This chapter isn't about what you can do to help, more so knowing that is's happening. As someone close to me once said: "Forgetting about it is letting it happen again."
This story begins on November 4, 1988. It is on this date, forty three years after the end of the Holocaust that U.S. President Ronald Reagan will sign the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
In the country of Sudan, in the western region there is a place called Darfur. Darfur is currently the most violent place in the world. It is home to a tribe called the Janjaweed. The Janjaweed are some of the most ruthless killers you will hopefully never encounter. They are a band of killers made up almost entirely of children.
These are children that were taken from the tribes they slaughtered. Janjaweed literally translates to “devils on horseback.” As the people heard the hooves thundering toward them it instilled a terror so huge. Besides the children taken for their own purposes only one person is allowed to live and go free. It was through that one person that the fear was spread. Word of slaughtered children, gang raped women and children, and burnt homes spreads like wildfire. Everyone knows and fears the name Janjaweed.
There was a young European family, who had decided to vacation in Africa. One day they ventured a little too close to the Janjaweed's territory. They were taken. For a period of six years abuse and violence was all she knew. Killing became a second nature. As natural as breathing. When the U.S. peacekeepers stumbled upon her she was so devoid of life, so cold. Her eyes closely resembled those of a sharks'. Black. She had been trained with a machete. There is a reason for that. When you use a gun you are far away from the person you are hurting. With a weapon that you hold in your hand, you have to see the light leave their eyes as you kill them. She had killed! She was also eight years old when she was taken. No longer the hunted, now the hunter.
You might be asking yourself: "Why?" Simply because these people were not Janjaweed. They belonged to the "wrong" tribe. This, however much the U.S. would like to believe otherwise, is a genocide. The U.S. refuses to call it so. If we call it a genocide by the Convention signed by Reagan, we would have to do something.
I am in no way saying we should drop everything and rush into Darfur. Let's imagine for a moment you are in the army. Your commanding officer has just told we are going to Darfur. We are fighting and essentially killing these people. You nod and say: "O.K." But when you are actually there, and you are looking into the eyes of the child you are about to kill you see a son. A daughter. A cousin. A neighbor. A sibling. No one should ever have to be in that position. The problem is to the children you are the threat. You are the ones they must kill. I am however saying we should call it what it is, because like it or not this is the way of the world.
For twenty years this has been happening. Twenty years of people asking, crying, pleading for help. But can we? Can we kill a child that has nothing child-like about him?
