Ethiopia, in Islam, was once accorded special status because 82 families of followers of Muhammad supposedly found temporary refuge there from the pagan Meccans. Gratitude to the Christian Negus of Ethiopia entitled the country to a kind of special status, as dar al-sulh, a kind of halfway house between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb. But that gratitude, and that special consideration, however minor it may have been, is not demonstrated in the slightest by Egypt's proprietary and exclusivist claims on the Nile waters.

If Ethiopia wishes to divert waters to feed people who have lacked, until now, the wherewithal and the technical assistance to use those waters for irrigation, that should be encouraged by the entire Infidel world. Egypt's threats, Egypt's wiles, should be seen in the proper context. The Arabs everywhere in North Africa essentially treat the black Africans with contempt. Indeed, in Darfur, the Arabs tried to wipe out black Africans -- as there is ample testimony from survivors -- even if they were Muslim.

It is not surprising that Egypt should attempt to arrogate to itself the water of the Nile, and deny, even in its nascent stage, the attempt of the oldest free black African country to recover its equilibrium. After all, Ethiopia is a country so celebrated for its long history of Christianity that, when Western Christendom imagined a Christian realm beyond Islam that represented an ally that might be counted on for succor and protection, they placed the Kingdom of Prester John first in India -- and then in Ethiopia.

Those in Western Europe who claim to have the interests of the Third World at heart really have to be put to the test. They sided with the Muslims in Biafra. They have not moved a finger to aid the Christian blacks in the southern Sudan, and have done nothing to denounce the Arab Muslim genocide against them that has lasted more than 20 years. They seem not to know much, and care nothing about, the continued enslavement of blacks by Muslim Arabs in Mali and in Mauritania. They do not take the side of the government of Tanzania, trying to deal with Arab revanchism in Pemba and Zanzibar.

And what will they say about Ethiopia and its need for water? One suspects that many, including the Anglican clergy who have never gone to the aid of the African Anglicans under attack by Islam, will say nothing - nothing whatsoever.

It is important for the American government to do something dramatic -- for nothing will come from Europe, not even from, or especially not from -- the co-religionists of the black African Christians under assault in Africa.

I have repeatedly suggested that a small force could seize the southern Sudan and secure it until the local black population, Christian and animist, Dinka and Nuer and others, can vote on their own independence. Why should they not? And why should the sinister regime in Khartoum, which keeps denying it has anything to do with the Janjaweed in Darfur, be heeded in the slightest?

Why is the American government, too, hellbent on ignoring what is happening to black Christians throughout Africa, and doing nothing to help or protect them against Muslim depredation and aggression and threats?

Ethiopia is one test. Nigeria is another test. And the Sudan is yet another. Let us see.