Monday, January 31, 2005
Genocide
Baghdad Burning
"E. was the first to hear it. We were sitting in the living room and he suddenly jumped up, alert, "Do you hear that?" He asked. I strained my ears for either the sound of a plane or helicopter or gun shots. Nothing... except, wait... something... like a small stream of... water? Could it be? Was it back? We both ran into the bathroom where we had the faucets turned on for the last eight days in anticipation of water. Sure enough, there it was- a little stream of water that kept coming and going as if undecided. E. and I did a little victory dance in front of the sink with some celebratory hoots and clapping."
"The curfew begins at six from now on and there's also a "driving curfew" in addition to the ordinary one. I don't have the exact hours but I know that during several hours of the day, it's ok to be on foot but not ok to be in a car. I don't have the slightest idea how they're going to enforce that one."
Love her writing style. Somehow I am reminded of Ann Frank's diary everytime I read her blog. The charm and sensitivity of a mature writer in the face of atrocities does indeed captivate an audience.
I watched Hotel Rwanda yesterday. To think that as almost 1 million people were being slaughtered (in three months) , the rest of the world looked on. History repeating itself? Ok, thats a given. But Darfur? It seems to me that when faced with such questions such as genocide, beaurocrats, pundits and world leaders alike tend to take the "for" or "against" approach - futile and ridiculous. Ian Williams from the Asia Times has described it well
"It is like being for or against surgery. You can oppose punitive amputation of limbs, be dubious about procedures that do more for profits than patients, but still be all in favor of operations that have clearly beneficial results, while still invoking the Hippocratic principle, "Above all do no harm."
Humanitarian and military intervention, as a concept, has always been smitten with such problems. Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, Japan's imperialist interventions to "liberate" Asia, Russians and Chechnya and ofcourse Iraq. It begs the question, who decides? Quite obviously, the Sudanese government control the janjaweed militia and are certainly as culpable as Milosevic was. The Sudanese were probably, and not so surprisingly, smarter in tackling the UN. Must have learned from Milosevic's mistakes. Pretended to bring in AID and impose stringent conditions, while thousands were murdered and raped. You would think though, that the international community has learnt from its past beaurocratic mishaps and their falsely derived syllogisms.
More than 70,000 people were killed and two million forced to flee their homes in Darfur. The UN ruled out a genocide. To thrash out pros an cons and delve deep into this is certainly beyond ths scope of this desultory diatribe. I just needed to vent.
"E. was the first to hear it. We were sitting in the living room and he suddenly jumped up, alert, "Do you hear that?" He asked. I strained my ears for either the sound of a plane or helicopter or gun shots. Nothing... except, wait... something... like a small stream of... water? Could it be? Was it back? We both ran into the bathroom where we had the faucets turned on for the last eight days in anticipation of water. Sure enough, there it was- a little stream of water that kept coming and going as if undecided. E. and I did a little victory dance in front of the sink with some celebratory hoots and clapping."
"The curfew begins at six from now on and there's also a "driving curfew" in addition to the ordinary one. I don't have the exact hours but I know that during several hours of the day, it's ok to be on foot but not ok to be in a car. I don't have the slightest idea how they're going to enforce that one."
Love her writing style. Somehow I am reminded of Ann Frank's diary everytime I read her blog. The charm and sensitivity of a mature writer in the face of atrocities does indeed captivate an audience.
I watched Hotel Rwanda yesterday. To think that as almost 1 million people were being slaughtered (in three months) , the rest of the world looked on. History repeating itself? Ok, thats a given. But Darfur? It seems to me that when faced with such questions such as genocide, beaurocrats, pundits and world leaders alike tend to take the "for" or "against" approach - futile and ridiculous. Ian Williams from the Asia Times has described it well
"It is like being for or against surgery. You can oppose punitive amputation of limbs, be dubious about procedures that do more for profits than patients, but still be all in favor of operations that have clearly beneficial results, while still invoking the Hippocratic principle, "Above all do no harm."
Humanitarian and military intervention, as a concept, has always been smitten with such problems. Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, Japan's imperialist interventions to "liberate" Asia, Russians and Chechnya and ofcourse Iraq. It begs the question, who decides? Quite obviously, the Sudanese government control the janjaweed militia and are certainly as culpable as Milosevic was. The Sudanese were probably, and not so surprisingly, smarter in tackling the UN. Must have learned from Milosevic's mistakes. Pretended to bring in AID and impose stringent conditions, while thousands were murdered and raped. You would think though, that the international community has learnt from its past beaurocratic mishaps and their falsely derived syllogisms.
More than 70,000 people were killed and two million forced to flee their homes in Darfur. The UN ruled out a genocide. To thrash out pros an cons and delve deep into this is certainly beyond ths scope of this desultory diatribe. I just needed to vent.
# posted by Surya Swamy : 11:03 AM
Comments:
<< Home
Generation in the next decade will condemn us for the current inaction in Darfur and making hollow of the promise "never again".
Post a Comment
<< Home
