Much to-do has been made about President Bush announcing more sanctions against Sudan over its government’s involvement in the genocide in Darfur. This comes on the heels of the Sudanese government’s refusal to let U.N. troops come to the aid of the people of Darfur. What we heard today was tough talk that rings hollow when certain facts are brought to light.

What Bush didn’t tell us was that these sanctions don’t really target the one commodity Sudan has at its disposal - oil. This means that sanctions targeting other areas of business in the Sudan don’t really mean that much to the bottom line when you have a country that pumps about 500,000 barrels of oil every day. If you multiply that by the roughly $63/barrel price, you can see that this country will be awash in enough cash to withstand any sanctions that don’t affect oil revenues.

So, while I am hopeful, I am not holding my breath on what Bush will do. As long as oil is in play, I believe that the lives of the people of Darfur will only continue to be in peril.

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Sometimes, it’s very hard to imagine what a genocide looks like. Of course, we know that a lot of people are killed but, without news footage, our imaginations don’t go into those dark places to create imagery stark enough to capture the real picture.

However, there are rare occasions where words can help create a mental image. If you follow the tale of a 42-year-old Darfur survivor by the name of Ibrahim, you can begin to get some idea of the level of brutality and inhumanity heaped upon the people of this region.

Uncovered by a restless wind, skulls and bones poke above the thin dirt in this corner of Darfur, lying surrounded by half-buried, rotting clothes.

A short, bearded man named Ibrahim, 42, scratches through the sand. He is quiet and serious, close to tears. There are other, bigger grave sites elsewhere, he says, but the bones he is looking at are those of 25 people who he is sure are his friends and fellow villagers.

Some of them were dragged from the prison where he was held and were axed to death, he says.

However, if this is not bad enough, imagine this as part of your reality:

Mukjar offers a sobering look at the results of a government victory: Impoverished and frightened ethnic Africans huddle in refugee camps where they survive on humanitarian aid, while Arab nomads control the hinterland, threatening any farmer who tries to return.

“They did such a good job at cleansing the region in 2003 that there’s not much left to fight over,” said an aid worker, who like all others interviewed refused to be quoted by name for fear of being expelled by the government.

Aid workers say the town is like “a security bubble,” where refugees can live in relative safety as long as they don’t venture more than a mile or so into the countryside.

Janjaweed fighters still stroll through the marketplace, automatic rifles slung over their shoulders.

“We live side by side with the murderers of our families, and we can’t do anything,” said Ibrahim.

Just imagine having to be in such close proximity to someone who has killed your family and threatens your life but, you are unable to do anything about it. The only thing you have is the frailest of hope that help will come. As I have stated before, Darfur can’t wait. This is another great moral test the world is failing.

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Finally, the world is starting to recognize the dire situation in Darfur. After the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of millions, the international community is finally starting to take some action. Today, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for war crimes in Darfur.

The warrants were issued for Sudan’s former state minister of interior Ahmed Haroun and Janjaweed militia commander Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman.

The list of crimes for which they are accused are indicative of the brutality and depravity of those perpetrating these attacks:

Judges said there were “reasonable grounds to believe” the two were responsible for murder, rape, and torture, as well as the forced displacement of villagers, and other war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, the court said.

Of course, Sudan’s government has no intention of cooperating but, at least we are now seeing this genocide be labeled the criminal act it is.

It is also interesting to not that, while 104 nations support the International Criminal Court, Russia, China and the United States do not.

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The “Butterfly Effect” is the idea that meteoroligical patterns are chaotic because even the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can contribute to changes in these patterns. In other words, things are interrelated and the actions of one can affect another.

Well, the recent change of heart in the Sudan may be the butterfly effect on steroids.

We have seen the leadership of that country refuse to budge on allowing a U.N. peacekeeping force into its Darfur region to quell the genocide there. It was able to do so, in large part, due to the backing it had from the Chinese government.

However, when some Hollywood luminaries and activists threatened to tie Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Olympics to the Darfur genocide, China began pressuring the Sudan to allow peacekeepers in the region.

Now, without a superpower watching its back, Sudan finds itself finally capitulating to the U.N. request that it bring in 3,000 troops to augment the 7,000 African Union troops already there.

This is by no means over. The U.N. wants even more troops and police in the region but, so far, Sudan’s President, Omar al-Bashir, is pushing back, claiming it would violate Sudan’s sovereignity.

But, hopefully, this is a step towards stopping the death and displacement of people whose only crime is being black.

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Like I’ve heard former congressman Rev. Walter Fauntroy say before, “money rules in all matters.”

This seems to be holding true for China. China, in its capacity as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council has long blocked attempts for sanctions against Sudan for it’s policies on Darfur. However, it’s interesting to see how the pull of the purse strings can make even mighty China take notice. China is set to hold the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. However, it is getting some really bad press over its support of the Sudan and it fears that it could hurt attendance (read: money) for its hosting of the Olympics.

So, in a stunning move, China is now pressuring Sudan to accept a U.N. peacekeeping force in the region.

How did this come about? You could chalk it up to the work of some Hollywood luminaries (sadly, none of them black but, we may address that some other time):

So what gives? Credit goes to Hollywood — Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg in particular. Just when it seemed safe to buy a plane ticket to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games, nongovernmental organizations and other groups appear to have scored a surprising success in an effort to link the Olympics, which the Chinese government holds very dear, to the killings in Darfur, which, until recently, Beijing had not seemed too concerned about.

Ms. Farrow, a good-will ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund, has played a crucial role, starting a campaign last month to label the Games in Beijing the “Genocide Olympics” and calling on corporate sponsors and even Mr. Spielberg, who is an artistic adviser to China for the Games, to publicly exhort China to do something about Darfur. In a March 28 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, she warned Mr. Spielberg that he could “go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games,” a reference to a German filmmaker who made Nazi propaganda films.

Four days later, Mr. Spielberg sent a letter to President Hu Jintao of China, condemning the killings in Darfur and asking the Chinese government to use its influence in the region “to bring an end to the human suffering there,” according to Mr. Spielberg’s spokesman, Marvin Levy.

China soon dispatched Mr. Zhai to Darfur, a turnaround that served as a classic study of how a pressure campaign, aimed to strike Beijing in a vulnerable spot at a vulnerable time, could accomplish what years of diplomacy could not.

So, money does indeed rule the day. I really don’t care what tactics are employed as long as the people of Darfur get the help they so desperately need.

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It has been reported that the U.S. is holding of on further sanctions against Sudan at the request of the United Nations. The U.N. is pushing Sudan to accept more international peacekeepers in their country.

This is expected to delay more sanctions by, at least, 2-4 weeks.

Please understand, these are sanctions. So, the effects of these may not be felt immediately in Sudan. So, any delay only adds more time to Sudan seeing any negative financial impact to its policy of genocide in Darfur.

These sanctions will target 29 Sudanese companies. The U.S. is hoping that they will have the same effect as similar sanctions against Iran and North Korea.

However, as we continue to way, more people will be raped, maimed and killed. The time to act is long overdue. So, world, what are we waiting for?

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Sudan was once the home of Osama bin Laden so, to say that the country has terrorist ties would be an understatement.

In our so-called, “war on terror”, it appears that we are willing to drag our feet while atrocities are carried out by a government in exchange for some information on terrorist activities.

Despite protestations to the contrary, this is part of our policy on Sudan.

It’s kind of like the police letting one of their informants rape and murder in exchange from some information they might have on drug syndicate. You ignore crimes actually being carried out by one group, based on the fear of potential crimes by another group.

This is just one more piece in the puzzle of why we sit idly by while people die.

But, really, it’s not so complicated when you think about it. There’s a line in the movie Sahara that sums it up best. In one scene, there’s an exchange between a man running a waste disposal plant where chemicals are seeping into the water supply, threatening the people of the country, and the dictator of that country. When the plant owner expresses worry, the dictator turns to him and simply says, “Don’t worry. It’s Africa. Nobody cares about Africa.”

So, I offer the same conclusion — nobody cares about Africa.

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Sadly, the deaths of over 500,000 people, the rapes of countless women and girls and the displacement of over 2.5 million Darfurians has not moved the U.S. toward decisive action against the Sudanese government (I guess oil is thicker than blood). However, there may be something that’s more in the U.S. own interests that will force its hand on Sudan.

You know the whole “global war on terror” thing that Bush keeps telling us we’re fighting. In particular, he states that al-Qaeda is our number one threat. Well, a judge has ruled that Sudan is liable in the 2000 attack of the U.S.S. Cole in which 17 sailors were killed.

Specifically, the judge said that “(t)here is substantial evidence in this case presented by the expert testimony that the government of Sudan induced the particular bombing of the Cole by virtue of prior actions of the government of Sudan.” Did you read what I read? The GOVERNMENT of Sudan was involved in an al-Qaeda attack against a U.S. Navy vessel. Remember, Sudan was a hotbed for al-Qaeda activity and, at one time, was home to Osama bin Laden.

So, what does it say that we go to war against a country that posed not real threat to us but, we act diplomatically with a country whose government was complicit in an attack on a military vessel and the deaths of U.S. soldiers?

If genocide doesn’t move the U.S., maybe this will.

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The wheels of justice have been entirely too slow but, they are finally starting to turn.

It seems there will be some accountability for atrocities that have killed more than 500,000 (though the media seems stuck on an estimate of 200,000) and displaced more than 2.5 million people.

Finally, the International Criminal Court has named its first suspects in these crimes.

The International Criminal Court chief prosecutor named a Sudanese minister and a militia commander on Tuesday as the first suspects he wants tried for war crimes in Darfur and suggested more could follow.

Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked pre-trial judges to issue summonses for Ahmed Haroun, state interior minister during the height of the Darfur conflict, and militia commander Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb.

“Our work sends a signal: those who commit atrocities cannot do so without impunity,” he told a news conference, adding that prosecutors were still gathering evidence of crimes committed by all parties and monitoring cross-border violence.

Haroun is currently Sudan’s state humanitarian affairs minister, a post below the full ministerial level. Prosecutors said Kushayb was a commander of the Janjaweed militia who led attacks on towns and villages, where dozens were killed.

In a 94-page filing, ICC prosecutors accused the two of criminal responsibility in relation to 51 counts of alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in 2003 and 2004 and urged Khartoum to make sure the suspects appear at the court.

For the sake of the dead and dying and for those terrorized and traumatized by this madness, let’s hope the international community rallies around this very real threat.

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To call Darfur, Sudan a dangerous place would be an understatement. I have heard estimates as high as 500,000 in regards to the number of people killed in the genocide. In addition to this, women and young girls are routinely raped by members of the Janjaweed militias. However, these rapes are not only the plight of black Sudanese women but, also, aid workers.

Groups such as Oxfam and Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) have had female workers sexually attacked. As a result, this puts the future of aid work in Sudan in jeopardy.

This is just the latest chapter in a frightening and depressing saga that, for the most part, goes on ignored.

But, because it black life and the lives of those helping these black folks, maybe it just doesn’t matter to rest of the world.

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