English Quiz 229

(English Quiz 229)

1. So Darfur is a test case--not just of the world's commitment to stop genocide but also of its ability to prevent future African resource wars. Already, the fighting in western Sudan has spilled into Chad and the Central African Republic. At the Guereda refugee camp in Chad, near the Sudanese border, staff members from the International Medical Corps increasingly find themselves mediating conflicts between refugees and local farmers, who complain that the influx of refugees has ruined their land. The refugee camps house concentrated populations that are too big for the land to support, and water and firewood are all but exhausted. "Resources are simply insufficient to meet the overwhelming needs," warns Serge Male, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees representative in Chad. At another camp, Touloum, home to 22,400, women's welfare officer Mariam Bakhet Ahmed tells me that this year, local villagers have raped 50 refugee women who ventured out for firewood. Touloum camp chief Haroon Ibra Diar describes how, when his people fled to Chad from the village of Abugamra, Sudan, in April 2004, the Janjaweed were employing macabre energy-saving measures. "They beheaded people and used their heads for firewood," he says. When I ask him what the future holds, he says, "We are farmers. But how can we farm here? There's not even enough water to drink. It's a land of death. That's all that it offers us."
Q: 試翻 "At the Guereda refugee camp ... has ruined their land."

2. The shifting dynamics of the fighting in Darfur illustrate why the prism through which the war is commonly explained--ethnic animosity between Arabs and blacks--may be less applicable than other factors, including the environment. Because of Darfur's harsh, dry terrain, the region's Arab herders and its non-Arab farmers have had to work together in the past: the farmers allowed the herders' livestock on their land in exchange for goods such as milk and meat. As resources become more scarce, that history of cooperation may help persuade some local Arabs and non-Arabs to join forces against the central government. Commanders of the non-Arab rebels told me some Janjaweed commanders have defected, in part out of fear that they will be abandoned by their backers in Khartoum and face arrest for war crimes. But those are still just small indications of change amid the continuing carnage in Darfur. A U.S.-brokered peace deal last year between rebel groups and the Sudanese government was not worth the paper it was written on. The U.N. has resolved to send in peacekeepers but has been stymied by Sudan's refusal to accept them. After a U.N. panel revealed that contrary to Sudan's denials, government planes have been transporting arms and military equipment to Darfur, Khartoum said it would accept the deployment of 3,000 U.N. troops. They would complement the 7,000 African Union peacekeepers already on the ground, but even that falls far short of what's needed to police a conflict involving hundreds of thousands of fighters and 2.5 million refugees. So far the Bush Administration has been unable to persuade other Security Council members, particularly China, to support more robust measures.
Q: 試翻 "The shifting dynamics ... including the environment."

3. The pillage of Darfur won't end until the world's powers pressure all sides to agree to a truce and allow for the deployment of a larger peacekeeping force. But that's just a start toward fixing Darfur's problems--and preventing similar conflicts from erupting elsewhere. In the longer term, Darfur and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa need sensible land-use policies and careful water management. And as climate change shrinks the availability of arable land and natural resources, Africa will need the developed world to do its part to curb the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. For Africa, the cost of inaction could be devastating. Philip E. Clapp, president of the Washington-based National Environmental Trust, warns that Darfur may be "an advance warning" of climate-related apocalypses to come. Take rising sea levels: five of Africa's 10 largest cities are coastal, and 40% of Asia's population of 3.9 billion--1.5 billion people--live within 62 miles of the sea. "Darfur is small by comparison with what is projected," says Clapp. "It may be our last warning before the consequences of climate change become so enormous that they are beyond the capacity of industrialized nations to deal with."
Q: 試翻 "And as climate change ... contribute to global warming."