The photograph of US Special Envoy Andrew Natsios chatting amiably with a Sudanese minister, Ali Karti, perfectly emblematizes the United States' relations with the genocidal National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum. While the Sudanese air force conducts bombing raids on defenseless Darfurian villages - even, and especially, now, when talk of UN "involvement" in a proposed three-phase peacekeeping plan flutters about - Natsios negotiates passively with senior leaders responsible for torturing and decimating selected portions of their country's population. This morally despicable politesse, akin to holding mild tete-a-tetes with Himmler at the height of the Holocaust, is nevertheless utterly in keeping with US policy toward Sudan. Despite widespread acknowledgment of his role in orchestrating the Darfur genocide, Washington has shown preferential treatment to Sudanese security chief Salah Abdallah "Gosh," flying him to Langley for consultations on Sudan's terrorism information, whose import is, according to multiple accounts that I have encountered, most likely negligible (Sudan gave up most of its relevant information in the weeks and months following 9-11, in a rush to curry favor with the US and avoid becoming one of its "War on Terror" targets). Ali Karti, meanwhile, freely traveled the US in May, even visiting a former Congressman, Mark Siljander (R-MI), yet spurned a meeting with Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, apparently simply because he "just decided he didn't want to make it" (Washington Post, "Sudanese Official is a No-Show at State Department," Glenn Kessler, 13 May 2006). Both Gosh and Karti are almost certainly on the list of 51 names given to the International Criminal Court and are staples of the old NIF regime that has attempted to innocuously pass itself off as the National Congress Party. The likelihood of Karti's guilt for war crimes and crimes against humanity was strengthened by his paranoid rejection of ICC jurisdiction in June 2005, a month after the Security Council recommended prosecution in Sudan - "Our decision not to hand any Sudanese national for trial outside the country remains valid and has not changed" (ibid.). Karti's current title is, like the plethora of "presidential advisor" positions created to dilute the SPLA voice of Salva Kiir Mayardit and to surround President Bashir with NIF cronies like Nafie Ali Nafie and Majzoub al-Khalifa, designed merely to disguise his identity as the man who formerly led the deadly Popular Defense Forces paramilitary group. The PDF, which currently poses as a benign security force, but into which Janjaweed soldiers have insidiously been recycled, is also notorious for having waged scorched earth warfare in the Abyei, Nuba Mountains, and Southern Blue Nile oil districts in the late 90's. Yet the consistent response of US officials in dealing with such terrorists - the word is not used lightly - has been to court and cajole them while buying time to concoct a face-saving strategy to simultaneously get the political pressure of their back and exonerate themselves for persistent failure to stand up to genocide and its perpetrators.
Another indicator of the degree to which the United States is prepared to cater to a coterie of genocidaires occurred in Natsios' December 13, 2006 meeting with Bashir. Naively describing the discussion "constructive" and reporting the likelihood of progress based solely on the words of a man who has done nothing but fail to live up to his promises, Natsios made an astonishing statement that the two "agreed to disagree on the history (of the violence)" (AP, "Envoy Reports Progress in Sudan Meetings). The history of over 450,000 innocent Darfurians killed, almost 3 million displaced, out of horrific racial motives and by a cutthroat surivalist regime is not something one can "agree to disagree on." This practically gives equal credence to Bashir's absurd propagandistic account of the "events" in Darfur, according to which a mere 9,000 have died - any deviation from this number being an exaggeration by self-serving humanitarian organizations and Zionist conspirators - and in which Darfur rebels are the only ones responsible for atrocities. Signalling implicit acceptance of this grossly distorted narrative cannot be the basis of negotiations ostensibly meant to bring an international peacekeeping force to the region; on the contrary, it destroys the potential for creating a realistic framework for ending the genocide by continuing to strengthen Bashir's confidence that he can flout international "demands," continue to kill his own people, and even disagree with objective history without any remotely muscular threat of repercussion.
30 December 2006
25 December 2006
Khartoum Reads and Reacts
The Sudanese government's recent "expectation" that the United States change its policy toward Darfur, expressed by Foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadiq, should not come as a surprise given the recent public wavering by US government officials, not the least of which was newly appointed Special Envoy Andrew Natsios. With just one statement, Natsios completely undermined any perception that the US intended to actively pursue UN Security Council resolution 1706's stipulation for a United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur (though the extent to which the US was ever actually committed to this goal - and willing to take bold and concrete steps to begin preparations for it, such as raising funds and urging member states to contribute troops - is highly doubtful, indicated simply by the fact that over two months have elapsed with nothing but rabid GoS protestations and hasty conciliatory remarks from US and international actors). Natsios, in abandoning the prospects of following through with the unambiguous requirements of resolution 1706, effectively capitulates to what has been a very aggressive campaign by the Sudanese government to renege on its pre-DPA vocal openness to allowing a UN peacekeeping force and slam the door on any force competent enough to endanger their genocidal war by vehemently insisting that any mission in Darfur remain in "African" hands. The AMIS force in Darfur long ago became worse than merely ineffective; the testimonies of Darfurians who see the AU as biased and contributing to the aims of the signatories of the DPA, the brutal Minni Minnawi faction of the SLA and the even more heinously brutal instigator of the genocide, the Sudanese government, suffice to taint AMIS with a shade of perceived complicity that not only makes their mundane filing of reports even more maddening to suffering Darfurian civilians, but also dangerously casts their actions in a confrontational schema and thus renders the mission definitively detrimental to the peace process. Regardless of the intentions of the African commanders and soldiers - many of whom come from Rwanda and have experienced the terror and isolation of genocide firsthand - which are likely benign or even commendable (a simpler frame in which to look at members of AMIS is of employees simply doing their job - one restricted by mandate, poor infrastructure, a lack of basic supplies, confusion in the chain of command, and, most frustratingly salient to these individuals, a severe backlog on the payment of their salaries), it is the perception of Darfurians that is important here. If they interpret AU monitors as, at worst, colluders with the Sudanese regime, or even, at best, unable or unwilling to protect them from the marauding government-backed Janjaweed militias that terrorize them, then their mission has at once become counterproductive. It is very difficult to go back across that line and earn the trust of people who have seen AU soldiers only in the context of filing paperwork after a village has been destroyed. Moreover, the perceptions of Darfurians on the ground, which must form the basis of any provision for their security, which will otherwise veer dangerously close to a paternalistic imposition in conflict with the actual needs and desires of the people, are no mere conjured-up fantasy. The AU has shown a despicable record in standing up to the Khartoum regime; this goes beyond failure to engage the foot soldiers of Sudan's genocide militarily, which AMIS is of course proscribed by its mandate to do, for the lack of confrontation extends to the highest diplomatic levels (forming an exasperating parallel with the international relations between foreign countries and Khartoum). By accepting and working under the aegis of the DPA, a document that has become little more than a divisive tool that Khartoum has wielded - both in international circles and on the ground - with painful efficiency, AMIS has essentially already positioned itself outside the vast majority of Darfurians who have rejected the DPA. Its timid response (or lack thereof) to Khartoum's violations of this pact, notably its silence to the Government of Sudan's persistent illegal disguising of military vehicles in the white AMIS color, simply enhances the notion that it cannot act as a meaningful arbiter, let alone peacekeeper or peacemaker, in this conflict. Finally, the recent deaths of Darfurians protesting against AU inefficiency, a crowd of whom was fired upon by the AU, only cements what is already reality on the ground: the AU is seen as an impediment, not a guarantor, of peace and security.
The Sudanese regime has also learned that promoting a stopgap African-led force can provide effective cover, and is essentially a diplomatic euphemism, for maintaining the unhindered genocidal status quo in Darfur. This, not the inflated bluster about neo-colonialism, is the actual motivation behind GoS support for the AU and its insistence that any intervention be solely in African hands. Government decision-makers have astutely picked up on the international sensitivity to arguments in favor of the AU (and the naïve blindness to the sadistic motivations underlying these professions of support) and have proceeded to ram this rhetoric down the throat of the West. They are only able to do so, however, because Western leaders have failed to recognize the barren reality underlying any solution that begins and ends focused on the AU, the African institution on its first legs that international government actors are wary to condemn and which receives the support - with the familiar slogan of "African solutions for African problems" - of African leaders from Qaddafi to Mubarak to Mbeki and, the most disgustingly hypocritical, Kagame, who, in the same breath that he condemns Western indifference to Darfur as paralleling that toward Rwanda 12 years ago, defensively asserts that "Africa should take the lead in handling these problems," (AP, "Crisis in Darfur has parallels with Rwanda - Kagame," 6 December 2006) Khartoum readily picks up the scent of weakness of the entirely unforced concessions such as Natsios' recent shelving of the UN plans of 1706 and abdication of the will to see to it that a UN force is deployed: “Our real interest here is not what it is called or what it looks like in terms of its helmet, but how robust and how efficient it is. If it is in a United Nations helmet and it is not robust and efficient, then it is not particularly useful. If it does not have a United Nations helmet, but it is very competent and very aggressive, then we have fulfilled our intention.” What Natsios neglects to account for is that the AU mission - and that is presumably all he is conceiving of in opposition to the UN option, for NATO is certainly not on his mind - is, by its very definition in the minds and experiences of the persectured Darfurians, irremediably ineffective and cannot be described as, nor, at this stage, is it at all likely that it can become, anything resembling "competent and very aggressive," which is in fact the very antithesis of AMIS right now.
Natsios' egregious blunder here greatly resembles the same fatally conciliatory remarks of recently expelled UN envoy Jan Pronk, whose series of damning errors and lack of judgment Eric Reeves has outlined in great detail. As early as late September, Pronk's completely underhanded and unofficial assertion that Sudan would never accept an AU force and that "the international community should instead push for the African Union's mission to be prolonged and reinforced" - a statement for which he was "berated" by UN officials, in Reeves' words, “essentially signaled to Khartoum that the UN had abandoned efforts to press aggressively for deployment of the UN force.” (Reeves, "Paralysis in Darfur: Khartoum Achieves a Final Diplomatic Success," 9 October 2006) Pronk's arrogant ability to undermine UN resolve follows a pattern of ill-informed and costly (probably in terms of human lives) decisions. In August 2004, Pronk used his position of authority to ensure that he received Khartoum's word on creating "safe areas" - Pronk's own plan, which the UN "quietly" dropped a month later after it did no more than excuse the buildup of Sudan's military offensive. What was lost in Pronk's negotiating fervor was any meaningfulness attached to Security Council resolution 1556's "demand" for GoS to disarm the Janjaweed, which Pronk apparently deemed unimportant enough to sacrifice to create "safe areas" that proved no safer than their Bosnian counterparts in the 90's. Finally, this past summer, Pronk lined himself up squarely on the side of the genocidaires by standing by the "good text" of the Darfur Peace Agreement and attributing any problems to a issues of implementation and the failure of certain groups to sign on to it (which is, interestingly enough, the same reasoning promulgated by the Government of Sudan). It thus seems fittingly ironic that Pronk's ridiculously groundless expulsion from Sudan came as a result of Khartoum's discontent with something printed by the man who so often naïvely proclaimed exactly what the genocidal regime would have liked him to say.
Revealing in Natsios' statement is his conclusion that after putting a suitable force on the ground - whatever that may look like - "we [will] have fulfilled our intention." One is left to wonder what exactly the "intention" of the United States is if it is unable to specify what sort of force would prove adequate in its mind, how or why it can expect GoS to pull and about-face and grant its consent for foreign intervention (discounting Jendayi Frazer's specious false assurance that "necessity and past history" provided sufficient reasons for the Americans' false - and strategic - optimism), what measures the US will pursue if Khartoum continues to flout the international community's weak urgings (the oft-cited and perfectly ambiguous "Plan B" and Tony Snow's blithe and belated conclusion that the US will have to "find some other way to protect the people of Darfur" are mere examples of the posturing that accompanies a genuine lack of any concrete plan whatsoever).
A definitive element of the US' policy of ad hoc flailing in lieu of an actual plan backed by sufficient political will is its unwillingness to take strong measures that it cannot rescind and which will the administration fears will propel it into an unstable territory that anti-American jihadis and hatemongering Islamists will flock to. Thus in rhetoric, only, which inevitably fades over time but provides an effective palliative for the present (think of President Bush's unfulfilled and disingenuous promise for "bold action" after Katrina), will the American government make any sort of stand. Yet even here do we fall well short of confrontation, or even of the willingness to issue a threat of punitive measures. Condoleezza Rice, Andrew Natsios, Tony Snow, and a host of other administration members or spokespeople have consistently eschewed the language of "threats," which have been painted as counterproductive in an attempt to glaze over the administration's timidity. Despite the recommendation of every influential human rights organization and even some government actors like Tony Blair, attempting to distinguish himself from the vapid President Bush, and in fact the supposed momentum of UN security council resolution 1672 (25 April 2006), which finally applied the sanctions called for in resolution 1591 (29 March 2005), albeit only on four individuals, three of whom were relatively innocuous, the US has recently backed down from even the concept of sanctions. One US diplomat, discussing the supposed "package" the administration was considering to produce a "peaceful settlement," elaborated that "[i] is not sanctions, it is not sticks," scolding manner-of-factly that "[y]ou don't just go in and wave sticks." (Reuters, "US works on international plan for Darfur," 1 November 2006) Anyone who doubts that the Khartoum regime seizes upon these kinds of vocal capitulations and flings them back at the international community with renewed vigor and defiance need only consult a sampling of GoS statements on the matter. Senior presidential advisor Nafie Ali Nafie (who, scholar Douglas Johnson recently informed me, is one of the old NIF elites brought in as "presidential advisor" to dilute the actual authority of the nominal First Vice President, the SPLA's Salva Kiir Mayardit, let alone the influence of the utterly isolated and meaningless position thrown to Minni Arco Minnawi) bluntly admitted that "We do not need the carrot, and would not be intimidated by the stick. ... We don't care…" and cryptically intoned that "the mouse in Khartoum cannot be caught by any cat in the world." (Reuters, “Sudan says ready for talks with Darfur’s NRF rebels,” 9 November 2006) Foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadiq countered potential renewal of punitive measures, perhaps spurred by Blair's vocal support for a no-fly zone, by stating that "[t]hreats of sanctions and military action, or the imposition of a no-flight zone will not help resolve the problem…This problem (Darfur) is a political one, and it should be remedied through political channels," (AP, “Sudan brushes off renewed threat of sanctions over Darfur,” 14 December 2006) and his boss, Lam Akol, reiterated that "threats, blockades and no-fly zones... would not solve the problem." (BBC, 14 December 2006) al-Sadiq's insistence that the problem is merely a political matter strikes a discomfiting sword with what has been Alex de Waal's mantra since the DPA - that only a political solution, irrespective of the numbers and mandate of a peacekeeping force, can stop the genocide in Darfur. The source of the emboldened proclamations of Sudanese officials and the impervious indifference to punitive threats comes straight from the proverbial horse's mouth, that of the Sudanese head of state, Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, in playing Sudan's financial trump card: "Just when some countries gave us sanctions, God gave us oil." (AP, “Efforts to help Darfur again end in dead end,” 5 December 2006)
Far from "going in and waving sticks," US policy seems, on the contrary, to be one of sitting back passively as these sticks are contemptuously thrown back in its face.
The Sudanese regime has also learned that promoting a stopgap African-led force can provide effective cover, and is essentially a diplomatic euphemism, for maintaining the unhindered genocidal status quo in Darfur. This, not the inflated bluster about neo-colonialism, is the actual motivation behind GoS support for the AU and its insistence that any intervention be solely in African hands. Government decision-makers have astutely picked up on the international sensitivity to arguments in favor of the AU (and the naïve blindness to the sadistic motivations underlying these professions of support) and have proceeded to ram this rhetoric down the throat of the West. They are only able to do so, however, because Western leaders have failed to recognize the barren reality underlying any solution that begins and ends focused on the AU, the African institution on its first legs that international government actors are wary to condemn and which receives the support - with the familiar slogan of "African solutions for African problems" - of African leaders from Qaddafi to Mubarak to Mbeki and, the most disgustingly hypocritical, Kagame, who, in the same breath that he condemns Western indifference to Darfur as paralleling that toward Rwanda 12 years ago, defensively asserts that "Africa should take the lead in handling these problems," (AP, "Crisis in Darfur has parallels with Rwanda - Kagame," 6 December 2006) Khartoum readily picks up the scent of weakness of the entirely unforced concessions such as Natsios' recent shelving of the UN plans of 1706 and abdication of the will to see to it that a UN force is deployed: “Our real interest here is not what it is called or what it looks like in terms of its helmet, but how robust and how efficient it is. If it is in a United Nations helmet and it is not robust and efficient, then it is not particularly useful. If it does not have a United Nations helmet, but it is very competent and very aggressive, then we have fulfilled our intention.” What Natsios neglects to account for is that the AU mission - and that is presumably all he is conceiving of in opposition to the UN option, for NATO is certainly not on his mind - is, by its very definition in the minds and experiences of the persectured Darfurians, irremediably ineffective and cannot be described as, nor, at this stage, is it at all likely that it can become, anything resembling "competent and very aggressive," which is in fact the very antithesis of AMIS right now.
Natsios' egregious blunder here greatly resembles the same fatally conciliatory remarks of recently expelled UN envoy Jan Pronk, whose series of damning errors and lack of judgment Eric Reeves has outlined in great detail. As early as late September, Pronk's completely underhanded and unofficial assertion that Sudan would never accept an AU force and that "the international community should instead push for the African Union's mission to be prolonged and reinforced" - a statement for which he was "berated" by UN officials, in Reeves' words, “essentially signaled to Khartoum that the UN had abandoned efforts to press aggressively for deployment of the UN force.” (Reeves, "Paralysis in Darfur: Khartoum Achieves a Final Diplomatic Success," 9 October 2006) Pronk's arrogant ability to undermine UN resolve follows a pattern of ill-informed and costly (probably in terms of human lives) decisions. In August 2004, Pronk used his position of authority to ensure that he received Khartoum's word on creating "safe areas" - Pronk's own plan, which the UN "quietly" dropped a month later after it did no more than excuse the buildup of Sudan's military offensive. What was lost in Pronk's negotiating fervor was any meaningfulness attached to Security Council resolution 1556's "demand" for GoS to disarm the Janjaweed, which Pronk apparently deemed unimportant enough to sacrifice to create "safe areas" that proved no safer than their Bosnian counterparts in the 90's. Finally, this past summer, Pronk lined himself up squarely on the side of the genocidaires by standing by the "good text" of the Darfur Peace Agreement and attributing any problems to a issues of implementation and the failure of certain groups to sign on to it (which is, interestingly enough, the same reasoning promulgated by the Government of Sudan). It thus seems fittingly ironic that Pronk's ridiculously groundless expulsion from Sudan came as a result of Khartoum's discontent with something printed by the man who so often naïvely proclaimed exactly what the genocidal regime would have liked him to say.
Revealing in Natsios' statement is his conclusion that after putting a suitable force on the ground - whatever that may look like - "we [will] have fulfilled our intention." One is left to wonder what exactly the "intention" of the United States is if it is unable to specify what sort of force would prove adequate in its mind, how or why it can expect GoS to pull and about-face and grant its consent for foreign intervention (discounting Jendayi Frazer's specious false assurance that "necessity and past history" provided sufficient reasons for the Americans' false - and strategic - optimism), what measures the US will pursue if Khartoum continues to flout the international community's weak urgings (the oft-cited and perfectly ambiguous "Plan B" and Tony Snow's blithe and belated conclusion that the US will have to "find some other way to protect the people of Darfur" are mere examples of the posturing that accompanies a genuine lack of any concrete plan whatsoever).
A definitive element of the US' policy of ad hoc flailing in lieu of an actual plan backed by sufficient political will is its unwillingness to take strong measures that it cannot rescind and which will the administration fears will propel it into an unstable territory that anti-American jihadis and hatemongering Islamists will flock to. Thus in rhetoric, only, which inevitably fades over time but provides an effective palliative for the present (think of President Bush's unfulfilled and disingenuous promise for "bold action" after Katrina), will the American government make any sort of stand. Yet even here do we fall well short of confrontation, or even of the willingness to issue a threat of punitive measures. Condoleezza Rice, Andrew Natsios, Tony Snow, and a host of other administration members or spokespeople have consistently eschewed the language of "threats," which have been painted as counterproductive in an attempt to glaze over the administration's timidity. Despite the recommendation of every influential human rights organization and even some government actors like Tony Blair, attempting to distinguish himself from the vapid President Bush, and in fact the supposed momentum of UN security council resolution 1672 (25 April 2006), which finally applied the sanctions called for in resolution 1591 (29 March 2005), albeit only on four individuals, three of whom were relatively innocuous, the US has recently backed down from even the concept of sanctions. One US diplomat, discussing the supposed "package" the administration was considering to produce a "peaceful settlement," elaborated that "[i] is not sanctions, it is not sticks," scolding manner-of-factly that "[y]ou don't just go in and wave sticks." (Reuters, "US works on international plan for Darfur," 1 November 2006) Anyone who doubts that the Khartoum regime seizes upon these kinds of vocal capitulations and flings them back at the international community with renewed vigor and defiance need only consult a sampling of GoS statements on the matter. Senior presidential advisor Nafie Ali Nafie (who, scholar Douglas Johnson recently informed me, is one of the old NIF elites brought in as "presidential advisor" to dilute the actual authority of the nominal First Vice President, the SPLA's Salva Kiir Mayardit, let alone the influence of the utterly isolated and meaningless position thrown to Minni Arco Minnawi) bluntly admitted that "We do not need the carrot, and would not be intimidated by the stick. ... We don't care…" and cryptically intoned that "the mouse in Khartoum cannot be caught by any cat in the world." (Reuters, “Sudan says ready for talks with Darfur’s NRF rebels,” 9 November 2006) Foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadiq countered potential renewal of punitive measures, perhaps spurred by Blair's vocal support for a no-fly zone, by stating that "[t]hreats of sanctions and military action, or the imposition of a no-flight zone will not help resolve the problem…This problem (Darfur) is a political one, and it should be remedied through political channels," (AP, “Sudan brushes off renewed threat of sanctions over Darfur,” 14 December 2006) and his boss, Lam Akol, reiterated that "threats, blockades and no-fly zones... would not solve the problem." (BBC, 14 December 2006) al-Sadiq's insistence that the problem is merely a political matter strikes a discomfiting sword with what has been Alex de Waal's mantra since the DPA - that only a political solution, irrespective of the numbers and mandate of a peacekeeping force, can stop the genocide in Darfur. The source of the emboldened proclamations of Sudanese officials and the impervious indifference to punitive threats comes straight from the proverbial horse's mouth, that of the Sudanese head of state, Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, in playing Sudan's financial trump card: "Just when some countries gave us sanctions, God gave us oil." (AP, “Efforts to help Darfur again end in dead end,” 5 December 2006)
Far from "going in and waving sticks," US policy seems, on the contrary, to be one of sitting back passively as these sticks are contemptuously thrown back in its face.
20 September 2006
Whose credibility is really at stake?
Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly, President Bush warned that the UN's credibility is at stake over its failure to act in Darfur. While Bush may be correct, and while his vocal push for the UN to send a peacekeeping force to Darfur, as per Security Council resolution 1706, is welcome and commendable, it is nonetheless disturbing that he continues to dump the entirety of the blame for the failure of the international community to stop or even slow the brutal Darfur genocide in the past three years. This is distasteful, erroneous, and counterproductive on a number of levels. First of all, it carelessly glides over the fact that the United States - financially, politically, militarily, and even geographically (headquarters are, after all, in New York) - is the single most important country in the UN. Thus to label something a failure of the UN effectively translates into a failure of the US. What Bush is thinking about in making these threatening statements to the world body, however, is not whether or not he is adhering to logic; rather, he is making a conscious decision on how to best deflect criticism for his own lack of action vis-a-vis Darfur. Scolding the UN is doubly effective; it makes it appear as if the US is committed to anti-genocide action - and, appealing to the large segment of the population disenchanted with the course of events in Iraq, does so in a multilateral way - and it gives a target for any frustration with the murderously persistent chaos in Darfur. In what surely resounds with the many UN-bashers that President Bush can count on backing him up on anything critical of the UN, up to and beyond refusing to pay dues and/or abolishing the entire body, if Americans can perceive this genocide as the UN's responsibility - which is easy to do given the lack of strategic interests in western Sudan and the post-Iraq hangover among both progressives and isolationists - then this obviates the White House from any meaningful concrete action. Administration officials can continue to whine about the horrors of the genocide and give the standard party line about US humanitarian aid and support of the peace process, and Bush can even abstractly voice committment to some sort of NATO (logistical) support, but as long as he can count on no significant political backlash, his efforts will remain vacuous. The terrifying thing is, that this strategic appeasement goes beyond the majority of Americans, who care or know little about Darfur anyway, but in fact probably even reaches into the ranks of the few committed activists. Among the 20,000 in New York this weekend, how many will cheer Bush's remarks to the General Assembly without a second thought as to the ulterior, sinister motivations - utterly consistent with American history - of deflecting attention from genocide while steadfastly refusing to take decisive action? It is our duty as activists to see through disingenousness, and to continue to demand real action, sans equivocation, sans finger-pointing, and sans the emptiness of rhetoric.
04 August 2006
Minni Minnawi, John Bolton, and Omar Hassan al-Bashir: A Genocidal Alliance
The past month has seen some of the most disturbing developments in the long and tragic story of the Sudanese government's unimpeded genocidal rampage in Darfur. These events have only confirmed the foreshadowing of many experts that the 5 May 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement was more likely exacerbate the plight of the Darfurian people, to fracture the Darfur rebel movements (which, while their commitment to the civilian victims of Darfur, demonstrated the overriding importance placed on individual rivalries and power struggles at negotiations as well as by the occasional wanton disregard for humanitarian concerns, can be questioned, at least, to be cynical, these groups can use guns against Janjaweed marauders - something protects innocents far more effectively than the pen and paper of the African Union), and to weaken whatever international attention and resolve existed beforehand, than to craft a genuine, sustainable, or even implementable peace. The disproportionate weight of trust heaped on this grossly flawed treaty should have been an indication that negotiators in Abuja - Salid Ahmed Salim, Sam Ibok, Great Britain's Hillary Benn, and the United States' Robert Zoellick - were more concerned with expediency than substance; nevertheless, the international continues to let this disingenous trust rot on the shambles of a peace agreement that, despite our best hopes and contrary to the bold-faced self-deception of voices like Jan Pronk (who, in a belated and disingenuous understatement [by the time of his writing, numerous deadlines toward disarmament of the Janjaweed that the GoS had committed itself to had already passed without consequence], warned, in his blog in late June, that "[t]here is a significant risk that the Darfur peace agreement will collapse," (see http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060709/east_sudan_060709/20060714?hub=CTVNewsAt11), who has recently backtracked on his previously blind support of the DPA, but who still fatally believes that the "text" of the agreement need not be tampered with), cannot possibly consitute even a framework for the de-escalation of violence and is on the contrary only deepening Darfur's misery. The DPA, it is time to admit, does not contain any prospects for achieving peace, has no enforcement mechanisms or legitimacy sufficient to temper Khartoum's genocidal ambitions, and thus leaves the people of Darfur in only a more precarious position. The past two months have proven that right now, the DPA means three things to three different groups, none of which it was intended to mean, and all of which have disastrous consequences for the safety and livelihoods of Darfurains: for Minni Minnawi, it is a Faustian bargain whereby he attains greater status at the expense of those he once claimed to represent and protect; for John Bolton, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, and to most of the international community, the DPA represents merely a receptacle for the guilty consciences of those who know they could, with a little political bravado, actually make a difference in affecting change in Darfur but would rather, as is easier, politically safer, and a perfectly acceptable, unimpassioned status quo, point to two signatures on a piece of paper and say we have done all we could do; and for Omar Hassan al-Bashir and the National Islamic Front dictatorship, the DPA was a wholly effective gamble that both gave them more room and legitimacy to conduct their genocide and made this task easier by exploiting the fault lines in rebel leadership, consistent with its prevalent divide-and-rule strategy.
Around the same time of early July that reports started leaking about attacks on villages conducted, in most Janjaweed-like fashion, by not only the notorious "devils on horseback" and their government sponsors, but also with the horrifyingly disturbing additional accomplice of Minni's SLA faction (see Julie Flint's excellent commentary, "Where is the African Union in Darfur?," The Daily Star (Lebanon), 12 July 2006), a seemingly innocuous news item emerged, citing Minni Arco Minnawi's statement that he would accept the position of Special Advisor to the President (the fourth highest position in the goverment) allocated to a Darfurian by the DPA. The link connecting the two events, the participation of Minni's forces with those of the Sudanese army and Minni's likely entry into the government in Khartoum, is not difficult to decipher. As Minni was conveniently the only high-level commander of the three major rebel movements to sign the DPA (he was joined by other commanders, largely Zaghawa military leaders loyal to him), after intense pressure and cajoling from the likes of, among others, US President Bush, it seems logical to assume that he held the attainment of this position in mind when he put his signature on the document that ensured the complete rupture between himself and the faction of Abdel-wahid Mohammed el-Nur. This conclusion is strengthened when we recall Minni's personal history, and his meteoric rise in SLA leadership, from a total outsider, to the movement's self-styled Secretary General, to its leader, "elected" at a meeting from which his opponenet, el-Nur, was absent. The promise of newly acquired power, which indeed seems to be the only motivation of the increasingly ruthless Minni, did, however, come with its perils, namely from the majority of Darfur's population, up in arms about what they perceived as Minni's treachery and, most vocally at the chaotic Kalma camp, even calling for his head. It is thus only logical that Minni walked (and likely was drove, both by the calculating NIF leadership and unwittingly by the international community, eager to see a peace deal but ignorant of its possible repercussions) right into the arms of the GoS, more than willing to throw a bone to one unpopular individual and neatly render him dependent on Khartoum for protection and legitimacy, especially when doing so largely absolved them of having to make any real concessions to the rebel groups. NIF leaders easily, and successfully, turned Minni's ambitions for power into the recruitment of another prong of their genocidal force.
I, and others, have described elsewhere the GoS's strategic use of the DPA to instigate divisiveness and discord among their opponents and to ease pressure from the satiated international community. It is important also to note that the DPA is increasingly being twisted into delegitimizing proposed UN intervention in Darfur, something that many world actors assumed was the logical next step after the agreement. Presidential advisor, and longtime crony of the NIF elite, Majzoub al-Khalifa, recently reiterated this manipulative revision of past GoS committments and brazen challenge to the hitherto lacking will of the international community, declaring bluntly that "[w]e are not going to accept any U.N. force," based on the tortured reasoning that "[a]ccording to the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) there is no room for the U.N. forces to come...The parties accepted ... only to stick to an AU force...and anything else (other) than that is a violation to the DPA." ("UN Darfur mission violates peace deal - Sudanese official," Reuters, 3 August 2006).
Sadly, the Sudanese government's use of the DPA to deflect the possibility of any meaningful intervention has been echoed by those with the most power to make intervention a reality and finally stop the bloodshed. I have already cited the obstinate support fatally accorded to the DPA by UN Special Envoy Jan Pronk, and as long as Pronk still begins and ends every discussion on the prospects of peace in Darfur with concerns about "implementing" the DPA, or fails to stand up and challenge statements like those of GoS Foreign Minister Lam Akol that "We will never accept an amendment because Pronk says ... we will amend the peace deal when the reality on the ground dictates (and) it does not" ("Few signs of peace or agreement in Darfur," CTV.ca, 14 July 2006), he is demonstrating that he is little more than, at worst, a pawn of the Sudanese government, or, at best, utterly useless. Similarly, the response of the United States to the Darfur genocide, turned up at the height of the Abuja negotiations from nearly nonexistent to tepid, has been limited entirely to talking around a defunct peace agreement that the US, like Pronk, is perfectly content to naïvely pretend will bring peace to Darfur if it is merely implemented more effectively. President Bush seems to harbor the illusion that merely exhorting Minni, the rebel leader he champions by bringing to Washington, to convince the other faction of the SLA (which detests him) and the people of Darfur (who want to kill him) to accept the DPA, and to cease torturing and attacking his opponents, consitutes an adequately severe response to the increasingly chaotic and worsening situation in Darfur. At the UN, Bush's bull-headed, unconfirmed, and impossible to work with appointee, John Bolton, continues to display the stubborn closed-mindedness so ineffective at the UN and so detrimental to the chances of the US taking the lead in international action on Darfur. With a track record that includes preventing Juan Mendez, the Special Advisor on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, from even giving his report on Darfur, failing to pass a Security Council resolution during the US' February leadership of the Council, despite much talk of doing so, and striking names from the eventual list of individuals for targeted sanctions (such as Salah Abdallah Gosh and other supposed "anti-terror" allies), Bolton has now bypassed a trip to Darfur with the Security Council because of a "personal committment" to speak at a right-wing think tank in the UK (questioning by Senator Russ Feingold at Bolton's confirmation hearings, see http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/27/bolton-sudan/). What most epitomizes Bolton's effective complicity with the GoS in using the DPA as an excuse for inaction, though, is his 27 July opening statement before the Senate Foreigh Relations committee. Though he does eventually discuss the prospects of putting 15-17 thousand UN peacekeeprs on the ground in Darfur by January 2007, it is the first paragraph that is most revealing. Bolton begins his discussion here - the emphasis on the importance of where one begins cannot be understated - by praising the DPA, blandly reciting the platitudes that "[t]he DPA, if fully enacted, establishes critical security, wealth sharing, and power-sharing arrangements that address the long-standing marginalization of Darfur. We believe that the DPA, along with the deployment of a strong UN force, provides real hope and a way ahead for the people in Darfur." If by "power-sharing," Bolton means the continued ascendance of the despotic Minni Minnawi, he was correct. If by "real hope" and "a way ahead," he envisioned the murder, rape, and torture of Darfurian civilians at the hands of one of "their" rebel groups, he was correct. But as long as he maintains that peace can be achieved simply by "fully enact[ing]" the DPA and that it is only "along with" a UN force that the Darfur genocide can be stopped, and not that this alone (or, even more so, a strong NATO force) can possibly deter Janjaweed and GoS genocidaires, Bolton will go down in history as the one who actively turned away as genocide was committed, yet again, "on our watch."
Around the same time of early July that reports started leaking about attacks on villages conducted, in most Janjaweed-like fashion, by not only the notorious "devils on horseback" and their government sponsors, but also with the horrifyingly disturbing additional accomplice of Minni's SLA faction (see Julie Flint's excellent commentary, "Where is the African Union in Darfur?," The Daily Star (Lebanon), 12 July 2006), a seemingly innocuous news item emerged, citing Minni Arco Minnawi's statement that he would accept the position of Special Advisor to the President (the fourth highest position in the goverment) allocated to a Darfurian by the DPA. The link connecting the two events, the participation of Minni's forces with those of the Sudanese army and Minni's likely entry into the government in Khartoum, is not difficult to decipher. As Minni was conveniently the only high-level commander of the three major rebel movements to sign the DPA (he was joined by other commanders, largely Zaghawa military leaders loyal to him), after intense pressure and cajoling from the likes of, among others, US President Bush, it seems logical to assume that he held the attainment of this position in mind when he put his signature on the document that ensured the complete rupture between himself and the faction of Abdel-wahid Mohammed el-Nur. This conclusion is strengthened when we recall Minni's personal history, and his meteoric rise in SLA leadership, from a total outsider, to the movement's self-styled Secretary General, to its leader, "elected" at a meeting from which his opponenet, el-Nur, was absent. The promise of newly acquired power, which indeed seems to be the only motivation of the increasingly ruthless Minni, did, however, come with its perils, namely from the majority of Darfur's population, up in arms about what they perceived as Minni's treachery and, most vocally at the chaotic Kalma camp, even calling for his head. It is thus only logical that Minni walked (and likely was drove, both by the calculating NIF leadership and unwittingly by the international community, eager to see a peace deal but ignorant of its possible repercussions) right into the arms of the GoS, more than willing to throw a bone to one unpopular individual and neatly render him dependent on Khartoum for protection and legitimacy, especially when doing so largely absolved them of having to make any real concessions to the rebel groups. NIF leaders easily, and successfully, turned Minni's ambitions for power into the recruitment of another prong of their genocidal force.
I, and others, have described elsewhere the GoS's strategic use of the DPA to instigate divisiveness and discord among their opponents and to ease pressure from the satiated international community. It is important also to note that the DPA is increasingly being twisted into delegitimizing proposed UN intervention in Darfur, something that many world actors assumed was the logical next step after the agreement. Presidential advisor, and longtime crony of the NIF elite, Majzoub al-Khalifa, recently reiterated this manipulative revision of past GoS committments and brazen challenge to the hitherto lacking will of the international community, declaring bluntly that "[w]e are not going to accept any U.N. force," based on the tortured reasoning that "[a]ccording to the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) there is no room for the U.N. forces to come...The parties accepted ... only to stick to an AU force...and anything else (other) than that is a violation to the DPA." ("UN Darfur mission violates peace deal - Sudanese official," Reuters, 3 August 2006).
Sadly, the Sudanese government's use of the DPA to deflect the possibility of any meaningful intervention has been echoed by those with the most power to make intervention a reality and finally stop the bloodshed. I have already cited the obstinate support fatally accorded to the DPA by UN Special Envoy Jan Pronk, and as long as Pronk still begins and ends every discussion on the prospects of peace in Darfur with concerns about "implementing" the DPA, or fails to stand up and challenge statements like those of GoS Foreign Minister Lam Akol that "We will never accept an amendment because Pronk says ... we will amend the peace deal when the reality on the ground dictates (and) it does not" ("Few signs of peace or agreement in Darfur," CTV.ca, 14 July 2006), he is demonstrating that he is little more than, at worst, a pawn of the Sudanese government, or, at best, utterly useless. Similarly, the response of the United States to the Darfur genocide, turned up at the height of the Abuja negotiations from nearly nonexistent to tepid, has been limited entirely to talking around a defunct peace agreement that the US, like Pronk, is perfectly content to naïvely pretend will bring peace to Darfur if it is merely implemented more effectively. President Bush seems to harbor the illusion that merely exhorting Minni, the rebel leader he champions by bringing to Washington, to convince the other faction of the SLA (which detests him) and the people of Darfur (who want to kill him) to accept the DPA, and to cease torturing and attacking his opponents, consitutes an adequately severe response to the increasingly chaotic and worsening situation in Darfur. At the UN, Bush's bull-headed, unconfirmed, and impossible to work with appointee, John Bolton, continues to display the stubborn closed-mindedness so ineffective at the UN and so detrimental to the chances of the US taking the lead in international action on Darfur. With a track record that includes preventing Juan Mendez, the Special Advisor on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, from even giving his report on Darfur, failing to pass a Security Council resolution during the US' February leadership of the Council, despite much talk of doing so, and striking names from the eventual list of individuals for targeted sanctions (such as Salah Abdallah Gosh and other supposed "anti-terror" allies), Bolton has now bypassed a trip to Darfur with the Security Council because of a "personal committment" to speak at a right-wing think tank in the UK (questioning by Senator Russ Feingold at Bolton's confirmation hearings, see http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/27/bolton-sudan/). What most epitomizes Bolton's effective complicity with the GoS in using the DPA as an excuse for inaction, though, is his 27 July opening statement before the Senate Foreigh Relations committee. Though he does eventually discuss the prospects of putting 15-17 thousand UN peacekeeprs on the ground in Darfur by January 2007, it is the first paragraph that is most revealing. Bolton begins his discussion here - the emphasis on the importance of where one begins cannot be understated - by praising the DPA, blandly reciting the platitudes that "[t]he DPA, if fully enacted, establishes critical security, wealth sharing, and power-sharing arrangements that address the long-standing marginalization of Darfur. We believe that the DPA, along with the deployment of a strong UN force, provides real hope and a way ahead for the people in Darfur." If by "power-sharing," Bolton means the continued ascendance of the despotic Minni Minnawi, he was correct. If by "real hope" and "a way ahead," he envisioned the murder, rape, and torture of Darfurian civilians at the hands of one of "their" rebel groups, he was correct. But as long as he maintains that peace can be achieved simply by "fully enact[ing]" the DPA and that it is only "along with" a UN force that the Darfur genocide can be stopped, and not that this alone (or, even more so, a strong NATO force) can possibly deter Janjaweed and GoS genocidaires, Bolton will go down in history as the one who actively turned away as genocide was committed, yet again, "on our watch."
04 July 2006
Who are the real colonialists?
Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s latest tactic to scare the United Nations away from Darfur (following his accusation that certain international voices were trying to “carve up” Sudan’s territorial integrity and his memorable threat to make Sudan a “graveyard” for foreign troops), as always infused with the motivation of desperate self-preservation, hinges on his attempt to raise the specter of “colonialism,” that historical bogeyman that Western countries seem forever doomed to tiptoe around. Emphatically clarifying the truth of the Khartoum’s position after months of overly optimistic speculating (especially in the tunnel vision reliance of Western powers on the May 5 Darfur Peace Agreement), Bashir declared that "[t]hese are colonial forces and we will not accept colonial forces coming into the country…They want to colonize Africa, starting with the first sub-Saharan country to gain its independence. If they want to start colonization in Africa, let them chose a different place" (see, for example, “Sudan accuses Jewish groups of pushing for UN troops in Darfur,“ Sudan Tribune, 21 June 2006). Besides his conspiratorial (and anti-Semitic) preoccupation with the “they” that he paints as determined to overrun and occupy his country – a “they” that he, revealing the ludicrous depths of his thought process, equates with the “Jewish organizations” who were supposedly the “only” organizers of recent U.S. demonstrations, an accusation whose absurdity would almost elicit a sigh of relief were the U.N. not foolishly determined to take Bashir’s rhetoric seriously – Bashir’s invocation of “colonialism” not only reflects a poor understanding of the concept and of Sudanese history, but also, were we to see through his statement’s transparency, in fact merely points the finger back at the government committing these genocidal atrocities. Even a cursory glance at British colonial history in Sudan makes clear that this experience far more closely resembles the strategies practiced by the NIF ruling elites in Khartoum (who are in fact the benefactors of British colonial policies) than those of a U.N. peacekeeping force, the very comparison of which to a colonial force is inapposite and counterproductive.
The crux of this argument – that current GoS policy in Darfur strikingly, and tellingly, resembles British colonial policies in Sudan – rests on the essential tactic of “divide-and-rule” used by both the colonial power and its modern day successor, the Khartoum ruling elite of genocidaires. Khartoum has long practiced this strategy in its brutal war in the South, a relevant example of which – and one that revealingly ties the South to Darfur and exhibits the intentionally divisive nature of Khartoum’s self-preservation techniques – was its disproportionate use of Darfurians (and soldiers from other marginalized areas) to wage its war in the South. Thus when people in Darfur rose up themselves, Khartoum hoped to have fully alienated any potential support from their formerly equally oppressed brethren (to the extent that Lam Akol and other puppet SPLA leaders given positions in the so-called Government of National Unity actually represent the sentiment in the South – which is doubtful – GoS played its cards well). A more enduring quality of Khartoum’s divide-and-rule tactics vis-à-vis the South, however, stretches back to the colonial period before January 1, 1956. This clearly arbitrary date that the British chose to cut and run hides behind its lofty proclamation of independence seeds of discord that had long been planted, fostered, even relied upon, and intentionallz exacerbated by both the British colonial rulers and their Sudanese protégés.
In a very real way, the National Islamic Front regime in power today traces its direct descent to British exploitation of the country and the few “natives” allowed to benefit from this, and thus given the keys to the government upon British departure. I do not intend to paint a conspiratorial picture of an Arab supremacist riverain elite as a temporally unified clique in comfortable maintenance of and transition to and from power (for to do so would be to grossly oversimplify Sudanese postcolonial history, to ignore internecine political tensions, Communist influence, and the situation surrounding Jaafar al-Nimeiry’s presidency, for example); I simply mean to call attention to the inertia of power-wielding that has, for 50 years, led inhabitants of certain areas of this massive country to continue to dominate higher political, educational, and military positions in the capital and has relegated certain other recurring areas to the margins of underdevelopment, lack of representation, and unequal benefits of wealth (this is of course the main thesis of the famous “Black Book” published in the late 1990’s and documenting the history of a power monopoly by certain tribes, which it is not my intention to assert, but which is an important indicator, at the least, of a common sentiment of Sudanese outside of Khartoum of not benefiting from the historically dominant political and economic order). The British experience, and the rationale behind training, preparing, and ceding the country to a certain group of elites, is, in a way, entirely comprehensible, given the perverse logic of colonialism. British policies were, almost by default, naturally channeled down tunnels carved out by the two predominant pillars of colonial rule at the time (I am referring here to the period after 1898, when Sudan’s territorial boundaries (not including, of course, the Fur Sultanate [Darfur], independent until 1916) were formally defined, and Great Britain assumed full control of the territory, despite the deceptive nomenclature of an “Anglo-Egyptian Condominium” and Britain’s sly tactic to house administration of Sudan not under the Colonial Office, but under the Foreign Office): economic exploitation, and political manipulation, which in the early 20th century underwent transition to the policies of Lugardian indirect rule that had come into fashion and which were in turn shaped by the underlying motivation necessarily beneath all colonial endeavors – ease of occupation. To this must of course be added the variable of distinction based on race, and of modifying, but ultimately maintaining, the cultural differences necessary for any subjugation utilizing a divide-and-rule strategy.
The former motivation, that of viewing the territory first in terms of resources to be plundered – only secondly treating the question of what to do with the people on the land to be exploited – is of course the raison d’être of colonial occupation. Its pursuit led the British to recognize that the north of the country was where their attention should be focused. Accordingly, this area was developed, schools were built, and certain Sudanese received the “benefit” of being trained as administrators (this quickly turned to anger and resentful nationalism as Sudanese graduates and trained professionals found no employment opportunities and no intention on the part of the British to cede their power in any meaningful way). Those who were recruited were not, of course, a reflection of the ethnic diversity of Sudan; rather, they typically came from families of Arab riverain elites who had been in positions of socioeconomic power even before the arrival of the British. This, again, befitted the dominant paradigm of following the path of least resistance. Unfortunately, in accepting and entrenching the status quo, the British also legitimized other long-standing practices and beliefs, such as the forays into Southern Sudan to capture slaves (slavery enduring, disgustingly, until the mid-90’s and even today in Sudan) and the racism of northern Sudanese toward southerners, which, while nuanced, nonetheless jibed with the familiar dark-light skin racism of European colonialists. The British further solidified this practice of enforced difference by their vastly different policy in administering South Sudan. In effect, this latter was more a conspicuous and intentional lack of any real administration; in the words of M.W. Daly, in Imperial Sudan, it was a practice of “institutionalizing backwardness” (cited in Richard Just, “An Imperialist Indifference,” in The New Republic, 15 May 2006). The British intentionally cut off the South from the rest of the country, made explicit in the Closed Districts Ordinance of 1922, which effectively delineated a policy of “two Sudans” – the ultimate example of a strategy of divide-and-rule. The South was left to underfunded Christian missionaries, whose own racism merely inflamed anti-colonial and anti-Northerner resentment.
Though such tactics may have eased administration of a large and unwieldy entity of hundreds of ethnicities, tribes, languages, and cultures for the British, they left a painful legacy, as well as a deadly recipe for how to subjugate, suppress, and retain control. Khartoum’s handling of the original unrest in Darfur of course does not mirror the British colonial design, but it is striking how, three years into the Government’s genocidal campaign, the essential component of fostering divisiveness, which perhaps helps explain – not to exonerate international actors whose pitiful response deserves a fair weight of culpability – how the genocide, rendered “ambiguous,” in Gérard Prunier’s term, has continued so long without a more appalled reaction, is possibly more visible now than ever. For it is just when (at least in the eyes of the overly optimistic international community) peace seems around the corner, that Khartoum’s failsafe tactic of diverting attention from itself to the squabbling rebel groups (and its crafty incitement of this squabbling in the first place) is most effective for preserving the state of chaos that allows GoS to continue its brutal counter-insurgency of genocide by attrition.
From the perspective of the Government of Sudan, of course, peace was never just around the corner. Even the much-heralded Darfur Peace Agreement of 5 (15, retroactively) May 2006, despite its deceptive title, was from the beginningmerely another tactic to maintain the genocidal status quo and to deflect international attention from the reality of what is occurring in Darfur. Beyond analyzing the failures within the document itself, notably its lack of enforcement and disarmament mechanisms, allowing Janjaweed militias to continue to carry out their genocidal, government-financed rampages throughout “rebel” countryside (for detailed analysis, see International Crisis Group’s report, “Darfur’s Fragile Peace,” 20 June 2006), Khartoum’s tactics during and after (as well as before) the negotiating process in Abuja themselves reveal the extent to which GoS merely intended to use the DPA as another wedge to drive amongst the rebel movements. Though the SLM/A had already split into its so-called Minni and Abdelwahed factions in the fall of 2005 (a split that I am sure was more than welcomed, by which I mean instigated and actively encouraged, by Khartoum, though I lack at the moment the resources to delve into this original fomentation), the divisiveness (and violence) between the two has sharpened considerably after the “breakthrough” on 5 May. Khartoum could not have wished for a more favorable result from Abuja (except perhaps, ironically enough, if the JEM, which enjoys even less support in Darfur and whose Islamist agenda and ties to idealogue Hassan al-Turabi provoke mistrust among Darfurians, had been the only party to sign) than what occurred; Minni Arco Minnawi, the relatively unpopular – and rather brutal, as reported by Julie Flint in “Pursuing an Illusion of Peace in Darfur,” The Daily Star, 24 May 2006, and “Dealing with the devil in Darfur,” New York Times, 18 June 2006) – military commander who single-handedly propelled himself up the ranks of SLA leadership (starting by inventing the position of Secretary General for himself, and culminating in his assumption of control of the organization at a meeting boycotted by his rival, Abdelwahed Mohamed el-Nur), of the Zaghawa tribe, representing only 8% of Darfur’s population, was the only one to sign the agreement. He has become increasingly isolated, even as other leaders of the movement have induced further fractionalization by later signing the DPA, and has become the subject of increasingly virulent attacks by the Darfur IDP and refugee population, being denounced as a traitor (see, for example, “SLM’s Minawi threatens to quit Darfur peace deal,” Sudan Tribune, 17 June 2006), as unrepresentative of the overwhelming majority of Darfurians, the largest group of which, the Fur, remains loyal to el-Nur, and even threatened with death (at Fata Borno Camp, an IDP stated bluntly, “If Minni comes here we will slaughter him” – see “For Darfur rebel leader peace is dangerous,” Reuters, Opheera McDoom, 6 June 2006). Many Darfurians have even voiced old fears of the conspiracy to create a “Greater Zaghawa Land,” a myth that Khartoum has seized upon and actively promulgated (the International Crisis Group speaks of “un sentiment anti-Zaghawa, que Khartoum depuis deux ans s’était efforcé de cultiver” in its 1 June 2006 report, “Le Tchad: Vers le Retour de la Guerre?,” though Khartoum’s attempt to cultivate an anti-Zaghawa sentiment likely began far earlier than two years ago). Moreover, this division, which immediately in the wake of the supposed peace accord, incited bloody rebel attacks on civilians that were reported to resemble Janjaweed raids in their viciousness, has the added benefit for Khartoum of removing the majority military component (the Zaghawa, disproportionately represented in the SLA military wing) from the field while leaving the bulk of civilians defenseless, at Khartoum’s mercy, and with no prospect of attaining concessions.
Proof of Khartoum’s inflammatory intent at Abuja is clear. As soon as Minni signed the agreement on 5 May, GoS main negotiator Ali Osman Taha immediately flew back to Khartoum, and the Government began rejecting all proposed additions to the agreement out of hand. The refusal of further negotiation points inexorably to the only truth that can be drawn from the past few months: such a fractured, insufficient agreement was exactly what Khartoum had been pursuing all along. Ruthlessly calculating that the international community would seize onto a peace treaty as a concrete (albeit hollow) symbol of accomplishment that would relinquish them from that pesky moral duty to intervene in the face of genocide and would, in Flint’s words, “fall[] over backward to do nothing to alienate the two parties whose signatures are on the bottom of the agreement” (Flint, op. cit., Daily Star), Khartoum managed to kill two birds with one stone. It not only eliminated the rebel movements’ capacity for resistance, as well as their hope of achieving a meaningful peace and concessions at the negotiating table (for after this (failed) treaty, the prospects of another accord are, in my opinion, extremely doubtful), but the Government of Sudan has, once again, perversely and sickeningly twisted events so that the international community is on its “side.” Depicting themselves as willing compromisers dedicated to peace, the Khartoum genocidaires can only smirk as the African Union and U.N. threatens sanctions on the very victims of the conflict, those who did not sign the peace accord. In another telling reflection of its cruel attempt to exacerbate inter-group tension, GoS has promised amnesty for those who have signed the DPA (see Xinhua, 12 June 2006, “Sudanese president issues decree on amnesty for Darfur rebels”), leaving those who did not in an even more precarious, and resentful, position.
The sum of Khartoum’s divide-and-rule and – dare I say – neocolonial tactics is evident in the chaotic maelstrom that is now the Kalma IDP camp. David Blair reports that, since the DPA was signed, Kalma was slowly but surely self-segregated according to tribal affiliation and has been marked by frighteningly recurring outbursts of violence (see “Tribal rivalry breeds fear in Darfur camps,” David Blair, Daily Telegraph, 26 June 2006). The effects are all too apparent; as Khartoum sits back, it can enjoy the fruits of its labor as Darfurian civilians, pushed to the brink of despair and fed lies and hatred, literally start killing one another, feeding the Sudanese propaganda machine (for now those claims of “tribal warfare” find even more accepting ears) and perpetuating its genocide. That an international force sent to protect these people from their own government’s attacks could even be described as “colonialist” is of course preposterous. While I would not necessarily go so far as to describe intervention as a necessary duty in overcoming colonialism and espousing conspicuous non-colonialism (with the argument, made in a recent op-ed, whose citation I cannot find at the moment, that to do nothing, to stand by and not act as the West is doing, is itself the more “colonialist” behavior, perpetuating a colonialist mindset of callous indifference), this is not for lack of belief in the necessity of intervention. Rather, I favor disposing with the inappropriate colonial comparisons altogether (though the author of the aforementioned op-edis correct to point out a degree of racism likely permeating the international community’s treatment of Darfur, even while this is by far not the only variable holding it back from a meaningful response), as they can only do harm for the situation by giving at least somewhat implicit credence to Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s outlandish accusations. The situation in Darfur should be regarded as it is: a government-conducted genocide in which innocent civilians are in desperate need of a force to protect them from their killers.
The crux of this argument – that current GoS policy in Darfur strikingly, and tellingly, resembles British colonial policies in Sudan – rests on the essential tactic of “divide-and-rule” used by both the colonial power and its modern day successor, the Khartoum ruling elite of genocidaires. Khartoum has long practiced this strategy in its brutal war in the South, a relevant example of which – and one that revealingly ties the South to Darfur and exhibits the intentionally divisive nature of Khartoum’s self-preservation techniques – was its disproportionate use of Darfurians (and soldiers from other marginalized areas) to wage its war in the South. Thus when people in Darfur rose up themselves, Khartoum hoped to have fully alienated any potential support from their formerly equally oppressed brethren (to the extent that Lam Akol and other puppet SPLA leaders given positions in the so-called Government of National Unity actually represent the sentiment in the South – which is doubtful – GoS played its cards well). A more enduring quality of Khartoum’s divide-and-rule tactics vis-à-vis the South, however, stretches back to the colonial period before January 1, 1956. This clearly arbitrary date that the British chose to cut and run hides behind its lofty proclamation of independence seeds of discord that had long been planted, fostered, even relied upon, and intentionallz exacerbated by both the British colonial rulers and their Sudanese protégés.
In a very real way, the National Islamic Front regime in power today traces its direct descent to British exploitation of the country and the few “natives” allowed to benefit from this, and thus given the keys to the government upon British departure. I do not intend to paint a conspiratorial picture of an Arab supremacist riverain elite as a temporally unified clique in comfortable maintenance of and transition to and from power (for to do so would be to grossly oversimplify Sudanese postcolonial history, to ignore internecine political tensions, Communist influence, and the situation surrounding Jaafar al-Nimeiry’s presidency, for example); I simply mean to call attention to the inertia of power-wielding that has, for 50 years, led inhabitants of certain areas of this massive country to continue to dominate higher political, educational, and military positions in the capital and has relegated certain other recurring areas to the margins of underdevelopment, lack of representation, and unequal benefits of wealth (this is of course the main thesis of the famous “Black Book” published in the late 1990’s and documenting the history of a power monopoly by certain tribes, which it is not my intention to assert, but which is an important indicator, at the least, of a common sentiment of Sudanese outside of Khartoum of not benefiting from the historically dominant political and economic order). The British experience, and the rationale behind training, preparing, and ceding the country to a certain group of elites, is, in a way, entirely comprehensible, given the perverse logic of colonialism. British policies were, almost by default, naturally channeled down tunnels carved out by the two predominant pillars of colonial rule at the time (I am referring here to the period after 1898, when Sudan’s territorial boundaries (not including, of course, the Fur Sultanate [Darfur], independent until 1916) were formally defined, and Great Britain assumed full control of the territory, despite the deceptive nomenclature of an “Anglo-Egyptian Condominium” and Britain’s sly tactic to house administration of Sudan not under the Colonial Office, but under the Foreign Office): economic exploitation, and political manipulation, which in the early 20th century underwent transition to the policies of Lugardian indirect rule that had come into fashion and which were in turn shaped by the underlying motivation necessarily beneath all colonial endeavors – ease of occupation. To this must of course be added the variable of distinction based on race, and of modifying, but ultimately maintaining, the cultural differences necessary for any subjugation utilizing a divide-and-rule strategy.
The former motivation, that of viewing the territory first in terms of resources to be plundered – only secondly treating the question of what to do with the people on the land to be exploited – is of course the raison d’être of colonial occupation. Its pursuit led the British to recognize that the north of the country was where their attention should be focused. Accordingly, this area was developed, schools were built, and certain Sudanese received the “benefit” of being trained as administrators (this quickly turned to anger and resentful nationalism as Sudanese graduates and trained professionals found no employment opportunities and no intention on the part of the British to cede their power in any meaningful way). Those who were recruited were not, of course, a reflection of the ethnic diversity of Sudan; rather, they typically came from families of Arab riverain elites who had been in positions of socioeconomic power even before the arrival of the British. This, again, befitted the dominant paradigm of following the path of least resistance. Unfortunately, in accepting and entrenching the status quo, the British also legitimized other long-standing practices and beliefs, such as the forays into Southern Sudan to capture slaves (slavery enduring, disgustingly, until the mid-90’s and even today in Sudan) and the racism of northern Sudanese toward southerners, which, while nuanced, nonetheless jibed with the familiar dark-light skin racism of European colonialists. The British further solidified this practice of enforced difference by their vastly different policy in administering South Sudan. In effect, this latter was more a conspicuous and intentional lack of any real administration; in the words of M.W. Daly, in Imperial Sudan, it was a practice of “institutionalizing backwardness” (cited in Richard Just, “An Imperialist Indifference,” in The New Republic, 15 May 2006). The British intentionally cut off the South from the rest of the country, made explicit in the Closed Districts Ordinance of 1922, which effectively delineated a policy of “two Sudans” – the ultimate example of a strategy of divide-and-rule. The South was left to underfunded Christian missionaries, whose own racism merely inflamed anti-colonial and anti-Northerner resentment.
Though such tactics may have eased administration of a large and unwieldy entity of hundreds of ethnicities, tribes, languages, and cultures for the British, they left a painful legacy, as well as a deadly recipe for how to subjugate, suppress, and retain control. Khartoum’s handling of the original unrest in Darfur of course does not mirror the British colonial design, but it is striking how, three years into the Government’s genocidal campaign, the essential component of fostering divisiveness, which perhaps helps explain – not to exonerate international actors whose pitiful response deserves a fair weight of culpability – how the genocide, rendered “ambiguous,” in Gérard Prunier’s term, has continued so long without a more appalled reaction, is possibly more visible now than ever. For it is just when (at least in the eyes of the overly optimistic international community) peace seems around the corner, that Khartoum’s failsafe tactic of diverting attention from itself to the squabbling rebel groups (and its crafty incitement of this squabbling in the first place) is most effective for preserving the state of chaos that allows GoS to continue its brutal counter-insurgency of genocide by attrition.
From the perspective of the Government of Sudan, of course, peace was never just around the corner. Even the much-heralded Darfur Peace Agreement of 5 (15, retroactively) May 2006, despite its deceptive title, was from the beginningmerely another tactic to maintain the genocidal status quo and to deflect international attention from the reality of what is occurring in Darfur. Beyond analyzing the failures within the document itself, notably its lack of enforcement and disarmament mechanisms, allowing Janjaweed militias to continue to carry out their genocidal, government-financed rampages throughout “rebel” countryside (for detailed analysis, see International Crisis Group’s report, “Darfur’s Fragile Peace,” 20 June 2006), Khartoum’s tactics during and after (as well as before) the negotiating process in Abuja themselves reveal the extent to which GoS merely intended to use the DPA as another wedge to drive amongst the rebel movements. Though the SLM/A had already split into its so-called Minni and Abdelwahed factions in the fall of 2005 (a split that I am sure was more than welcomed, by which I mean instigated and actively encouraged, by Khartoum, though I lack at the moment the resources to delve into this original fomentation), the divisiveness (and violence) between the two has sharpened considerably after the “breakthrough” on 5 May. Khartoum could not have wished for a more favorable result from Abuja (except perhaps, ironically enough, if the JEM, which enjoys even less support in Darfur and whose Islamist agenda and ties to idealogue Hassan al-Turabi provoke mistrust among Darfurians, had been the only party to sign) than what occurred; Minni Arco Minnawi, the relatively unpopular – and rather brutal, as reported by Julie Flint in “Pursuing an Illusion of Peace in Darfur,” The Daily Star, 24 May 2006, and “Dealing with the devil in Darfur,” New York Times, 18 June 2006) – military commander who single-handedly propelled himself up the ranks of SLA leadership (starting by inventing the position of Secretary General for himself, and culminating in his assumption of control of the organization at a meeting boycotted by his rival, Abdelwahed Mohamed el-Nur), of the Zaghawa tribe, representing only 8% of Darfur’s population, was the only one to sign the agreement. He has become increasingly isolated, even as other leaders of the movement have induced further fractionalization by later signing the DPA, and has become the subject of increasingly virulent attacks by the Darfur IDP and refugee population, being denounced as a traitor (see, for example, “SLM’s Minawi threatens to quit Darfur peace deal,” Sudan Tribune, 17 June 2006), as unrepresentative of the overwhelming majority of Darfurians, the largest group of which, the Fur, remains loyal to el-Nur, and even threatened with death (at Fata Borno Camp, an IDP stated bluntly, “If Minni comes here we will slaughter him” – see “For Darfur rebel leader peace is dangerous,” Reuters, Opheera McDoom, 6 June 2006). Many Darfurians have even voiced old fears of the conspiracy to create a “Greater Zaghawa Land,” a myth that Khartoum has seized upon and actively promulgated (the International Crisis Group speaks of “un sentiment anti-Zaghawa, que Khartoum depuis deux ans s’était efforcé de cultiver” in its 1 June 2006 report, “Le Tchad: Vers le Retour de la Guerre?,” though Khartoum’s attempt to cultivate an anti-Zaghawa sentiment likely began far earlier than two years ago). Moreover, this division, which immediately in the wake of the supposed peace accord, incited bloody rebel attacks on civilians that were reported to resemble Janjaweed raids in their viciousness, has the added benefit for Khartoum of removing the majority military component (the Zaghawa, disproportionately represented in the SLA military wing) from the field while leaving the bulk of civilians defenseless, at Khartoum’s mercy, and with no prospect of attaining concessions.
Proof of Khartoum’s inflammatory intent at Abuja is clear. As soon as Minni signed the agreement on 5 May, GoS main negotiator Ali Osman Taha immediately flew back to Khartoum, and the Government began rejecting all proposed additions to the agreement out of hand. The refusal of further negotiation points inexorably to the only truth that can be drawn from the past few months: such a fractured, insufficient agreement was exactly what Khartoum had been pursuing all along. Ruthlessly calculating that the international community would seize onto a peace treaty as a concrete (albeit hollow) symbol of accomplishment that would relinquish them from that pesky moral duty to intervene in the face of genocide and would, in Flint’s words, “fall[] over backward to do nothing to alienate the two parties whose signatures are on the bottom of the agreement” (Flint, op. cit., Daily Star), Khartoum managed to kill two birds with one stone. It not only eliminated the rebel movements’ capacity for resistance, as well as their hope of achieving a meaningful peace and concessions at the negotiating table (for after this (failed) treaty, the prospects of another accord are, in my opinion, extremely doubtful), but the Government of Sudan has, once again, perversely and sickeningly twisted events so that the international community is on its “side.” Depicting themselves as willing compromisers dedicated to peace, the Khartoum genocidaires can only smirk as the African Union and U.N. threatens sanctions on the very victims of the conflict, those who did not sign the peace accord. In another telling reflection of its cruel attempt to exacerbate inter-group tension, GoS has promised amnesty for those who have signed the DPA (see Xinhua, 12 June 2006, “Sudanese president issues decree on amnesty for Darfur rebels”), leaving those who did not in an even more precarious, and resentful, position.
The sum of Khartoum’s divide-and-rule and – dare I say – neocolonial tactics is evident in the chaotic maelstrom that is now the Kalma IDP camp. David Blair reports that, since the DPA was signed, Kalma was slowly but surely self-segregated according to tribal affiliation and has been marked by frighteningly recurring outbursts of violence (see “Tribal rivalry breeds fear in Darfur camps,” David Blair, Daily Telegraph, 26 June 2006). The effects are all too apparent; as Khartoum sits back, it can enjoy the fruits of its labor as Darfurian civilians, pushed to the brink of despair and fed lies and hatred, literally start killing one another, feeding the Sudanese propaganda machine (for now those claims of “tribal warfare” find even more accepting ears) and perpetuating its genocide. That an international force sent to protect these people from their own government’s attacks could even be described as “colonialist” is of course preposterous. While I would not necessarily go so far as to describe intervention as a necessary duty in overcoming colonialism and espousing conspicuous non-colonialism (with the argument, made in a recent op-ed, whose citation I cannot find at the moment, that to do nothing, to stand by and not act as the West is doing, is itself the more “colonialist” behavior, perpetuating a colonialist mindset of callous indifference), this is not for lack of belief in the necessity of intervention. Rather, I favor disposing with the inappropriate colonial comparisons altogether (though the author of the aforementioned op-edis correct to point out a degree of racism likely permeating the international community’s treatment of Darfur, even while this is by far not the only variable holding it back from a meaningful response), as they can only do harm for the situation by giving at least somewhat implicit credence to Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s outlandish accusations. The situation in Darfur should be regarded as it is: a government-conducted genocide in which innocent civilians are in desperate need of a force to protect them from their killers.
23 June 2006
The UN in Darfur: Who’s calling the shots?
In a statement that perhaps best encapsulates the disparity between U.N. rhetoric and the reality the international organization is allowing to transpire under its very own eyes, Juan Mendez, the U.N. Special Advisor to the Secretary General on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (whose very title already endows him with the ignominy of failure), recently avowed that “[i]t’s high time the AU, the Security Council, and all of us tell the government of Sudan that consent…has to be given in good faith” and that the international community could “not let[] the government call the shots over the makeup or mandate of the future U.N. mission…[which] would render it as ineffective as the AU operation” (“Darfur peace accord is expected to fail: Sudan’s word, U.N. will to act in doubt,” Tina Susman, Newsday, 31 May 2006). However, any will behind this belated statement of the obvious – that genocidaires should not dictate the terms of a force between them and their victims, or, essentially, that the fox should not be given the keys to the chicken coop – has proven wholly transparent, dissipating in the wake of the U.N.’s persistent failure to engage the Sudanese government and take it to task for any of its supposedly unallowable assertions of its right to have the final say over the form of any eventual U.N. mission in its territory. The U.N. Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, has stated quite succinctly, and with ringing overtones of the U.N.’s inherent weakness – signals assuredly picked up and exploited by the Government of Sudan – that “[t]he United Nations never imposes itself on any country” (“Mission Presses Sudan for U.N. Peacekeeping Troops in Darfur,” Opheera McDoom, Reuters, 11 June 2006). While at face seemingly a simple traditional deference to national sovereignty and an assurance that the U.N. is not an aggressor force, this statement also bluntly admits that the international organization will by default bow to the conditions set by Khartoum so as not to be “impos[ing]” itself on a sovereign (albeit genocidal) government. This amounts to a frightening degree of complicity, for the U.N. is effectively averting its eyes and timidly resigning itself to begging the executioner, even when it is the only possible force between the ax and hundreds of thousands more Darfurian lives.
The U.N.’s cowardice is even more dastardly given the statement of Mr. Mendez, for it taints the organization with downright two-faced duplicity, even though the face asserting that it will “call the shots” of a U.N. mission is merely a faint mockery that pales in comparison to the fervent efforts of U.N. leaders to reassure murderous Sudanese government officials that they intend to do nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that could possibly be twisted into the specter of a “Western invasion.” For this, one need go no further than the statements of British U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, leading the recent U.N. Assessment Mission (belatedly and only after much pressure, including form Lakhdar Brahimi, accepted by the GoS). Jones Parry, in an astoundingly depressing report to the degree that it reveals how far behind and out of the loop entirely the U.N. is in dealing with a genocidal campaign begun over three years ago, first opines that after this trip, his view that “the argument is not whether we should be involved in Sudan and Darfur” was “reinforced.” If that is as far as the U.N. has progressed – to cautiously reassert step one, that the U.N. should even be at all interested, should even be passing the Security Council resolutions that Khartoum promptly flouts – then we truly can already announce the U.N. response to the 21st century’s first genocide, even before its slaughter is completed, as an utter failure. Mr. Jones Parry, however, totally ignorant to the degree which his conciliatory stance denounces nearly all subsequent U.N. efforts as sheerly chimerical, presents his deference to the Sudanese government as the necessary efforts to succeed in negotiations before a peacekeeping force can be deployed. He urges that the U.N. “emphasise its respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sudan” and further descends to the base level of downplaying the significance of the vital conferral of a Chapter 7 mandate, reassuring Khartoum that “Chapter VII was a technical, not a political, issue” (“Report to the Security Council on the Council’s Mission to Sudan, Addis Ababa and Chad,” UK Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, 15 June 2006). Are the hundreds of thousands of lives likely to be saved by a peacekeeping mission with authorization to engage in lethal force to defend itself and civilians, are they merely beneficiaries of a “technical issue,” Mr. Jones Parry? The British Ambassador, who tellingly has been one of the more “active” voices on Darfur, subtly and likely unknowingly evinces the power of Khartoum propaganda in clasping its fist over powerful international voices that, with more independence and courage, could raise a much-warranted storm over a genocide committed by a sovereign government. In his report we can clearly see that he has swallowed all of the lies promulgated by the GoS and designed to keep the United Nations impotent to effect any real change. He accepts the overly simplistic minimalization of “the situation in Darfur as a traditional conflict between herdsmen and farmers over limited national resources” (Idem.)– one far too closely resembling Khartoum’s (and Bob Zoellick’s) version of “tribal warfare” in the peripheries that has no relationship to the center whatsoever. He additionally voices the crucial flaw of U.N. posturing on Sudan (one unfortunately, and with Sudan’s malicious intent, consistent with the current mandate of the AU mission in Darfur, which acknowledges “the protection of civilians being the responsibility of the Government of Sudan,” (see Communique of the AU Peace and Security Council, October 2004) but in sharp contrast to the obligations of the Responsibility to Protect that the U.N. supposedly adopted (unanimously) in the fall of 2005), abdicating all responsibility for the lives of millions of Darfurians by unacceptably declaring that “it is the obligation of the Government of Sudan to protect its civilians” (Idem.). Finally, the fact that he bothers to reassure Khartoum that the international community has no designs on its “territorial integrity” (itself a patently ridiculous assertion that one would (hopefully) be hard pressed to find outside of Government propaganda) indicates that the U.N. has subtly internalized even the most outlandish of Khartoum’s claims opposing international intervention.
What Emyr Jones Parry fails to recognize is that genocide is not an arena for negotiation; it is a scenario where doing something “out of the ordinary” is exactly what is required. When Mr. Guehenno rationalized his effective castration of any U.N. force by explaining that “[a]ll our peacekeeping operations in Africa are deployed with the cooperation of the host country,” he is neglecting to articulate the difference between those countries with U.N. peacekeepers (DR Congo, Liberia, Burundi, Ivory Coast, & Sierra Leone, all of which have a Chapter 7 peacemaking mandate) and those potentially in Darfur, namely that the former governments all have an interest in U.N. troops helping their countries achieve stability; Sudan’s interest, of course, is the exact opposite – to shy away any interference with their strategic campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide. A similar difference is undermining the efforts of the International Criminal Court in Sudan as compared to other countries. Whereas President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has a strategic interest in the ICC arresting Joseph Kony and other LRA rebels wreaking havoc on the north of the country (and perhaps of a more realpolitik significance, representing a constant threat to his power that Museveni has had to battle against for twenty years), Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Second Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, head of security forces Salah Abdallah Gosh, and Interior Minister Zubier Bashir Taha, along with many other national and regional government officials responsible for the design and execution of the Darfur genocide, have no interest whatsoever in allowing the ICC to arrest themselves. This problem, which was nominally overcome by the May 2005 Security Council recommendation of the ICC to Sudan (necessary, as per the Rome Treaty creating the Court, in the absence of state consent), has left the ICC floundering in a quandary it has never experienced in its young existence; how to engage in the somewhat aggressive adjudication necessary to fulfill its mission when it is not welcome. The ICC is also handicapped by that other previously unencountered flaw in the Rome Treaty – that it has no jurisdiction where the offending state has undertaken “efforts” to create its own tribunals to rectify the injustice. These tribunals, represented by the laughably named Special Criminal Court on the Events in Darfur (“events” being the lowest of the low propaganda terms that I have seen the Sudanese government ascribe to its bloody genocide), as described in a recent Human Rights Watch report, have quite literally done nothing whatsoever to even attempt to prosecute anyone related to the atrocities committed in Darfur (“No Justice for Darfur in Local Courts,” Fritzroy Sterling, Inter Press Service, 9 June 2006).
Why are the problems facing the ICC in Darfur significant for the prospects of U.N. reluctance to exert any meaningful pressure on Khartoum’s objection to a U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur? The answer is the same desire that motivates all of the the GoS’ rhetoric and behind-the-scenes calculations when dealing with the international community – maintenance of the status quo. As long as Khartoum is able to fend off any changes to the current state in Darfur (which they have been remarkably astute at accomplishing without much outcry, from their ability to violate the April 2004 N’djamena Ceasefire with impunity, to their flouting of Security Council Resolutions of 2005, their strategic trade-off allowing augmentation of the AU force in numbers but preventing any upgrade to its mandate, as well as their aforementioned obstruction of ICC efforts, to current obstinacy resisting the U.N., as well as many tactics in between, all designed to darken the shroud around Darfur and ease any inhibitions to their genocidal destructiveness), its military and its Janjaweed proxies – who were supposedly never under government control, whose existence the government tries to obscure and deny, and who, particularly now, under the latest obligation (that of the May 5 DPA) of the government to disarm them, are portrayed as chaotic and acting on their own – can with little hindrance and utter impunity continue to terrorize, maim, kill, rape, and displace any and all “non-Arab” villagers and IDPs in western Sudan and eastern Chad. Khartoum is thus again engaging in a bargain that costs them little and that the international community is too naïve and/or overly cautious to contest; the GoS can tolerate an ineffective ICC mission whose own head prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, admits the failings and slow progress of his team, and the obstacles facing it (for example, he has stated that he cannot call witnesses from Darfur, for risk of their safety, another problem that befuddles the inexperienced ICC), as long as no U.N. troops, who the government genocidaires fear might make more possible their own prosecution and punishment, are allowed to enter the country.
Until very recently, the genocidal regime’s strategy in discussing any future U.N. role in its country has been one of reticence and coy hints, designed as a perfect dance with the U.N.’s own hesitant posturing. Somehow, somewhere along the line, the press started reporting that the GoS would allow U.N. peacekeepers into Sudan, a reversal of all previous statements of officials, including those of President Bashir, who in February 2006 neatly wove together various strands of Sudanese propaganda in vehemently opposing any international intervention, characterizing it as the work of “some invisible hands that continue to manipulate the question of Darfur for tearing up the unity of Sudan in preparation for controlling and looting its resources” (“Sudan objects to U.N. force in Darfur,” CNN.com, 7 February 2006). After the AU Peace and Security Council snubbed what it considered condescending Western voices by electing at its meeting in March to simply extend its own mandate until 30 September, rather than begin a process of the immediate handoff to the U.N., the assumption again somehow emerged, despite no GoS official on record as voicing anything resembling a warm endorsement of this proposition, that U.N. blue helmets would take over the strapped and ineffective AU forces beginning on 1 October. With the signing of the DPA, this was assumed to be a reality, which can only leave one in bewilderment, were one not seasoned to Khartoum’s history of mendacity and deception, when reading presidential spokesman Majzoub al-Khalifa’s recent statement that “the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) does not include any role for the UN in the region.” (“Sudan reiterates refusal of peacekeeping deployment in Darfur,” CHECK google alerts 6-12). What this indicates more than anything, however, is not an about-face by an ultimately compliant, if a trifle murky on the details, Sudanese regime, but rather the shameful self-deception practiced by the international community to convince itself that with the mere signing of a peace agreement (the sighs of relief were likely uttered not at any real prospects for peace, but more out of a sense of “whew, we are out of this mess now”) it could wash its hands of the confusing bloodshed and embarrassingly stagnant quagmire in Darfur (one that, as all observers of the region have acknowledged, would (have) require(d) an unprecedented confrontation with a sovereign government – confrontation here denoting not violent overthrow or “regime change” as self-styled American anti-imperialists would have it, a prediction they share with Khartoum government propaganda, but rather simply sending in peacekeepers against the government’s will). This, however, neglects to consider all previous statements and prevarications emanating from Khartoum in the past months and years. Thus when First Vice President Salva Kiir recently called into question the acceptability of a U.N. force’s mandate, questioning aloud whether it would be humanitarian (acceptable) or otherwise (unacceptable), President Omar Hassan al-Bashir lashed out at even this timid handling of the issue, stating that he stood on the opposite side of the spectrum as his supposed partner in Khartoum’s executive office. How the international community could convince itself that this placed Bashir anywhere other than staunchly opposed to any U.N. “interference” in Sudan is mystifying. We should thus not be surprised that Bashir has just made his rejection of any U.N. force explicit. The mere face of his outlandish rhetoric, equating a U.N. peacekeeping force with foreign occupation and recolonization (see “Sudan’s Bashir rejects strongly UN peacekeepers,” Sudan Tribune, 21 June 2006) and attributing Darfur activism in the United States to “Jewish organizations” (see “Sudan President Nixes Darfur Peacekeepers,” The Associated Press, 21 June 2006), should belie any seriousness with which the U.N. continues to deal with this genocidal tyrant. Bashir has taught us that, faced with a whimpering and unresolved international response, one too wary to challenge a “sovereign” government, he will not back down, and will in fact only escalate the degree of his rhetoric and the gall that it speaks to. The most painful element of this rhetoric, though, is that, by allowing it to continue, we are ourselves complicit in the death and destruction that lies transparently behind it.
The U.N.’s cowardice is even more dastardly given the statement of Mr. Mendez, for it taints the organization with downright two-faced duplicity, even though the face asserting that it will “call the shots” of a U.N. mission is merely a faint mockery that pales in comparison to the fervent efforts of U.N. leaders to reassure murderous Sudanese government officials that they intend to do nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that could possibly be twisted into the specter of a “Western invasion.” For this, one need go no further than the statements of British U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, leading the recent U.N. Assessment Mission (belatedly and only after much pressure, including form Lakhdar Brahimi, accepted by the GoS). Jones Parry, in an astoundingly depressing report to the degree that it reveals how far behind and out of the loop entirely the U.N. is in dealing with a genocidal campaign begun over three years ago, first opines that after this trip, his view that “the argument is not whether we should be involved in Sudan and Darfur” was “reinforced.” If that is as far as the U.N. has progressed – to cautiously reassert step one, that the U.N. should even be at all interested, should even be passing the Security Council resolutions that Khartoum promptly flouts – then we truly can already announce the U.N. response to the 21st century’s first genocide, even before its slaughter is completed, as an utter failure. Mr. Jones Parry, however, totally ignorant to the degree which his conciliatory stance denounces nearly all subsequent U.N. efforts as sheerly chimerical, presents his deference to the Sudanese government as the necessary efforts to succeed in negotiations before a peacekeeping force can be deployed. He urges that the U.N. “emphasise its respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sudan” and further descends to the base level of downplaying the significance of the vital conferral of a Chapter 7 mandate, reassuring Khartoum that “Chapter VII was a technical, not a political, issue” (“Report to the Security Council on the Council’s Mission to Sudan, Addis Ababa and Chad,” UK Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, 15 June 2006). Are the hundreds of thousands of lives likely to be saved by a peacekeeping mission with authorization to engage in lethal force to defend itself and civilians, are they merely beneficiaries of a “technical issue,” Mr. Jones Parry? The British Ambassador, who tellingly has been one of the more “active” voices on Darfur, subtly and likely unknowingly evinces the power of Khartoum propaganda in clasping its fist over powerful international voices that, with more independence and courage, could raise a much-warranted storm over a genocide committed by a sovereign government. In his report we can clearly see that he has swallowed all of the lies promulgated by the GoS and designed to keep the United Nations impotent to effect any real change. He accepts the overly simplistic minimalization of “the situation in Darfur as a traditional conflict between herdsmen and farmers over limited national resources” (Idem.)– one far too closely resembling Khartoum’s (and Bob Zoellick’s) version of “tribal warfare” in the peripheries that has no relationship to the center whatsoever. He additionally voices the crucial flaw of U.N. posturing on Sudan (one unfortunately, and with Sudan’s malicious intent, consistent with the current mandate of the AU mission in Darfur, which acknowledges “the protection of civilians being the responsibility of the Government of Sudan,” (see Communique of the AU Peace and Security Council, October 2004) but in sharp contrast to the obligations of the Responsibility to Protect that the U.N. supposedly adopted (unanimously) in the fall of 2005), abdicating all responsibility for the lives of millions of Darfurians by unacceptably declaring that “it is the obligation of the Government of Sudan to protect its civilians” (Idem.). Finally, the fact that he bothers to reassure Khartoum that the international community has no designs on its “territorial integrity” (itself a patently ridiculous assertion that one would (hopefully) be hard pressed to find outside of Government propaganda) indicates that the U.N. has subtly internalized even the most outlandish of Khartoum’s claims opposing international intervention.
What Emyr Jones Parry fails to recognize is that genocide is not an arena for negotiation; it is a scenario where doing something “out of the ordinary” is exactly what is required. When Mr. Guehenno rationalized his effective castration of any U.N. force by explaining that “[a]ll our peacekeeping operations in Africa are deployed with the cooperation of the host country,” he is neglecting to articulate the difference between those countries with U.N. peacekeepers (DR Congo, Liberia, Burundi, Ivory Coast, & Sierra Leone, all of which have a Chapter 7 peacemaking mandate) and those potentially in Darfur, namely that the former governments all have an interest in U.N. troops helping their countries achieve stability; Sudan’s interest, of course, is the exact opposite – to shy away any interference with their strategic campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide. A similar difference is undermining the efforts of the International Criminal Court in Sudan as compared to other countries. Whereas President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has a strategic interest in the ICC arresting Joseph Kony and other LRA rebels wreaking havoc on the north of the country (and perhaps of a more realpolitik significance, representing a constant threat to his power that Museveni has had to battle against for twenty years), Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Second Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, head of security forces Salah Abdallah Gosh, and Interior Minister Zubier Bashir Taha, along with many other national and regional government officials responsible for the design and execution of the Darfur genocide, have no interest whatsoever in allowing the ICC to arrest themselves. This problem, which was nominally overcome by the May 2005 Security Council recommendation of the ICC to Sudan (necessary, as per the Rome Treaty creating the Court, in the absence of state consent), has left the ICC floundering in a quandary it has never experienced in its young existence; how to engage in the somewhat aggressive adjudication necessary to fulfill its mission when it is not welcome. The ICC is also handicapped by that other previously unencountered flaw in the Rome Treaty – that it has no jurisdiction where the offending state has undertaken “efforts” to create its own tribunals to rectify the injustice. These tribunals, represented by the laughably named Special Criminal Court on the Events in Darfur (“events” being the lowest of the low propaganda terms that I have seen the Sudanese government ascribe to its bloody genocide), as described in a recent Human Rights Watch report, have quite literally done nothing whatsoever to even attempt to prosecute anyone related to the atrocities committed in Darfur (“No Justice for Darfur in Local Courts,” Fritzroy Sterling, Inter Press Service, 9 June 2006).
Why are the problems facing the ICC in Darfur significant for the prospects of U.N. reluctance to exert any meaningful pressure on Khartoum’s objection to a U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur? The answer is the same desire that motivates all of the the GoS’ rhetoric and behind-the-scenes calculations when dealing with the international community – maintenance of the status quo. As long as Khartoum is able to fend off any changes to the current state in Darfur (which they have been remarkably astute at accomplishing without much outcry, from their ability to violate the April 2004 N’djamena Ceasefire with impunity, to their flouting of Security Council Resolutions of 2005, their strategic trade-off allowing augmentation of the AU force in numbers but preventing any upgrade to its mandate, as well as their aforementioned obstruction of ICC efforts, to current obstinacy resisting the U.N., as well as many tactics in between, all designed to darken the shroud around Darfur and ease any inhibitions to their genocidal destructiveness), its military and its Janjaweed proxies – who were supposedly never under government control, whose existence the government tries to obscure and deny, and who, particularly now, under the latest obligation (that of the May 5 DPA) of the government to disarm them, are portrayed as chaotic and acting on their own – can with little hindrance and utter impunity continue to terrorize, maim, kill, rape, and displace any and all “non-Arab” villagers and IDPs in western Sudan and eastern Chad. Khartoum is thus again engaging in a bargain that costs them little and that the international community is too naïve and/or overly cautious to contest; the GoS can tolerate an ineffective ICC mission whose own head prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, admits the failings and slow progress of his team, and the obstacles facing it (for example, he has stated that he cannot call witnesses from Darfur, for risk of their safety, another problem that befuddles the inexperienced ICC), as long as no U.N. troops, who the government genocidaires fear might make more possible their own prosecution and punishment, are allowed to enter the country.
Until very recently, the genocidal regime’s strategy in discussing any future U.N. role in its country has been one of reticence and coy hints, designed as a perfect dance with the U.N.’s own hesitant posturing. Somehow, somewhere along the line, the press started reporting that the GoS would allow U.N. peacekeepers into Sudan, a reversal of all previous statements of officials, including those of President Bashir, who in February 2006 neatly wove together various strands of Sudanese propaganda in vehemently opposing any international intervention, characterizing it as the work of “some invisible hands that continue to manipulate the question of Darfur for tearing up the unity of Sudan in preparation for controlling and looting its resources” (“Sudan objects to U.N. force in Darfur,” CNN.com, 7 February 2006). After the AU Peace and Security Council snubbed what it considered condescending Western voices by electing at its meeting in March to simply extend its own mandate until 30 September, rather than begin a process of the immediate handoff to the U.N., the assumption again somehow emerged, despite no GoS official on record as voicing anything resembling a warm endorsement of this proposition, that U.N. blue helmets would take over the strapped and ineffective AU forces beginning on 1 October. With the signing of the DPA, this was assumed to be a reality, which can only leave one in bewilderment, were one not seasoned to Khartoum’s history of mendacity and deception, when reading presidential spokesman Majzoub al-Khalifa’s recent statement that “the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) does not include any role for the UN in the region.” (“Sudan reiterates refusal of peacekeeping deployment in Darfur,” CHECK google alerts 6-12). What this indicates more than anything, however, is not an about-face by an ultimately compliant, if a trifle murky on the details, Sudanese regime, but rather the shameful self-deception practiced by the international community to convince itself that with the mere signing of a peace agreement (the sighs of relief were likely uttered not at any real prospects for peace, but more out of a sense of “whew, we are out of this mess now”) it could wash its hands of the confusing bloodshed and embarrassingly stagnant quagmire in Darfur (one that, as all observers of the region have acknowledged, would (have) require(d) an unprecedented confrontation with a sovereign government – confrontation here denoting not violent overthrow or “regime change” as self-styled American anti-imperialists would have it, a prediction they share with Khartoum government propaganda, but rather simply sending in peacekeepers against the government’s will). This, however, neglects to consider all previous statements and prevarications emanating from Khartoum in the past months and years. Thus when First Vice President Salva Kiir recently called into question the acceptability of a U.N. force’s mandate, questioning aloud whether it would be humanitarian (acceptable) or otherwise (unacceptable), President Omar Hassan al-Bashir lashed out at even this timid handling of the issue, stating that he stood on the opposite side of the spectrum as his supposed partner in Khartoum’s executive office. How the international community could convince itself that this placed Bashir anywhere other than staunchly opposed to any U.N. “interference” in Sudan is mystifying. We should thus not be surprised that Bashir has just made his rejection of any U.N. force explicit. The mere face of his outlandish rhetoric, equating a U.N. peacekeeping force with foreign occupation and recolonization (see “Sudan’s Bashir rejects strongly UN peacekeepers,” Sudan Tribune, 21 June 2006) and attributing Darfur activism in the United States to “Jewish organizations” (see “Sudan President Nixes Darfur Peacekeepers,” The Associated Press, 21 June 2006), should belie any seriousness with which the U.N. continues to deal with this genocidal tyrant. Bashir has taught us that, faced with a whimpering and unresolved international response, one too wary to challenge a “sovereign” government, he will not back down, and will in fact only escalate the degree of his rhetoric and the gall that it speaks to. The most painful element of this rhetoric, though, is that, by allowing it to continue, we are ourselves complicit in the death and destruction that lies transparently behind it.
20 May 2006
Genocide as a Disease?
From what we are told by many recent media reports, the violence that has spawned from the genocide in Darfur is now "spilling over" across the border into Chad. Besides the fact that "Darfur's" (the quotation marks are meant to question the implied possessive quality of the violence, as if it belongs to Darfur) violence has affected Chad since early in the conflict, evidenced by the Janjaweed's persisently demonstrated willingness both to chase victims into Chad (the majority of today's Darfurian refugees in Chad (over 200,000) in fact arrived in the first 18 months of the terror) and to initiate new raids on Chadian villages, such reports are deceptive in how exactly they treat the phenomenon of genocide. I do not mean to question the boon of any press attention at all to this under-reported area, but much of this press is unfortunately tailored in a way that will likely have the long-term harmful effect of perpetuating a common myth about the very nature of genocide. Reports highlighting the "spill-over" of violence from Darfur into Chad imply, as stated above, that this violence was previously (almost "meant to be" it seems at times) confined to Darfur, that the violence was thus Darfur's, and that any appearance of the violence outside of Darfur represents a spreading of the violence. Again, I will reserve commentary on a typically misunderstood issue of the Chad-Darfur relationship, the importance of overcoming our traditional conception of a "border" between two well-defined states and seeing the ambiguous territory of eastern Chad and western Sudan for what it is - a porous and essentially nonexistent "boundary" (simply a line drawn by colonialists, we must remember) onto which are transposed the same peoples, living in similar fashion - and which has historically served as a breeding ground for rebels and foreign interference (think Qaddafi) and a launching pad for coups (for which the string of Chadian dictators is certainly grateful), and instead focus on what strikes me as the deeper problem, which will likely have a greater and longer lasting impact through its historical and theoretical inertia. By portraying genocidal violence as something that spreads or spills over, we de-emphasize the fact that the violence is not "spreading" of its own volition; rather it is being spread, it is being used by its perpetrators against a wider population. Herein lies the media's likely unintentional obfuscation of the nature of genocide; it is a tool, wielded by human actors, and does not have its own agency.
I was thus maddeningly infuriated to hear the well-intentioned Jonathan Miller of the UK's More4 News, in his 16 May 2006 special report, "Echoes of Horror" (can be found here: http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=2377), describe "Chad's dangerous borderlands, where the contagion that's affected Darfur has now spread" and opine that "the [only] certainty [is] that, like a virus, ethnic cleansing is poisoning the borderland." I would like to point out two elements of the construction of these seemingly innocuous (at least as innocuous as genocide can be) characterizations of the horror in Darfur and Chad. The first is that Mr. Miller provides a perfect example of the grave error described above, as, through the verb phrases "has now spread" and "is poisoning," he accords the processes of genocide and ethnic cleansing their own self-propelling agency. Though this may seem like a minor grammatical squabble, and one that certainly should not detract from More4 News' attempts to provide coverage and commentary on the repercussions of the genocide in Darfur, it is emblematic of, and subtly reinforces, our relatively well-entrenched idea of the pathological quality of genocide, whose crippling effect has been to take what is fundamentally a human crime - perpetrated by human beings on other human beings - out of our hands and depict it as an uncontrollable tornado of unstoppable wrath, which relieves us of the burden of even explaining the seemingly organic momentum of this unthinkable atrocity.
Samantha Power would criticize this relinquishing of explicative power and moral responsibility as tactfully sidestepping the cold, hard, human-produced reality of genocide by labelling it "a problem from hell." Such characterization, and the hands-in-the-air helplessness that it engenders, Power argues, has been the prevailing tactic of the international community in hedging, skirting, dithering, and otherwise withholding meaningful action to deal with genocides from the Holocaust to Rwanda. It effectively plays on an undisputed pillar of common moral thinking - that genocide is in theory a horrible and inhumane act - to justify an immoral conclusion - that no human action, no matter how concentrated, good-willed, or pragmatic, can possibly affect such pure evil. We have seen this pattern time and time again; after each strategic, well-orchestrated campaign of violence that we (belatedly) qualify as genocidal, we lament our lack of action, but expend a far greater amount of moral capital bemoaning the unspeakable horrors inherent in such human atrocity. We cannot reconcile the cognitive dissonance of our own moral paralysis with the acknowledged fundamental evil before us, so we absolve ourselves of (the possibility of) assuming responsibility by depicting what has just occurred as something not from our world, something we can not possibly grapple with, something by whose very nature transcends any hope of containment or defeat. Thus genocide, we declare, is something "from hell;" the very idea of this confounds human sensibility and renders us prostrate on the floor before the embodiment of the greatest conceivable evil. The More4 News report commits this evasive tactic by describing the genocidal violence of Darfur and Chad as a "contagion" and "a virus." While these are certainly accurate descriptors - and probably even understatements - of the level of horror to which innocent Darfurians and Chadians are victim, they imply that ethnic cleansing and genocide are pathological - and by implication nearly incurable - phenomena, and that we can only wait (with prayers) until they run their course of "spreading" and eventually - hopefully - weakening. We can patch concience-appeasing band-aids onto the problem area (the AU) and throw bags of rice at the suffering victims (though only half of what they need to live), attempting to ease their immediate pain, but what can we expect to accomplish in the face of an epidemic, a many-headed atrocious beast of pure evil (especially without investing anywhere near sufficient political capital or even centering the issue on the popular radar screen)? We are left with merely words. More4 News is not the only one complicit in this abdication in the face of genocide; perhaps every media outlet, nearly all political leaders, and practically everyone who comments on the heart-wrenching situation plaguing (this verb, as an example, subtly implies both genocidal self-propulsion and the unstoppable, disease-like pathology of genocide) Darfur unintentionally give credence to the theory this is something we can complain about, empathize (to a very limited extent) with, wave signs and take token action against, but are ultimately powerless to stop. The two world leaders' whose inaction history will judge the most harshly, the UN's Kofi Annan and the US's George W. Bush are guilty of this erroneous conception of the roots of genocide. Thus when Annan describes Darfur as "little short of hell on earth," he is certainly making an accurate plea for the dire nature of the humanitarian situation there, but, by bringing the unearthly "hell" into his characterization, he also likely furthers our distance from the reality of what is happening in western Sudan.
How can we possibly combat this? There is little hope of changing the dominant vocabulary and phraseology of dealing with genocide when it has been etched into our ignonimous history, according to which regret and remorse cyclically follow death and destruction as soon as we are clear of the frame in which meaningful intervention would have been possible. Though in Darfur we have been experiencing the unprecedented drama of watching something unfold that we have, during its lifetime, acknowledged as genocide, this has not resulted in any revision of the predominant strategical attribute of watching. We have more information, more photographs, and more evidence of genocidal intent and consequences than any previous genocide (including the more publicized reporting of the Armenian genocide and others), yet it does not stop us from limiting our action to peppering the crisis with words of sympathy and lamentations. The only solution is to remember - and focus on - what we do know. This is a genocide committed by individuals - members of an Arab supremacist, power-hungry, unscrupulous NIF regime who have actively and thoughtfully planned and carried out this strategic campaign - and which victimizes other individuals - innocent civilians of certain tribes of Darfur and Chad labelled as "non-Arab." Only after we acknowledge this and truly internalize it will we be able to see the genocide in Darfur as something very real and very human, which, as such, can be stopped by real human methods.
I was thus maddeningly infuriated to hear the well-intentioned Jonathan Miller of the UK's More4 News, in his 16 May 2006 special report, "Echoes of Horror" (can be found here: http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=2377), describe "Chad's dangerous borderlands, where the contagion that's affected Darfur has now spread" and opine that "the [only] certainty [is] that, like a virus, ethnic cleansing is poisoning the borderland." I would like to point out two elements of the construction of these seemingly innocuous (at least as innocuous as genocide can be) characterizations of the horror in Darfur and Chad. The first is that Mr. Miller provides a perfect example of the grave error described above, as, through the verb phrases "has now spread" and "is poisoning," he accords the processes of genocide and ethnic cleansing their own self-propelling agency. Though this may seem like a minor grammatical squabble, and one that certainly should not detract from More4 News' attempts to provide coverage and commentary on the repercussions of the genocide in Darfur, it is emblematic of, and subtly reinforces, our relatively well-entrenched idea of the pathological quality of genocide, whose crippling effect has been to take what is fundamentally a human crime - perpetrated by human beings on other human beings - out of our hands and depict it as an uncontrollable tornado of unstoppable wrath, which relieves us of the burden of even explaining the seemingly organic momentum of this unthinkable atrocity.
Samantha Power would criticize this relinquishing of explicative power and moral responsibility as tactfully sidestepping the cold, hard, human-produced reality of genocide by labelling it "a problem from hell." Such characterization, and the hands-in-the-air helplessness that it engenders, Power argues, has been the prevailing tactic of the international community in hedging, skirting, dithering, and otherwise withholding meaningful action to deal with genocides from the Holocaust to Rwanda. It effectively plays on an undisputed pillar of common moral thinking - that genocide is in theory a horrible and inhumane act - to justify an immoral conclusion - that no human action, no matter how concentrated, good-willed, or pragmatic, can possibly affect such pure evil. We have seen this pattern time and time again; after each strategic, well-orchestrated campaign of violence that we (belatedly) qualify as genocidal, we lament our lack of action, but expend a far greater amount of moral capital bemoaning the unspeakable horrors inherent in such human atrocity. We cannot reconcile the cognitive dissonance of our own moral paralysis with the acknowledged fundamental evil before us, so we absolve ourselves of (the possibility of) assuming responsibility by depicting what has just occurred as something not from our world, something we can not possibly grapple with, something by whose very nature transcends any hope of containment or defeat. Thus genocide, we declare, is something "from hell;" the very idea of this confounds human sensibility and renders us prostrate on the floor before the embodiment of the greatest conceivable evil. The More4 News report commits this evasive tactic by describing the genocidal violence of Darfur and Chad as a "contagion" and "a virus." While these are certainly accurate descriptors - and probably even understatements - of the level of horror to which innocent Darfurians and Chadians are victim, they imply that ethnic cleansing and genocide are pathological - and by implication nearly incurable - phenomena, and that we can only wait (with prayers) until they run their course of "spreading" and eventually - hopefully - weakening. We can patch concience-appeasing band-aids onto the problem area (the AU) and throw bags of rice at the suffering victims (though only half of what they need to live), attempting to ease their immediate pain, but what can we expect to accomplish in the face of an epidemic, a many-headed atrocious beast of pure evil (especially without investing anywhere near sufficient political capital or even centering the issue on the popular radar screen)? We are left with merely words. More4 News is not the only one complicit in this abdication in the face of genocide; perhaps every media outlet, nearly all political leaders, and practically everyone who comments on the heart-wrenching situation plaguing (this verb, as an example, subtly implies both genocidal self-propulsion and the unstoppable, disease-like pathology of genocide) Darfur unintentionally give credence to the theory this is something we can complain about, empathize (to a very limited extent) with, wave signs and take token action against, but are ultimately powerless to stop. The two world leaders' whose inaction history will judge the most harshly, the UN's Kofi Annan and the US's George W. Bush are guilty of this erroneous conception of the roots of genocide. Thus when Annan describes Darfur as "little short of hell on earth," he is certainly making an accurate plea for the dire nature of the humanitarian situation there, but, by bringing the unearthly "hell" into his characterization, he also likely furthers our distance from the reality of what is happening in western Sudan.
How can we possibly combat this? There is little hope of changing the dominant vocabulary and phraseology of dealing with genocide when it has been etched into our ignonimous history, according to which regret and remorse cyclically follow death and destruction as soon as we are clear of the frame in which meaningful intervention would have been possible. Though in Darfur we have been experiencing the unprecedented drama of watching something unfold that we have, during its lifetime, acknowledged as genocide, this has not resulted in any revision of the predominant strategical attribute of watching. We have more information, more photographs, and more evidence of genocidal intent and consequences than any previous genocide (including the more publicized reporting of the Armenian genocide and others), yet it does not stop us from limiting our action to peppering the crisis with words of sympathy and lamentations. The only solution is to remember - and focus on - what we do know. This is a genocide committed by individuals - members of an Arab supremacist, power-hungry, unscrupulous NIF regime who have actively and thoughtfully planned and carried out this strategic campaign - and which victimizes other individuals - innocent civilians of certain tribes of Darfur and Chad labelled as "non-Arab." Only after we acknowledge this and truly internalize it will we be able to see the genocide in Darfur as something very real and very human, which, as such, can be stopped by real human methods.
18 May 2006
Punishing the Good Guys?
At its meeting on Monday, the African Union Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) once again extended the deadline for the two holdout rebel groups to accept the Darfur Peace Agreement laid out in Abuja and accepted by the dominant SLA factions' leader, Minni Arco Minnawi. This extension, however, is tempered by the PSC's warning of issuing sanctions on the two groups if they do not accept the agreement by the new date of May 31. This threat exhibits the growing exasperation of AU Chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare in dealing with the rebels, whom he characterizes as very frustrating to work with, but it also attests to the AU's unfortunate tendency to allow itself to be manipulated by the Government of Sudan in Khartoum. The GoS has effectively stiffarmed the peace talks at Abuja; Second Vice President Ali Osman Taha, previously the main figurehead Khartoum was displaying to show its dedication to the talks, left Abuja long ago, and Government spokesman Amin Omar has highhandedly asserted that Khartoum "...will not open the negotiation again and there is no problem (in the peace agreement) which should be negotiated any more" (Xinhua, “Sudan refuses to reopen talks on Darfur peace deal,” 17 May 2006). This leaves me with the sinking feeling that, by portraying its threat of sanctions on groups that fail to sign the accord as enforcement of its ceasefire provisions, the AU is trying to cover Khartoum's tracks and cast a gloss of legitimacy over the Government's obstinacy. The Government's sharp line-drawing, refusing to consider any further concessions, also convinces me that it is not worried that the DPA as stands will prove a significant obstacle to achieving their genocidal aims of self-preservation.
I do not mean for my title to be deceptive. No one in Darfur can truly be considered a "good guy." The province is so rife in guns, abuses, and corruption that any attempt at a ceasefire or peace accord is by default a steep uphill battle. Furthermore, recent reports that the internecine squabbles between SLA factions have once again flared up in violence - violence that the Sudan Tribune describes as "gunmen on pick-up trucks and horseback...burning huts, killing, looting, and even raping women, in raids just as deadly as those of the Arab "Janjaweed" militia ("After peace, Darfur's rebels turn on each other," Sudan Tribune, 17 May 2006) - greatly decrease my dim hopes that the two groups can coalesce under the unified banner of protecting the people of Darfur. To engage in violence only gives the GoS legitimate bargaining capital; it is much easier to convince the AU of the desirability of sanctions on the rebels if they are indeed actively violating the ceasefire. The problem with threatening sanctions on the el-Nur faction of the SLA and Khalil Ibrahim's JEM is of course that it ignores the flagrant, and likely deadlier and more systematic, ceasefire violations simultaneously and wantonly carried out by Government-backed Janjaweed militias immediately after the DPA theoretically mandated their disarmament; for example, Janjaweed attacks in seven villages
around Kutum in the past week have killed 11 people, providing solid evidence that the piece of paper signed in Abuja has not translated into any meaningful relaxation of the genocidal status quo. The additions to the DPA that el-Nur is pushing for constitute entirely reasonable assurances for the safety and security of the people of Darfur to be upheld in a realistic and effective way. El-Nur demands include “adequate compensation for the individuals and families who have suffered losses during the conflict," a vital step in returning Darfurians to their livelihoods, as well as crucial specifications of what should be the fundamental motivating concern at Abuja: disarmament of the Janjaweed. El-Nur requests "full involvement of SLM/A in key aspects of security arrangements including ensuring the protection of civilians as they return to their original places and the mechanisms for monitoring the disarmament of the Janjaweed" (Sudan Tribune, "Rebel JEM mulls joining Darfur peace deal," 17 May 2006) he should not be censured for seeking to achieve what Abuja was indeed premised on achieving.
Even without accepting el-Nur's characterization of the SLA as "freedom fighters," he is correct in stating that "sanctions are for those who commit crimes" (The Daily Telegraph, "Darfur rebels reject sanctions threat," 17 May 2006). Surely there is no crime - especially not the refusal to sign an agreement that does not adequately provide for protection of the victims of the Darfur conflict - that should overshadow that of genocide. To threaten sanctions on rebel groups for not signing a "peace" agreement, while ignoring the persistent (and illegal) campaign of systematic violence wreaked by the Government and its proxies, is to make a mockery of the seriousness of the attempt at peace, as well as of the AU's status in general as a force whose mission should be to protect civilians.
I do not mean for my title to be deceptive. No one in Darfur can truly be considered a "good guy." The province is so rife in guns, abuses, and corruption that any attempt at a ceasefire or peace accord is by default a steep uphill battle. Furthermore, recent reports that the internecine squabbles between SLA factions have once again flared up in violence - violence that the Sudan Tribune describes as "gunmen on pick-up trucks and horseback...burning huts, killing, looting, and even raping women, in raids just as deadly as those of the Arab "Janjaweed" militia ("After peace, Darfur's rebels turn on each other," Sudan Tribune, 17 May 2006) - greatly decrease my dim hopes that the two groups can coalesce under the unified banner of protecting the people of Darfur. To engage in violence only gives the GoS legitimate bargaining capital; it is much easier to convince the AU of the desirability of sanctions on the rebels if they are indeed actively violating the ceasefire. The problem with threatening sanctions on the el-Nur faction of the SLA and Khalil Ibrahim's JEM is of course that it ignores the flagrant, and likely deadlier and more systematic, ceasefire violations simultaneously and wantonly carried out by Government-backed Janjaweed militias immediately after the DPA theoretically mandated their disarmament; for example, Janjaweed attacks in seven villages
around Kutum in the past week have killed 11 people, providing solid evidence that the piece of paper signed in Abuja has not translated into any meaningful relaxation of the genocidal status quo. The additions to the DPA that el-Nur is pushing for constitute entirely reasonable assurances for the safety and security of the people of Darfur to be upheld in a realistic and effective way. El-Nur demands include “adequate compensation for the individuals and families who have suffered losses during the conflict," a vital step in returning Darfurians to their livelihoods, as well as crucial specifications of what should be the fundamental motivating concern at Abuja: disarmament of the Janjaweed. El-Nur requests "full involvement of SLM/A in key aspects of security arrangements including ensuring the protection of civilians as they return to their original places and the mechanisms for monitoring the disarmament of the Janjaweed" (Sudan Tribune, "Rebel JEM mulls joining Darfur peace deal," 17 May 2006) he should not be censured for seeking to achieve what Abuja was indeed premised on achieving.
Even without accepting el-Nur's characterization of the SLA as "freedom fighters," he is correct in stating that "sanctions are for those who commit crimes" (The Daily Telegraph, "Darfur rebels reject sanctions threat," 17 May 2006). Surely there is no crime - especially not the refusal to sign an agreement that does not adequately provide for protection of the victims of the Darfur conflict - that should overshadow that of genocide. To threaten sanctions on rebel groups for not signing a "peace" agreement, while ignoring the persistent (and illegal) campaign of systematic violence wreaked by the Government and its proxies, is to make a mockery of the seriousness of the attempt at peace, as well as of the AU's status in general as a force whose mission should be to protect civilians.
15 May 2006
Sudan hopes to follow the path of Libya
The US's removal of Libya from its list of state sponsors of terrorism today and its restoration of full diplomatic relations with Tripoli represents the culmination of Muammar al-Ghaddafi's efforts since late 2003 to curry favor with the US, renounce all ties to terrorism, and obtain all the perks that friendly relations with the world's superpower (and largest oil consumer) bring with them. This is of course interesting in its own right, but for our purposes, I am sure that Omar Hassan al-Bashir is taking note of the successful road paved by Ghaddafi, the Colonel whose experience in human rights abuses, support for terrorism, and general manipulation of (what he views as) his sphere of influence in East Africa dates back to the days of Bashir's infancy. If a mere three years committment to "fighting terrorism" - coupled with all of the information he has been able to provide US intelligence agencies - can undo 35 years of brazen rogue actions, then, Bashir must be thinking, the almost ten years during which Sudan has been trying to wipe off the stain left by its accomodation of Osama bin Laden in the mid-90's surely will pay off soon. Khartoum has been campaigning actively to repeal the state sanctions levied against it since 1999 and remove its name as a "state sponsor of terrorism" by portraying itself as a friend of the United States and a willing participant in the "war on terror." That a country could attempt to pass itself off as accomodating to the West when its head of state ominously forecast just a few months ago that a portion of his country would become a "graveyard" for foreign troops if they entered his territory is ironic to the point of contradiction. Nonetheless, there are signs that Bashir's two-faced policy - genocide, utter disregard for human rights, and vicious and crafty power consolidation on one side, and smiling appeasement, lies about good intentions, and signing pieces of paper (the Naivasha accords for peace in the South in January 2005 and the recent DPA in Abuja last week) that it has no inclination to uphold on theh other - is satisfying the United States. The degree to which the US is contended by the mere formality and words of DPA, or to what extent it actually intends to pursue viable assurances of actual peace on the ground - will become clear in the following weeks and months, but there are other signs that the US has made other priorities besides taking Khartoum to task for its genocidal policies. For one, the CIA's willingness to host genocidal architect and head of Sudanese security forces Salah Abdallah Gosh belies any commitment to reprimand genocidaires over the countervailing interest of securing terrorism intelligence and cooperation. Perhaps even more appallingly, in October 2005, the US upgraded Sudan's international slavery status to Tier 2, a level that includes countries like Switzerland (see http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=55098), an unacceptable concession given the recent predominance of enslavement as an institutionalized practice of war in southern Sudan and its continued existence today. Sudan has been actively cultivating the strengthened ties that such steps entail, as evidenced by its attempt late last year to skirt regulations and hire Robert Cabelly, a notorious former State Department employee, as a lobbyist to improve Sudan's image in the US (an effort that created such a disgusting taste in people's mouths that legislative and popular pressure, the former led by, among others, Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia (see http://www.house.gov/wolf/news/2005/10-17-Sudan.html), and the latter by the Genocide Intervention Network (see http://www.genocideintervention.net/about/press/releases/2006/02/08/sudan-lobbyist-quits/)), and by its million dollar payment for an 8 page advertisement in the New York Times heralding the prospects of investing in Sudan. This gets at the real source of Sudan's interest in cooperating in the "war on terror;" it is seeking eager investors for abundant, recently discovered and as yet untapped, oil reserves (often in areas, such as the Nuba Mountains region, potentially Darfur, and for strategic reasons in the South and East, where Khartoum has forced local inhabitants off the land to ensure that the (blood) spoils flow directly to their pockets and are not distributed equitably. The attempt to resist these devilish calls to participate in Khartoum's genocidal clockwork, and for American organizations to divest from businesses fuelling the regime, is of course undermined when countries like China unreservedly exploit Sudan's oil resources.
"Shameful" Corruption and More Shameful Genocide
Reading a report of the tremendous amount of corruption amongst delegates in an Abuja hotel over the past few months of peace negotiations (Andrew Walker, "Sudan: Nigerian Peacekeepers Unpaid in Darfur," Daily Trust (Abuja), 8 May 2006), I was of course first shocked by the gall of mediators whose sole professed goal was achieving peace and stability for the innocent civilians they were claiming to represent. The numbers unearthed by Mr. Walker and his sources at the Chida Hotel where the talks have been taking place detail the questionable sort of purchases made by delegates, including visits of over 2,000 prostitutes and 200 bottles of whiskey sold. The explanation of AU Chief Mediator Sam Ibok that delegates' per-day salary of $85 is "not a lot when you have to consider you have to buy lunch and dinner, laundry and such" does not alleviate my concerns, especially in lieu of the two month delays in paying some AU peacekeepers in Darfur their considerably lower earnings of about $15 per day, which Ibok brushed off as "cash flow problems." While these numbers do instinctively make me uncomfortable with the delegates' apparent level of commitment to the substantive aspect of their mission - finalizing an accord to bring ensure the safety of hundreds of thousands of Darfurians - they are not what worries me the most about the goings-on at Abuja. The discrepancy between delegates and their "constituents" can be measured in many other ways, and is indeed a grave concern, but more pressing is the GoS reaction to the peace process, for rebel negotiators - even if hedonistic and simply seeking the spotlight of power - are at least trying to wean from the Government concessions that will have a direct effect on improving innocent Darfurians' prospects for survival. The National Islamic Front Government, on the other hand, has demonstrated no concern whatsoever for the livelihood and human rights of any of the people it has marginalized and excluded from governance; be it in the South, the central Nuba Mountains or Jebel Marra areas, the West, or the East, the Khartoum elites, with the national army and military proxies at their control, have exhibited no qualms to using violence, destruction, forced displacement, and death as mere policy tools to expediently reach a preferred outcome. With that in mind, the statements of Government spokesman Abdul Rahman Zuma with regards to the spending exploits in Abuja are far more illuminating in revealing the true dynamic of the Khartoum-Darfur-Abuja axis. While Zuma was correct in calling the corruption "shameful," the motivations for his claim must be doubted the moment one considers how he opened his criticism ("To think we came here to talk when...the people here were drinking whiskey and entertaining prostitutes.") and his follow-up statement ("I can assure you that no one in the government delegation was involved in such specialisations."). He depicts the Government as graciously descending from on high to begrudgingly lend an ear to grievances of ne'er-do-well troublemakers who have been causing problems since they began complaining, and finding that they can still not get their act together. His claim that the Government has not similarly engaged in corrupt spending is dubious and especially ironic in the face of Sudan's recent anointment atop US Foreign Policy magazine's list of "failed states." Zuma's tactic here seems - reading only slightly below the surface layer - to be an attempt to delegitimize the rebel delegations, the entire Abuja process, and thus implicitly any obligation to uphold the peace agreement that has emerged from it. What is truly "shameful" is the Government's continued desire to undermine the prospects for peace and lack of intention to implement any provisions of the accord (which I will detail in another column); this, however, is a "shame" that runs like water off of the Khartoum genocidaires, confidently entrenched in impunity and safe from real accountability, a hollow "shame" that will likely cost many more Darfurians their homes and lives.
11 May 2006
A piercing glimpse into reality, courtesy of a genocidaire
Over the past three years, I have heard many - equally hollow, disingenous, and (morbidly) laughably incoherent - explanations given by the Government of Sudan as to what was occurring in Darfur and why it did not constitute genocide. The Khartoum architects of the genocide have persistently denied the reality of the mass murder and displacement carried out at their behest and using their military force, attempting to pass it off as an internal problem, "tribal warfare," or at most simply a maintenance of the peace in the face of an illegal insurrection. They have sought to obscure the nature of both the perpetrators (falsely equating the Janjaweed and the rebels at one point - see my first post) and the victims (including trying to convince one tribe, the Jebel Misseriya, traditionally considered "non-Arab," that they were indeed "Arab;" see "To Save Darfur," International Crisis Group, 17 March 2006, p. 7) and have successfully resisted any meaningful interference by the international community, despite the patently clear falsehood of practically any government description of the situation in Darfur. The recognition, of the US, Germany, and others, that Darfur is indeed the home to a genocide, and even the UN's belabored identification of the crisis as "tantamount to genocide," indicates that most of the rest of the world has seen through Khartoum's lies; our failure to act and continued deference to a genocidal regime is thus made all the more appalling. Never before though, have I encounted such a biting defense of the Sudanese genocide as that recently proffered by Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol (a Southerner who, acting as no more than a tool of the elite Khartoum ruling clique's genocidal aims, has convinced me almost more than anything that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the Government of National Unity are mere mirages concealing a continuation of the brutal status quo). Answering a question about the characterization of the Darfur conflict as genocide, Akol, in addition to spouting ridiculous deflective rhetoric such as asking why US intervention in Vietnam was not called genocide, took a sharp stab at the rest of the world's paralysis in the face of genocide. He remarkably turned logic on its head to assert that "...genocide requires international intervention. So why did they not intervene?" ("Sudan is committed to deploy UN forces in Darfur - FM," Sudan Tribune, 9 May 2006) Despite its supremely flawed logic, this statement nonetheless should reverberate loudly in our consciences. If Khartoum can use our inaction to justify its genocide, how can be absolve ourselves of complicity? Moreover, how can we not see through this tactic, for to take advantage of our guilt is to admit that intervention has indeed been required. Akol, as much as I hold him in utter disdain for his duplicity and deception, presciently asked that question that I cannot answer: "Why did they not intervene?"
In the same interview, Akol, perhaps through naïve diplomacy or perhaps through sheer brazen contempt (I am inclined to lean toward the latter, though the former might also be present), voiced very clearly reasons that the world should not trust his government to implement the terms of the Abuja peace accord. He belittled the recent sanctions imposed on Janjaweed chief Musa Hilal, lying through his teeth about Khartoum's support for him by deemphasizing Hilal's role to one in which "Musa Hilal might own some camels and I do not know where he travels to warrant banning him" (Ibid.) He furthermore scorned the possible effectiveness of sanctions, threatening their ability to be implemented, and confidently asserted the immunity of top government officials from any international retribution. Such hubris indicates either supreme naïveté or a chiseled understanding of the ultimate weakness of the international community's resolve. Unfortunately the latter is likely a much greater motivating factor, one that all Khartoum leaders seem to have internalized; they recognize that they - until the international community demonstrates some muster - will be able to continue their actions will wholescale impunity, a fact that does not bode well for the prospects of implementing the DPA. He further demonstrated his willingness to make threats in the same sentence as his professed commitment to peace, warning that "[i]mposing sanctions threatens only the parties that refused and refuse to sign the peace agreement" (Ibid.). Akol also rejected the prospect of individual financial compensations for those who have suffered from the genocide, dismissing claims that the government, in compensating Northerners forced to relocate from the construction of a damn but not support victims of genocide, callously cares for some of its people less than palm trees, with an offhand dismissal of such "emotional talk." Perhaps Mr. Akol should take a trip to the IDP camps in the west of his country, flooded with over 2 and a half million Sudanese civilians, and listen to their "emotional talk."
In the same interview, Akol, perhaps through naïve diplomacy or perhaps through sheer brazen contempt (I am inclined to lean toward the latter, though the former might also be present), voiced very clearly reasons that the world should not trust his government to implement the terms of the Abuja peace accord. He belittled the recent sanctions imposed on Janjaweed chief Musa Hilal, lying through his teeth about Khartoum's support for him by deemphasizing Hilal's role to one in which "Musa Hilal might own some camels and I do not know where he travels to warrant banning him" (Ibid.) He furthermore scorned the possible effectiveness of sanctions, threatening their ability to be implemented, and confidently asserted the immunity of top government officials from any international retribution. Such hubris indicates either supreme naïveté or a chiseled understanding of the ultimate weakness of the international community's resolve. Unfortunately the latter is likely a much greater motivating factor, one that all Khartoum leaders seem to have internalized; they recognize that they - until the international community demonstrates some muster - will be able to continue their actions will wholescale impunity, a fact that does not bode well for the prospects of implementing the DPA. He further demonstrated his willingness to make threats in the same sentence as his professed commitment to peace, warning that "[i]mposing sanctions threatens only the parties that refused and refuse to sign the peace agreement" (Ibid.). Akol also rejected the prospect of individual financial compensations for those who have suffered from the genocide, dismissing claims that the government, in compensating Northerners forced to relocate from the construction of a damn but not support victims of genocide, callously cares for some of its people less than palm trees, with an offhand dismissal of such "emotional talk." Perhaps Mr. Akol should take a trip to the IDP camps in the west of his country, flooded with over 2 and a half million Sudanese civilians, and listen to their "emotional talk."
09 May 2006
Peace Achieved? Abuja, Kalma, and the Prospects for Meaningful Peace
"World hails Darfur peace deal as first step to peace." That is just one of the headlines (from Africa News, 6 May 2006) to emerge in the last few days since Minni Arco Minnawi, leader of the "main" faction of the rebel Sudanese Liberation Movement/Army, urged on by the recent arrivals of Bob Zoellick and Britain's Hillary Benn, signed the proposed Darfur Peace Agreement on Friday, May 4. The text of this headline underscores two questions that have emerged in the wake of Minni's signing of the document. The first prompts us to assess the way in which the "world [is] hail[ing]" the agreement" - how we interpret what happened in Abuja and how we are reacting to it in the press. The second, encompassing a great number of underlying questions, involves the extent to which the agreement can legitimately be called a "peace deal" at all and whether it does in fact signal the "first step" in a progression toward peace.
The attention generated by the peace accord, inspiring prominent stories in the New York Times and Washington Post among others, is greatly welcome at a time when many are still unaware of what is occurring in Darfur. The darker side to this, of course, is that newcomers to the issue reading headlines like above may very well think that this disastrous genocide has been contained and is on the safe road to resolution. This carries with it the danger of absolving people of their concern, leading them to close their checkbooks (especially harmful in a context in which donor fatigue has led to only a fraction of pledged aid actually reaching Darfur, aid even more desperately needed with the recent withdrawal of humanitarian organizations from the more dangerous areas and the UN World Food Program's heart-wrenching budget cut halving the calorie ration afforded to refugees and IDPs to an unviable 1000 per day) and turn their attention elsewhere. Some press, the Times especially, has, however, accurately portrayed the unchanging situation on the ground as a remonstrative foil to the promise that we have cultivated from the Abuja agreement. I have carefully avoided the phraseology that the DPA has "provided" or "generated" actual promise, because I believe it warrants enough cautious skepticism to withhold building castles of peace in the sky out of a document that does not even garner the full support of the people it purports to protect and that, more significantly, relies on the goodwill of the Sudanese government and the enforcement capacity of the African Union, both of which have consistently failed to demonstrate their reliability in the past two years. While I truly want to be hopeful that perhaps this peace accord, supported by the efforts of the US, will bear fruit, that the support of the United States, which did, after all, send its Deputy Secretary of State on a red-eye, last-ditch mission to Abuja, will prove genuine, that the Janjaweed will be disarmed, that Darfurian representatives will be incorporated into the Government of Sudan, and that the painfully deceptive banners of "Peace and Unity" currently flapping with murderous irony in the winds of Khartoum will actually achieve some meaning, all of my familiarity with the GoS and its history tempers my hopes and reduces me to simply praying that nothing will go more horribly awry than it already has.
The DPA is unfortunately lacking in both the depth and the width of its adherence. It does not span the wide gulfs separating the one SLM/A faction that signed it from the other, that of Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur, nor the ideological divide between both of these groups and the Justice and Equality Movement. While the motives behind the JEM's refusal to sign are questionable (mistrust is justified by the JEM's supposed ties to Hassan al-Turabi, the prominent Islamicist idealogue and former mentor of and co-conspirator with Omar Hassan al-Bashir), the reservations of the el-Nur faction parallel a similar wariness toward the agreement manifested by the Fur tribe, el-Nur's primary "constituents" (to the extent to which any of these factions can even be pinned down as truly representative of innocent Darfurian civilians, a goal that has in the past seemed to lose the prominence it deserves amidst internecine squabbles and jockeying for position). Many Fur seem to be even resentful toward Minni's faction for signing an agreement they do not support, a resentment surely the result of perpetual frustration, which reached its tragic culmination today in the brutal killing of an African Union translator in troubled and overcrowded Kalma camp. This horrendous event, and the violent mass protests that prompted the UN to expeditiously evacuate Jan Egeland from the camp, have at their source the growing friction among displaced persons in the squalid conditions of one of Darfur's largest camps about their seemingly interminable situation, the persistence of the Government's active creation of "conditions of life calcuated to bring about [their] destruction," (to quote the much-ignored, but most relevant, prong of the definition of genocide by the 1948 Commission on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide), and the repeated insufficiency and failures of international efforts to improve these people's lot. The impetus for today's outburst of frustration was likely inhabitants' sense that they have been left out of the signed peace agreement that brought Mr. Egeland to Kalma. A large proportion of the IDPs in Kalma camp are of the Fur tribe, and many of them echo the animosity felt by el-Nur toward Minnawi and reflect that the divisions within the SLM/A are not limited to a struggle for power and that very real tensions exist between the primary "members" (both those in the movement itself and those "virtually" represented by it) of the two factions. One banner at the protest epitomized the extreme of the resentment felt toward Minni for signing the DPA, declaring that "To the Darfur, Arco Minawi is destroyer'' ("Angry Darfur Refugees Riot in Demand for U.N. Troops," New York Times, Lydia Polgreen, 9 May 2006). The divisiveness espoused by many Fur in Kalma - remember, one of the earliest camps to arise and boom in population - can largely be explained by the fact that the Fur and Massaleit tribes bore the brunt of the early Government/Janjaweed attacks of 2003 and 2004 ("Unifying Darfur's Rebels: A Prerequisite for Peace," International Crisis Group, Africa Briefing No. 32, 6 October 2005, pp. 3-5). Furthermore, the traditional predominance of Zaghawa (Minni's tribe) in the military component of the movement, cultivated and emphasized by Minni as he forced himself up the chain of power, has undercut relations between this faction and that of el-Nur, representing the Fur and seeking to compensate for their underwhelming influence in military matters by focusing on the movement's political wing (Idem.)
The Fur protest in Kalma attests to the personal loyalty many feel toward el-Nur, for they trust that a peace agreement that their leader calls "a big disaster" ("Darfur talks yield imperfect 'peace,'" Toronto Star, 6 May 2006) must leave something to be desired for their protection. El-Nur's primary objection, and the most dire concern of the people of Darfur, is that the agreement does not do enough to ensure immediate and total disarmament of the Janjaweed militias stalking the Darfurian countryside. IDPs have developed a very rational fear of these terrifying "devils on horseback;" the women who arrive at camps recount their inhumane stories of fleeing their village, watching their husbands summarily executed, their children riddled with bullets, and their subjection to strategic genocidal rape. The identity of those whom they fear is obvious in the cry of "Janjaweed! Janjaweed!" that accompanied the mob attack on the innocent Sudanese humanitarian workers who were the unfortunate objects of Darfurians' displaced anger.
The popular agreement with el-Nur's reservations is not, however, limited to personal loyalty and trust. The Darfurian people have very real reasons to be skeptical toward the GoS's intentions to disarm the Janjaweed and thus follow el-Nur's attempts to hammer out specific delegations added to the agreement specifying who will ensure that this occurs (“Darfur’s main rebel faction says Abuja accord is still incomplete,” Sudan Tribune, 13 May 2006). As of now, the task remains in the hands of the African Union, whose mandate prevents them from exercising sufficient authority to ensure disarmament, so this effectively results in a perpetuation of the status quo, a status quo dominated by death and unimpeded Janjaweed raids, as documented mere days after the DPA was signed (see "Truce is Talk, Agony is Real in Darfur," Lydia Polgreen, New York Times, 12 May 2006). It is difficult to take Khartoum's word when it hedges out of its commitment by casting ambiguity over what groups it is even supposed to disarm, evidenced by Government spokesman Amin Omar's statement that "...Janjaweed is an ambiguous term. It represents many groups holding arms in Darfur" and that many of these groups "will be harder to control." (“Darfur prepares for uneasy peace,” Associated Press, Alfred de Montesquiou, 13 May 2006). A refugee in Gaga, Chad voiced the popular acknowledgment that Khartoum's profession to disarm the Janjaweed does not necessarily amount to anything in reality and raised the logical question - one that the international community seems to be blindly ignoring - of "if these marauders are still in Darfur, how on earth can we be expected to go back and live there?" ("Refugees too scared to go home despite Darfur peace deal," The Independent, Claire Soares, 9 May 2006). The conditions for security simply do not yet exist, and until they do, people will not feel ready - and we cannot force them, for they likely know better than we that if they venture out of what little safety they have in the camps, they will be killed - to return to their homes. Even Zoellick acknowledged that "…Darfur is going to remain a dangerous place and it's going to be a place of violence," though he did so in practically admitting that the DPA as signed represents a "second-best" alternative, taking solace in the "assurance" of having secured "at least the commitment of the major rebel movement and the government not to be conducting violent operations…” (Abuja press conference, 5 May 2006, can be found at US State Department website), which of course leaves out the most dangerous force - the Janjaweed military proxies.
Ultimately, any guidance looking toward the future of this peace accord must factor in the mistrust that the GoS has earned through its three years of continued genocide and failure to uphold any pact or ceasefire. A refugee in Chad best expresses the impossibility of returning home with conditions as dangerous as they are and with the Government having acquired no legitimate degree of reliability whatsoever: "I'd like to go home in 2006," Ismael Haron says, "but I doubt it will happen...We know Bashir. We have seen him make agreements and then break them 10 minutes later, and that worries us.'' Unfortunately, the only response to Mr. Haron is that we in the international community have seen this too, but we seem too shortsighted or bullheaded to allow it to worry us.
The attention generated by the peace accord, inspiring prominent stories in the New York Times and Washington Post among others, is greatly welcome at a time when many are still unaware of what is occurring in Darfur. The darker side to this, of course, is that newcomers to the issue reading headlines like above may very well think that this disastrous genocide has been contained and is on the safe road to resolution. This carries with it the danger of absolving people of their concern, leading them to close their checkbooks (especially harmful in a context in which donor fatigue has led to only a fraction of pledged aid actually reaching Darfur, aid even more desperately needed with the recent withdrawal of humanitarian organizations from the more dangerous areas and the UN World Food Program's heart-wrenching budget cut halving the calorie ration afforded to refugees and IDPs to an unviable 1000 per day) and turn their attention elsewhere. Some press, the Times especially, has, however, accurately portrayed the unchanging situation on the ground as a remonstrative foil to the promise that we have cultivated from the Abuja agreement. I have carefully avoided the phraseology that the DPA has "provided" or "generated" actual promise, because I believe it warrants enough cautious skepticism to withhold building castles of peace in the sky out of a document that does not even garner the full support of the people it purports to protect and that, more significantly, relies on the goodwill of the Sudanese government and the enforcement capacity of the African Union, both of which have consistently failed to demonstrate their reliability in the past two years. While I truly want to be hopeful that perhaps this peace accord, supported by the efforts of the US, will bear fruit, that the support of the United States, which did, after all, send its Deputy Secretary of State on a red-eye, last-ditch mission to Abuja, will prove genuine, that the Janjaweed will be disarmed, that Darfurian representatives will be incorporated into the Government of Sudan, and that the painfully deceptive banners of "Peace and Unity" currently flapping with murderous irony in the winds of Khartoum will actually achieve some meaning, all of my familiarity with the GoS and its history tempers my hopes and reduces me to simply praying that nothing will go more horribly awry than it already has.
The DPA is unfortunately lacking in both the depth and the width of its adherence. It does not span the wide gulfs separating the one SLM/A faction that signed it from the other, that of Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur, nor the ideological divide between both of these groups and the Justice and Equality Movement. While the motives behind the JEM's refusal to sign are questionable (mistrust is justified by the JEM's supposed ties to Hassan al-Turabi, the prominent Islamicist idealogue and former mentor of and co-conspirator with Omar Hassan al-Bashir), the reservations of the el-Nur faction parallel a similar wariness toward the agreement manifested by the Fur tribe, el-Nur's primary "constituents" (to the extent to which any of these factions can even be pinned down as truly representative of innocent Darfurian civilians, a goal that has in the past seemed to lose the prominence it deserves amidst internecine squabbles and jockeying for position). Many Fur seem to be even resentful toward Minni's faction for signing an agreement they do not support, a resentment surely the result of perpetual frustration, which reached its tragic culmination today in the brutal killing of an African Union translator in troubled and overcrowded Kalma camp. This horrendous event, and the violent mass protests that prompted the UN to expeditiously evacuate Jan Egeland from the camp, have at their source the growing friction among displaced persons in the squalid conditions of one of Darfur's largest camps about their seemingly interminable situation, the persistence of the Government's active creation of "conditions of life calcuated to bring about [their] destruction," (to quote the much-ignored, but most relevant, prong of the definition of genocide by the 1948 Commission on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide), and the repeated insufficiency and failures of international efforts to improve these people's lot. The impetus for today's outburst of frustration was likely inhabitants' sense that they have been left out of the signed peace agreement that brought Mr. Egeland to Kalma. A large proportion of the IDPs in Kalma camp are of the Fur tribe, and many of them echo the animosity felt by el-Nur toward Minnawi and reflect that the divisions within the SLM/A are not limited to a struggle for power and that very real tensions exist between the primary "members" (both those in the movement itself and those "virtually" represented by it) of the two factions. One banner at the protest epitomized the extreme of the resentment felt toward Minni for signing the DPA, declaring that "To the Darfur, Arco Minawi is destroyer'' ("Angry Darfur Refugees Riot in Demand for U.N. Troops," New York Times, Lydia Polgreen, 9 May 2006). The divisiveness espoused by many Fur in Kalma - remember, one of the earliest camps to arise and boom in population - can largely be explained by the fact that the Fur and Massaleit tribes bore the brunt of the early Government/Janjaweed attacks of 2003 and 2004 ("Unifying Darfur's Rebels: A Prerequisite for Peace," International Crisis Group, Africa Briefing No. 32, 6 October 2005, pp. 3-5). Furthermore, the traditional predominance of Zaghawa (Minni's tribe) in the military component of the movement, cultivated and emphasized by Minni as he forced himself up the chain of power, has undercut relations between this faction and that of el-Nur, representing the Fur and seeking to compensate for their underwhelming influence in military matters by focusing on the movement's political wing (Idem.)
The Fur protest in Kalma attests to the personal loyalty many feel toward el-Nur, for they trust that a peace agreement that their leader calls "a big disaster" ("Darfur talks yield imperfect 'peace,'" Toronto Star, 6 May 2006) must leave something to be desired for their protection. El-Nur's primary objection, and the most dire concern of the people of Darfur, is that the agreement does not do enough to ensure immediate and total disarmament of the Janjaweed militias stalking the Darfurian countryside. IDPs have developed a very rational fear of these terrifying "devils on horseback;" the women who arrive at camps recount their inhumane stories of fleeing their village, watching their husbands summarily executed, their children riddled with bullets, and their subjection to strategic genocidal rape. The identity of those whom they fear is obvious in the cry of "Janjaweed! Janjaweed!" that accompanied the mob attack on the innocent Sudanese humanitarian workers who were the unfortunate objects of Darfurians' displaced anger.
The popular agreement with el-Nur's reservations is not, however, limited to personal loyalty and trust. The Darfurian people have very real reasons to be skeptical toward the GoS's intentions to disarm the Janjaweed and thus follow el-Nur's attempts to hammer out specific delegations added to the agreement specifying who will ensure that this occurs (“Darfur’s main rebel faction says Abuja accord is still incomplete,” Sudan Tribune, 13 May 2006). As of now, the task remains in the hands of the African Union, whose mandate prevents them from exercising sufficient authority to ensure disarmament, so this effectively results in a perpetuation of the status quo, a status quo dominated by death and unimpeded Janjaweed raids, as documented mere days after the DPA was signed (see "Truce is Talk, Agony is Real in Darfur," Lydia Polgreen, New York Times, 12 May 2006). It is difficult to take Khartoum's word when it hedges out of its commitment by casting ambiguity over what groups it is even supposed to disarm, evidenced by Government spokesman Amin Omar's statement that "...Janjaweed is an ambiguous term. It represents many groups holding arms in Darfur" and that many of these groups "will be harder to control." (“Darfur prepares for uneasy peace,” Associated Press, Alfred de Montesquiou, 13 May 2006). A refugee in Gaga, Chad voiced the popular acknowledgment that Khartoum's profession to disarm the Janjaweed does not necessarily amount to anything in reality and raised the logical question - one that the international community seems to be blindly ignoring - of "if these marauders are still in Darfur, how on earth can we be expected to go back and live there?" ("Refugees too scared to go home despite Darfur peace deal," The Independent, Claire Soares, 9 May 2006). The conditions for security simply do not yet exist, and until they do, people will not feel ready - and we cannot force them, for they likely know better than we that if they venture out of what little safety they have in the camps, they will be killed - to return to their homes. Even Zoellick acknowledged that "…Darfur is going to remain a dangerous place and it's going to be a place of violence," though he did so in practically admitting that the DPA as signed represents a "second-best" alternative, taking solace in the "assurance" of having secured "at least the commitment of the major rebel movement and the government not to be conducting violent operations…” (Abuja press conference, 5 May 2006, can be found at US State Department website), which of course leaves out the most dangerous force - the Janjaweed military proxies.
Ultimately, any guidance looking toward the future of this peace accord must factor in the mistrust that the GoS has earned through its three years of continued genocide and failure to uphold any pact or ceasefire. A refugee in Chad best expresses the impossibility of returning home with conditions as dangerous as they are and with the Government having acquired no legitimate degree of reliability whatsoever: "I'd like to go home in 2006," Ismael Haron says, "but I doubt it will happen...We know Bashir. We have seen him make agreements and then break them 10 minutes later, and that worries us.'' Unfortunately, the only response to Mr. Haron is that we in the international community have seen this too, but we seem too shortsighted or bullheaded to allow it to worry us.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
