"The victims perished not only because of the killers, but also because of the apathy of the bystanders. ... What astonished us after the torment ... was not that so many killers killed so many victims, but that so few cared about us at all."
--Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
On November 25th, I am heading back to the Nuba Mountains of Sudan to once again purchase and truck food up to the civilians who are on the verge of starvation as a result of the Government of Sudan's (GoS) actions: daily bombing of villages and farms, and preventing the United Nations and nongovernmental humanitarian organizations from entering the area to provide relief.
Since I was last in the Nuba Mountains, the situation has taken several turns for the worse. First, instead of solely relying on lumbering Antonovs to drop bombs on Nuba compounds, schools, places of worship and suqs (open marketplaces), the GoS is making ever-increasing use of fighter jets (Sukhoi-24s), which are frighteningly fast and capable of utterly destroying a village in minutes.
But the bad news does not stop there. Not satisfied with having forced the Nuba civilians off their farms high up into mountain caves where they seek sanctuary from the daily bombings, the GoS is now dropping chemicals on any patch of land in the Nuba Mountains where sorghum--the traditional food of the Nuba--is growing. This is a blatant effort to either starve the people to death or to force them out of Sudan--a classic ploy of those perpetrating ethnic cleansing, if not genocide by attrition.
According to Nuba Reports (an Internet news source issued by citizen journalists, which was founded by a friend of mine, an American, Ryan Boyette), "five children from the same family were killed when a bomb hit their home during a government air raid on Heiban market on Thursday, October 16. ... The children died as they tried to run for cover."
Not a few, including some relatives, have accused me of being foolish for subjecting myself to possible death as I carry out these humanitarian efforts. Maybe. But I don't really see it that way. In fact, as a scholar of genocide studies, I feel a deep and abiding responsibility to not allow myself to be a bystander in the face of others' suffering.
That, of course, does not automatically mean I have to enter war zones to help people. But the Nuba Mountains' situation is unique in that, as previously stated, the international community, individual states (including the U.S.), and international humanitarian organizations have been banned from entering the Nuba Mountains by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. In announcing the ban, he issued this threat: "Anyone who crosses our border against our wishes will have their throats cut."
And thus, for the past three and a half years not a single international organization (not the World Food Programme, not the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, not Oxfam) have ventured across the South Sudan/Sudan border to provide aid for the Nuba civilians. The point is if individuals do not accept the responsibility of providing food for the Nuba people, no one will.
This brings me to the incredibly moving article, "In praise of giving" by Steve Straessle, which appeared recently in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Therein, Straessle wrote: "Bystanders have been the greatest cause of pain in human history. Those who choose to look away as opposed to speak up have, by default, allowed the greatest degradations of the human spirit to occur. ... Good things happen when people say yes to good things. ... The act of giving is just that--an action. Bystanders never make things happen. It takes people willing to give without knowing the outcome."
If I have learned anything at all during the course of my 30-year career of studying and writing about genocide, it is that I do not want, could not abide, being a bystander. Ultimately, my missions in the Nuba Mountains, as foolish as they may appear to others, are predicated on the simple but profound admonition, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
I am not undertaking this mission on my own. While I am the one heading to the Nuba Mountains, scores of good people have supported my effort in a host of astonishing ways. May God bless all of them. Among them are such wonderful human beings as Kathleen Barta, my incredible wife; Michael Totten, my brother; Reverend Lowell Grisham; Art Hobson; Dick Bennett; Gladys Tiffany; and Patty Bell, to name but several.
To help make this latest mission a success, please go to IndieGoGo.com and type in Nuba Mountains. Then, look for the heading "Community."
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Samuel Totten's latest book is Conflict in the Nuba Mountains: From Genocide to Attrition to the Contemporary Crisis in Sudan. He can be reached at samstertotten@gmail.com.
Editorial on 11/22/2014