Darfur: How Long Can We Ignore the Violence?

This is the text of a lecture given on Nov. 16, 2005, by David Kilgour, member of the Canadian Parliament, Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont, and one of Canada's leading human rights advocates. Co-Sponsored by the SCU School of Law Center for Global Law and Policy, the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and the International Law Students Association, this lecture was part of San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Genocide Awareness week, held at the World Affairs Council of Northern California in San Francisco.

My assigned questions from the council are: "What has been the international community's, Canada's, and the U.S. response to (Darfur)?" and "Why is it relevant to the future of this continent?"

In summary first, the larger international community's response to the Darfur catastrophe since it began has been to rely on the African Union's (A.U.) unarmed ceasefire observers and the limited number of A.U. soldiers present to protect them-both mandated in reality for the most part by the government of Sudan-to stop the continuing systematic killing and raping of "African" Darfurians at the hands of its Janjaweed militias. The entire gruesome enterprise is beyond any doubt being managed by the same government of Sudan.

An effective international response (such as the humanitarian interventions deployed in Bosnia and Kosovo), until the U.N. Security Council can be shamed into discharging the peacemaking responsibility for Darfur which it holds under the U.N. Charter, is necessary to save hundreds of thousands of lives; otherwise the world will ultimately know that nothing of substance was learned from Rwanda, East Timor, the breakup of Yugoslavia, and other recent crises.

The approximately one billion of our sisters and brothers who live on the continent of Africa are, of course, entitled to the same level of human security from the international community during a crisis as peoples anywhere else. As one Canadian of origin in Sudan remarked about the Darfur crisis, "Are Africans not full members of the U.N. system?" Doesn't the 'Responsibility to Protect' principle, which Canada and other nations managed to preserve at the recent U.N. summit, apply to every community that is being brutally attacked by agents of their own government?"

What's Being Done
A number of African countries, including Ghana, Rwanda, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa, have sent monitors, soldiers, and police, whose mandate, according to those on the ground, does not include protecting Darfurians from violence. An estimated 400,000 villagers have already died from murder, starvation, and other unnatural causes. The current death rate from such causes is now probably running at more than 10,000 children, women, and men per month.

It is now clear that, however well-intentioned the A.U. efforts over the past year have been, they have been ineffective in saving lives and ending the mass murders, gang rapes, and other violence committed by the Janjaweed. Within the past week or so, the Janjaweed, assisted by government helicopters, have been back at the slaughter again; six A.U. personnel were killed recently by them.

A number of non-African countries-the U.S., the E.U. Commission, the UK, Germany, Canada-have committed much-needed humanitarian and other assistance (such as food, blankets, and medicine) to the two million internally displaced Darfurians living in wretched desert camps. The courageous work of many humanitarian workers with the U.N. and other agencies cannot be praised too highly. Please keep in mind that virtually every item of food etc. to reach people in camps within Darfur must get past both government of Sudan security and the Janjaweed.

When a Sudanese-Canadian visited three of these camps earlier this year, the local Janjaweed took half of the food and water he was carrying. Six rape victims from one of the camps came out to tell him their tragic stories. Each night, they said, Janjaweed bands came into the camps to drag intended victims out of them. This was in April; nothing I know suggests that it is not still happening.

The Government of Sudan has used numerous administrative devices to block visits to the camps. Consider the one deployed for U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in July 2004 as recounted in the just-published Darfur-A Short History of a Long War by
Julie Flint and Alex de Waal (of Harvard):

"On arriving [at the camp in al Fasher] [Annan] found stagnant puddles and dead donkeys, but no people. No one believed the assertion [by officials] that it had been cleared because it had no sanctions...the displaced were simply loaded into army trucks and dumped at the gates of the already overcrowded Abu Shouk camp, where some 40,000 were living in open desert."

This is but one of the myriad instances of Smith College professor Eric Reeves' point that the Khartoum government "lies repeatedly, shamelessly, egregiously, and without consequences," but that governments continue to treat Darfur as a humanitarian emergency only. Darfur-A Short History makes an important point here about the ongoing Darfur peace negotiations:

"By the time of the Addis Ababa meeting in July [2004], Khartoum's disregard for the solemn commitments was so egregious that even Elgabiad's Chadian co-chair-Foreign Minister Mahamat Saleh Annadif, a Rizeigat Arab-openly supported the rebels' complaint that it was pointless to negotiate with an adversary whose promises were not worth the paper they were written on."

Perhaps the rebel leaders in Darfur know something that your Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who appears to be putting so many eggs in these negotiations basket, does not. Mr. Zoellick understandably has great hope for the Comprehensive Peace Agreement as well-and we all hope that it holds-but is it not necessary also to reflect that any regime that could inflict what it did on African Darfurians even as it was negotiating peace with the South is highly unlikely to honor any agreement unless there is a credible threat of force obliging it to do so? That of course is why there are approximately ten thousand U.N. "blue helmet" peacekeepers now in the South, but what about Darfur?

Please Google "Darfur" whenever you can if you doubt this. A report from China View-which is certainly anything but fair-minded-yesterday quotes Sudan's Vice President Ali Osman, one of the worst of the genocidaires, as saying that some countries have "blown [the Darfur situation] out of proportion." He goes in his familiar way to say the "conflict in Darfur was a tribal one, not a political or ethnic cleansing issue." A Short History is very good on Osman's numerous roles in Khartoum since 1990.

If all of us in the international community would pay attention to the facts rather than diplomatic wish lists, I believe Secretary General Annan would be devoting much more of his time and energy at present to Darfur. At the time of the East Timor crisis, I understand that Mr. Annan telephoned Jakarta and made it clear that war crimes/crimes against humanity consequences would follow. Almost immediately, the then government of Indonesia "invited" U.N. peacekeepers to enter East Timor. Peace was restored. Why not a similar call to Khartoum? Many of the 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers now in Southern Sudan should be invited into Darfur now.

The U.N. Security Council should also be asked to give a Chapter VII mandate, which allows the use of force where needed, to U.N. peacekeepers entering Darfur and to the A.U. soldiers already in Darfur as well. Why not at least call the bluff of China and Russia in the Security Council? Does either of them really want be seen by the world as assisting in the ongoing brutal murder and gang rapes of African Darfurians and the burning of their villages? What about the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in the face of the $22 billion of debt run up by Khartoum? Is anyone attempting to use that leverage effectively to stop the killings?

Canada's Role
My own country's contributions to the African Union includes sending 105 armored personnel carriers three months ago, which Khartoum refused to allow on Sudanese soil. Romeo Dallaire, Canada's much-admired hero from the Rwandan debacle, was quoted yesterday from Sudan as saying that the vehicles will start to arrive on November 18.

I'm delighted that Mr. Dallaire is also calling for a stronger A.U. mandate and more resources. Hopefully, his visit to Darfur will convince him to call publicly or privately for a Chapter VII mandate for the U.N. for Darfur. Failing that, why would he not favor a NATO humanitarian intervention-one no doubt led by the A.U. if its leaders finally accept that they need a range of logistical, communications, air force, and other assistance? Mr. Dallaire has indicated in the past that 3500 highly trained and equipped peacemakers could probably have stopped the genocide in Rwanda. A NATO bridging force of the kind suggested by the International Crisis Group in Brussels would save many lives.

Bosnia
I should add here that I was visited recently in Ottawa by a delegation from Bosnia. They reminded me that approximately 200,000 Bosnians died during a hideous 40 months of violence there in the mid-1990's before the international community, led by President Clinton and NATO, finally moved in to stop crimes against humanity there. A few years later, when a similar pattern erupted in Kosovo, a temporarily wiser world acted quickly. The deaths there-in the 5,000 range before Slobodan Milosevic threw in his towel-were at least far less than in Bosnia.

One question for all of us today is why the obvious lessons of Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and elsewhere have vanished. How could 52 governments together send approximately 60,000 peacemakers to Bosnia and many to Kosovo as well, including more than 1000 from Canada, and none to Darfur? Are Darfurians less human than Europeans?

Eric Reeves
Like some of you no doubt, I've been prodded to act for several years by emails from Smith College English professor Eric Reeves, who is probably the closest observer on this continent of events across Sudan and who is now seriously ill. Recently, he wrote in part:

"In failing to respond to the conspicuous and now fully articulated truth, the world is yet again knowingly acquiescing in genocide. But as the shadows of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Rwanda fall more heavily over Darfur, we cannot evade this shameful truth: we know-as events steadily remorselessly unfold-more about the realities of ethnically targeted human destruction in Darfur than on any other such occasion in history. So much the greater is our moral disgrace."

This week, Reeves sent out another analysis of what's occurring now. I wish everyone in this country and across the world could read all of it, but let me provide only in briefest form some of his key points:

Intervention or Continued Acquiescence?
Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said during his recent trip to Sudan: "It's a tribal war, and frankly I don't think foreign forces want to get in the middle of a tribal war of Sudanese." Didn't we hear the same kind of "ancient hatreds" argument in the case of Bosnia from those who wanted no humanitarian intervention there? Reeves correctly flags that, aside from your deputy secretary's highly problematic characterization of the conflict in Darfur (permit me to add if you read A Short War you'll see how wrong Zoellick is in his understanding), there are millions of highly vulnerable Darfuri civilians who desperately need international protection. It's illogical for Zoellick to believe that it would be impossible for the U.S. and allies to protect these people at the same time it seeks to improve the prospects for successful peace negotiations.

Zoellick again: "I don't think we can clean it [the crisis in Darfur] up because it's not just a question of ending violence; it's a question of creating the context for peace." The disabled logic here ensures a continuation of the genocidal status quo. Mr. Zoellick's transparent determination to avoid a humanitarian intervention, and its concomitant willingness to allow the A.U. to fail in Darfur, is simply irresponsible.

NATO
NATO, to its credit, issued an unprecedented alarm over Darfur recently, even if it noted pointedly that it could do no more until the A.U. finds the will to ask for greater help, including NATO bridging soldiers. A consequent question for nationals of both NATO and non-member countries is whether we'll all try to persuade the A.U. to accept its desperate need for help to halt what continues to happen in Darfur. Reeves notes with dismay: "But judging by the tenor of recent remarks coming from… Zoellick during his recent trip to Sudan, this is a question that has already been answered." How can you and I change the mind of President Bush?

A.U. Role
I'm not as tough about the role of the A.U. to date as is Professor Reeves, but he does raise some important concerns, including:

1. Six A.U. personnel were killed on Oct 8 by the Janjaweed, and Reeves thinks more will be targeted in future to test their effectiveness.
2. The refusal by Khartoum to admit Canada's personnel carriers demonstrated how little political will the A.U. has to confront the genocidaires. Reeves is quite right, too, that the issue is not one between Canada and Sudan, but is rather one between the A.U. leadership and one of its member governments.
3. A further example of this A.U. diffidence with Khartoum for Reeves is that, thus far, not a single A.U. member state has publicly objected to the next A.U. summit taking place in January 2006 in Khartoum. If that happens, and by custom the host nation succeeds to the role of chair of the A.U., notes Reeves, "this will make the National Islamic Front genocidaires leaders of the very organization charged with providing security in Darfur and negotiating a peace agreement."
4. Reeves quotes President Mbeki of South Africa saying that Darfur is "an African responsibility, and we can do it." He counters that the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide obliges all contracting parties to prevent and punish such a crime.

Most of all, Reeves correctly blames the international community for choosing to rely exclusively on an A.U. observer force to provide human security amidst violence that has never been controlled and is now accelerating again. As Reeves says: "The A.U. is no more capable of halting the ongoing destruction of primarily African tribal populations than [Romeo] Dallaire was able to halt the Interhamwe or deter the Hutu extremists of the Rwandan government and military."

Conclusion
Permit me to close with an anecdote I heard recently at a conference on Darfur. The teller was not certain as to its accuracy, but you can decide. As the genocide raged across Rwanda in April and May 1994, Jane Fonda was becoming more and more upset about those scenes on television. She leaned heavily on her then husband, Ted Turner, who then ran CNN, to do something. Finally convinced, he ordered every CNN reporter to hound every Clinton administration official about Rwanda. Within a few weeks after this began, President Clinton by coincidence or not decided to send troops. Unfortunately, they arrived in Kigali too late to save many lives.

Will history repeat itself in Darfur? If it does, how many more Darfurians will die?

Thank you.