more on Chad

Though I am not finished with discussing some of Ann Curry's work, I wanted to expand more on what I wrote yesterday about Chad. Curry's work is all from November of last year. While that's not too long ago, I wanted to see if anything had changed. This is an article from the Boston Herald today that discussed the violence spreading into Chad and the possibility of the UN asserting force.

Due to the confusion and complications between the two governments, I think it is clearly made apparent in this article that the UN or the United States needs to do something. When two countries are clashing and can't stop the violence within their own borders the rest of the world needs to see that something is done to end the thousands of atrocities occurring. The UN was created for this specific purpose. And if we, the US, felt we needed to invade Iraq, I think there is ten-fold the reason to interfere in Darfur and Chad.

An excerpt from the article I want to focus people's attention on follows:

"Tens of thousands of Darfur refugees live in scorching, wind-beaten camps on Chad’s side of the border, competing with Chadian villagers over scarce water and firewood. Various rebel groups and militias roam the vast region....
...More than 200,000 people have died since ethnic African tribesmen in Darfur took up arms four years ago, complaining of discrimination by the Arab-dominated Sudanese government. The U.N. blames the Sudanese government’s counterinsurgency for the bulk of the atrocities. Of the 2.5 million people who have fled their homes, 230,000 have ended up in refugee camps inside Chad"

The first thing I would like to point out is the description of the people living on the border. As I was reading that I was thinking, what if we don't do anything? What happens if this is what borders of the surrounding countries pictured above start to look like? What happens if this violence spreads through out all of this area in Africa? Will we do something then? And how bad and how many borders have to look like this for us to do something?

I know it is more complicated than this, but it can also be this simple. These are simple questions that aren't answered. Maybe it's because I'm naive and too young, but I don't understand why we don't do something more. Especially, when we are interjecting in Iraq.

I included the second paragraph only to get some more statistical input on the violence.