Armies of Liberation

The militias are crossing into Chad to attack the refugees.

Kofi Annon is going to visit Darfur. So is Colin Powell. “According to Mr. Boucher, the militias have destroyed 301 villages in Darfur and damaged 76 others. The attacks have also destroyed crops and irrigation systems, he said. In addition, the Sudanese authorities have responded to a mounting crisis by placing obstacles in the paths of relief workers, he said.”

The Talabanish Sudanese government has promised to disarm their militias but hasn’t followed through. The government has denied attacking their citizens with aerial bombardment and gunships although numerous witnesses have escaped death to testify to these tactics.

The majority of the one displaced million people are women and children. They are starving to death while aid is blocked at the border.

In one unusual Web site posting, a Saudi man who wrote that he worked with the kidnap victim and had even discussed Islam with him, tried to extend a religiously inspired, traditional tribal form of protection known in Arabic as “ijara” that would forbid killing Mr. Johnson.

“I hereby declare my protection and rescue for this man along with all his colleagues who work with us in the company, who ate with us and accepted our gifts of Islamic books which they promised to read,” wrote the man, identified as Saad al-Moemen. He also described visits by Mr. Johnson to his home and said Mr. Johnson had expressed distaste for American foreign policy.

One cleric, identified as Sheik Abu Bassir, reissued a ruling saying that anyone who came to Saudi Arabia with a valid visa should be protected. He wrote that whether foreigners come “to visit, or for tourism, or for trade, or to study, or to tutor, or for therapy, or to get married, or to hear the word of God, they should be safe and should not be terrorized, should not be assaulted.” The exceptions, he wrote, are those who come as warriors or spies or to spread corruption, vice and drugs.

The fatwa, or religious edict, was immediately attacked by a number of readers who said all foreigners, by definition, come to the kingdom with such bad intentions, acting as the vanguard for the American military. “Whoever gives them security is an apostate,” read one posting.

Others scoffed at the idea that an official visa bestowed legitimacy on visitors. “Who gave them the visa? It is the infidel agent regime,” read one posting in part. “So I tell the mujahedeen to keep killing them until the Arabian peninsula is cleared of the filth of the crusaders.”

Still others were not quite so severe, suggesting to the militants that they try to convert Westerners to Islam rather than killing them, because that way they would be spared from going to hell, and the image of the faith around the world would not be so tainted with blood.

Reflecting the differences that are rife in the interpretation of Islam, one religious sheik, identified as Abdel Rahman bin Saleh al-Mahmoud, said that Muhammad’s followers had commanded that all nonbelievers be expelled from the Arabian peninsula. But it has never been clear, he wrote, whether that includes just the holy city of Mecca or some larger area. Foreigners visited at the time of the prophet, he noted; it was just the idea of permanent communities that was abhorrent….”We want to make clear that anyone who comes to the country to live is different from someone coming to invade,” said Muhsin Awaji, the Saudi lawyer. He said he doubted that any such campaign would change the minds of the militants, and would certainly be too late for Mr. Johnson.

“Islamic” websites are airing a video of the beheading of Paul Johnson. The photos posted with the statement showed a severed head, placed on the back of a body. The body was wearing an orange jumpsuit and the face was turned toward the camera. “We gave you the deadline but you did not respect it” was the message that accompanied the video. (Link from My pet jawa.

Danile Pearl, Nick Berg and now Paul Johnson have been beheaded. Wahhabi Zealots in their quest for world domination have succeeded in attacking America, toppling the Spanish governemnt, driving the UN out of Iraq, and now impacting the Saudi economy by slaughtering innocents: Muslim, Christian and Jew alike. In their propagnda war, all these actions are justified and necessary. Let’s vote for Kerry, so “America can be America again.”

Robert Spencer at JihadWatch recently pointed to this article by Alan Caruba:I think a lot of Americans, certainly those favoring withdrawal from Iraq and efforts to negotiate with al-Qaeda and the nations supporting its holy war, have not yet figured out that the Islamic fundamentalists who beheaded Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg, who attacked this nation on 9/11, and who represent the insurgents in Iraq, want us dead. Unless, of course, we convert to Islam. …

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is due to visit the Sudan in the next few weeks, has said there were massive violations of international humanitarian law being committed there.

Sounds like what he said a few weeks ago. But Annan still won’t lable it genocide which would trigger an automatic response.

However, international aid agencies have accused the UN of being slow to react to the crisis which has left thousands dead and forced more than a million to flee their homes.

Slow to react? They haven’t reacted at all-except to permit the Sudan to gain a position on the Human Rights Committee. We’ve all seen this genocide developing for months. Numerous UN, US and aid officials have been vocal and blunt and the Un has done nothing.

Aid groups say the Security Council must make sure that Sudan complies with these demands and there should be credible threats of action if it does not comply such as sanctions.

As credible as the threats against Saddam were?

Mr Annan has hinted at the possibility of military intervention although it is not seen as likely.

Not likely as long as Annan depends on the African regional voting block for his position. Oh and who exactly will provide the military?
Thanks to The Grand Vizier for the link.This link at Solomonia gives a good history- thanks Bad Hair Blog.
To Contribute
To Protest

The wild free for all against President Bush does empower al-Qaeda by supporting their paradigm that its all America’s fault and that attacks are thus justified. At the other extreme, criticizing the head of state is illegal in most Middle eastern Countries.
Ali is charged with criticizing - during a Friday sermon - HH the Amir’s right to allow foreign armies to launch war on Iraq from Kuwaiti territory, defaming HH the Amir in public by describing Arab leaders as ‘traitors and failures’, holding a public seminar to defame brotherly and friendly states without permission and holding a public rally during the Friday sermon without permission. Al-Ali, former Secretary-General of the Salafi Movement, is also accused of teaching individuals how to make explosives in a mosque in Jahra and posting this information on his private website on the Internet.

Attorney Monawer added his client did not defame any one in particular, his spoke in general when he talked about allowing foreign armies to invade Iraq from Kuwaiti soil, without naming anyone. “Talking about ‘Arabs’ failure’, my client only said what the Arab leaders themselves had decided,” said Monawer.

My article “Victims of Silence in the Sudan” in The Yemen Times.
Sudan Update: UNICEF is “deeply concerned about the growing vulnerability of the vast displaced population in Darfur, now estimated at some one million people, half of them children.” Nearly all now face food shortages, outbreaks of disease, exploitation, and the rainy season, which has just started.

Other Yemeni News in this issue:Another Ugly Mosque Massacre

Terror trial postponed while lawyers obtain copy of charges Yemen Times met the family of Fawaz Al-Rabeae, one of the suspects. They stated that they consider their son a hero for what he had done to America and the world.

A Cultural Carnival aimed at a society free of revenge and violence.

Quote from Bernard Lewis: The Crisis of Islam, Holy War and Unholy Terror

Most Muslim countries are still profoundly Muslim, in a way and sense that most Christian countries are no longer Christian….In no Christian country at the present time can religious leaders count on the degree of belief and participation that remains normal in Muslim lands. In few, if any, Christian countries do Christian sanctities enjoy the immunity from critical comment or discussion that is accepted as normal even in ostensibly secular and democratic Muslim societies. Indeed, this privileged immunity has been extended, de facto, to Western countries where Muslims communities are now established and where Muslim beliefs and practices are accorded a level of immunity from criticism that the Christian majorities have lost and Jewish minorities never had. Most important, with very few exceptions, the Christian clergy do not exercise or even claim the kind of public authority that is still normal and accepted in Muslim countries.

(Sorry for the repition of topic but estimates have been revised. Now all the refugees in the Sudan are expected to die within months- the whole million. The monsoon has just begun and there is a window of a few weeks to begin a massive aid program if one existed. I am retooling my article for submission to US papers- as if it got published, the whole world would wake up and say wow, this is another genocide, lets all hurry in to help.)

Of the over a million Sudanese that have fled their own government to the edge of the Sahara, 300,000 will die within months. That is the best case scenario, according to Anthony Natsios, USAID chief. He predicts that without an immediate and enormous international effort, nearly all the entire displaced population- up to a million people- may perish. (1) None of the European, African or Middle Eastern states so vehemently opposed to the US’s role as global policeman are willing to assume for themselves the burden of the prevention of genocide.

The roots of the conflict are many. The collective punishment of the civilian population began as reprisals for an uprising by rebel groups from the disenfranchised western populace. In the Sudan, the Arab ruling class is primarily nomadic cattle and camel herders. The Darfurians are primarily pastoralists, farmers. Drought and desertification has made arable land more scare and placed these groups in conflict. Furthermore, many of the black Darfurians are Sufi Muslims who reject the strict Sharia law imposed by the government in Khartoum. Some point to a racially motivated Arabization policy.

The massive human rights violations “may” amount to crimes against humanity, a UN report stated last month.(1) Calling it the “worst humanitarian disaster today,” the UN nonetheless refuses to officially define the slaughter as genocide, which would trigger an automatic response. With a candidacy sponsored by the African regional group, the Sudan became a member of the United Nations Human Rights Commission last month. Now one of the worst violators of human rights has been entrusted to police itself and all nations.

The international community appears content to let this million die; the costs in money, manpower and political capital are too great to bear for the sake of a million Africans. The shadow of shame on the UN for the slaughter in Rwanda again darkens the international community. And the calls for the supremacy of international law ring hollow when that law is selectively applied, and applied least when needed most. In practice, the international hierarchy of priorities places the well being of civilians far below other concerns.

These are mothers, tens of thousands of mothers, watching their children wither away. These are fathers, fathers in the hell of helplessness, unable to fight off the death that stalks their wives. Civilians are their only allies: billions of parents value these families as states do not. The power of public opinion impacts foreign policy internationally as never before. Constituents thus empowered are more complicit by silence and face a choice. The new global power struggle is between the civilians and the terrorists, the civilians and the murderous regimes. As tens of thousands of Sudanese children die, our children become more vulnerable.