CNN International Interview with Nigeria's President Obasanjo and USAfricaonline.com Publisher Chido Nwangwu on Democracy and Security Issues

I watched the September 30, 2004 presidential debate in Florida with the usual, professional interest of extracting and articulating the bi-continental interests of U.S and Africa. One of those interests, albeit brief, focused on the genocidal killings by gangs of radical, Islamo-fascist soldiers in the heart of Africa, the republic of the Sudan.

Beyond the understanding by President George Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry that the crisis in the western Darfur region of Sudan is tantamount to "genocide", the issues of if, when and how the umbrella African Union and the U.S. should intervene have really become the valid agenda.

Kerry is right it has since become a "moral responsibility" for the U.S not to allow another Rwanda to happen. Recall that slow response especially by by the Bill Clinton presidency, Kofi Annan's U.N, and France allowed the murderous evil of 1994 where Rwandan Hutu extremists slaughtered 780,000 minority Tutsis and other Hutu sympathizers within 80 days!

I made similar points during an October 1, 2004 interview the Voice of America had with me regarding the U.S 2004 presidential debate.

The decimation of the fundamental human right to life, one of Bush's latter-day reasons for the invasion of Iraq, is a daily event in Darfur and other christian, indigenous, southern Sudan.

In a case where almost 11,000 have died in what the enfeebled United Nations first described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis in recent times, what detains the moral will of the world's most powerful military power? Or are those Darfur Sudanese the children of a lesser God? I don't think so!

In Darfur, Islamic Arab militias have seized lands, employed terroristic means to wantonly destroy farmlands and villages, raping hundreds of women and killing thousands civilians of indigenous black African ethnic nationalities of the Sudan from their lands, many, and pushing others into refugee camps. The government of the Sudan has since the 1990s and more recently from 2002 into 2004, unleashed and provided resources to the so-called horseback militias, called the janjaweed. They enslave the Black Africans of the Sudan, too.

- the imperatives of his duties as Americas chief diplomat;

- genuine concern for his shared heritage as a son of Caribbean grandparents of predominantly African descent;

- a pan-human interest in a case where almost 11,000 have died in what the enfeebled United Nations describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Powell is the highest ranking U.S. official to visit Sudan since 1978.

USAfricaonline.com special correspondent in Sudan reports that in Darfur, Islamic Arab militias have seized lands, employed terroristic means to wantonly destroy farmlands and villages, raping hundreds of women and killing thousands civilians of indigenous black African ethnic nationalities of the Sudan from their lands, many, and pushing others into refugee camps.

The government of the Sudan has since the 1990s and more recently from 2002 into 2004, unleashed and provided resources to the so-called horseback militias, called the janjaweed. They enslave the Black Africans of the Sudan, too.

Their mission: suppress and murder Christians and African indigenes of the Sudan, despoliate their means of existence and connection to the heritage.

These two groups have long been battered by the Islamic zealots who masquerade a theocratic constipation and contortion called a 'government' in Khartoum.

Led by the likes of Dr. John Garang, the indigenous Africans in the area have fought with modest and half-hearted support from the West/European/American governments who lean more to the mineral and oil resources interest of businesses and corporations than any vigorous protection of the human rights and self-determination imperatives of the non-Muslim, indigenous southern Sudan. (el-Bashir wearing white in picture is seen shaking hands with Powell during Powell's June 2004 visit)

A few weeks ago, the New York-based organization Human Rights Watch in a June 22 report said that it investigated "the use of rape by both Janjaweed and Sudanese soldiers against women from the three African ethnic groups targeted in the 'ethnic cleansing' campaign in Darfur." It added, "The rapes are often accompanied by dehumanizing epithets, stressing the ethnic nature of the joint government-Janjaweed campaign. The rapists use the terms 'slaves' and 'black slaves' to refer to the women, who are mostly from the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups."

Let's recall, too, that the spearhead of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden lived in the same Sudan. After American investigations of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, 5 of the 15 men who were indicted hailed from the same Sudan.

In 1998, soon after the terroristic bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, then president Clinton ordered U.S. cruise missiles against Al-Qaeda camps in the same Sudan. I have written previously on Africa and terrorism on this page and on our web site USAfricaonline.com

Those facts and the continuing, bigoted impudence of Islamic Sudan offer clarity to why the U.S should aggressively halt the genocide and gory events in Africa's largest country. The Sudan has almost 918,000 square miles in size and a war-weary population of 30million. Even as I call for a red line to be drawn against the rag-tag army of Arab-taliban-fascists in Africa and the assorted troops of religio-criminal rapists who have since four decades set upon the southern Christian, indifrican African Sudanese, I agree with Gen. Powell that "America will be a friend to all Africans who seek peace; but we cannot make peace among Africans." He is right. Africans must respect and love each other.

He is also right to warn Sudan's Islamic extremist President Omar el-Bashir. "Unless we see more movement soon it may be necessary to consider other actions, including Security Council actions. Need No. 1 is security, so that the people of Darfur feel safe, so that aid can flow.''

Thankfully, the politically active Christian base of president Bush's presidency demand that he should do more than mere condemnations to halt the primordial cruelties of el-Bashir's antiquated Islamic republic. Hopefully, neither Bush nor Powell would like to see the al-Qaeda find more refuge in the Sudan.

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