Black Africa: The inattention, neglect, and betrayal should not be repeated

Hugh Fitzgerald

Black Africa is a battlefield between Islam and Christianity. Individual Christian missions, and are doing, have done a great deal of good. But Christians in black Africa need more support, tangible and visible, from the outside world. The spectacle of Muslims in Nigeria being allowed to throttle the Christians (Ibo and others) of the south during the Biafra War (1967-1969), with Egyptian pilots strafing Ibo villages and only two countries in the world (Ghana and Israel) willing to recognize an independent Biafra, should never be repeated. The forces of Biafra were fighting against the “Jihad” (Col. Ojukwu’s own word in the Ahiara Declaration), while what was seen as the Christian world did nothing. It did not help the cause of Christianity in Africa.

The spectacle of the Western powers, held in Africa to represent Christianity, doing nothing or very little while, almost at will, Muslim Arabs continued to kill, or starve to death, by taking away their cattle or destroying their crops, the Christian and animist black Africans in the southern Sudan, and did this without any consequences over several decades, with nearly 2 million dead a result, also did not help the cause of Christianity in black Africa.

It is time for something dramatic to be done so that the Western world makes clear it will take the side of the Christians where they are under assault. Should a new Biafra be declared, the Western world should support and not shun it. In the Sudan, the Americans should — but this will await, as so much awaits, removal of American forces from tarbaby Iraq — enter, and smash in the first hour the capacity of the Sudanese government to conduct its renewed campaign of murder (so much for that “treaty”) in the southern Sudan and its newer mass murder in Darfur. Then they should seize both the southern Sudan and Darfur and hold them, to protect the black African populations, until such time as a referendum on self-rule can be held without interference by the government in Khartoum.

The spectacle of American soldiers, having dealt a blow to whatever Sudanese army or air force exists, and having cleared Darfur overnight of Janjaweed (General Mattis might take particular pleasure in being put in charge of that), being warmly greeted by black Africans in both places, will be hard to disavow. What will the U.N. do? Deplore the protection of black Africans, either Muslim or non-Muslim, in Darfur and the south? And what will the E.U do? They can not, at this point, denounce the Americans for such an obviously humanitarian mission. It should galvanize support for, and encourage intelligent understanding of, the need for this kind of counter-Jihad.

In that event, what would the Arab League do? It has been foursquare behind the Sudanese government in Darfur, as it was in the southern Sudan — or where it was not approving openly, then it was approving secretly. For who cares about non-Muslims being killed or Arab Muslims killing non-Arab Muslims? There was not a syllable of protest over the massacre of the Kurds by Arabs in Iraq. There was not a syllable of protest by the same Arab League over the use of the criminal law to punish the Berbers for using their own language and preserving their own culture for so many decades. (Recently, the Algerian government was forced by pressure from Berbers within Algeria to change those laws). What will the Arab League do? Declare the divine right of Arab Muslims to rule over and massacre non-Arab Muslims?

All that is being suggested is that word should get around that the Western world will no longer support countries or peoples equally. It is going to give its aid only to those who are not engaged now, or in a possible future, in Jihad, but to those countries where non-Muslims live, or where they currently withstand Muslim pressure, inside and out, and if given aid can make Christianity more attractive to those who might otherwise be tempted by Islam. The Infidel wold should eliminate economic, diplomatic, and other kinds of aid for countries where the jihad ideology is being spread. An example of a country deserving of special attention and support is Ethiopia. Its efforts to divert some of the headwaters of the Nile for irrigation projects should be encouraged, and threats by Egypt against Ethiopia taken note of, and Egypt put on notice. And that Jizyah to Egypt that the Americans keep sending, should end. Egypt is not our “ally” nor our “staunch ally.” It is a country that officially and unofficially has done everything to promote anti-Americanism and antisemitism (government television beaming a series based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, for example), it has failed to meet any of its solemn commitments under the Camp David Accords, and Copts have been under attack for decades — it was during the reign of Saint Sadat that Pope Shenouda II first went into self-imposed isolation as a protest against the government. Egypt needs to be taken off the American Infidel dole, until it changes its ways completely. Let all Muslim states be made aware that they are now on their own — and they can go, hat in hand, as the “Palestinians” should be made to, to their fabulously rich Muslim brothers in the Gulf, and see how that works out. And that change in policy will be noticed throughout Africa, and not merely by Egypt’s immediate neighbors.

Finally, in black Africa, more needs to be done to publicize the longest and most devastating trade in black Africans — that of the Arabs. And that information should not only be spread in Africa, but in the Western world, since Islam’s missionaries have deliberately targeted black populations on the assumption that they can continue to present Islam — falsely — as an appropriate vehicle for the expression of dismay with, or alienation from, the larger society. For Islam suppresses music and art and science. Islam does not encourage “social justice”: good god, just look at Saudi Arabia, look at the zamindars and generals of Pakistan, look at the corrupt military rulers of Egypt and Algeria, the petty kings of Jordan and Morocco, the police-state of Tunisia — one uninterrupted series of despotisms. It is also false that Islam discourages “materialism.” Pay a visit to the souks of the Gulf statelets or Saudi Arabia — shopping is all there is. There isn’t anything else.

But more important, for helping to immunize important target populations for jihad subversion in the Western world, would be a clear and deliberate sign of Western protection of black African Christians from continued depredations, persecution, and even mass murder, by those pushing Islam in Africa. Black African Christians were abandoned to their fate in southern Nigeria and southern Sudan. That inattention, that neglect, that betrayal, should not be repeated.