Why does the Darfur tragedy matter?
"Expect more expressions of concern, little action and more deaths - well beyond the borders of Darfur," warns a columnist in Britain's Daily Telegraph .
What does he mean? Sudan's government, which is now effectively the government of northern Sudan, is Islamist and Arab, explains journalist Charles Moore. Its aim in the recently-ended war with the south was to "assert Arab dominance of the north over the (country's) black population", and this is what it is doing in Darfur as well. The largely Christian south now has a great measure of self-rule, and will be allowed to vote, in 2011, as to whether it wants to secede from the rest of Sudan. What occurs in Darfur, in the far west of the country, concerns not only the fate of its hungry, raped and dispossessed people, Moore says. If the world lets Khartoum get away with what it wants in Darfur, it may renew its quest for the much larger prize of the south, home to most of the country's lucrative oil reserves.
Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Reuters.
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