Meanwhile...

The war in the western region of Sudan, Darfur, continues. Despite world outrage and a response by the UN (though lackluster), government troops a proxy militiament continue their killing and pillaging of innocent Darfurians. A snippet from the Washington Post story:

Yagoub Mustafa, 45, could not easily mimic the "whoop whoop whoop, boom! boom!
boom!" of two helicopter gunships that fired rockets into the huts in his Darfur village. He tried to make the noises, but they were not loud enough, or terrifying enough.

But the horror he experienced that July afternoon, while he crouched low under a tree with his sobbing sons, daughters and nephews pressed against him, was more easily expressed: Mustafa thought they all were going to die, he said. And as he offered soothing words to the children, he begged for rescue in a silent prayer. Please God help us. We need your mercy.

Three years into a war in the Darfur region of western Sudan, thousands of villagers have been victimized by government troops and proxy militiamen who killed, raped and looted. Now the government is intensifying an air war featuring Soviet-era Antonov planes jury-rigged into bombers and Mi-24 helicopter gunships turned against mud-and-thatch huts. New waves of shellshocked villagers have left their homes and trekked for days to bulging relief camps.

Here's hoping the awareness of the plight in Darfur continues and does not fizzle out.