Sudan: The Passion of the Present

Genocide in Darfur getting little response, lecturer says

From Lehigh University's "Brown and White"...

Rajan Menon, International Relations professor, discussed a sensitive word in a March 28 lecture on an event equally horrific as the Holocaust—the Darfur genocide.

The term “genocide” comes from the roots genos (Greek for family, tribe or race) and cide (Latin for massacre). It was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish legal scholar in 1943, after WWII and was adopted into international law at the Geneva Conventions.

“Darfur is engaged in all matters of destruction ... from rape, pillage, to the destruction of villages,” Menon said. “And the response from the international community is either too late, too little or nothing at all.”

According to Menon, the most important issues at hand are the “systematic killing of people,” and “the issue of sovereign nation-state.”

To understand what is happening in Darfur, Menon described the region in western Sudan as having a “long and complicated history,” with many tense relationships among groups of people of different race, ethnicity, lifestyle and religion.

When Sudan was created in the 1950s, the region of Darfur was heavily neglected by the government. With no investment into it, it became a very backward and poor area.

Living on the peripheries of Sudan, Darfur was denied economic resources, political power, adequate infrastructure, and proper investment. Conflict began to brew in 1983 and since then 1 million people have died. In 2000, with the spread of information, there came a political awakening. Beginning to realize the extent of their oppression, Darfurians began to assemble and demand rights, marking “the rise of the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement—neither of which were secessionist—but just wanted equal political representation and resources,” Menon said.

The inhumane acts committed in Darfur are hard to process. Of the 7 million people, 300,000 men, women and children have been killed. 7,000 villages have been destroyed.

“Darfur is even turning against itself,” Menon said. “Subject people to these extreme conditions for long periods of time and that’s what happens. Nobody wants to help one another anymore. The village burns down and where do people go? Another village—but those people don’t want you there. People are fighting to survive.”

Menon explored in particular the role that rape plays within the acts of brutality committed by the Junjaweed.

“Rape demoralizes and degrades the society," he said. "When it happens, the question arises—what kind of society cannot look after its women? Where is the society’s dignity?”

The Junjaweed, extremists in Arabist ideology, rape to reap more Arabs from the “primitive black tribes”—“to appropriate what is justly theirs” said Menon. This creates another class of people but most importantly—it is tearing apart the social fabric of society.

“Darfur is a traumatized child subjected over the years, repeatedly experiencing atrocities” Menon said.

As the international community looks in, nobody is quite sure what to do. The U.N., with a budget equal to that of the NYPD, does not have the resources nor the manpower to intervene. Avoiding using the term genocide has allowed the U.N. to stay out and keep the blame off themselves in case they were to fail (which they most likely would). Thus, they will not send in cavalry, Menon said.

Sitting on the Security Council, Russia is selling arms to the Sudanese and the Chinese have oil deals with Sudan and both intend to veto external intervention.

Sponsored by the World Affairs Club, Menon’s lecture left students thinking very profoundly on the very complicated issues at hand. The President of the World Affairs Club, Meredith Aach, ’08, said that it was important for her to arrange the lecture because, “a lot of people don’t know what Darfur is, where Darfur is, and what’s happening there.”

Project Awareness, a new club on campus, is also committed to spreading awareness on the genocide in Darfur. For more information, Professor Menon has recommended seeing the movie Hotel Rwanda, or reading the books "Darfur: A Short History of a Long War," written by coauthors Julie Flint and Alex de Waal, or "Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide," written by Gerard Prunier.

Hypocritical Arab generosity on Darfur (by Julie Flint)

Her latest commentary for Lebanon's "Daily Star"; thanks to both Save Darfur and the AlertNet "In the Press / Today on the Web" section...

It would be comical if it were not so cynical; cruel even. Arabs leaders meeting at the Arab League summit in Khartoum earlier this week offered to fund the African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Darfur to the tune of some $150 million, starting on October 1 of this year. However, the AU has been on the ground in Darfur since 2004, and in all that time the Arab League has invested $200,000 [...] in it - the equivalent, at the present rate of expenditure, of less than one day's running costs.

But there is less to the Arabs' new generosity than meets the eye. Much less. The AU's present mandate expires on September 30. That's either a big saving or a very nasty piece of politicking.

Winston Churchill once said of the Americans that "America will always do the right thing, after exhausting all other possibilities." When it comes to Darfur, the Arabs have pretty much exhausted all the possibilities within their range - from minimizing the unspeakably brutal, wholly man-made tragedy, to turning two blind eyes to it - and are now doing the wrong thing. The AU needs strengthening now, today, while it is in Darfur; not in six months' time, when it may not be. As Baba Gana Kingibe, the head of the AU mission in Sudan, said on hearing of the Arab decision: "This is medicine after death. We need the assistance now in order to be able to resolve the crisis."

The Arabs' sudden readiness to invest in the AU, comes as Khartoum discovers a new enthusiasm for a force that it has until now relentlessly obstructed. Sudanese diplomats have toured the continent lobbying African leaders and looking for the funds required to keep the mission going. They have even threatened to quit the AU if things did not go their way.

Their fear is not that Darfur will go to hell in a hand basket if the AU packs its bags; the government-supported Janjaweed are taking care of that. It is that the AU will be replaced by a United Nations force with teeth, which could act as a police force for the International Criminal Court. As international pressure to pull the AU out grows, so too does Khartoum's insistence on keeping it in. Anti-UN propaganda in the Sudanese press compares the threatened introduction of "foreign forces" into Darfur to the United States' invasion of Iraq, ignoring that some 10,000 peacekeepers are being deployed to Southern and Eastern Sudan and that the AU already has scores of international advisers in Darfur.

Khartoum was not a popular venue for the Arab League summit. Almost one in every three heads of state stayed away, including Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who blames the Sudanese government for an attempt on his life in Addis Ababa in June 1995, and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who has not forgotten that the National Islamic Front hosted the kingdom's arch-enemy, Osama bin Laden, and his terrorist network only a decade ago. But Khartoum will not have been unhappy with the Arabs' performance:

Although they stopped short of an outright rejection of wider international intervention in the conflict, they said there should be no UN deployment without Khartoum's approval. They not only remained silent about government atrocities in Darfur; they gave the victimizer the right to decide who may, or may not, act on the victims' behalf.

Although the Darfur conflict is often simplified to an Arab versus non-Arab struggle, with the Arabs cast as the villains, Darfur's Arab population is no less desperate for a solution to the conflict than the non-Arabs, namely the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit who form the backbone of the rebel movements. Most Arab tribes have resisted government blandishments to join the war and are attempting, for the fourth straight year, to maintain a position of neutrality between the government and the rebel forces. Those that have accepted Khartoum's shilling, primarily the northern Rizeigat camel herding tribes, are among the poorest people in Darfur, victims both of the capital's historic neglect of the peripheries and of the gradual death by drought and desertification of their old, pastoral way of life. The vast majority know their future lies not with a government 1,000 miles away that has never shown the slightest concern for them, but with their Darfurian neighbors - no matter what their ethnicity.

In the next six months - months that Khartoum's Arab accomplices have chosen to ignore - many people will die in Darfur. Because of growing insecurity, both in Darfur and across the border in Chad, more than half a million displaced and conflict-affected civilians are beyond the reach of relief. The UN has raised only $130 million of the $650 million it needs for 2006. The UN children's agency, UNICEF, has received just a tenth of the funding that it needs. International pressure on the Sudanese government and its murderous proxies is a sometime, and supremely unconvincing, thing. The UN's humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, says he fears that Darfur is returning to the "abyss" of early 2004 when the region was "the killing fields of this world." He predicts that those who cannot be reached "will soon get massively increased mortality."

But of that there was not a whisper in Khartoum this week. With unerring instinct, the leaders of the Arab world have once again seized the low moral ground.

Julie Flint has written extensively on Sudan. She is the author, with Alex de Waal, of "Darfur: A Short History of a Long War." She wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.

Mendez: "Darfur is unravelling"

A SAPA story from over a week ago that had been overlooked (although it didn't slip past Eric Reeves, who referred to it in his latest analysis)...

Sudan's strife-torn region of Darfur is unravelling and two million people there are increasingly vulnerable to human rights abuse, the UN envoy on genocide warned on Wednesday [March 22nd].

"No one disputes that the situation on the ground is unravelling, it's getting worse," Juan Mendez, special adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the prevention of genocide, said.

"The almost two million Darfurians who were vulnerable to human rights violations are more vulnerable now than they were a year ago," he said.

The conflict in Darfur between rebels and militias backed by Sudanese government troops has left some 300 000 people dead and displaced more than two million others since 2003.

African Union (AU) countries sent troops there in 2004 - a force which now numbers around 7 000 personnel - but the peacekeeping mission has suffered from poor funding and has struggled to contain the violence.

Imperative to boost AU force

Mendez, speaking during a three-day trip to Brussels to speak with officials from the European Union's main institutions, said that conditions had notably declined in the last six months.

"Not only are we at a status quo that is intolerable, we are actually back-tracking and we are back-tracking to a situation that is very vulnerable," he said.

He said the main problem was that the government in Khartoum had refused to respect an UN Security Council resolution demanding that it disarm local militiamen known as the Janjaweed.

"If they are not armed, they are incorporated into the security forces to the point where you don't know whether they act as Janjaweed, or police, or military," said Mendez.

The AU has agreed in principle to hand over its cash-strapped peacekeeping mission in Darfur to the UN but the Sudanese government has argued that the move would be counter-productive.

Mendez said it was imperative to boost the AU force and make its mandate more robust so that it can provide "more dynamic, active protection".

"They need to be supplemented by more troops and by greater military capacities and also by a clear change in mandate, so that they are actually allowed to protect people on the ground," he said.

Darfur, President Bush, and the Triumph of Expediency

Eric Reeves' latest full-length analysis is now available both on his site and on Sudan Tribune; here is the introduction...

(Much of this analysis does deal with the recent International Crisis Group report "To Save Darfur".)

In remarks that do far more to highlight US impotence and lack of resolve, President Bush went on to declare that, “‘this is serious business. This is not playing a diplomatic holding game.... When we say genocide, that means genocide has to be stopped’” (Deutsche Presse-Agentur, South African Press Agency [dateline: Washington, DC], March 29, 2006).

Perhaps President Bush has forgotten that his administration made a formal genocide determination over a year and a half ago: on September 9, 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell testified to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “genocide has been committed in Darfur, and the government of Sudan and the Janjawid bear responsibility.” The many hundreds of thousands of Darfuris who have subsequently perished, experienced violent displacement, rape, torture, and the misery of lives defined by fear and deprivation provide gruesomely abundant evidence that the genocide continues. These victims also make clear that the Bush administration does not really regard genocide in Darfur---and increasingly eastern Chad---as urgent or “serious business.” In fact, all evidence suggests that the administration is indeed playing precisely a “diplomatic holding game.”

Certainly if the President and his State Department think that a highly limited, finally nebulous commitment from NATO to provide transport and minimal logistics to an overwhelmed African Union force somehow sends “a clear signal” to Khartoum’s genocidaires, then we can be in no doubt that disingenuousness and expediency continue to rule US policy on Darfur. And there should be no mistake about the highly limited nature of NATO’s commitment. The word from NATO headquarters in Brussels yesterday was a strong re-assertion of previous declarations by NATO Secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer:

“NATO said it had agreed to a request by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to look at how it could provide support to troops there, but said there was no question of it intervening on the ground. ‘No one is discussing, planning or considering a NATO force on the ground in Darfur. That is not one of the options,’ NATO spokesman James Appathurai told a regular briefing. ‘We should look at this in the context of what NATO is already providing.’” (Reuters [dateline: Brussels], March 29, 2006)

What NATO is “already providing” consists entirely of transport lift capacity, as well as very limited logistics and training. This is certainly nothing that will change the calculations in Khartoum about how to continue with its genocidal counter-insurgency strategy, or how the regime might politically consolidate the effects of previous genocidal actions. It sends no “clear signal” to Khartoum that it must halt the genocide, but only confirms the regime in its belief that the Western powers are content to substitute words for meaningful action.

Moreover, de Hoop Scheffer has made it clear that NATO will not act without UN authority, precisely the authority that the African Union has recently refused to request. Instead, the AU (at its March 10 Peace and Security Council meeting in Addis Ababa) spoke only of a future handover to the UN---in six months---and this only “in principle.” Further, the just concluded Arab League summit (revealingly held in Khartoum) pointedly rejected any UN authorization or deployment unless requested by the genocidaires who make up the National Islamic Front regime. This is the context in which to understand NATO’s position on Darfur:

“[De Hoop Scheffer] ruled out [ ] sending troops from the western military alliance to Sudan's strife-torn Darfur province. De Hoop Scheffer said he believed that NATO could help in the region during the transition phase from an African Union operation to one led by the UN but only with a clear UN mandate. ‘Then we can discuss a NATO role, which I do see in the enabling sphere and not the boots of troops on the ground,’ he told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of EU defence ministers in Innsbruck, Austria.” (Agence France Presse, March 6, 2006)

President Bush’s assertion that the “involvement by NATO should send a 'clear signal'” to Khartoum, like his previous declaration that there should be “NATO stewardship” for the Darfur protection mission, is mere political expediency:

“President Bush declared this past Friday [March 17, 2006] that a security force for Darfur will require ‘NATO stewardship, planning, facilitating, organizing, probably double the number of peacekeepers that are there now, in order to start bringing some sense of security.’” (New York Times, February 17, 2006)

A month and a half later, and after thousands of additional genocidal deaths, there is no sign of meaningful “NATO stewardship.” Again, NATO itself has offered only minimal assistance, and anything more is contingent upon a UN takeover in Darfur that evidently won’t occur for almost half a year---and which Khartoum is already actively working to forestall. The AU force currently on the ground in Darfur, desperately outmanned and outgunned, is overwhelmed by the violence, and daily finds itself less and less able to respond to the insecurity that continues to attenuate the humanitarian lifeline upon which millions of human beings depend.

Nonetheless, the most recent African Union Peace and Security Council Communiqué (March 10, 2006) failed to acknowledge these weaknesses, and refused to move toward an immediate UN handover. Moreover, the AU Communiqué is not only hedged by various contingencies and qualifications---so many as to make the document largely meaningless beyond a vague gesture toward a terminus date of September 30, 2006---it refuses to acknowledge the central shortcoming of the AU mission: that it has no useful mandate to protect civilians or humanitarian operations.

This refusal is simultaneously a function of sheer inability (the AU has neither the manpower nor [the] resources to fulfill such a mandate) as well as the AU’s continued deference to Khartoum, which has allowed the AU force to increase in Darfur only on condition that the mandate not change. The official AU task remains the futile one of monitoring a non-existent cease-fire (one that, significantly, does not include the brutal Janjaweed militia forces). De facto expansion of the mandate by some AU commanders on the ground has made only marginal difference in the protection of civilians and humanitarians; the overall and rapid deterioration of security is obvious to all observers.

Humanitarian workers speaking (necessarily on condition of anonymity) to this writer and to a wide range of journalists, UN officials, and representatives of donor countries paint a terrifying picture of violent threats against themselves and their operations. Many thousands of square kilometers within Darfur (especially West Darfur and the Jebel Marra area) and in eastern Chad are completely inaccessible to humanitarian operations. And the size of these areas only grows. UNICEF reports that “increased insecurity has already prevented humanitarian agencies from teaching over half a million people [in Darfur]; if funding shortages continue, that number will only grow” (UN News Center, March 17, 2006). Insecurity in eastern Chad is too great to permit meaningful assessment, but at least 100,000 conflict-affected civilians---and very likely a great many more---are also beyond humanitarian reach.

Jan Egeland, the conscience [of] the UN, has also spoken explicitly about the humanitarian realities following from growing insecurity:

“As a result of [deteriorating insecurity], Egeland said, UN relief officials and relief organizations cannot reach more than 300,000 people on the Chad border in western Darfur and the central mountainous region of Jebal Marra because they are too dangerous. These unreachable areas, he said, ‘will soon get massively increased mortality because there is nothing else but international assistance.’ He expected deaths to increase markedly within weeks.” (Associated Press [dateline: United Nations], March 13, 2006)

Additional hundreds of thousands of civilians are inaccessible in South Darfur and North Darfur states. Egeland went on to declare that “Darfur is returning to ‘the abyss’ of early 2004 when the region was ‘the killing fields of this world.’ ‘We're losing ground every day in the humanitarian operation which is the lifeline for more than 3 million people.’” Again, in aggregate, UN figures---including those from the UN High Commission for Refugees---suggest a total population in need of approximately 4 million people throughout the greater humanitarian theater of Darfur and eastern Chad.

Former Marine captain visits Indiana to raise concern for Darfur / Retired Marine captain brings photos back from Darfur / More funding needed for Darfur peacekeepers

Three items (two stories and a letter to the editor) from over the past few days:

From the AP...

A retired Marine captain who spent six months monitoring the war-ravaged Darfur region in Sudan is visiting Indiana this week as part of a 22-city tour to urge the U.S. government to do more to end the violence.

Brian Steidle said he's on a mission to get Americans to show great concern about the raping of women, burning of villages and displacement of millions from their homes in the African nation.

He was scheduled to speak in Bloomington on Thursday and Friday [March 30th and 31st], [speak] in Indianapolis on Saturday [April 1st] and attend an interfaith service in Fort Wayne on Sunday [April 2nd]. The tour is to culminate with an April 30 rally in Washington, D.C.

The Darfur conflict began when mainly ethnic African rebels began an uprising in February 2003 against what they called decades of marginalization and neglect. Sudan's Arab-dominated government and pro-government Arab tribal militia are accused of attacking ethnic African farmers in retaliation.

At least 180,000 people have died - many from hunger and disease - and about 2 million others are said to have fled their homes. The United States and several other nations have said genocide has occurred in Darfur. The government denies backing the militias, called Janjaweed.

Many people are initially skeptical when they hear the claims of genocide, Steidle said Thursday, but their doubts recede when he shows them photos of the violence he has witnessed.

"I put the evidence right in front of them," he said.

Steidle, who served from September 2004 to February 2005 as the U.S. representative to the African Union's peacekeeping mission, says he saw helicopters firing on villages, found mutilated bodies, and interviewed people who told of rapes and fleeing villagers shot by militias.

Steidle described standing next to a Sudanese general who denied that troops attacking a village were under his command, but acknowledged that soldiers in a military vehicle nearby were his troops - until they piled out of the vehicle and attacked another village.

"It's completely unbelievable. I don't know why people aren't more outraged about that," Steidle said.

The United States has been calling for more effort to halt the violence, and NATO is considering boosting training, transport and planning assistance to the African Union peacekeeping force of 7,000. NATO deployment, however, would need a United Nations request, with backing from Russia, China and the African Union - which prefers an African solution to the conflict.

Steidle, however, has said he believes the United States could persuade the African Union to go along with a joint UN or NATO mission with its own forces monitoring and foreign forces acting as peacekeepers.

The Save Darfur Coalition is calling on people to send postcards - an electronic version of which is available on the campaign's Web site - calling on Bush to use his office to support a stronger multinational force to protect the people of Darfur.

From the "Pitt News"...

The 1-year-old girl's back looked like a slab of hamburger meat --- entry wound, exit wound.

After members of the armed militia known as the Janjaweed gunned down her mother and attacked her while she was running away from their village, the child was lucky to be alive.

Or was she?

Looking at the pictures former Marine Captain Brian Steidle brought back from his stay in Sudan's war-torn region of Darfur can cause people to feel sick.

It can cause them to cry, or cry out in disgust, as some people did Wednesday in the Kurtzman Room of the William Pitt Union when the Tour for Darfur came to Pitt.

Men lying on their backs in pools of blood, eyes gouged out, ears cut off and lying perhaps off to the side, castrated.

Women raped and beaten and cut. Children with shrapnel wounds in their skulls and backs --- orphaned by Kalashnikov AK-47s, homeless by firebombs and petrol.

Villages of tens of thousands systematically turned to ash and foundations.

It wasn't an agreeable bunch of photographs.

But still, the room was packed beyond capacity, as Steidle slammed his message home: "This is genocide ... The people of Darfur have no voice. We need to be that voice."

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, millions displaced, and yet, in America, "Michael Jackson's name was mentioned on the news 27 times to every one time Darfur was," Steidle said.

Americans need to realize, he said, that humanity comes before politics, race and religion.

All it will take is "one-third of 1 percent" of the population, one million people, to use their voices, Steidle said.

The Tour for Darfur is a grassroots effort trying to change U.S. policy. It's a speaking tour of 22 cities in 11 states. Attendees are asked to fill out postcards to elected officials, go out and tell "the people sitting at home watching TV" that something must be done.

If each representative and senator had received 100 letters, Steidle said, Rwanda could have been stopped.

Steidle asked the audience to visit www.pittsburghdarfur.org.

He stressed, however, that they would get nothing in return.

"Oil won't be cheaper ... your sitcoms will be just as stupid," he said.

Nothing, he added, except knowing that you truly did something right.

From Pascagoula's "Mississippi Press"...

To the editor:

Did you know that ending the killing in the Sudan is a U.S. responsibility, according to a majority of likely voters -- regardless of party affiliation -- in the latest Zogby America poll of 1,007 likely voters nationwide?

On April 4, the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to consider an amendment to the fiscal year 2006 supplemental appropriations bill that would add $100 million to improve peacekeeping in genocide-ravaged Darfur, Sudan. This proposed funding would be in addition to the President's initial request of $123 million for peacekeeping out of his total request of $514 million for peacekeeping and humanitarian aid in Sudan. The $100 million would be used to immediately bolster the African Union Mission in Sudan, the only line of defense for the 3.5 million Darfuri men, women and children who depend on the international humanitarian aid and security efforts to keep them alive and safe from the Sudanese government-backed Janjaweed militias. For these reasons, I urge you to write a letter to Congress before April 4 urging the Senate Appropriations Committee members, especially chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., and State, Foreign Operations, and Related Agencies Subcommittee Chairman Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to support this amendment.

While the African Union peacekeepers have been doing the best they can with their limited resources, they are out-manned and out-gunned by the Janjaweed and the fractious rebel groups. These limitation are being exacerbated by the fact that violence in Darfur has actually been increasing in recent weeks, causing the United Nations refugee assistance agency to announce that it is cutting its budget for Darfur by 44 percent, citing an inability to distribute aid due to security concerns.

Until such time as a stronger and better-equipped United Nations peacekeeping force can be deployed, the U.S. must continue to lead the way in strengthening the African Union forces to protect civilians in the near-term. In addition, the funds would help speed up a potential transition to a larger U.N. peacekeeping force by helping to bring the African Union troops up to U.N. standards.

I'm a former Marine captain who served as the U.S. representative to the African Union's peacekeeping mission in Darfur from September 2004 to February 2005, when I personally witnessed mass murder, rape and other atrocities in Darfur.

Since February 2003, at least 300,000 people are estimated to have died in Darfur as a result of what U.S. President Bush and the U.S. Congress recognized in 2004 to be genocide, with 3.5 million dependent on foreign aid for their survival and 2 million forced by violence to live in make-shift camps. A campaign of terror, violence and mass rape continues every day, leaving fathers and sons in fear for their lives, wives and daughters in fear for their bodies.

In his comments of Feb. 17, President Bush acknowledged that the people of Darfur needed better protection than they were getting from the African Union peacekeepers.

While the President is absolutely right that a U.N. force is needed urgently, we cannot allow the prospect of a long-term solution to blind us to the short-term needs of those still living in constant fear of attack.

The Senate must therefore match, or preferably exceed, the additional $50 million for peacekeeping in Darfur that the U.S. House of Representatives provided last week by passing an amendment by Rep. Mike Capuano, D-Mass., to the fiscal 2006 supplemental spending bill.

Letters urging Senators to vote for the expected African Union peacekeeping funding amendment would give a much-needed voice to the people of Darfur by calling on Congress to adequately support their only protectors.

Brian Steidle
Former U.S. Representative
African Union Peacekeeping Mission in Darfur
Washington, D.C.

Violence in Darfur needs world's attention (by Tom Nichols)

His latest column for the Gainesville, Ga., "Times"...

Just two days after our First Pres Book Club discussed Elie Wiesel's book "Night," about his experiences as a child in the Holocaust, I received an e-mail with a brief article by him just published by the Jerusalem Post. Here is what Elie Wiesel wrote:

"I am haunted by what I know of Darfur.

["]In Darfur, humankind's center of suffering today, men, women and children are uprooted, starved, tortured, mutilated, humiliated and massacred. ... Nothing significant is being done to stop these massive violations of human rights. ... Who is responsible? ... We are compelled to say: 'Aren't we all?'"

Elie challenges the readers with this: "Won't you make your voice heard?"

This column is my voice on the subject. I hope you become concerned enough to try to find out for yourself more about conditions in Darfur. This is the background for that conflict.

Sudan is a country in East Africa just below Egypt. Formerly ruled by Turkey, Egypt and the United Kingdom, the Sudan became independent in 1956. Military dictators seized power in 1958 after a civil war began in 1955 between the Muslim government in the north and non-Muslims, including Christians, in the south. That ended with a peace accord in 1972, but a second civil war broke out in 1983 that lasted another 21 years and ended in 2005.

In the western region of Sudan, called Darfur, a third conflict began in February 2003 between the government and two rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Movement.

Government troops tend to be black Arab Muslims. The most fierce of these are the Janjaweed, a radical group not bound to respect human rights and who are apparently not directly controlled, but perhaps are being supported, by the government. The rebels tend to be black, non-Arab Muslims. Both sides use violence that is destroying the quality of life in the entire region as genocide spreads.

What has happened is a fierce cultural conflict in which reportedly more than 300,000 people have been killed, and more than 1.8 million people have been driven from their homes.

In 2004, the United Nations stated that the Darfur conflict was the world's worst current humanitarian crisis.

Another way of looking at this conflict is to see it as a basic economic and territorial dispute between farmers and cattle-herding nomads who are struggling for scarce resources in a desolate part of Africa. The dispute is thus both economic and racial.

I understand that some people want to try to find war criminals and take then before an International Criminal Court like the one used to try war criminals in the Balkans. President Bush does not like this idea. He wants to create a special tribunal for trying war criminals guilty of genocide in Sudan. [Actually, the Darfur situation was referred to the ICC about a year ago. - EJM]

With all our current problems in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is unlikely that the United States will intervene militarily. However, we do have economic and diplomatic resources that could be used there.

We need to ask all other nations in the world to help us take some action now to try to stop the killings and torture. They risk turning this dispute into the spark that might spread into a wider World War III of non-Arabs against Arabs, East versus West, or Muslims against the rest of the world.

We cannot afford to sit idly by and do nothing to stop the carnage. Wiesel is right. The humanitarian issues in the Sudan conflict should be of concern to everybody in the world.

If you do not know much about the Sudan problem, the Internet has many resources available for study. We all need to know more about this conflict before it spreads out of control.

Tom Nichols is a retired college professor who lives in Gainesville; e-mail, [email protected].

Why Don’t You Take Us Back Home? The Plight of the Internally Displaced in Sudan

New from IOM...

“Why don’t you take us back home?”

These are the first words whispered by Thiang Adak, a gaunt and exhausted widow and mother of eight as she reaches an IOM information centre in El Salaam, a windswept and dusty camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) which sprawls for miles across the grey Nile River from Khartoum.

Thiang is one of the estimated one million IDPs who have settled in and around Khartoum in four official camps and numerous squalid squatter areas, which dot the flat and barren landscape. El Salaam camp alone shelters an estimated 100,000 persons, almost all displaced from southern Sudan.

Thiang and her family are Dinkas from the Melusal tribe. They fled the insecurity in the garrison town of Aweil in North Bahr El-Ghazal in 1992 and travelled by train and by road to Khartoum, where they struggled to survive while waiting for better days to come.

But two years ago, more hardship struck as Thiang’s husband Thaw died because the family couldn’t afford to pay for medical treatment. “He had fever and bloody diarrhoea for a week,” recalls Thiang. “And in the end he just wasted way.”

Since her husband’s death, Thiang and her children have been struggling to survive. Her two eldest daughters have now married and have settled in Khartoum. But most days, her other six children have to walk for hours to forage for food around markets in downtown Omdurman.

“Sometimes, I find work cleaning houses and washing clothes in Khartoum,” says Thiang. “But this is not enough to feed us all.” 

Thiang and her six children live in a shack made of flattened cardboard boxes and plastic bags stitched together and stretched over wooden poles. The hovel is divided into two cramped areas, each with an old bedstead and a chair, the only evidence that once, life was slightly better for the family.

Like many other IDPs from the south, Thiang is a Christian. She wears a small cross, which hangs from her shrivelled neck on a piece of string.  Above one of the beds, a faded religious print is pinned on a piece of cardboard.   

“God willing, we will soon be able to go back to Aweil,” says Thiang, who visits one of the three IOM centres in el Salaam on a regular basis, on the lookout for any information which could help her return home.

To date, twelve information centres have been established by IOM in the greater Khartoum region to provide would-be returnees with up-to-date information on conditions in areas of return and distribute flyers on a variety of health issues, such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and guinea worm and sanitation, and to warn people of the threat posed by unexploded bombs and landmines.

Twenty-two year old Maria Ken, a mother of three, is also from the North Bahr El-Ghazal town of Aweil. But she and her husband would rather visit Aweil before deciding if and when they want to return home. 

“Organizing go-and-see visits for community representatives is crucial to help IDPs decide whether they want to return home or not,” explains Mario Tavolaj, IOM’s Chief of Mission in Sudan.

After a pilot phase in the town of Kosti, in the White Nile province, IOM recently organized several go-and-see visits to the Nuba region of South Kordofan for community representatives who in turn informed IDPs on the conditions in the areas of return.

Already, some small scale returns to the south are taking place. James Juna’s wife and two children recently returned to Juba after saving enough money to pay for the trip. “I want to go back as soon as possible,” says James who earns a meagre living working at a local bus stop with a whistle around his neck as his only tool. He earns on average 1,000 Sudanese Dinar, around US$ 4 per week and hopes to be able to afford the return journey home before the start of the rainy season, expected in late April.

“Most IDPs have relied on international assistance for years now,” says IOM’s Stefano Tamagnini.  “And they will only return in numbers once they are sure that they will receive comprehensive return and reintegration assistance.”

As part of its return and reintegration programme in 2006, IOM has appealed for US$ 24 million and has to date received US$ 7,356,202 from Denmark, the Common Humanitarian Fund and the Netherlands.

The International Criminal Court and Sudan: access to justice and victims’ rights

New from FIDH...

(The full report is available as a 60-page PDF file; see also a related item on ReliefWeb.)

One year after the referral by the UN Security Council to the International Criminal Court (ICC) of the situation in Darfur, FIDH, its partner organisation SOAT (Sudan Organisation Against Torture), and the Khartoum Center for Human Rights and Environmental Development (KCHRED) are publishing their report, "The International Criminal Court and Sudan: access to justice and victims’ rights".

This is the report of the first [roundtable] on the ICC since the Security Council referral organised by FIDH, SOAT, and KCHRED, in collaboration with the Coalition for the ICC (CICC) and the International Human Rights Law Institute (IHRLI), in Khartoum on 2-3 October 2005.

This report will soon be available in Arabic.

Rep. Frank Wolf asks for special envoy to Sudan, recommends former Ohio Congressman Tony Hall

A new press release (thanks to Mr. Oregon)...

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) today [Friday] released the attached letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice officially asking that a special envoy to Sudan be appointed to focus on ending the genocide in Darfur and ensuring that the North-South peace agreement holds.

Wolf, co-chairman of the bipartisan Congressional Human Rights Caucus and chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee with oversight of the State Department, recommended that former Ohio Congressman Tony Hall be named envoy. Hall is presently the U.S. ambassador to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations in Rome.

“The appointment of a special envoy will send a clear message to Khartoum that the international community will not back down on Darfur and that we will not let the [Comprehensive Peace Agreement] fail,” wrote Wolf, who has been to Sudan five times. “While no one can guarantee that this approach will work, we owe it to the women and children clinging to life in refugee camps to try everything.”

March 31, 2006

The Honorable Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State
2201 C St NW Ste 7276
Washington DC 20520

Dear Secretary Rice:

As a follow-up to our dialogue at the appropriations subcommittee hearing a few weeks ago, I want to reiterate my strong support for the appointment of a special envoy for Sudan.

I commend the dedication that both you and the president have shown to the issue of peace in Sudan. From the early days of his administration, the president has made Sudan a major foreign policy priority - - first by appointing former Senator John Danforth as his special envoy to find a peaceful resolution to the North-South conflict, then by maintaining pressure on the government of Sudan, and by rightfully declaring the atrocities in Darfur as genocide.

The appointment of John Danforth as a special envoy, and the administrations strong engagement, was instrumental in bringing an end to the horrific civil war that took the lives of over 2 million people in southern Sudan. Special envoys can be a valuable tool to breathe renewed energy into a complicated situation and Senator Danforth was successful in pushing the parties over the finish line. While we all had great hopes for peace in the South, current indications show that Khartoum is only selectively complying with its obligations and deliberately slow-rolling implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The untimely death of the leader of the Sudan Peoples’s liberation Movement, Dr. John Garang, a key architect of the CPA, has slowed progress. Commissions that are critical to the implementation of the CPA are not being established which further delays the peace process. Another special envoy is needed to help hold this fragile agreement together.

A special envoy is also needed to focus on ending the genocide in Darfur. Under your leadership, Deputy Secretary Robert Zoellick has made a valiant effort to try to bring about a political settlement in Darfur. Traveling there four times over the last year is no small task, and no one can questions the dedication the administration has to Sudan. But as you well know, the situation in Darfur continues to deteriorate. A renewed effort is needed to try to bring about peace and security to the millions of people at risk in Darfur.

It is not too late for Sudan. There are clear steps that can be taken. The appointment of a special envoy with a clear mandate and authority, as was the case with Senator Danforth, will make a difference.

I strongly recommend that you appoint Ambassador Tony Hall to that position. I have known Tony for over two decades. He is a passionate defender of human rights and knows the issues that Sudan is facing. As the current ambassador to the Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome, Tony has worked to alleviate hunger and poverty across the globe. He is respected by members of both parties and is someone in whom you could have complete confidence. He is well suited for this position and would serve you well.

The appointment of a special envoy will send a clear message to Khartoum that the international community will not back down on Darfur and that we will not let the CPA fail. While no one can guarantee that this approach will work, we owe it to the women and children clinging to life in refugee camps to try everything.

I ask that you appoint Tony as quickly as possible.

Thank you and best wishes.

Sincerely,

Frank R. Wolf
Member of Congress

British Conservative MPs to visit Sudan’s Darfur

An unsourced Sudan Tribune story...

Britain’s Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague and Shadow International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell will be visiting Sudan’s IDPs camps in Darfur, from 2 to 4 April, to see what necessary steps need to be taken by the international community in order to protect the people in the region.

The visit follows remarks by Conservative party leader David Cameron on renewing the Conservative party’s foreign policy on human rights.

During their visit, Hague and Mitchell will be meeting some members of Sudan’s Government of National Unity, the UN envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, and some prominent AU members.

The meetings are aimed at assessing the required increase in assistance by the British government and the international community in order to protect the people of Darfur. The role of the UN and plans for deploying its troops will be particularly taken into account.

The two secretaries will also visit Abu Shawk camp in Northern Darfur State, where they will be accompanied on a tour by [Oxfam] UK and will meet some displaced people and listen to some cases of violence in the area.