Monday, May 31, 2004

Massive atrocity unfolding in western Sudan

Nick Kristof (NYTimes):

But there's a larger lesson here as well: messy African wars are not insoluble, and Western pressure can help save the day. So it's all the more shameful that the world is failing to exert pressure on Sudan to halt genocide in its Darfur region.
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New York Times
May 29, 2004

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Bush Points the Way

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

I doff my hat, briefly, to President Bush.

Sudanese peasants will be naming their sons "George Bush" because he scored a humanitarian victory this week that could be a momentous event around the globe — although almost nobody noticed. It was Bush administration diplomacy that led to an accord to end a 20-year civil war between Sudan's north and south after two million deaths.

If the peace holds, hundreds of thousands of lives will be saved, millions of refugees will return home, and a region of Africa may be revived.

But there's a larger lesson here as well: messy African wars are not insoluble, and Western pressure can help save the day. So it's all the more shameful that the world is failing to exert pressure on Sudan to halt genocide in its Darfur region. Darfur is unaffected by the new peace accords.

I'm still haunted by what I saw when I visited the region in March: a desert speckled with fresh graves of humans and the corpses of donkeys, the empty eyes of children who saw their fathers killed, the guilt of parents fumbling to explain how they had survived while their children did not.

The refugees tell of sudden attacks by the camel-riding Janjaweed Arab militia, which is financed by the Sudanese government, then a panic of shooting and fire. Girls and women are routinely branded after they are raped, to increase the humiliation.

One million Darfur people are displaced within Sudan, and 200,000 have fled to Chad. Many of those in Sudan are stuck in settlements like concentration camps.

I've obtained a report by a U.N. interagency team documenting conditions at a concentration camp in the town of Kailek: Eighty percent of the children are malnourished, there are no toilets, and girls are taken away each night by the guards to be raped. As inmates starve, food aid is diverted by guards to feed their camels.

The standard threshold for an "emergency" is one death per 10,000 people per day, but people in Kailek are dying at a staggering 41 per 10,000 per day — and for children under 5, the rate is 147 per 10,000 per day. "Children suffering from malnutrition, diarrhea, dehydration and other symptoms of the conditions under which they are being held live in filth, directly exposed to the sun," the report says.

"The team members, all of whom are experienced experts in humanitarian affairs, were visibly shaken," the report declares. It describes "a strategy of systematic and deliberate starvation being enforced by the GoS [government of Sudan] and its security forces on the ground." (Read the 11-page report here.)

Demographers at the U.S. Agency for International Development estimate that at best, "only" 100,000 people will die in Darfur this year of malnutrition and disease. If things go badly, half a million will die.

This is not a natural famine, but a deliberate effort to eliminate three African tribes in Darfur so Arabs can take their land. The Genocide Convention defines such behavior as genocide, and it obliges nations to act to stop it. That is why nobody in the West wants to talk about Darfur — because of a fear that focusing on the horror will lead to a deployment in Sudan.

But it's not a question of sending troops, but of applying pressure — the same kind that succeeded in getting Sudan to the north-south peace agreement. If Mr. Bush would step up to the cameras and denounce this genocide, if he would send Colin Powell to the Chad-Sudan border, if he would telephone Sudan's president again to demand humanitarian access to the concentration camps, he might save hundreds of thousands of lives.

Yet while Mr. Bush has done far too little, he has at least issued a written statement, sent aides to speak forcefully at the U.N. and raised the matter with Sudan's leaders. That's more than the Europeans or the U.N. has done. Where are Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac? Where are African leaders, like Nelson Mandela? Why isn't John Kerry speaking out forcefully? And why are ordinary Americans silent?

Islamic leaders abroad have been particularly shameful in standing with the Sudanese government oppressors rather than with the Muslim victims in Darfur. Do they care about dead Muslims only when the killers are Israelis or Americans?

As for America, we have repeatedly failed to stand up to genocide, whether of Armenians, Jews, Cambodians or Rwandans. Now we're letting it happen again.

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Boston Globe
May 29, 2004

US holds key to peace in Sudan

SUDAN'S Islamist government and the secular Sudan People's Liberation Army have passed another milestone in a long and tortuous peace process. On Wednesday, Vice President Ali Osman Taha and SPLA Chairman Colonel John Garang signed the last of six protocols that collectively constitute a framework for a comprehensive peace agreement for Southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains. They are now poised to conclude negotiations by establishing modalities for implementation and international monitoring.

On paper, the protocols appear to lay the foundation for an end to 21 years of apocalyptic civil war between successive Arab-Muslim-dominated governments and the predominantly black, non-Muslim rebels of Southern Sudan. The South is due to receive autonomous, Shariah-free government during a six-year interim period. Free elections are scheduled within three years. Southern Sudan is promised a referendum on independence at the end of that period.

The greatest beneficiary of peace should be the South. There, the war assumed genocidal proportions: Over two million black non-Muslims perished, over four million were displaced, and tens of thousands enslaved. For Southern Sudan, the protocols open a door to economic development and self-determination. They also provide the North with a historic opportunity to free itself from a destructive jihad declared against restive non-Muslim communities.

The Bush administration deserves credit for creating conditions for a serious peace process. Despite a parade of initiatives over the years, no significant progress had been made until 2001 when President Bush appointed former Senator John Danforth as special envoy. Congress also played a crucial role. With broad bipartisan support, it passed the Sudan Peace Act in 2002. This legislation identified Sudan's government as the perpetrator of acts of "genocide" and gave the president the carrots and sticks he needed to ensure progress.

The key question now is whether the six protocols will lead to stability, or become, like the Oslo Accords, a byword for failed diplomacy. The biggest obstacle to success is the belief of Northern Sudan's ruling class in its manifest destiny to Islamize and Arabize the multicultural country. Cultural and religious assimilation in Sudan is the legacy of 1,300 years of Arab colonialism and has been pursued by successive governments since independence in 1956. General Bashir's dictatorship promotes Islamization and Arabization in the context of a totalitarian ideology of jihad. Fundamental ideological change in Khartoum is a precondition of sustainable peace.

Khartoum's war against Muslim black African tribes in Darfur demonstrates its lack of commitment to peace. Since the end of last year, government offensives have displaced over one million civilians, and have resulted in the death of tens of thousands. Captive women and children are subjected to ritual gang-rape. UN officials now use terms such as "war crimes," "crimes against humanity," "reign of terror," and "ethnic cleansing" to describe the deeds of Bashir's troops.

The continuing enslavement of tens of thousands of black non-Muslims and Khartoum's persistent denial of this "crime against humanity" is further indication that institutionalized racism and religious bigotry have not been overcome. In December 2002, Danforth identified the eradication of slavery as vital. Yet Khartoum has made little progress in facilitating the liberation of slaves -- despite having received millions of US dollars from the international community for that purpose.

In the South, the greatest long-term danger to peace comes from the possibility of nonaccountable government, a breakdown of the fragile institutional and economic infrastructure, and a descent into tribalism. Khartoum expects this and is prepared to exploit the poverty of the South, using its immense power of patronage over key Southern politicians and tribal militias -- to undermine the peace process, especially future implementation of the right of self-determination.

If these enormous obstacles to a lasting peace are overcome, it will be because of continuing US engagement. The Bush administration must compel Khartoum to end all campaigns of terror. It should also advance representative and secular constitutional government, in accordance with Bush's declared commitment to encourage democracy. As long as Sudan's pro-democracy movement and substantial religious and ethnic minorities are marginalized, peace will be very fragile indeed.

President Bush should be prepared to employ throughout the interim period the punitive measures provided by the Sudan Peace Act to ensure that both sides honor their word. The eradication of slavery will require an effective monitoring mechanism at the State Department. Without a strong US commitment to guarantee the six protocols, a lasting peace in Sudan is likely to prove illusory.

John Eibner, a member of the human rights organization Christian Solidarity International, and Joe Madison, a Washington-based syndicated radio commentator, are co-founders of the Sudan Campaign coalition.

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Economist
May 27, 2004

Sudan
Peace in the south, war in the west

From The Economist print edition

A breakthrough in one civil war; the other still rages

THE world's longest-running war is ending. After 2m deaths and matchless misery, Sudan's southern rebels have come to terms with the government in Khartoum. On May 26th, John Garang, leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), and Ali Osman Taha, the country's vice-president, signed protocols removing the last obstacles to a formal peace deal, which should follow within weeks. The 4m people displaced by the war, which has raged on and off since independence in 1956, can finally go home. It is time to celebrate.

But not unreservedly, for two reasons. One is that the soon-to-be-formed transitional regime is unlikely to be a pleasant one. After six years, the mostly non-Muslim south will hold a referendum on whether to secede from the Muslim north. But in the meantime, the government and the SPLA will share cabinet posts and oil revenues. Neither party has ever shown much respect for democracy, and both have striven to minimise the share of power allotted to unarmed civilians in the transitional government. Still, autocracy is better than war.

The other, even bigger problem is that a separate civil war in western Sudan, which began last year, is getting worse by the day, and spilling over into neighbouring countries (see article). To crush a revolt by black Africans in the western region of Darfur, the government has armed an Arab militia and ordered it to drive blacks out of their homes. More than a million have fled. In much of Darfur, the ethnic cleansing is complete. Our correspondent, riding for four days across the savannah last week, encountered village after burned and gutted village, but fewer than a dozen civilians. The rest had run away, either into miserable camps within Sudan, where the government sometimes deliberately starves them, or into neighbouring Chad. Aid workers have been permitted only limited access to the displaced. Some say that hundreds of thousands of people will die in the next few months if the government continues to obstruct relief efforts.

Morality, and danger

The West should pay attention to Sudan. Mostly it should do so for moral reasons: Darfur is probably the world's worst humanitarian crisis. But self-interest is also at stake: Sudan used to host Osama bin Laden, and is now exporting the kind of chaos that could provide cover for his acolytes. Terrorists with alleged links to al-Qaeda are already using the mountains of northern Chad as a base. Chad's government, which is currently working with America to flush them out, is threatened by the war in Darfur.

Sudanese rebels and refugees have crossed into Chadian territory: the militiamen who kill for Khartoum have pursued them, and come to blows with the Chadian army. There was a coup attempt in Chad last week, almost certainly linked to the Darfur conflict. Unchecked, Darfur's war could destabilise the whole sub-region, from the Libyan desert down to the rainforests of the Central African Republic.

It was a combination of exhaustion and western pressure that persuaded Khartoum to make peace with the south. More pressure could help pacify Darfur. The first priority is to get aid to the displaced, to prevent them from starving. There needs to be a proper ceasefire in Darfur, monitored by the UN's blue helmets. Khartoum must rein in its militia and address the grievances of the rebels there. It should be rewarded with aid if it does, and chastised with sanctions if it does not.

Sunday, May 30, 2004

Sudan: "Too Little, Too Late" (Human Rights Watch)

Ten years after the Rwandan genocide and despite years of soul-searching, the response of the international community to the events in Sudan has been nothing short of shameful.

[ .... ]

The United Nations: strong statements from U.N. staff

United Nations officials have played a key role in raising the awareness of international governments and media to the gravity and scale of the abuses in Darfur, but the U.N.’s political bodies such as the Security Council and the U.N. Commission on Human Rights have failed to respond adequately to the crisis, thus far.

Several leading U.N. human rights officials and experts made strong statements of concern about Darfur in January and February 2004.150 On March 19, 2004, the then United Nations Resident Representative for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, speaking to reporters in Nairobi, made the strongest statement thus far, describing the situation in Darfur as “ethnic cleansing”. 151 He said some Arab groups, backed by the government, were conducting a campaign affecting one million persons that was comparable in character with the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

On April 2, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland briefed the Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Darfur which he described as one of “ethnic cleansing”152 and expressed his hope that the Council would remain seized of the matter and would consider taking further action if the situation did not improve. 153 Despite these strong remarks, the Security Council President issued a pre-approved, tepid statement to the press in which he expressed concern at the “humanitarian crisis” in Darfur but refrained from acknowledging that the human rights situation is the cause of the humanitarian crisis.154

U.N. concern about the situation in Darfur was strongly expressed yet again on April 7, when U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke before the Commission on U.N. Human Rights on the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, referred to Egeland’s ethnic cleansing remarks, and cautioned that the international community would have to take action if full access was not given to human rights and humanitarian workers.155 He noted that reports of the large-scale human rights abuses in Darfur:

leave me with a deep sense of foreboding. Whatever terms it uses to describe the situation, the international community cannot stand idle.

At the invitation of the Sudanese government, I propose to send a high-level team to Darfur to gain a fuller understanding of the extent and nature of this crisis, and to seek improved access to those in need of assistance and protection. It is vital that international humanitarian workers and human rights experts be given full access to the region, and to the victims, without further delay. If that is denied, the international community must be prepared to take swift and appropriate action.

By “action” in such situations I mean a continuum of steps, which may include military action.156

The mission referred to in Annan’s remarks was due to leave in mid-April, led by Under-Secretary Jan Egeland, but was delayed by the Sudanese government, which refused visas to several of its members, including Egeland. The mission finally left in late April, under the leadership of WFP Executive Director James Morris and was due to be completed in early May.157

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights: more heat than light

Despite the strong words of Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the Commission for Human Rights and an earlier statement, on March 26, 2004, by eight human rights experts of the Commission who took the unusual step of issuing a joint statement of concern “at the scale of reported human rights abuses and at the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Darfur, Sudan . . . .”, the final deliberations of the Commission were disappointing for those who had been hoping that the world’s premier human rights entity would set a strong moral tone on this issue. 158

In early April, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) sent a team of human rights experts to investigate the Darfur abuses.159 This was to be a separate mission from the humanitarian assessment mission being conducted in April under the direction of Jan Egeland.

From April 5-15 the OHCHR team conducted research among the Sudanese refugees in Chad, then more than 100,000 people. Its efforts to investigate abuses from inside Sudan were initially rejected by the Sudanese government, which refused to issue visas to the delegation. However, the Sudanese government, a member of the Commission, suddenly had a change of heart and reversed its refusal of visas for the OHCHR team the day the report was to be released– in the opinion of most, to prevent the report from being distributed at the Commission.

The report, never officially released, strongly condemned the Sudanese government’s abuses in Darfur, which it said might constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes. The government, it asserted, was conducting a “reign of terror” directed at the African Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa.160

On April 20 the OHCHR fact-finding mission left Geneva for Darfur.161 The strong OHCHR “reign of terror” report was quickly leaked and was instantly news.162 Some members of the Commission expressed outrage over the leak, and the governments of Pakistan, Sudan, and others demanded an investigation of the leaks.163

The Commission vote on Sudan was postponed until the last day of the yearly Commission session, April 23. At the last minute the E.U., which had co-sponsored a strong resolution condemning the abuses and re-establishing the mandate for a special rapporteur for human rights, backed down. E.U. members reportedly feared insufficient support from key African and Arab members of the U.N. body, who had bowed to Sudanese pressure. Instead, a weaker decision eventually passed. This decision included the appointment of an independent expert on human rights but failed to condemn the crimes against humanity and war crimes or other violations of international humanitarian law committed by the Sudanese government. Only one member voted against this watered-down statement—the United States—and two members abstained, Australia and Ukraine.

The U.S. asked for a special session of the Commission to consider the situation in Darfur following the return of the OHCHR from Sudan in early May. In a speech to the Commission, U.S. Ambassador Richard Williamson warned:

ten years from now, the 60th Commission on Human Rights will be remembered for one thing and one thing alone: Did we have the courage and strength to take strong action against the ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Darfur. We will be asked, ‘Where were you at the time of the ethnic cleansing?’ ‘What did you do?’164

The world’s preeminent human rights body failed to perform the role for which it was created, limiting itself to expressions of “deep concern”—rather than condemnation—over the situation in Sudan. It appointed an independent expert to assess Sudan’s human rights performance rather than the stronger special rapporteur.165

The European Union and European member states

European reaction to the situation in Darfur has been mixed. The European Union on February 25 expressed its “serious concern” and said it was “alarmed at reports that Janjaweed militias continue to systematically target villages and centres for IDPs in their attacks. The EU strongly condemns the attacks and calls upon the Government of Sudan to put an end to Janjaweed atrocities.”166 The European Parliament also issued strong statements and resolutions on the Darfur crisis. Some individual European countries lobbied strongly behind the scenes for improvements in Sudan’s human rights performance and the E.U. response to it.

Despite some strong public statements from the European Union, however, there has been little public condemnation from key individual European governments such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France, all of which have embassies in Khartoum, relations with the government of Sudan, and longstanding interests in the IGAD peace talks taking place in Naivasha, Kenya to end the war in southern Sudan. Indeed, despite growing awareness of the scale of the abuses in Darfur, European governments until April appeared loath to apply serious pressure on the Sudanese government, at the risk of allowing Darfur to undermine two years of Naivasha talks.

Europeans also have preferred to let the African Union take the lead on ceasefire monitoring, choosing instead to offer personnel, funding and logistical support to an A.U.-led mission. But a German minister urged that U.N. troops be used to monitor the ceasefire, instead of the A.U. troops contemplated.167

The E.U.'s rapid response mechanisms do not seem to have worked in political, diplomatic, or practical terms to alert the E.U. to take prompt and effective measures on Darfur. The U.N. had been warning of the humanitarian emergency since late 2003. The E.U., and other donors, did not react to the Sudanese government's denial of humanitarian access or early reports of abuses. Instead the human rights abuses generating the displacement continued, unmentioned by European governments until one million Darfurians had already been forced out and a humanitarian catastrophe was inevitable.

The African Union and African member states

Individual African member states have made little or no public condemnation of the government of Sudan’s abuses. African members of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, acting as a group, helped to undermine the resolution proposed at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in April to appoint a special rapporteur and to condemn the Sudanese government’s abuses in Darfur.

The African Union has played an observer role at the ceasefire and political talks in N’djamena, Chad, and was delegated the task of setting up the ceasefire commission in Darfur pursuant to the April 8 ceasefire agreement.

In a communiqué issued at an April session, the A.U. Peace and Security Council expressed its concern over “the grave humanitarian situation in Darfur” and called on the government of Sudan to “bring to justice those responsible for violations of human rights,” but has since concentrated on deployment of the ceasefire monitors.

The African Union appealed for U.S. $ 10 million for the ceasefire observer mission and humanitarian assistance to Darfur.168 The A.U.’s proposal for the establishment of a ceasefire commission is lacking in several respects, namely in specifying the number of monitors. It also proposes that 100-200 troops participate as “protectors” for the ceasefire observers, should they be required,169 and suggests Ethiopian and Chadian troops. Neither country can be considered as neutral with regard to Sudan.

As of the writing of this report, one month (thirty days) after the signing of the month-and-a-half (forty-five days) ceasefire agreement, no monitors are on the ground although a reconnaissance mission may be undertaken shortly.

The United States

The U.S. government has taken the strongest public stance on Darfur of any individual government, with repeated statements condemning the human rights abuses and calling on the government of Sudan to address the situation. On April 7, U.S. President George Bush condemned “atrocities” in Sudan and called for unrestricted humanitarian access.170

The U.S. House of Representatives held hearings on Darfur, or in which Darfur was prominently mentioned.171 U.S. aid officials have frequently drawn attention to the enormous humanitarian needs in the region, with repeated visits to Darfur and statements. U.S. AID’s chief executive Andrew Natsios held a press conference to denounce the Sudanese government’s stalling on visas for twenty-eight U.S. emergency relief workers.172

The fact that the U.S. and European policy-makers have not been unified in their approach to Darfur, however, permitted the government of Sudan to play various governments against each other to its own advantage, with the Europeans implicitly criticizing the U.S. for being too aggressive and perhaps threatening the Naivasha talks. As momentum gathered, however, the U.S. pushed for having Darfur before the Security Council while both the E.U. and U.S. have deferred on the ceasefire commission to the A.U.

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Human Rights Watch
May 2004

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE: SUDANESE AND INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE 2004

Ten years after the Rwandan genocide and despite years of soul-searching, the response of the international community to the events in Sudan has been nothing short of shameful. The initial reason for deferring consideration of the war in Darfur was that serious peace talks had started in mid-2002 to end the twenty-year war between the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), a mostly-southern Sudanese force. The parties were making progress but the war in western Sudan, which only started in 2003, was not on the agenda at these Naivasha, Kenya talks.

The diplomatic community feared that too much attention to Darfur would distract from the attention and energy the parties and the Troika (U.S., U.K., and Norway) were bringing to the successful conclusion of these talks, still pending. As various Troika-suggested deadlines were missed by the parties, Darfur began to overshadow Naivasha as the scope of the human rights and humanitarian crisis began to shake public opinion.

Response of the Sudanese government and the rebel groups: The ceasefire agreement

Sudanese President Omar El Bashir prematurely declared victory over the rebels in Darfur and promised full humanitarian access to the international relief community on February 9, 2004146. The victory was prematurely claimed, and access was not forthcoming.

The government of Sudan almost completely banned humanitarian agencies from Darfur for four crucial months, from late October 2003 through late-February 2004. The government’s continued violence and forced displacement of civilians had and continues to have enormous humanitarian consequences.147 More than a million people are estimated to be displaced from their homes, the vast majority still within Darfur.

Access only began to improve in March after months of NGO and U.N. lobbying, but the government continued to impede humanitarian access, imposing bureaucratic procedures on visas and layers of “travel authorizations” for aid workers. The U.N. humanitarian mission to Darfur warned on May 1 that “the crisis in Darfur, western Sudan, will worsen dramatically unless security there is immediately improvement and humanitarian agencies have better access to those in need.”

Under pressure, another round of peace negotiations between the rebels and the Sudanese government was held in N’djamena, Chad, under the auspices of Chadian President Idriss Deby, in late March; a previous ceasefire in August 2003 was long dead.148

The Sudanese government rejected “internationalizing” the Darfur conflict and tried to obstruct E.U. and U.S. participation in the talks, perhaps because it has greater ability to influence the fledgling A.U. and its ally, Chadian President Idriss Deby, whom it helped come to power in 1990—his military coup was launched from Darfur. Despite Sudanese government foot-dragging, the talks were attended by representatives of the European Union and the United States who offered to support the process and a ceasefire with personnel, logistics, funding, and other support.149

It nevertheless took strong statements by both the U.N. Secretary-General and the U.S. president, on April 7 and 8 respectively, to pressure the government to take any action. The Sudanese government and the two rebel groups hastily signed a minimal “humanitarian” ceasefire agreement on April 8, also committing themselves to further political negotiations to resolve the war.

The ceasefire came into effect on April 11, 2004, but was followed almost immediately by allegations of violations, mainly continuing Janjaweed attacks on civilians. This was unsurprising given the government’s lack of commitment to disarm and disband the groups. The ceasefire agreement referred to the government’s responsibility to “neutralize” the militias, but did not define this term. Many observers are concerned that the government may simply incorporate the militias into the police and regular armed forces, an alarming possibility given the gravity of their crimes.

Additional flaws in the April 8 ceasefire agreement included the lack of a clear timetable and structure for international monitoring and the lack of any mechanism to monitor ongoing human rights abuses which continue to affect thousands of Darfurians. The ceasefire also lacked measures to reverse ethnic cleansing, such as an agreement that the Sudanese government would immediately withdraw the Janjaweed militia from those parts of Darfur it seized from 2003 to the present.

By late April, political talks in N’djamena had begun amid reports that the Sudanese government was attempting to split the rebel coalition along ethnic lines. The ceasefire monitors had not yet deployed. Reports of ceasefire violations and the consistent lack of protection for civilians continued to grow.

The United Nations: strong statements from U.N. staff

United Nations officials have played a key role in raising the awareness of international governments and media to the gravity and scale of the abuses in Darfur, but the U.N.’s political bodies such as the Security Council and the U.N. Commission on Human Rights have failed to respond adequately to the crisis, thus far.

Several leading U.N. human rights officials and experts made strong statements of concern about Darfur in January and February 2004.150 On March 19, 2004, the then United Nations Resident Representative for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, speaking to reporters in Nairobi, made the strongest statement thus far, describing the situation in Darfur as “ethnic cleansing”. 151 He said some Arab groups, backed by the government, were conducting a campaign affecting one million persons that was comparable in character with the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

On April 2, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland briefed the Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Darfur which he described as one of “ethnic cleansing”152 and expressed his hope that the Council would remain seized of the matter and would consider taking further action if the situation did not improve. 153 Despite these strong remarks, the Security Council President issued a pre-approved, tepid statement to the press in which he expressed concern at the “humanitarian crisis” in Darfur but refrained from acknowledging that the human rights situation is the cause of the humanitarian crisis.154

U.N. concern about the situation in Darfur was strongly expressed yet again on April 7, when U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke before the Commission on U.N. Human Rights on the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, referred to Egeland’s ethnic cleansing remarks, and cautioned that the international community would have to take action if full access was not given to human rights and humanitarian workers.155 He noted that reports of the large-scale human rights abuses in Darfur:

leave me with a deep sense of foreboding. Whatever terms it uses to describe the situation, the international community cannot stand idle.

At the invitation of the Sudanese government, I propose to send a high-level team to Darfur to gain a fuller understanding of the extent and nature of this crisis, and to seek improved access to those in need of assistance and protection. It is vital that international humanitarian workers and human rights experts be given full access to the region, and to the victims, without further delay. If that is denied, the international community must be prepared to take swift and appropriate action.

By “action” in such situations I mean a continuum of steps, which may include military action.156

The mission referred to in Annan’s remarks was due to leave in mid-April, led by Under-Secretary Jan Egeland, but was delayed by the Sudanese government, which refused visas to several of its members, including Egeland. The mission finally left in late April, under the leadership of WFP Executive Director James Morris and was due to be completed in early May.157

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights: more heat than light

Despite the strong words of Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the Commission for Human Rights and an earlier statement, on March 26, 2004, by eight human rights experts of the Commission who took the unusual step of issuing a joint statement of concern “at the scale of reported human rights abuses and at the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Darfur, Sudan . . . .”, the final deliberations of the Commission were disappointing for those who had been hoping that the world’s premier human rights entity would set a strong moral tone on this issue. 158

In early April, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) sent a team of human rights experts to investigate the Darfur abuses.159 This was to be a separate mission from the humanitarian assessment mission being conducted in April under the direction of Jan Egeland.

From April 5-15 the OHCHR team conducted research among the Sudanese refugees in Chad, then more than 100,000 people. Its efforts to investigate abuses from inside Sudan were initially rejected by the Sudanese government, which refused to issue visas to the delegation. However, the Sudanese government, a member of the Commission, suddenly had a change of heart and reversed its refusal of visas for the OHCHR team the day the report was to be released– in the opinion of most, to prevent the report from being distributed at the Commission.

The report, never officially released, strongly condemned the Sudanese government’s abuses in Darfur, which it said might constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes. The government, it asserted, was conducting a “reign of terror” directed at the African Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa.160

On April 20 the OHCHR fact-finding mission left Geneva for Darfur.161 The strong OHCHR “reign of terror” report was quickly leaked and was instantly news.162 Some members of the Commission expressed outrage over the leak, and the governments of Pakistan, Sudan, and others demanded an investigation of the leaks.163

The Commission vote on Sudan was postponed until the last day of the yearly Commission session, April 23. At the last minute the E.U., which had co-sponsored a strong resolution condemning the abuses and re-establishing the mandate for a special rapporteur for human rights, backed down. E.U. members reportedly feared insufficient support from key African and Arab members of the U.N. body, who had bowed to Sudanese pressure. Instead, a weaker decision eventually passed. This decision included the appointment of an independent expert on human rights but failed to condemn the crimes against humanity and war crimes or other violations of international humanitarian law committed by the Sudanese government. Only one member voted against this watered-down statement—the United States—and two members abstained, Australia and Ukraine.

The U.S. asked for a special session of the Commission to consider the situation in Darfur following the return of the OHCHR from Sudan in early May. In a speech to the Commission, U.S. Ambassador Richard Williamson warned:

ten years from now, the 60th Commission on Human Rights will be remembered for one thing and one thing alone: Did we have the courage and strength to take strong action against the ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Darfur. We will be asked, ‘Where were you at the time of the ethnic cleansing?’ ‘What did you do?’164

The world’s preeminent human rights body failed to perform the role for which it was created, limiting itself to expressions of “deep concern”—rather than condemnation—over the situation in Sudan. It appointed an independent expert to assess Sudan’s human rights performance rather than the stronger special rapporteur.165

The European Union and European member states

European reaction to the situation in Darfur has been mixed. The European Union on February 25 expressed its “serious concern” and said it was “alarmed at reports that Janjaweed militias continue to systematically target villages and centres for IDPs in their attacks. The EU strongly condemns the attacks and calls upon the Government of Sudan to put an end to Janjaweed atrocities.”166 The European Parliament also issued strong statements and resolutions on the Darfur crisis. Some individual European countries lobbied strongly behind the scenes for improvements in Sudan’s human rights performance and the E.U. response to it.

Despite some strong public statements from the European Union, however, there has been little public condemnation from key individual European governments such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France, all of which have embassies in Khartoum, relations with the government of Sudan, and longstanding interests in the IGAD peace talks taking place in Naivasha, Kenya to end the war in southern Sudan. Indeed, despite growing awareness of the scale of the abuses in Darfur, European governments until April appeared loath to apply serious pressure on the Sudanese government, at the risk of allowing Darfur to undermine two years of Naivasha talks.

Europeans also have preferred to let the African Union take the lead on ceasefire monitoring, choosing instead to offer personnel, funding and logistical support to an A.U.-led mission. But a German minister urged that U.N. troops be used to monitor the ceasefire, instead of the A.U. troops contemplated.167

The E.U.'s rapid response mechanisms do not seem to have worked in political, diplomatic, or practical terms to alert the E.U. to take prompt and effective measures on Darfur. The U.N. had been warning of the humanitarian emergency since late 2003. The E.U., and other donors, did not react to the Sudanese government's denial of humanitarian access or early reports of abuses. Instead the human rights abuses generating the displacement continued, unmentioned by European governments until one million Darfurians had already been forced out and a humanitarian catastrophe was inevitable.

The African Union and African member states

Individual African member states have made little or no public condemnation of the government of Sudan’s abuses. African members of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, acting as a group, helped to undermine the resolution proposed at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in April to appoint a special rapporteur and to condemn the Sudanese government’s abuses in Darfur.

The African Union has played an observer role at the ceasefire and political talks in N’djamena, Chad, and was delegated the task of setting up the ceasefire commission in Darfur pursuant to the April 8 ceasefire agreement.

In a communiqué issued at an April session, the A.U. Peace and Security Council expressed its concern over “the grave humanitarian situation in Darfur” and called on the government of Sudan to “bring to justice those responsible for violations of human rights,” but has since concentrated on deployment of the ceasefire monitors.

The African Union appealed for U.S. $ 10 million for the ceasefire observer mission and humanitarian assistance to Darfur.168 The A.U.’s proposal for the establishment of a ceasefire commission is lacking in several respects, namely in specifying the number of monitors. It also proposes that 100-200 troops participate as “protectors” for the ceasefire observers, should they be required,169 and suggests Ethiopian and Chadian troops. Neither country can be considered as neutral with regard to Sudan.

As of the writing of this report, one month (thirty days) after the signing of the month-and-a-half (forty-five days) ceasefire agreement, no monitors are on the ground although a reconnaissance mission may be undertaken shortly.

The United States

The U.S. government has taken the strongest public stance on Darfur of any individual government, with repeated statements condemning the human rights abuses and calling on the government of Sudan to address the situation. On April 7, U.S. President George Bush condemned “atrocities” in Sudan and called for unrestricted humanitarian access.170

The U.S. House of Representatives held hearings on Darfur, or in which Darfur was prominently mentioned.171 U.S. aid officials have frequently drawn attention to the enormous humanitarian needs in the region, with repeated visits to Darfur and statements. U.S. AID’s chief executive Andrew Natsios held a press conference to denounce the Sudanese government’s stalling on visas for twenty-eight U.S. emergency relief workers.172

The fact that the U.S. and European policy-makers have not been unified in their approach to Darfur, however, permitted the government of Sudan to play various governments against each other to its own advantage, with the Europeans implicitly criticizing the U.S. for being too aggressive and perhaps threatening the Naivasha talks. As momentum gathered, however, the U.S. pushed for having Darfur before the Security Council while both the E.U. and U.S. have deferred on the ceasefire commission to the A.U.

The humanitarian response

The vast majority of civilians at risk have been stripped of their assets, land, security, and freedom of movement. Confined in camps and settlements for the displaced and unable to access their land or even the wild foods, markets, and labor migration that could normally sustain them in times of crisis, they are entirely dependent on humanitarian assistance. To date, the humanitarian assistance available to civilians in Darfur remains far from adequate. Only a few international humanitarian agencies are active in Darfur, and they say the needs far outstrip the capacity of the existing humanitarian operations.

In many areas of Darfur, malnutrition is on the increase and health conditions are rapidly worsening. In some locations, people’s food stocks were exhausted in early April.173 There is a potential humanitarian catastrophe looming, with some observers estimating that at least 100,000 individuals could die from disease, malnutrition and other conditions if assistance is not dramatically increased.174



[146] “Statement by His Excellency Omar Hassan Ahmed Al Bashir, President of the Republic of Sudan,” Khartoum, February 9, 2004.

[147]Confirming Massive Humanitarian Crisis in Darfur, UN demands better Security,” U.N. News, May 1, 2004, (accessed May 2, 2004).

[148] See "Resumption of ceasefire unlikely, say Darfur rebels," IRIN, Nairobi, Dec. 3, 2003 ("This ceasefire is a waste of time," said the SLA. "There is no ceasefire.").

[149] Amb. Michael Ranneberger, special advisor on Sudan, U.S. Department of State, on "Death and Displacement in the Sudan," NPR radio broadcast, Washington, D.C., April 30, 2004, (accessed May 3, 2004).

[150] “Acting Rights Chief Concerned Over Deteriorating Situation In Darfur Region Of Sudan,” Geneva, January 29, 2004 and Gerhart R. Baum, Press release, Cologne, Germany, February 2, 2004. Baum was head of the German delegation to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights from 1992-1998 and its Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Sudan from 2000-2003.

[151] BBC Online, “Mass rape atrocity in west Sudan,” March 19, 2004. (accessed April 30, 2004, as were all the websites in this section).

[152] U.N. Press Release, “Sudan: Envoy warns of ethnic cleansing as Security Council calls for ceasefire,” April 2, 2004.

[153] United Nations, “Press briefing on humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan,” New York, April 2, 2004.

[154] U.N. Security Council, press release, "Press Statement on Darfur, Sudan, by Security Council President," New York, April 2, 2004, (accessed May 3, 2004).

[155] “Secretary-General Observes International Day Of Reflection On 1994 Rwanda Genocide,” Kofi Annan speech, Geneva, April 7, 2004.

[156] Kofi Annan, speech, “Secretary-General Observes International Day of Reflection on 1994 Genocide,” Geneva, April 7, 2004.

[157] IRIN, “UN mission arrives in Khartoum, leaves for Darfur,” Nairobi, April 29, 2004.

[158] U.N. Press Release, “Eight Un Human Rights Experts Gravely Concerned About Reported Widespread Abuses In Darfur, Sudan,” Geneva, March 26, 2004.

[159]UN mission starts probe into atrocities in western Sudan,” AFP, Geneva, April 6, 2004,

[160] The report is posted here

[161] IRIN, “UN human rights mission heads for Darfur,” Nairobi, April 22, 2004.

[162] "Sudan 'atrocity' report withheld," BBC Online, April 22, 2004, (accessed May 3, 2004).

[163] "UN vote on Sudan delayed amid accusations over leaked Darfur report," AFP, Geneva, April 22, 2004.

[164] U.S. Ambassador Richard Williamson, Statement at CHR, Geneva, April 23, 2003,

[165] UNCHR press release, “Commission on Human Rights Expresses Deep Concern over Human Rights Situation in Western Sudan,” Geneva, April 23, 2003.

[166] Declaration by the Presidency on behalf of the European Union on the situation in Darfur (Sudan), 6750/04, P 26/04, Brussels, February 25, 2004.

[167] German Ministry of Development, press release, "UN Blue Berets should monitor cease-fire in western Sudan," Berlin, April 29, 2004, (accessed May 3, 2004).

[168]African Union asks for 10 million dollars for Sudan's troubled Darfur,” AFP, Addis Ababa, April 22, 2004.

[169] African Union, Proposals for the establishment of the ceasefire commission, undated. The proposal specifies that “disengagement of forces” take place within two weeks of the signing of the ceasefire agreement and that a reconnaissance mission occur within thirty days—very late considering the urgency of the situation.

[170] George Bush, statement, “President condemns atrocities in Sudan,” April 7, 2004.

[171] U.S. House of Representatives, International Relations Committee, Africa Subcommittee, hearing, “Sudan: Peace Agreement Around the Corner?” Washington, D.C., March 11, 2004. U.S. Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, Africa Subcommittee U.S. Senator Russell Feingold, statement, “The Situation in Darfur,” U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C., March 30, 2004; Senator Edward Kennedy, statement, “On Sudan,” U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C., April 29, 2004.

[172] Press conference, Washington, D.C., April 27, 2004.

[173] “Measles and malnutrition increasing in Sudan’s Darfur region,” Medecins sans Frontieres press release, Paris, April 28, 2004.

[174] Statement of Roger Winter, USAID Assistant Administrator For The Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance Bureau, N'Djamena, Chad, March 31, 2004, (accessed May 3, 2004).

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

David Aaronovitch, "The Trouble with Sontag's Story" (Guardian)

It's amazing how David Aaronovitch manages to be right so often--especially when the issues are difficult, tangled, and morally troubling.
And sometimes he's not the only one. As Aaronovitch points out, Susan Sontag was right to emphasize in 1999
that "the principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own recognised borders. Can we really say there is no response to this? Is it true that war never solved anything? (Ask a black American if he or she thinks the civil war didn't solve anything.)"
Sontag herself wrote those words in 1999, at the time of the Kosovo intervention. And even she characterises the Iraq invasion as "a war that did overthrow one of the monster tyrants of modern times ... " Why would going to Kosovo be any less intrinsically colonialist and therefore less likely to release the demons in the American psyche?
These questions (Sontag's and Aaronovitch's) are still worth pondering.

Yours in struggle,
Jeff Weintraub
===============
Guardian
Tuesday, May 25, 2004

The trouble with Sontag's story
David Aaronovitch

'The photos are us," said the cover line for Susan Sontag's G2 essay yesterday. I took this to mean that a much respected writer would demonstrate how the Abu Ghraib pictures told all Americans (and perhaps all Britons too) something about themselves. Good. When the news emerged of the US bombing of a gathering on the Syrian border last week, I wanted to drop down a hole and pull it in after me. I didn't for one minute believe that it was a careful targeting of a fedayeen raiding party. Nor have I accepted that the Abu Ghraib torture and abuse pictures represent simply an aberration. And if Sontag was in the business of explaining how "we" got to this point, then I was certainly in the market for it.

Sontag didn't write that cover line, of course, but the trouble is that her essay is not about "us" at all. She argues, in essence, that the abuses in Abu Ghraib are the product of a violent society and a corrupt policy. Her essay is an intellectual's version of Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. All the blame lies with "them". It's a case of Never On Sontag.

Like Moore, Sontag identifies "America's ... increasingly out-of-control culture of violence" in which sex, entertainment and physical brutality are intertwined. And she extrapolates: "This idea of fun is, alas, more and more - contrary to what Mr Bush is telling the world - part of 'the true nature and heart of America'." The evidence, she writes, is everywhere, "starting with the games of killing that are the principal entertainment of young males", and extending to the phenomenon of "hazing", in which initiates to new colleges, schools or barracks are subjected to sexual teasing and - sometimes - violence. These acts, and "what formerly was segregated as pornography" are now being normalised, says Sontag, "by the apostles of the new, bellicose, imperial America, as high-spirited prankishness or venting".

But who - an intelligent conservative might ask - championed sexual freedom if it wasn't us on the liberal left? Who made films full of shocking violence and endless sex? Who wrote the 80s and 90s books on how to bring up your kid? If there has been a decline of the sort that Sontag laments, do the liberal "we" not share any responsibility? Didn't the conservatives warn us that all this would happen?

Despite the new culture of brutality, the administration, repudiating the acts in Abu Ghraib, "has invited the American public to believe [in the] virtue of American intentions ... " In other words, the same debased, brutal people who love sexual humiliation are gulled by the president into accepting that America hates torture and sexual humiliation. There is an unexplored contradiction here.

Which brings us to Sontag's second "them". "The photographs are us," she writes. "That is, they are representative of distinctive policies and of the fundamental corruptions of colonial rule." Presumably she is saying that the whole idea of invading a country to bring democracy to it, or otherwise "improve" it, is essentially flawed - institutionalising a corrupt relationship between the invader and the invaded. Torture grows easily out of this corruption.

But she also complains bitterly (and rightly) about the "strenuous avoidance of the word genocide while the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda was being carried out ... [an avoidance] that meant the American government had no intention of doing anything".

What should it have done, by her lights? Intervention by the west (who else?) would surely have brought about "the fundamental corruptions of colonial rule". Not least, presumably, because of the intrinsic brutality of the society that would have provided most of the soldiers. And a note here to liberal Americans - French and German boys play violent videogames too.

Sontag would, one imagines, have the same objection to anyone who could argue recently that "the principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own recognised borders. Can we really say there is no response to this? Is it true that war never solved anything? (Ask a black American if he or she thinks the civil war didn't solve anything.)"

Sontag herself wrote those words in 1999, at the time of the Kosovo intervention. And even she characterises the Iraq invasion as "a war that did overthrow one of the monster tyrants of modern times ... " Why would going to Kosovo be any less intrinsically colonialist and therefore less likely to release the demons in the American psyche? Surely not simply because there is a Bush - one of "them" - in the White House?

Suppose that it isn't about "them" but "us". I'm not sure I buy the idea that everything is worse than it was. Unlike in the days of Robert Musil's Young Torless, brutalised at boarding school, "hazing" is banned on most campuses. The authorities, imperialist or not, disapprove of it. Interestingly, the film cited by Sontag to suggest current mores, Dazed and Confused, was made in 1993 about a school in the year 1976. Watching Gus van Sant's more recent Columbine film Elephant, I was struck by how much nicer all the kids were to each other than the boys were at my school 30 years ago. There are no race riots, there is no formal segregation, there has been no My Lai in Iraq, no one is called "gook" as far as I know.

The Progressive's horror is that we thought the other stuff had gone away. Not entirely, but mostly. We thought that, however thick and repulsive the Rush Limbaughs, at least the Powells and Rices would know what they were doing. Mea culpa, if that's what you want. I cannot better Sontag's description of "the mystifying, near-total unpreparedness of the American rulers of Iraq to deal with the complex realities of an Iraq after its 'liberation' ". And I agree with her about the Guantanamisation of the war on terror.

But by making this about them and not really about us, Sontag is in danger of making all action impossible. If it is about them, all we have to do is to defeat them. If it is about us, we have to take constant and daily action to notice and to deal with those things in ourselves and our societies that humiliate others. We have to be always vigilant, always re-examining, always questioning. Which is a bloody and necessary pain.

Thursday, May 20, 2004

Bonino & Shawcross, "Darfur's agony is world's shame"

Financial Times
May 19, 2004

Darfur's agony is world's shame
By Emma Bonino & William Shawcross


There are no more villages to burn," a United Nations relief officer said when describing the situation in western Sudan last week. Forced displacement of people had stopped to an extent, he added, and after more than a year of war, an unsettling calm had fallen across much of the region of Darfur.

But just because Darfur's villages have been razed to the ground, that does not mean the horror is over for the brutalised civilians of the area. The "Janjaweed" government-backed Arab militia continues its campaign of mass murder and rape against black African tribes in Darfur. The government of Sudan not only aids the Janjaweed with money and guns but also supports the fighters tactically with aerial bombardment of villages immediately before militia raids.

The Janjaweed have corralled civilians into camps - what some rightly call "concentration camps" - where many are dying slowly from disease and malnutrition. This year's planting season has been missed, grain reserves have been deliberately targeted and destroyed and the government continues to block humanitarian aid from reaching most displaced Darfurians. Those who were not slaughtered outright are clearly being left to starve. Since early last year, this vicious campaign has claimed an estimated 30,000 civilian lives; international aid agencies say that over 1.2m people have been displaced within Sudan and at least 120,000 have fled to neighbouring Chad, making Khartoum's conduct a grave threat to regional as well as internal stability. USAID estimates that another 350,000 could die due to the desperate situation in Darfur.

In short, the government of Sudan is conducting a scorched-earth, near-genocidal war against its own citizens. Again.

We have seen this before, after all. Many of these tactics are familiar from the government's decades-long war primarily in the country's south; the scorched-earth approach is Khartoum's signature policy when dealing with rebellion. For years, it has attacked its own civilians in the course of the conflict with the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA). In the past few months, however, Khartoum has turned its attention to the people of Darfur, whom it suspects of aiding two other rebel groups, the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

Recent promising progress in the peace talks between the government and the SPLA actually contributed to Darfur's downfall. The SLA and, later, the JEM saw the two-party peace deal as shutting them out of Sudan's future. So they took up arms, scoring some early successes against government installations. This focused the government's wrath, sending its hired Janjaweed militia out against the civilian population of Darfur.

There are strong suspicions that the government has been stringing out the talks with the SPLA simply to provide time to redirect military resources to the Darfur front. In any case, Khartoum almost certainly calculated - correctly - that the international community would be unwilling to speak out about the turmoil in Darfur as long as a deal between the government and the SPLA was so tantalisingly close.

But the time for the international community to stand by and hope is long past. The government-supported atrocities in Darfur are too horrific and widespread to ignore.

The roaring silence from the Arab League and the Muslim world over Darfur is inexcusable. Both the Arab aggressors and the black African victims are Muslims. So one might have expected to hear something from those quarters, at least a call from the former for Arab brethren to show restraint, if not condemnation from the latter of the massacre of Muslims.

The European Union has not fared much better, offering weak words at best. A well-meaning statement by the Irish presidency of the EU last month said only that "it is essential that the Sudanese government fulfil its commitment to control the irregular armed forces known as the Janjaweed". That timid line came a week after George W. Bush said Sudan "must immediately stop local militias from committing atrocities against the local population", and also a week after Kofi Annan, United Nations secretary-general, referred to "ethnic cleansing" in Darfur and openly suggested military intervention might be required.

Europe needs to catch up quickly, acknowledge the severity of the situation in Darfur and use its weight in the UN Security Council. That weight is considerable: in addition to permanent members - France and the UK - EU member states Germany and Spain are also currently on the Security Council, as is Romania, an EU applicant. They need to push for an emergency session of the Security Council to take up the Darfur issue in a resolution, making it clear to the government of Sudan that the killing must stop, aid must be allowed to go through and displaced people permitted to return home. The Security Council should in addition authorise all measures short of force to be used against Sudan and warn Khartoum of international military intervention if it does not alter its course. Only such an ultimatum will demonstrate that the international community means it when it says "never again" - that we are not going to stand by as another mass slaughter of innocents unfolds before our eyes

We may be too late to save Darfur's burnt villages, but we can still save hundreds of thousands of lives.

Emma Bonino is a member of the European parliament and a former European commissioner; William Shawcross is an author, most recently of the book 'Allies'. Both are board members of the International Crisis Group

Sunday, May 16, 2004

Darfur abandoned | Nick Cohen, "Human Rights on Trial" (Observer)

The Observer (London)
May 16, 2004

Human rights on trial

We choose to ignore atrocities committed in the Third World when it is politically expedient. As in Sudan

Nick Cohen
Sunday May 16, 2004
The Observer


After the Hutton inquiry and the official investigations into millionaire newspaper editors and magnates, it is worth remembering that not everyone in the media purveys fake exclusives or needs to hire lawyers to fight accusations of embezzlement. Alongside the dross are men and women prepared to risk their lives for the Quixotic cause of reporting news from the world's worst places.

The task of recording the names of those who don't make it back falls to the International Press Institute. At first glance its roll call of the dead makes grimly predictable reading: 10 journalists killed in Iraq this year; two in Palestine; another two in Colombia. Go into the institute's archives from the 1990s and you find that journalists were being killed by accident or design in the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone, which again seems to make sense. It's only when you stand back you realise that not all of these countries are or were the worst places on earth. North Korea is and was, but no foreign journalists have been killed there. Wild-eyed refugees talk of gulags and death squads and famines claiming the lives of millions, but newspapers and aid agencies can't verify their claims because it is all but impossible to report freely from North Korea. As in Saddam's Iraq, the few reporters who are allowed in have secret police escorts who ensure that they don't talk to anyone they're not meant to talk to or see anything they're not meant to see.

There's a bell curve in the international appreciation of atrocity. Safe countries receive no coverage for the obvious reason that there are no atrocities to cover in, say, Denmark or Belgium. The curve climbs up from these dull lowlands and hits its peak in countries which are dangerous but not too dangerous to make reporting from them impossible - today's Iraq and the former Yugoslavia in the age of Milosevic and Tudjman. From here the curve slithers down until it reaches countries at the furthest extreme from civilised life which are either too dangerous or too tyrannical for free investigation to be an option for anyone but the recklessly brave - the Congo and North Korea today or Iraq before the war. The lesson for tyrants is that they risk becoming the objects of global outrage when they are not tyrannical enough.

The rulers of Sudan know it well. Foreign journalists aren't murdered there, but pretty much everyone else is. An extraordinary Islamist regime filled with apocalyptic fervour of the fundamentalist revival has enslaved Christian and animist tribes in the black, African south as it prosecuted a civil war which has claimed the lives of two million since the early 1980s. Two million is the provisional estimate of the number killed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. But while every politically sentient person has heard of Pol Pot and the killing fields, I doubt if many know of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and Hassan al-Turabi, a cleric who provided the ideological justifications for the terror until he fell out with his murderous patron. If the names ring a bell, my guess is that you are active in one of the Christian or human rights campaigns which has doggedly monitored the extermination campaigns. The killings have subsided and there is now a faint hope of a peace agreement. But this seemingly happy prospect has only made the randomness of global compassion more unhinged and unprincipled.

This year is the tenth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. It has seen Kofi Annan apologise for ignoring warnings that a mass slaughter was about to begin, and every Western government accept that they were guilty of sins of omission, except, inevitably, the French, whose despicable role in Rwanda came close to the sin of commission.

As the air was filled with the drumming of chests being beaten and the cries of 'never again' being bellowed in all languages except French, another African disaster was being ignored. Since the autumn of last year, Arab militias have driven one million people from their homes in the Darfur province of Sudan. Government forces have overseen and participated in massacres, the summary executions of civilians and the burnings of towns and villages. Those who escaped now face the risk of famine.

Few outside Sudan cared or indeed noticed until Human Rights Watch issued the first of two terrible reports in April (available on hrw.org for readers with a strong stomach). Steve Crawshaw, its London director, told me how he had to hammer away at the doors of newspapers, television stations and government departments before he could get them to take notice - which, to their credit, a few eventually did.

Sudan is totalitarian in the Islamist north and anarchic in the war-ravaged south. But the difficulties of reporting from the countries at the far end of the atrocity curve can't on their own account for the months of indifference. Human Rights Watch was able to send investigators into Darfur, after all, and they got out to tell their stories. The phoniness of the promise of media pluralism has its part to play.

The breaking of the print unions power by Rupert Murdoch was meant to give the public more choice in the newspaper market, cable and satellite were meant to bring more choice to television viewing, and the internet was meant to deliver an unstoppable torrent of divergent news and views. In the event, if more hasn't always meant worse, as Kingsley Amis promised, it has often meant more of the same. Everyone does what everyone else is doing, and piles resources into the big story of the day.

At the time of the Rwandan massacres, the rich world's media were obsessed with the OJ Simpson case. When the Taliban and al-Qaeda were persecuting women, exterminating Shia Muslims and plotting the destruction of American embassies and warships, all eyes were staring at the stains Bill Clinton had left on Monica Lewinsky's dress. Today it's Iraq.

Beyond the media's tunnel vision lies the persistence of the habit of the rich world using the poor world to buttress its prejudices. In the Cold War the Left highlighted the crimes of capitalism in Chile, South Africa and East Timor; the Right preferred to concentrate on the slave empires of Stalin and Mao. Iraq epitomised the screaming hypocrises of both sides. When Saddam was the de facto ally of America and Europe, Western governments muted their condemnations of his crimes while the Western Left pledged its undying support to the Iraqi opponents of a fascist regime. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, Western governments denounced him as a new Hitler while the scoundrel wing of the Western Left dropped the Iraqi dissidents overnight and began to mutter excuses for their former enemy.

The 1990s were meant to bring an end to all of that humbug and see the triumph of universal values of human rights, but what advances they made haven't always been confident. It still helps the oppressed to have a powerful constituency in the rich world with a political, ethnic or religious interest in lobbying on their behalf. I mean no disrespect to the Christian charities which have had the thankless task of monitoring the Sudanese disaster when I say that one great problem the inhabitants of Darfur face is that they aren't Christians. A second is that they aren't the victims of capitalism. Darfur is a Muslim province, and as Human Rights Watch points out the massacres are a straight-forward race war by Arab Muslims who want to ethnically cleanse African Muslims and steal their land.

The UN has been as useless as it was in Rwanda. Its High Commissioner for Human Rights, Bertrand Ramcharan, suppressed a report his own officials had made on the 'reign of terror in Darfur'. Earlier this month, the United Nations followed that ignoble performance with a gesture so insulting the word contemptuous doesn't begin to cover the ground: its members elected Sudan to a seat on the UN's Human Rights Commission. The votes came from other African dictatorships, but the desire of thieves to stick together isn't the end of the bitter story. Democratic governments have worked to bring an end to the civil war in the south between Muslims and Christians. There is the possibility of a settlement to what has been one of the worst conflicts of our time.

Crawshaw and many others suspect that the international community's bluff has been called by the Sudanese government; that there is an implicit threat that if diplomats and ministers make a fuss about Darfur then it will wreck the peace deal in the south. In other words, atrocity must be allowed to flourish so other atrocities can be prevented.

Saturday, May 08, 2004

Naturally, Sudan has just been given a seat on the UN Human Rights Commission.

Financial Times
May 5, 2004

HEADLINE: Outrage over Sudan's human rights role at UN

BYLINE: By MARK TURNER

DATELINE: UNITED NATIONS

BODY:


Sudan yesterday won a seat on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, outraging human rights groups, exasperating UN officials and prompting the US to walk out in protest.

Sichan Siv, the US ambassador to the economic and social council, was "perplexed and dismayed" by the decision to put forward "a country that massacres its own African citizens", and said: "The US will not participate in this absurdity."

The annual spectacle of the world's worst human rights offenders being elected to the commission has become a source of deep embarrassment for the UN and a rallying cry for its critics. The membership of Zimbabwe and Cuba this year caused similar outrage, while Libya's chairmanship of the commission last year became a must-mention in any anti-UN tirade.

Sudan's uncontested election, backed by the African regional group, comes as UN officials say a catastrophe is unfolding in its Darfur region.

Jan Egeland, the UN's humanitarian chief, recently described "an organised campaign of forced depopulation of entire areas", in which "entire villages are looted, burned down and sometimes bombed. Large numbers of civilians have been killed and scores of women and children have been abducted, raped and tortured," he said.

"Scorched-earth tactics are being employed throughout Darfur. I consider this to be ethnic cleansing."

Mr Siv said yesterday that "Sudan's membership on the commission threatens to undermine not only its work, but its very credibility".

Sudan's envoy retorted that the US was "utterly blinded by cultural arrogance and sensational hegemony", and accused it of "turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed by American forces" in Iraq.

But human rights groups, for once in concert with the American right, also condemned Sudan's election.

Joanna Weschler, from Human Rights Watch, said the problem lay with the UN's system of granting regional groups a set number of seats, with no minimum criteria.

Mass murder & ethnic cleansing escalate in western Sudan

New York Times
March 27, 2004

HEADLINE: Will We Say 'Never Again' Yet Again?

BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF (nicholas@nytimes.com)

DATELINE: ALONG THE CHAD-SUDAN BORDER

For decades, whenever the topic of genocide has come up, the refrain has been, "Never again."

Yet right now, the government of Sudan is engaging in genocide against three large African tribes in its Darfur region here. Some 1,000 people are being killed a week, tribeswomen are being systematically raped, 700,000 people have been driven from their homes, and Sudan's Army is even bombing the survivors.

And the world yawns.

So what do we tell refugees like Muhammad Yakob Hussein, who lives in the open desert here because his home was burned and his family members killed in Sudan? He now risks being shot whenever he goes to a well to fetch water. Do we advise such refugees that "never again" meant nothing more than that a Fuhrer named Hitler will never again construct death camps in Germany?

Interviews with refugees like Mr. Hussein -- as well as with aid workers and U.N. officials -- leave no doubt that attacks in Darfur are not simply random atrocities. Rather, as a senior U.N. official, Mukesh Kapila, put it, "It is an organized attempt to do away with a group of people."

"All I have left is this jalabiya," or cloak, said Mr. Hussein, who claimed to be 70 but looked younger (ages here tend to be vague aspirations, and they usually emerge in multiples of 10). Mr. Hussein said he'd fled three days earlier after an attack in which his three brothers were killed and all his livestock stolen: "Everything is lost. They burned everything."

Another man, Khamis Muhammad Issa, a strapping 21-year-old, was left with something more than his clothes -- a bullet in the back. He showed me the bulge of the bullet under the skin. The bullet wiggled under my touch.

"They came in the night and burned my village," he said. "I was running away and they fired. I fell, and they thought I was dead."

In my last column, I called these actions "ethnic cleansing." But let's be blunt: Sudan's behavior also easily meets the definition of genocide in Article 2 of the 1948 convention against genocide. That convention not only authorizes but also obligates the nations ratifying it -- including the U.S. -- to stand up to genocide.

The killings are being orchestrated by the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, partly through the Janjaweed militia, made up of Arab raiders armed by the government. The victims are non-Arabs: blacks in the Zaghawa, Massaliet and Fur tribes. "The Arabs want to get rid of anyone with black skin," Youssef Yakob Abdullah said. In the area of Darfur that he fled, "there are no blacks left," he said.

In Darfur, the fighting is not over religion, for the victims as well as the killers are Muslims. It is more ethnic and racial, reflecting some of the ancient tension between herdsmen (the Arabs in Darfur) and farmers (the black Africans, although they herd as well). The Arabs and non-Arabs compete for water and forage, made scarce by environmental degradation and the spread of the desert.

In her superb book on the history of genocide, "A Problem from Hell," Samantha Power focuses on the astonishing fact that U.S. leaders always denounce massacres in the abstract or after they are over -- but, until Kosovo, never intervened in the 20th century to stop genocide and "rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred." The U.S. excuses now are the same ones we used when Armenians were killed in 1915 and Bosnians and Rwandans died in the 1990's: the bloodshed is in a remote area; we have other priorities; standing up for the victims may compromise other foreign policy interests.

I'm not arguing that we should invade Sudan. But one of the lessons of history is that very modest efforts can save large numbers of lives. Nothing is so effective in curbing ethnic cleansing as calling attention to it.

President Bush could mention Darfur or meet a refugee. The deputy secretary of state could visit the border areas here in Chad. We could raise the issue before the U.N. And the onus is not just on the U.S.: it's shameful that African and Muslim countries don't offer at least a whisper of protest at the slaughter of fellow Africans and Muslims.

Are the world's pledges of "never again" really going to ring hollow one more time?

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Independent (London)
April 23, 2004

HEADLINE: CRISIS IN SUDAN: RAPE, TORTURE, AND ONE MILLION FORCED TO FLEE AS SUDAN'S CRISIS UNFOLDS. WILL WE MOVE TO STOP IT?

BYLINE: DECLAN WALSH


THE FIRST sign is the ominous drone of a plane. Ageing Russian Antonovs sweep hundreds of feet over the remote Sudanese village, dispatching their deadly payload of crude barrel bombs. They randomly explode among the straw-roofed huts, sending terrified families scurrying for safety - but there is none.

Next comes the Janjaweed, a fearsome Arab militia mounted on camels and horses, and armed with AK-47 rifles and whips. They murder the men and boys of fighting age, gang-rape the women - sometimes in front of their families - and burn the houses. Their cattle are stolen, their modest possessions carted off.

Survivors dash for the border with neighbouring Chad, where hordes of Sudanese refugees are clinging to life in an inhospitable desert area, threatened by disease epidemics, looming famine and still more attacks.

This is where some of the world's worst human rights abuses are occurring and nothing is being done to stop it. This is ethnic cleansing Sudanese- style. A government-sponsored campaign, led by Arab tribesmen against their black, African neighbours, has triggered the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time and - with the world's eyes fixed on Iraq - its most forgotten calamity.

According to a confidential UN human rights report, seen by The Independent, the government forces are leading a "reign of terror", perpetrated by war criminals who may be guilty of crimes against humanity.

But, because of apparent delaying tactics by the government of Sudan, the report will not be aired at a UN Human Rights Commission meeting today.

More than one million people have been displaced since war erupted in Darfur - a remote western province the size of California - early last year. Another 110,000 have crossed into the harsh, mine-strewn deserts of eastern Chad.

According to the International Crisis Group, Darfur represents the "potential horror story in 2004". The Overseas Development Institute says there is "a clear risk of large-scale famine mortality".

After initially refusing to allow the UN team to visit Darfur, the Sudanese authorities changed their mind at the last-minute this week - delaying the confidential report's publication until after today's vote on whether to send a UN envoy to the country. The delay has provoked outrage from human rights campaigners, who see it as a blatant ploy to deflect scrutiny of its notoriously poor human rights record.

Jemera Rone of Human Rights Watch said: "The Sudan government is trying to delay and delay these missions. It is trying everything it can to avoid UN censure."

There is much to hide. Darfur has been at war since the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) launched a rebellion early last year, citing economic marginalisation, chronic underdevelopment and the government's failure to protect farming tribes from attacks by armed Arab nomads. The SLA was later joined by a second rebel group, the loosely-allied Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

The war has pungent echoes of the 22-year war against the SPLA rebels, which is now winding down because ofo peace talks in neighbouring Kenya. To quell the southern insurgency, Khartoum sent squadrons of bombers, armed local Arab militas and manipulated Western aid. Now it is using the same ruthless tactics in Darfur.

Despite sporadic fighting between government and rebels, the brunt of the war has been borne by defenceless civilians. This week's UN report echoes earlier human rights investigations into its "scorched earth" strategy targeted at the Zaghawa, Massalit and Fur tribes, which are accused of supporting the two rebel groups.

Ageing Russian cargo planes attack first, lobbing crude bombs over towns and villages with wells or markets. Refugees describe the bombs - which in the southern war were simply oil drums packed with explosive and metal shards - as "big barrels". Others say they were attacked by helicopter gunships.

Those who survive the aerial bombardment are targeted by a follow-up offensive led by the Janjaweed militia, regular government soldiers, or both. From nomadic Arab tribes, the Janjaweed have traditionally battled with Darfur's farming and trading tribes for control of the area's scarce resources.

According to the UN report: "Janjaweed were invariably said to use horses and camels, while government soldiers were described as travelling in military vehicles," it said. "Both were dressed in combat fatigues and both were well-armed." An orgy of destruction and bloodshed ensues. Some victims talk of being stripped and repeatedly whipped or beaten with the butt of a gun.

The Janjaweed round up herds of cattle, camels and goats and steal all other possessions. The theft of livestock - the main form of wealth in Darfur - is to render the villagers destitute for life. Some of the stolen goods are sold in government-controlled towns.

More than 100 desperate refugees handed lists of their stolen goods to the UN researchers. Sexual violence is a widely-used "weapon of war" according to the UN report.

Gangs of Janjaweed rape non-Arab women, sometimes at gunpoint and in front of family members. The rape is usually accompanied by beating or whipping.

Some victims have become pregnant, although researchers admit accurate information is difficult to establish due to the intense local stigma. Some assaults have clear racial overtones. One 18-year-old woman told Human Rights Watch that her attacker stuck a knife into her vagina, saying "You get this because you are black."

During such attacks, hundreds of children have been abducted, according to HRW, echoing slave raids carried out by another government-sponsored Arab militia, the Murahaleen, in southern Sudan.

Human rights groups say the spectre of ethnic cleansing, driven by province- wide panic and fear, hangs over the co-ordinated government attacks. The Intermediate Technology Development Group estimates that up to 60 per cent of villages have been "destroyed, burnt or abandoned because of attacks from the warring parties."

Until last January, President Omar el-Bashir's government prevented international humanitarian assistance to Darfur. Since then, a trickle of agencies have moved into the province but their movements remain severely restricted by the government.

Some have witnessed the atrocities first hand. The UN aid worker Ben Parker said yesterday: "I saw a village on fire east of El Genenina on Wednesday. The people ran away when they saw our car. We felt it wasn't safe to stop. I can't say I saw the Janjaweed lighting the match but that is their modus operandi."

Exhausted, terrified and hungry, and with nowhere else to run, a flood of 110,000 refugees have crossed into neighbouring Chad. They have found scant protection in the hot, inhospitable desert.

Some parts are still littered with landmines and other unexploded ordnance from Chad's own civil war in the 1970s. In some camps, up to 80 per cent of the refugees are children. Their fathers are thought to be dead, have remained behind to salvage their possessions, or have joined the rebel forces.

Western aid agencies are struggling to provide the refugees with water, food and medicine in extremely difficult conditions. Disease is a hovering threat - in Tine town, doctors reported 25 incidences of meningitis, which is above the threshold for an epidemic. Relief workers fear a rapid deterioration of conditions over the coming two months once seasonal rains start to pound down on the area.

But the refugees' greatest fear is for their own security.

Even across the Chad border, they are not guaranteed sanctuary from the ravages of their own government. In February, three people were killed and about 50 injured when bombs from a Sudanese aircraft landed just over the border.

In an effort to protect refugees from cross-border raids, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Tuesday it had moved more than 31,000 Sudanese refugees further inland in eastern Chad.

According to the UN report the Chadian military has engaged in battles with Janjaweed militiamen who slip across the border to harass refugees and steal cattle. In a recent exchange of fire, two Chadian soldiers died and one was injured.

President Bashir described the Janjaweed as rebels not supported by the government - an account disputed many workers and diplomats. The Janajweed are heavily armed, their leaders are in provincial offices, use satellite phones and drive government jeeps.

"They are not out-of-control bandits. They work in close cooperation with the government forces. They loot and rape and nobody is allowed touch them," said Jemera Rone of Human Rights Watch. "It's open season on all the ethnic communities."

On Monday, the Sudanese Humanitarian Affairs Minister, Ibrahim Hamid, led a rare media tour of selected towns in Darfur. He said the government would reconstruct areas hit by the fighting. "As you can see, the psychological effect of this ceasefire is tremendous and since Sunday there has been no violation of this ceasefire," he said in Nyala town.

He refused to comment on the government's refusal to issue a visa to Jan Egeland, the UN's chief humanitarian co-ordinator. Mr Egeland has described the violence against Africans in Darfur as "ethnic cleansing, but not genocide" and termed the situation "one of the most forgotten and neglected humanitarian crises."

In its conclusions, the UN report called for an international commission of inquiry to establish the scale of the crimes against humanity in Darfur, and the complicity of the Sudan government in the atrocities.