Darfur exposes trait of Arab and Islamic Racism. After Rwanda, the World learned once more the peril of genocide in rogue states. Yet the world, or the United Nations as its representative body, is seemingly a reluctant learner with flawed memory. Darfur is a remote part of Sudan -- itself remote from cosmopolitan centres of Europe and North America. There, in the arid deserts of the eastern Sahara, where living is a bitter daily struggle against sand and sun, a genocide is unfolding, with nary a whimper from the folks at the UN and sophisticates in cosmopolitan centres who remain outraged over American "imperialism" dismantling brutal rogue regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Over the past 18 months, nearly 50,000 Darfurians have been killed and more than a million made refugees by Arab Janjaweed militias, allegedly supplied with military support by the Sudanese government of strongman Gen. Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum. For more than two decades, Sudan, with an estimated population of 35 million, has been torn apart in a bitter civil war between a predominantly Arab-Muslim north, and a Christian-black south. This conflict has resulted in an estimated two million dead and another four million made homeless in their own country. Darfur, however, exposes another dimension of the internal conflict in Sudan. Here, the victims are Muslim, black and non-Arab. Those perpetrating the brutalities are Muslims of Arab origin.

Under the prodding of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- both of whom recently visited Darfur -- the UN Security Council produced a resolution demanding the Sudanese government, within a month, disarm the militias and restore security in Darfur, or be faced with sanctions. The tragedy unfolding in Darfur has been well-documented by reputable international human rights agencies such as Human Rights Watch. There is no disputing in this instance the facts of a state-supported ethnic cleansing being repeated in the heart of Africa. More on Arab and Islamic racism..............