Hey, when we weren’t paying attention, the Obama administration ended the Darfur genocide.
Oh, wait, maybe they just said that the genocide was coming to an end.
Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration’s comments yesterday that Darfur is experiencing only the “remnants of genocide,” thus implying the troubled region’s worst violence is in the past, have exposed a deep disagreement on the matter within the Obama administration.
Just two days earlier US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice described the situation as “genocide” and at a press conference in Germany earlier this month President Obama used the phrase “ongoing genocide.”
After Gration’s comments yesterday, Rice was furious, according to US officials.
The Paris-based leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) Abdel Wahid Al-Nur is pretty bothered by this, as you can imagine: “I’m very sad and shocked by the statements made by Gration yesterday about genocide and humanitarian situation. What is strange is, does not his statement about genocide contradict with what President Obama had said earlier this month in Germany? . . . Gration should know that the humanitarian situation has never been worse than it is right now.”
Usually when you hear the phrase, “the remnants of genocide” it’s a sign that the killers have run out of victims.