Just a few months ago, Ms. Khattar had a great life. Her sweet personality and lovely appearance earned a hefty bride price of 40 cattle when she was married four years ago to Ali Daoud, a prosperous farmer. The family owned 300 cattle and 50 camels, making them among the wealthiest in their village, Ab-Layha in western Sudan. Ms. Khattar promptly bore two children, the youngest born late last year.

About the same time, though, the Sudanese government resolved to crush a rebellion in Darfur, a region the size of France in western Sudan. Sudan armed and paid a militia of Arab raiders, the Janjaweed, and authorized them to slaughter and drive out members of the Zaghawa, Masalit and Fur tribes.

On March 12, Ms. Khattar was performing her predawn Muslim prayers about 4 a.m. when a Sudanese government Antonov aircraft started dropping bombs on Ab-Layha, which is made up of Zaghawa tribespeople. Moments later, more than 1,000 Janjaweed attackers rode into the village on horses and camels, backed by Sudanese government troops in trucks.

"The Janjaweed shouted: `We will not allow blacks here. We will not let Zaghawa here. This land is only for Arabs,' " Ms. Khattar recalled.

Ms. Khattar grabbed her children, and, as shots and flames raged around her, raced for a nearby forest. But her father and mother tried to protect their animals — they were yelling, "Don't take our livestock." They were both shot dead.

The attack was part of a deliberate strategy to ensure that the village would be forever uninhabitable, that the Zaghawa could never live there again. The Janjaweed poisoned wells by stuffing them with the corpses of people and donkeys. They also blew up a dam that supplied water to the farms, destroyed seven hand pumps in the village and burned all the homes and even the village school, the clinic and the mosque.

In separate interviews, I talked to more than a dozen other survivors from Ab-Layha, and they all confirm Ms. Khattar's story. By most accounts, about 100 people were massacred that day in Ab-Layha, and a particular effort was made to exterminate all men and boys, even the very young. Women and girls were sometimes allowed to flee, but the prettiest were kidnapped.

Most of those raped don't want to talk about it. But Zahra Abdel Karim, a 30-year-old woman, told me how in the same attack on Ab-Layha, the Janjaweed shot to death her husband, Adam, and 7-year-old son, Rahshid, as well as three of her brothers. Then they grabbed her 4-year-old son, Rasheed, from her arms and cut his throat.

The Janjaweed took her and her two sisters away on horses and gang-raped them, she said. The troops shot one sister, Kuttuma, and cut the throat of the other, Fatima, and they discussed how to mutilate her. (Sexual humiliation has been part of the Sudanese strategy to drive out the African tribespeople. The Janjaweed routinely add to the stigma by branding or scarring the women they rape.)

"One Janjaweed said: `You belong to me. You are a slave to the Arabs, and this is the sign of a slave,' " she recalled. He slashed her leg with a sword before letting her hobble away, stark naked. Other villagers confirmed that they had found her naked and bleeding, and she showed me the scar on her leg.

By comparison, Ms. Khattar was one of the lucky ones. She lost her parents, her home and all her belongings, but her husband and children were alive, and she had not been raped. Unfortunately, her luck would soon run out.

I'll tell you more of her story on Saturday, because if she and her people aren't victims of genocide, then the word has no meaning.

Read The Rest Scale: 1 out of 5.

Remember, you can donate to Oxfam here, specifically targeting Darfur and Sudan if you wish. You can also print this out, and e-mail it, to friends, neighbors, relatives, anyone, and ask everyone to write and call their congressional (or parliamentary) representatives, and say that attention must be paid. Now. Let "never again" mean something.

Earlier, I said this.

Nightline tonight was on Darfur. Ted Koppel apologized for delaying the story for over a week due to the Reagan coverage.

As usual, there's only an AP placeholder story here at the moment; they should fill in their own coverage tomorrow. Elie Wiesel closed by calling for a summit of world leaders to stop the killing.

U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland criticized the Sudanese government Monday for blocking aid workers, food and equipment from reaching the Darfur region, where 2 million people desperately need humanitarian aid. Calling Darfur the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today, Egeland told the U.N. Security Council that relief agencies are trying to get food, water, sanitation equipment and tents to the western Sudanese region before the rainy season.

[...]

Egeland said the international community was very late in responding to the conflict in Darfur, where thousands have been killed in fighting between Arab militias and the black African population since February 2003. "Nowhere else in the world are so many lives at stake as in Darfur at the moment," he said.

Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5. The Nightline print story is here, though it can't remotely compare to the heartbreak of the videotape, of the sound of the real people.

ADRE, Sudan, June 16, 2004 — It is being called the greatest humanitarian crisis the world faces today. Some estimates put the death toll at 350,000, while 1 million people are in refugee camps, and tens of thousands more are on the run.

Those figures alone add up to catastrophe, and it is the brutal reality in a place called Darfur, Sudan's westernmost province, bordering on Chad.

Darfur has become a conflict point in a country that has known conflict for more than two decades. The war in southern Sudan has dominated headlines for years, but little is known about the war in the west, which has erupted violently in recent months.

In February of last year, black rebels rose up against the Arab-dominated government in the capital, Khartoum. The essence of the rebels' cause is a fight for better treatment in a region that has long been marginalized. The rebels are determined to force the Sudanese government to commit more of the newfound oil money to impoverished Darfur.

The government responded swiftly to the uprising, launching a lightning campaign to wipe out the rebels. Antonov planes bombed villages where the rebels were thought to be hiding and on the ground where the Sudanese military armed and supported an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed.

The Janjaweed raced through villages, usually mounted on horses or camels, destroying homes, killing and driving people off their land.

You can drive for miles and miles, hundreds of miles in fact, and see nothing but empty villages. Tens of thousands of people in Darfur have gathered for safety in squalid camps for the displaced, and they are too afraid to go home.

Virtually everyone tells the same story: How the Janjaweed came and burned homes, killed people, raped women.

Halwa, a 13-year-old girl, stands with her seven sisters — they are all orphans now.

"The Arabs attacked first, then the government planes came and shot at us," she said.

There is also a flood of testimony indicating that Janjaweed attack only black Sudanese, often bypassing Arab villagers.

Ahmed Adam Ahmed said it is pretty obvious what is going on: "They kill only black people."

Ethnic Cleansing?

Ahmed is convinced it is all part of a government plan to drive all black farmers out of Darfur. One U.S. government official has gone so far as to call what's happening ethnic cleansing. Others, including senior humanitarian representatives, are calling it genocide.

The Sudanese government, meanwhile, denies all accusations. While admitting there have been civilian "casualties," the government claims it's all part of a legitimate right to fight a rebel movement and that the civilians are merely caught in the middle.

Yet 1 million people have been driven from their homes and are now struggling to survive in horrific conditions inside Darfur and along the border with Chad.

The United Nations and other relief agencies have complained bitterly that the government is obstructing efforts to help the people and, indeed, only recently have humanitarian workers been granted visas to travel to Darfur.

Several high-profile delegations have gone to Darfur to survey what is going on — most recently, one led by Carol Bellamy, the head of UNICEF. She demanded the Sudanese government do more to ease the plight of the people and called on the world to respond quickly.

The great fear is that with so many people in camps just as the rainy season is starting, it will be difficult to keep the relief supplies coming. The nightmare scenario that could follow: widespread hunger and disease.

Read The Rest Scale: 0 out of 5. Just do something about it.

You read this earlier in this post. It can't be said enough, so I'm saying it again:

Remember, you can donate to Oxfam here, specifically targeting Darfur and Sudan if you wish. You can also print this out, and e-mail it, to friends, neighbors, relatives, anyone, and ask everyone to write and call their congressional (or parliamentary) representatives, and say that attention must be paid. Now. Let "never again" mean something.