Kristof: World Remains 'Silent' as Darfur Violence Rages

Nicholas Kristof documents executions, rape, and famine there, and how not enough is being done
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 19, 2024 1:49 PM CDT
Kristof: World Remains 'Silent' as Darfur Violence Rages
Sudanese girls carry water supplies in a refugee camp near Darfur, Sudan, on April 13, 2010.   (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser, File)

"Catastrophic" is how Cindy McCain, widow of Sen. John McCain and head of the United Nations World Food Program, describes the situation in the Darfur region of Sudan to Nicholas Kristof, who recently visited there to see the devastation. Writing for the New York Times, Kristof details the horrors of the civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Arab militias: executions, rapes, and other violence, particularly against Black African ethnic groups, where even infants don't escape the carnage. "We don't want to see any Black people," one witness says a militia leader said during an attack last year. "We don't even want to see black trash bags." Kristof writes that the Darfur genocide of two decades ago was similar, though there's now a famine tacked on, plus another "crucial difference": The world doesn't seem as tuned in this time around.

"Today ... the world is distracted and silent," he writes. "The impunity is allowing violence to go unchecked." He includes the Biden administration among those not doing enough. Although the US president has offered aid and named a special envoy to work on talks, Biden hasn't made public demands that the UAE, which has been providing weapons to militia members, end that support. A disaster expert, meanwhile, tells Kristof that 13 million people could die of starvation by late 2025. Kristof visited one family in Darfur, where 17-year-old Thuraya Muhammad cares for her three younger siblings after her parents' deaths. "I'd rather my sisters and brother eat, because they cry when they go hungry," Thuraya told Kristof of how she gives her food portions to them. "And I can't bear to hear them cry." Read the full essay. (More Darfur stories.)

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