Women of Darfur

There is a searing report in the Sunday Telegraph (registration required) by Benjamin Joffe-Walt:

After 50 years of conflict that have claimed almost 2 million lives, Sudan is now officially at peace - but unofficially, the war goes on. In Darfur, Sudan's western-most region, the people remain untouched by last week's peace agreement signed between the country's Islamic government and Christian rebels. Sudanese soldiers and the government-backed Janjaweed militia still terrorise, and at the centre of their campaign of "ethnic cleansing" is a policy of systematic rape designed to drive civilians from their settlements.
.....
"When we arrived in Abu Lehah we saw hundreds of women unable to walk," says Asha Abdara Haman, 25, who helped Ilham and other girls on the long journey to Bahai. "Many girls were under 15 and couldn't walk. We carried them for 16 days."

Asha and her 17-year-old sister, Radiya, were taken by Janjaweed and held as sex slaves for two days. "Five to six people raped each of us," Asha says. "They did everything they wanted with us, our condition was horrible."
.....
Asha describes the rape camp as a well organised operation. "There were 35 women taken and they split us up, one for each group of Janjaweed." She says that this is how it generally works. "If women are few, they divide us five or six Janjaweed per woman. If there are enough women after their daily collections then it's one to one."

The continuing horror of Darfur provides some perspective on the argument lately deployed - by Human Rights Watch amongst others - against those who thought there was a powerful humanitarian case for regime change in Iraq: I mean the argument that things weren't (yet... any longer) quite bad enough in Iraq for the humanitarian case for intervention to apply. And when things are more than bad enough? Then the world community talks and talks, huffs and puffs, delays and delays, maybe prepares a bit, then talks some more, while the rape and the torture and the murder go on to the extent of tens of thousands of abandoned human beings. Sufficient unto the case - each case - my friends. Was Baathist Iraq bad enough? It was a living abomination. Is Darfur today?

"Many girls were under 15 and couldn't walk. We carried them for 16 days."

The 'peace' marchers remain still, not favouring the women (and others) of Darfur with their slogans and their banners.