Madam, - The failure of the UN Security Council to force the Khartoum government to rein in the marauding Janjaweed killers in western Sudan brings into question the UN's ability to fulfil its mandate of protecting vulnerable people.
The Janjaweed have been carrying out their terror campaign in Darfur with total impunity for 18 months. Estimates put the total dead at somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 - nobody is really sure because huge tracts of the country are inaccessible.
The Janjaweed, meaning "evil men on horseback," have used mass rape, murder, torture and theft in a campaign of terror that has driven a million-and-a-half people from their homes and left them to rot in the desert or flee to neighbouring Chad.
During a visit to the region last week I went on a four-hour car journey between GOAL bases and passed village after village which had been burned out. The only people I saw moving in the hot, dusty plains were making their way on foot toward one or other of the various camps or were heading for Chad.
The government of Sudan has not only failed in its duty of care towards its citizens but has also actively supported the Janjaweed.
The UN Security Council has debated this crisis on several occasions. It cannot agree on whether this is ethnic cleansing, genocide or simply an internal security problem. It has threatened to impose sanctions on Sudanese politicians and officials if they don't call off the Janjaweed; both Kofi Annan and Colin Powell expressed outrage after they visited Darfur; yet, apart from finger-pointing, nothing has been done to end the terror and allay the human suffering.
Why are the people of Sudan not considered worthy of protection? According to Blair and Bush the reason they went in to Iraq was because people were being persecuted. The people of Darfur are being persecuted also but there seems to be resistance to the idea of coming to their rescue.
I wonder could this lack of concern have anything to do with the presence of oil in Sudan? Could it be that the powers that be are reluctant to upset the regime in Khartoum because they have their eyes on future oil contracts? I hope that this is too cynical an explanation.
Could it be that the Security Council is prepared to sacrifice two million lives to safeguard the flow of oil? If that is the case it should be disbanded forthwith. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN O'SHEA, GOAL, PO Box 19, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.