Back in the 90s and early 2000’s there were a couple of movies set in Africa where a line was said in both that summed up the world’s attitude: “This is Africa. Nobody cares about Africa.”

Sure, rock stars and then Christian artists got together a couple of times and sang some songs and raised some money… and then?

It’s not that Africa is “the dark continent.” It’s not. But the world ignores the atrocities that happen there all the time. Our attention is on the Ukraine and Israel right now. It’s not that it shouldn’t be there… but in Sudan there is ongoing horrific conflict that has lasted decades.

No one in the U.S. has done a better job of constantly writing about the Sudan than Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. His writing over the years challenges me. He constantly reports on what is going on and is constantly ignored. Yet, here we are again.

This is his recent column opens:

When an Arab militia rampaged through Maryam Suleiman’s village in the Darfur region of Sudan last year and lined up men and boys to massacre, the gunmen were blunt about their purpose.

“We don’t want to see any Black people,” a militia leader said, adding mockingly: “We don’t even want to see black trash bags.” To make his point, Maryam recalled, he shot a donkey because it was black.

Perhaps a clue as to why we constantly ignore African atrocities lies in this opening…

The neighboring country of Chad has 10 million refugees from Sudan, mostly women and children since the men and boys are killed in Sudan, and this time it’s because the Arab population in Sudan wants to systematically erase all blacks from the country. All of this has been unchecked and unnoticed. It’s happened at the same time we’re busy arguing over Ukraine and Gaza. All of this conflict is also producing one of the worst famines in decades.

Kristof continues:

Timmo Gaasbeek, a disaster expert who has modeled the crisis for a research institute in the Netherlands, told me that he foresees 13 million people starving to death in Sudan by October 2025, with a margin of error of two million. Such a toll would make this one of the worst famines in world history and the worst since the great Chinese famine of 65 years ago. 

More HERE.

It seems we like to argue over the war in Gaza and the war in Ukraine mainly because there is political hay to be made in those regions. Trump loves Russia so it’s an easy target to hit for Democrats. Progressives love slamming Israel and praising Hamas (or so it seems) so it’s an easy target for Republicans. It seems that if we can make a conflict a hot button issue to fight over and take down a political opponent here, we are highlighting that conflict. But if it’s blacks being systematically eliminated from an African country by Arabs doing ethnic cleansing and we can prevent starvation by sending food… we’re not interested?

“This is Africa. Nobody cares about Africa.”