Darfur, Fasting, and Confusion

On October 5th, 2006, I ate nothing. Drank some water, took a vitamin, and felt kinda miserable near the end, and went for 24 hours without food. As sane people who believe I'm fairly sane as well, you're probably wondering why that is. So I'll explain. STAND, which is an acronym for Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, organized a day called Darfur Fast, to show solidarity with the people of Darfur. It's currently Ramadan, but while usually the people of Darfur would be fasting during the day and eating at home after sunset, they have been displaced, murdered, and starved. The reason I took part is not that I feel the people of Darfur appreciate the gesture (as much as they'd appreciate basic necessities) but that I have never gone a day without eating and that this is an issue that I feel strongly about, and I wanted to make a statement.

I'm not entirely sure what effect I had as I didn't shout my action from the rooftops, but I did mention it to some people (and even told one guy about what's going on, as he had never heard of it. For shame, media, do what you're supposed to do. By which I don't mean sensationalise the issue for a week, but investigate and educate the people about all issues, not just the Issue of the Week.) As part of my statement, I wanted to tell you guys all about it, but as you'll see later I had more trouble writing about the issue than I thought.

So what is the issue? Well, Sudan is primarily Muslim, but they are divided into the primarily Arabic Central and Eastern Sudan, and the predominately black people of Darfur. The Sudanese government wants Sudan to be an Arabic state, and thus marginalized the people of Darfur, who rebelled in protest. This started around 2003, when the government was already engaged in a civil war in the south, and so rather than diverting its military to combat the problem, it created and supplied militias, known as the janjaweed, who then started to terrorize and murder the population. The Sudanese government has also refused to allow humanitarian aid into Darfur, and the janjaweed have poisoned crops and wells. This is a systematic effort to drive out or murder the non-Arab people of Darfur, it is genocide, and it is overwhelmingly horrible. I literally can't imagine it, and it is one of the few issues that I am genuinely passionate about.

So what can you do? Well, I'm not sure. That's why I didn't write this earlier. I cannot think of any conflict of the previous century that was actually resolved through humanitarian intervention. Rwanda is stable because a rebel force took over the government and stopped the killing (well, and France intervened, but on the side of the government that was perpetrating the genocide.) The UN is still in Kosovo and I don't see how they're going to get out, while the UN didn't intervene at all during the ethnic cleansing in the other Balkan states. I don't know much about Somalia other than that the intervention there was pretty catastrophic, and don't get me started on Iraq. On the whole, genocide seems to generally run its course, and I don't know whether interventions actually help. On Monday STAND is having a meeting to discuss concrete solutions, which I'm quite tempted to attend, so maybe they'll correct my views on the subject.

The world makes me depressed. Only that fact that I want to change it keeps me from staying depressed. I will be writing a post about the issues I feel threaten us the most soon, and I honestly hope to influence you guys to do something, because fasting and thinking has led me to the conclusion that I can no longer sit around and occasionally be disgusted by the world.