Saturday, July 02, 2005
Sorry. I had to do it.
Friday, July 01, 2005
Darfur: a year later, still 'Never Again'
The UN called it the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. The US State Department has labeled it 'genocide'. Since 2003, 180,000 people have died and 2 million have become homeless. (The population of San Jose, CA is roughly 904,000. The population of Santa Monica, CA is roughly 84,000.)
And yet, despite the magnitude of this moral challenge, international action has been EMPTY. The African Union has deployed 3,000 troops to monitor an April 2004 ceasefire that has stopped nothing. The UN has stopped short of labeling these crimes 'genocide', preferring instead to try charging Sudanese in the International Criminal Court for war crimes. While the US calls the Darfur crisis genocide, it opposes the ICC war crimes tribunals. Why? Because a legitimate ICC court could try Americans abroad. Better that innocents should go to the slaughter, I suppose.
The grim birth of war in Darfur
The Darfur region, which is roughly the size of Texas, lies in Sudan's west. Environmental conditions have traditionally made water and farmland scarce. So over time, ethnic 'African' farmers in the region have competed with nomadic 'Arabs' for these resources.*
It just so happens that the Sudanese government, based in the northern capital of Khartoum, is primarily Arab-run. In 2003, two Darfuri rebel groups (the Sudanese Liberation Army and Justice and Equality Movement, SLA and JEM for short) began to attack government targets, claiming that Khartoum was deliberately ignoring their region and favoring Arabs.
The government responded with aerial attacks supported by an Arab ground militia called Janjaweed. (The word "janjaweed" is an Arabic colloquialism meaning, roughly, "a man with a gun on a horse".) The pattern was always the same: planes dropped bombs, helicopters strafed the area, and then the Janjaweed would enter to finish the job.
This job was as gruesome as anything I've ever heard. They systematically killed men, raped women, and abducted children. They razed and plundered homes and destroyed the food and water supply. The survivors, mostly women and children, fled without their possessions, without burying their dead. They wandered, sometimes for hundreds of miles, until they ended up in refugee camps set up outside a few of Darfur's larger towns.
Identifying the perpetrators
The Sudanese government has denied any link to the Janjaweed; President Umar el-Bashir has even derided them as "thugs and gangsters".
But refugees think differently. Not only are Janjaweed massacres obviously coordinated with the Sudanese military, but the attackers sometimes wear military outfits.
If that's not convincing enough, consider the testimony of two American lawmakers, Senator Sam Brownback and Congressman Frank Wolf, who visited Darfur for three days in June 2004. They visited five refugee camps and saw some of the razed villages.
"We also were told the Janjaweed are well armed and well supplied. If they are traditional nomads, how are they getting modern automatic weapons, and, more importantly, from whom? They also are said to have satellite phones, an astonishing fact considering most of the people in the far western provinces of Darfur have probably never even seen or walked on a paved road." (5-6)
Brownback and Wolf go on to express utter shock at "the impunity under which the Janjaweed operate".
It "was most telling as we approached the airport in Geneina on our last day in the region for our flight back to Khartoum. In plain sight was an encampment of Janjaweed within shouting distance of a contingent of Government of Sudan regulars. No more than 200 yards separated the two groups. Sitting on the tarmac were two helicopter gunships and a Soviet-made Antonov plane."
The camps
The sorry state of Darfuri refugee camps is very much a part of the crisis. These camps rely on international aid to provide food, medicine and shelter, but the resources are scarce. When refugees arrive, Brownback and Wolf said, they receive a tarp, a water jug, some cookware and a small amount of grain. They live in flimsy shelters made of straw and plastic sheets.
B & W describe the sanitary conditions of the camps as "wretched". At one particularly large camp of 70,000! residents (population of West Hollywood, CA is roughly half that: 35,716), they wrote, "it was hard not to step in either human or animal feces as we walked. In a few weeks, when the heavy rains begin, excrement will flow across the entire camp. Mortality from diarrhea, which we were told represents one-third of the deaths in the camps, will only increase."
Camp residents live in fear. Men or women who exit the camp to collect straw or firewood are regularly killed or raped, respectively. Janjaweed literally brand symbols into some of the rape victims to 'mark' their deed. No one is off limits--Brownback and Wolf heard the story of a 9-year-old girl who was raped by these fiends.
There's no telling when the refugees can return home. To what would they return? Villages decimated, shorn of their possessions. Perpetual fear of the Janjaweed's blitzkrieg. Separated from their land, the Darfuri farmers won't be able to grow their own food, let alone contribute to the regional shortage.
Aid agencies are doing their best, but Khartoum is making it difficult for them to do so. Huge swaths of the country are beyond the humanitarian agents' reach; the government is using bureaucracy--including customs and visa requirements--to block them. Cars and planes filled with supplies are sitting on tarmacs or in garages as the Sudanese government pushes papers.
Know genocide when you see it
From the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html#Article%202
<>
Article 2.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
>
I am, however, ignorant as to which of these qualities the UN emphasizes. Surely the Janjaweed's ethnically-influenced targeting scheme qualifies as "intent to destroy in part". Surely killing, raping and pillaging meet the requirements of (1) and (2) at least. So why isn't this clearly genocide? Your learning solicited.
Action! not Words
Aid agencies are doing what they can with finite resources and the Sudanese government's contemptible resistance. But what avails their work so long as violence and terror reign? The refugee camps will only get worse. The aid will dry up.
International action has been tentative. The UN has no troops in Darfur. (Even if it did, we saw in Rwanda how ineffective their peacekeepers are.) Its best attempts have been international sanction--"travel bans and an asset freeze on those who commit atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region," according to the BBC Q & A--and a war crimes dossier sent to the International Criminal Court.
African Union peacekeepers--who number about 2,000 in-country--are not much more effective. The UN says the AU needs more troops--more like 8,000--and a 'stronger mandate' to protect civilians.
And so there is some good news. The above link claims that an AU assessment team noticed encouragement and people getting back to their lives in some communities with AU troops nearby. It also claims that the United States is authoring a draft resolution that would authorize a UN peacekeeper force of 10,000 soldiers to go to southern Sudan (which is having its own problems); 'impose sanctions' on those behind the killing; and figure out a place to take them to court.
The Sudanese government, meanwhile, has responded ineffectively to international pressure. As the BBC Q & A writes, "They have recently announced the trials in Khartoum of some members of the security forces suspected of abuses - but this is viewed as part of a campaign against UN-backed attempts to get some 50 key suspects tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague." No surprises. The government is in cahoots with the killers--they're not the right people to work with!
Note:
*Brendan Koerner, author of the Slate article cited below, says that Darfur's ethnic history is complex, and that the terms 'African' and 'Arab' are crude. I did not have the time to research the issue. I'm also uncertain as to whether the local Arab populations are any lighter than their African countrymen. The Wikipedia article casts some doubt on that.
Other sources:
Further reading:
And yet, despite the magnitude of this moral challenge, international action has been EMPTY. The African Union has deployed 3,000 troops to monitor an April 2004 ceasefire that has stopped nothing. The UN has stopped short of labeling these crimes 'genocide', preferring instead to try charging Sudanese in the International Criminal Court for war crimes. While the US calls the Darfur crisis genocide, it opposes the ICC war crimes tribunals. Why? Because a legitimate ICC court could try Americans abroad. Better that innocents should go to the slaughter, I suppose.
The grim birth of war in Darfur
The Darfur region, which is roughly the size of Texas, lies in Sudan's west. Environmental conditions have traditionally made water and farmland scarce. So over time, ethnic 'African' farmers in the region have competed with nomadic 'Arabs' for these resources.*
It just so happens that the Sudanese government, based in the northern capital of Khartoum, is primarily Arab-run. In 2003, two Darfuri rebel groups (the Sudanese Liberation Army and Justice and Equality Movement, SLA and JEM for short) began to attack government targets, claiming that Khartoum was deliberately ignoring their region and favoring Arabs.
The government responded with aerial attacks supported by an Arab ground militia called Janjaweed. (The word "janjaweed" is an Arabic colloquialism meaning, roughly, "a man with a gun on a horse".) The pattern was always the same: planes dropped bombs, helicopters strafed the area, and then the Janjaweed would enter to finish the job.
This job was as gruesome as anything I've ever heard. They systematically killed men, raped women, and abducted children. They razed and plundered homes and destroyed the food and water supply. The survivors, mostly women and children, fled without their possessions, without burying their dead. They wandered, sometimes for hundreds of miles, until they ended up in refugee camps set up outside a few of Darfur's larger towns.
Identifying the perpetrators
The Sudanese government has denied any link to the Janjaweed; President Umar el-Bashir has even derided them as "thugs and gangsters".
But refugees think differently. Not only are Janjaweed massacres obviously coordinated with the Sudanese military, but the attackers sometimes wear military outfits.
If that's not convincing enough, consider the testimony of two American lawmakers, Senator Sam Brownback and Congressman Frank Wolf, who visited Darfur for three days in June 2004. They visited five refugee camps and saw some of the razed villages.
"We also were told the Janjaweed are well armed and well supplied. If they are traditional nomads, how are they getting modern automatic weapons, and, more importantly, from whom? They also are said to have satellite phones, an astonishing fact considering most of the people in the far western provinces of Darfur have probably never even seen or walked on a paved road." (5-6)
Brownback and Wolf go on to express utter shock at "the impunity under which the Janjaweed operate".
It "was most telling as we approached the airport in Geneina on our last day in the region for our flight back to Khartoum. In plain sight was an encampment of Janjaweed within shouting distance of a contingent of Government of Sudan regulars. No more than 200 yards separated the two groups. Sitting on the tarmac were two helicopter gunships and a Soviet-made Antonov plane."
The camps
The sorry state of Darfuri refugee camps is very much a part of the crisis. These camps rely on international aid to provide food, medicine and shelter, but the resources are scarce. When refugees arrive, Brownback and Wolf said, they receive a tarp, a water jug, some cookware and a small amount of grain. They live in flimsy shelters made of straw and plastic sheets.
B & W describe the sanitary conditions of the camps as "wretched". At one particularly large camp of 70,000! residents (population of West Hollywood, CA is roughly half that: 35,716), they wrote, "it was hard not to step in either human or animal feces as we walked. In a few weeks, when the heavy rains begin, excrement will flow across the entire camp. Mortality from diarrhea, which we were told represents one-third of the deaths in the camps, will only increase."
Camp residents live in fear. Men or women who exit the camp to collect straw or firewood are regularly killed or raped, respectively. Janjaweed literally brand symbols into some of the rape victims to 'mark' their deed. No one is off limits--Brownback and Wolf heard the story of a 9-year-old girl who was raped by these fiends.
There's no telling when the refugees can return home. To what would they return? Villages decimated, shorn of their possessions. Perpetual fear of the Janjaweed's blitzkrieg. Separated from their land, the Darfuri farmers won't be able to grow their own food, let alone contribute to the regional shortage.
Aid agencies are doing their best, but Khartoum is making it difficult for them to do so. Huge swaths of the country are beyond the humanitarian agents' reach; the government is using bureaucracy--including customs and visa requirements--to block them. Cars and planes filled with supplies are sitting on tarmacs or in garages as the Sudanese government pushes papers.
Know genocide when you see it
From the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html#Article%202
<
Article 2.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
I am, however, ignorant as to which of these qualities the UN emphasizes. Surely the Janjaweed's ethnically-influenced targeting scheme qualifies as "intent to destroy in part". Surely killing, raping and pillaging meet the requirements of (1) and (2) at least. So why isn't this clearly genocide? Your learning solicited.
Action! not Words
Aid agencies are doing what they can with finite resources and the Sudanese government's contemptible resistance. But what avails their work so long as violence and terror reign? The refugee camps will only get worse. The aid will dry up.
International action has been tentative. The UN has no troops in Darfur. (Even if it did, we saw in Rwanda how ineffective their peacekeepers are.) Its best attempts have been international sanction--"travel bans and an asset freeze on those who commit atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region," according to the BBC Q & A--and a war crimes dossier sent to the International Criminal Court.
African Union peacekeepers--who number about 2,000 in-country--are not much more effective. The UN says the AU needs more troops--more like 8,000--and a 'stronger mandate' to protect civilians.
And so there is some good news. The above link claims that an AU assessment team noticed encouragement and people getting back to their lives in some communities with AU troops nearby. It also claims that the United States is authoring a draft resolution that would authorize a UN peacekeeper force of 10,000 soldiers to go to southern Sudan (which is having its own problems); 'impose sanctions' on those behind the killing; and figure out a place to take them to court.
The Sudanese government, meanwhile, has responded ineffectively to international pressure. As the BBC Q & A writes, "They have recently announced the trials in Khartoum of some members of the security forces suspected of abuses - but this is viewed as part of a campaign against UN-backed attempts to get some 50 key suspects tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague." No surprises. The government is in cahoots with the killers--they're not the right people to work with!
Note:
*Brendan Koerner, author of the Slate article cited below, says that Darfur's ethnic history is complex, and that the terms 'African' and 'Arab' are crude. I did not have the time to research the issue. I'm also uncertain as to whether the local Arab populations are any lighter than their African countrymen. The Wikipedia article casts some doubt on that.
Other sources:
- My oft-quoted BBC Q & A: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3496731.stm
- A Slate 'explainer' defining the Janjaweed. You can access Wolf's and Brownback's report at the bottom of this page: http://slate.com/id/2104210
Further reading:
- 5,000 refugees heading home: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/29/international/africa/29sudan.html
- Black Africans aren't the only victims--Arabs are too: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3737566.stm
- Sudan and international aid at a glance--not just Darfur: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/dbc.nsf/doc108?OpenForm&emid=ACOS-635PJQ&rc=1
- Also recommend a sobering NYTimes story from 2/11...about the half-Arab children borne of Janjaweed rapes. Title: Darfur's Babies of Rape Are on Trial from Birth.
