“Stop Bombing Our Hospitals!”

“Stop Bombing Our Hospitals!”

It is a terrible sign of the desperation on the part of the people of the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan, Sudan.  Compelled by three years of unrelenting, indiscriminate, and massively destructive bombing by Khartoum’s air force, the people of the Nuba have been driven to plead with these simple photos.  But for all their simplicity, they should be shocking: where else in the world, other than Sudan, are hospital, schools, churches, and mosques regularly targeted for attack?  These attacks are carried out for the most part by Antonov “bombers,” highly inaccurate retrofitted Russian cargo planes. They are entirely without the accuracy required for military purposes; they are tasked with sowing civilian destruction and terror.  They have largely destroyed the agricultural economy of the Nuba and over a million people have been displaced or are in acute need of humanitarian assistance.

And still the world will not act to compel Khartoum to halt this savage campaign.  Look carefully at these photographs and imagine yourself among these people.  What would you find acceptable as an explanation of international inaction in the face of your pleas?

Concerted economic pressure by the United States and the countries of the European Union could halt Khartoum’s bombing quickly.  Why aren’t these pressures being exerted?