June 11th, 2008
Madeleine Albright points out yet another disastrous consequence of Bush’s imperialist war of choice: by announcing he would trample the sovereignty of any foreign nation without provocation (he threatened Iran again just yesterday), Bush forced every vulnerable nation into a defensive posture, strengthening their resistance to enforcement of international law and their reluctance to allow any interference in their internal affairs, even for humanitarian relief in disasters. In the process of destroying two countries to no benficial effect, Bush reversed a 10-year trend toward consensus on human rights, and made international intervention in crisis situations impossible.
(more…)
Categories: Culture, Darfur, Economics, General, Iran, Iraq |
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April 8th, 2007
Hilzoy knows of one:
Instead of writing about the genocide, I want to focus on Mbaye Diagne, a Senegalese military observer who was profiled in the excellent Frontline program Ghosts of Rwanda. His background was unremarkable: according to the profile on the Frontline site, “Capt. Mbaye, a devout Muslim, was one of nine children from a poor family on the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal’s capital. He was the first in his family to go to college. After graduating from the University of Dakar, he joined the army and worked his way up through the ranks.”
But what he did during the Rwandan genocide was extraordinary. Again, from Frontline:
“”A real-life Cool Hand Luke…”
“The bravest of the brave…”
“…the greatest man I have ever known…”
These are the words of those who knew Capt. Mbaye Diagne, a young Senegalese army officer who served in Rwanda as an unarmed U.N. military observer. I have never heard another human being described in the way that those who knew Mbaye describe him: he was, as one of his colleagues told me, “the kind of guy you meet once in a lifetime.”
He was a hero.
From literally the first hours of the genocide, Capt. Mbaye simply ignored the U.N.’s standing orders not to intervene, and single-handedly began saving lives.
The Amazing Race went to Auschwitz last week. It was, considering that its a reality show, tastefully and respectfully done. You see places like Auschwitz and you read about people like the men who killed the Major and all your left with the inescapable impression that the human race is a collection of right bloody bastards.
I live in the probably vain hope that my children or my children’s children will one day read that last sentence and wonder what I could possibly have been talking about.
Categories: Culture, Darfur |
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January 20th, 2006
SaveDarfur.org is trying:
Million Voices for Darfur
The Save Darfur Coalition, in cooperation with over 150 faith-based, advocacy, and humanitarian aid organizations, is proud to announce the launching of the Million Voices for Darfur campaign, an unprecedented effort to raise awareness of the genocide taking place in Darfur and promote the actions necessary to end it. The goal of the Million Voices for Darfur campaign is to generate one million hand-written and electronic postcards from Americans demanding a stronger and more effective U.S. response. Specifically, the campaign calls on the United States government to support a stronger multinational force to protect the civilians of Darfur. Click here to visit the Million Voices site and learn more.
Click here for the Million Voices press release
Call the President and Ask him make Darfur a priority in 2006
As the President puts the finishing touches on both his State of the Union address and the FY07 budget, please take a moment to remind him that ending the genocide in Darfur must be a priority in 2006. The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
Categories: Darfur |
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January 18th, 2006
An interfatih group in Canada is pressure the four major parties ahead of the federal elections to make Darfur a campaign issue.
No one thiks it will have any effect on the elections.
Categories: Darfur |
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January 17th, 2006
The Sudanese government is drawing a line in the sand:
KHARTOUM, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Sudan on Friday rejected a suggestion by U.N. head Kofi Annan that U.S. and European troops be sent to Darfur, saying the international community should give more cash to African forces already on the ground.
“We think that the African Union is doing a good job and so far they have not said they are unable to do that job,” Foreign Minister Lam Akol told Reuters.
“Naturally what should happen is to give them the money they want, not to complicate matters by involving another force on the ground,” he said
… Akol said the AU was a peace monitoring force and Sudan did not need the military power of the United States in Darfur.
“What would they do other than what the African forces can do?” he said. “We are not looking for a force who is going to fight,” he added.
This is yet another test of the West’s commitment to the principle of “Never again”. Without a strong military presence from the West, it is likely that the Sudanese government will either be able to prevent UN troops from gaining access to the region or force the UN to work under rules that makes their presence effectively useless. The US and Europe has failed nearly every test that Darfur has presented them. Let’s hope they do not fail this one.
Categories: Darfur |
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January 13th, 2006
The UN is planning to take over the protection of Darfur form African Union troops:
The current African Union (AU) force in Darfur, comprising some 7,000 troops and monitors from African nations, is expected to run out of funds soon, with no future commitments from voluntary contributors who have financed it to the tune of about 17 million dollars per month.
The Addis Ababa-based AU released a report Thursday indicating its willingness to hand over its peacekeeping mission to the world body.
“The time has come to make a pronouncement on the future of the AU mission in Darfur and the ways and means to adapt it to the present challenges, including the handover to the United Nations at the appropriate time,” the AU said.
Asked to comment, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters Thursday that the AU had indicated it would want to stay on for another nine to 12 months — “provided the donor community gives them the necessary resources, and logistical support”.
“If that logistical support and financial support doesn’t come, they will run out of money by March,” he warned.
“Obviously, the international community cannot allow that situation to go unaddressed, and in all likelihood will have to look at other options, including possibly the United Nations working with the AU to address the situation,” he added.
Annan seems to recognize that the current force is inadequate for the task:
Sudan, he said, is a large territory. “And I think whichever force is there with this kind of mandate has to be mobile, has to have tactical air support, must have helicopters and the ability to respond very quickly. So, it would be a different type of structure.”
Annan said an expanded force would also need very sophisticated equipment and logistical support. “I will be turning to governments with capacity to join in that peacekeeping operation — if we were to be given the mandate.”
The current AU force is confined to troops from Africa but the proposed new force will have troops from outside the war-torn continent, he added. “We want government with military capacities to join,” he said.
The problem, of course, is creating that force. Annan has asked for help form the US and the West, but, so far, to no avail:
he United Nations is considering a tough mobile force to police Sudan’s Darfur region and hopes the United States and European military will help stop the bloodshed, rape and plunder, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Wednesday.
But Annan said that first the Sudan government, the 15-member Security Council and the African Union, which has sent the only foreign troops to Darfur, had to agree to a U.N. operation.
“We need to get the (Sudan) government to work with us in bringing in an expanded force with troops from outside Africa, because until recently it has maintained that it will only accept African troops,” Annan told reporters. “But I think we have gone beyond that now.”
It is worth noting that the US has ties to Sudan because Sudan and the US share a common enemy: al-Queda. The US should take advantage of that relationship to pressure the Sudan into allowing the UN to place a force in Darfur. And then the US and EU should consent to Annan’s request and place their troops and logistics at the command of this new force.
Categories: Darfur |
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January 12th, 2006
There isn’t much to add to this report:
“Killings, rape, torture and other heinous crimes against non-Arabs in Darfur are well-documented”, said PHR investigator and report author John Heffernan. “But PHR’s in-depth investigation shows that the GOS and the Janjaweed, have in a systematic way attacked the very survival of a people by destroying property, livestock, communities and families , driving victims into a terrain unable to sustain life, and then repeatedly obstructing humanitarian assistance, their only lifeline.”
The report also illuminates and analyzes an overlooked clause in the Genocide Convention which defines the crime as including deliberate infliction on a group “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part.” The PHR investigators documented the precariousness of life in the vast no-man’s land beyond the network of villages and transport. One refugee told PHR investigators that she overheard her attacker say, “Don’t bother, don’t waste the bullet, they’ve got nothing to eat and they will die from hunger.”
… The three villages, chosen to represent the ethnic and geographic diversity of Darfur, were far from one another and attacked at different times. Yet, eyewitness accounts of the assaults were strikingly similar: early morning attacks by armed men on horseback or in pick-up trucks, backed up by Sudanese military aircraft. The attackers killed and raped villagers, and then looted and burned houses and shops, poisoned wells, stole livestock and torched prime farmland. The majority of people PHR interviewed reported the collective loss of thousands of camels, cattle, donkeys, sheep and goats, as well as thousands of sacks of sorghum, millet, ground nuts and other food stocks; the torching of scores of acres of prime farmland and looting of virtually all personal possessions, including mattresses, rugs, clothing, radios, and Korans.
With wells poisoned, homes and shops burned to the ground and attackers often in hot pursuit of their victims, survivors fled into the harsh desert. Many wandered through the bleak landscape for weeks or months. They escaped death by eating wild foods growing in the desert and eventually found their way to outside assistance. Others were not so lucky. PHR found that many households experienced a substantial drop in size due to death and separation while seeking refuge.
The average household size in all three villages before the attacks was 12.1 people, while after the attacks, the average household had shrunk to just 6.7. Out of a total combined population of 558 people in all of the households of respondents, 251 were confirmed killed or missing; of these 141 were confirmed killed.
Never again was supposed to be a promise.
Categories: Darfur |
1 Comment
January 11th, 2006
The US urged Chad to end its dispute with Sudan over Sudan arming rebels in Chad:
The United States told Chad on Tuesday to end a dispute with neighboring Sudan over rebel and militia raids in Sudan’s Darfur region and said the conflict posed serious risks to refugees and displaced people.
During talks in Washington with Chad’s Foreign Minister Ahmat Allam-Mi, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick made clear U.S. concern over the deteriorating security situation between the two sides, the State Department said.
The words are nice, but I have to wonder what the US is going to do to stop the flow of arms into the region:
Weapons are flowing to anti-government rebels in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region from neighboring Chad, Eritrea and Libya in violation of a U.N. arms embargo, U.N. experts said in a report obtained by Reuters on Tuesday.
The embargo, imposed on all non-government forces in Darfur in July 2004, has also failed to prevent the government from arming the Arab militias that act as its proxy fighters in the Darfur conflict, the experts said.
Since a second civil war ended in southern Sudan, the government has in addition shifted troops, arms and attack helicopters from the south to Darfur in the west, they said.
Southern rebel groups have at the same time helped train and arm the rebel fighters in Darfur, the panel reported.
The Sudanese and Chad governments are using rebels in each other’s country to fight a proxy war, and the Southern Sudanese rebels are using the western Sudanese rebels in much the same fashion. And all the while arms pour into the region and the AU force finds itself out-manned and out-gunned. So while it is good that the US is vocal about the problem, talk alone isn’t going to solve anything.
Categories: Darfur |
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January 10th, 2006
A peacekeeper was killed in an ambush, another sign that the cycle of violence is proving difficult to end in Darfur:
Talks to end the bloody conflict in Darfur have been suspended for a week to respect a Muslim holiday, mediators said on Monday, but there is little sign of progress as the security situation in the western Sudan region worsens and the two sides fail to agree on key aspects of sharing power.
African Union (AU) officials called off the peace negotiations in Abuja on Sunday to allow Muslim delegates from the Sudanese government and two Darfur rebel movements to celebrate the Eid el-Kabir festival. Discussions are set to resume on 15 January.
Mediators had hoped that this seventh round of talks between Khartoum, the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which began in November, would yield a breakthrough in the conflict which has been raging for three years.
But they admit that the only tangible result so far has been keeping the sides talking.
The issue is power sharing. The rebels in Darfur simply do not trust the government and want substantial, official power in the new government. The government has no interest in sharing such power and is only offering an advisory position. Each side appears to feel that it can achieve more militarily than it can at the negotiating table, and so far they are probably correct. The African Union force is not strong enough to separate the combatants, so there is little incentive to come to the table in good faith. A NATO force would be more effective and possibly sufficient to get the parties to negotiate in good faith.
Categories: Darfur |
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January 9th, 2006
The peace treaty that ended the North-South civil war in the Sudan is on shaky ground:
A year after it was signed, Sudan’s Coprehensive Peace Agreement that ended more than two decades of war has overcome several obstacles but is still threatened on several fronts, analysts say.
A north reluctant to loosen its grip on power, a south already leaning towards independence, other conflicts in the west and east and a lack of international commitment are only some of the perils the agreement faces.
The government in the North is shaky and thus has little room to maneuver between hardliners and the peace treaty:
“One of the most worrisome things is the systematic effort on the part of the National Congress party to delay the implementation of the agreement,” said analyst David Mozersky, from the International Crisis Group (ICG).
Beshir, who seized power in a 1989 military coup, has a tiny support base and has to open up the political arena to competition and relinquish any control on the country’s oil bounty.
“The facade of shared governance masks the ruthless preservation of power by the” Islamic regime, US-based Sudan analyst Eric Reeves wrote in a recent commentary.
The rebels in the South are mistrustful, in a state of leadership-flux and still appear to view independence as the only guarantee of their safety:
But the SPLM’s contribution to the momentum of the peace deal has also fallen short of expectations.
“The south is more worried about its future independence than preserving a united Sudan,” Haroun, of The Future Trends Foundation for Strategic Studies and Dialogue, based in Khartoum, said.
He was referring to a referendum on self-determination due to be held in six years.
The death of the SPLM’s historical leader John Garang in a July helicopter crash also dealt a serious blow to a peace process he had come to symbolize.
The lack of charisma and credibility of his successor Salva Kiir has left the SPLM’s different factions struggling to outline a clear vision and oversee its metamorphosis from a rebel group to ruling political party.
And the international community doesn’t seem to care beyond how it all effects the oil shipments:
But analysts also blamed the international community for failing to stand by its commitments and letting Africa’s largest country run the risk of sinking back into conflict.
Mozersky took to task foreign powers for their “lack of visible engagement to be the guarantors of the peace process.”
The African Union, which deployed close to 7,000 troops in Darfur in 2005, took much flak for failing to stabilize the area, where an estimated 300,000 people have died and 2.4 million been displaced.
“But the UN Security Council fell short by passing resolutions and holding nobody accountable. The US labeled Darfur genocide but then did very little about it,” Mozersky argued.
It seems that the situation in Darfur both makes the treaty implementation harder and the treaty’s lackluster implementation makes the situation in Darfur worse. As long as the situation in Darfur goes on, the government has to deal with hardliners who advocate something close to complete genocide in Darfur. Angering the hardliners appears hard enough - -angering them on two fronts seems to be next to impossible. The failure of the treaty to secure the South for the Sudan government gives the hardliners a reason to say that negotiation leads to disintegration. That, obviously, leads to harsher measures in Dafur. And as long as Darfur is on fire and the government distracted by that, there is less reason for the rebels in the South to cooperate.
Round and round, down and down we go …
Categories: Darfur |
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January 6th, 2006
The UN is pulling people out of the Darfur region due to a buildup of troops on either side of the Sudan-Chad border. Chad is rattling its sabers over accusations that Sudan is supporting rebels in the region:
Mr Dujarric said it was: “due to the increasing instability in the affected areas, including a buildup of forces on either side of the Sudan-Chad border with increased potential for armed conflict.”
But he said the move by the 5,783-strong UNMIS did not signal an overall evacuation from the area.
“Essential life-saving humanitarian services delivered by the UN will continue and the mission will monitor the situation and carry out a fresh security assessment of the affected areas in the next two to three weeks,” said Mr Dujarric.
… “There is a heavy buildup of troops on both sides of the border. It has been quite bad in the last three weeks,” Mr Somerwill noted.” “I think there is some cause for concern.”
… Chadian President Idriss Deby recently accused Sudan of “exporting” the Darfur crisis to his country, as Central African leaders met at a crisis summit in Ndjamena over escalating tensions between the neighboring states.
“The Khartoum regime is secretively going ahead with the recruitment of mercenaries and other elements to put into action its Machiavellian plan – the destabilization of Chad,” Mr Deby said in opening remarks to the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) mini-summit.
Mr Deby has repeatedly accused the Khartoum regime of supporting Chadian rebels in eastern Chad, on the border with Darfur, which has been in the throes of a civil war for three years.
If this spreads to Chad, then a local problem becomes a regional one, capable of destabilizing other nations in northern Africa. This is a good example on what the lack of NATO presence means. If there were NATO troops on the ground, it is highly unlikely that Chad and Sudan would feel free to begin escalating their dispute. In fact, with NATO boots on the ground, it is likely that there would be no refugee crisis in Chad and thus no vector for Sudan to act against Chad, if, indeed, that is what they are doing.
But there are no NATO troops in the region, and Chad and Sudan are walking towards a line, that if crossed, could spread the violence across the region.
Categories: Darfur |
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January 5th, 2006
The genocide in Darfur is the kind of on-going story with little in the way of dramatic change that the media and, frankly, bloggers, are not very good at covering. If something new doesn’t happen, if the story doesn’t change, then there is nothing to report. As a result, the issue is easy to forget. So starting tommorrow, I am going to try to write something about Darfur every day this blog publishes. On days that I cannot find news stories, I will try to post something on the history and or the personalities involved. I hope to keep myself and our readers better informed,and thus better able to understand what I can do to help, about the situation.
Categories: Darfur |
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