Darfur - The Violence Still Rages

So the UN Security Council is finally considering sending help to Darfur. For the last eighteen months, the African Union (AU) has been trying to prevent the mass killings and rapes taking place there. But with just 7,000 peacekeepers monitoring an area the size of France, it is no surprise that all they could do was stand by and watch people being massacred at the hands of the government-sponsored janjawid. Now, finally, the AU has admitted defeat, and the Security Council is drawing up plans to take over the mission.

Even so, it could take over six months to get a peacekeeping force together - and that's after the resolution to do so is finally passed. With around 300,000 people dead in three years of conflict, and the violence showing no sign of abating, why is the world taking so long to act?

There are several reasons. The first (and perhaps main) one is war-weariness. The Sudanese government unleashed the janjawid in 2003, just when a major conflict at home (the war against the Southern rebels) was coming to an end, and one abroad (the war in Iraq) was beginning. With a twenty-year civil war in the south finally showing signs of abating, no-one wanted to rain on the peace parade by admitting that equally vicious violence was raging in Darfur.

Then there was (and still is) the matter of Iraq. With the US pouring its resources into a controversial war, with constant accusations of meddling and unilateralism by most of the European Union, it had no desire to step into another conflict - especially involving another Muslim country. Even after it labeled the Darfur massacres 'genocide', the Bush administration was still unwilling to actually do anything. And if Bush wasn't willing to intervene, how much less the EU?

Darfur shows, beyond question, how heavily international relations rely on public relations. With the world's eyes turned (increasingly disapprovingly) on Iraq, the Sudanese government must have known how reluctant the international community would be to intervene.

And if it showed any signs of doing so, there was always the sovereignty card (Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Ahmad Karti recently said the UN had "tarnished Sudan's image and infringed on its sovereignty"). How many times has that been played throughout history? The USSR under Stalin; China under Mao; Germany under Hitler - all massacres that took place under the cover of war and national borders. Thankfully international action has become easier since a UN summit last September, when every nation signed an agreement allowing intervention in countries failing to protect their populations from crimes against humanity.

The second reason for the delay is more damning. Why would the UN Security Council intervene in a conflict from which at least two of its members were profiting? Jan Egeland, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, said in July 2004 that "the only thing in abundance in Darfur is weapons. It is easier to get a Kalashnikov than a loaf of bread." Guns were not the only arms supplied by Russia; tanks and fighter jets were also thrown in. A 2004 Amnesty International report, Sudan: Arming the perpetrators of grave abuses in Darfur, also implicated China, France, the UK, India and Belarus amongst other arms suppliers (although the EU has now imposed an embargo).

The Sudanese government funds these arms deals through oil revenues. Gutbi al-Mahdi, a presidential adviser, said: "For us it is very important to get oil, because an embargo on oil imports would put the country on the verge of collapse." With 6m metric tonnes of crude oil imported per year, Sudan's main customer is China - also on the Security Council and Sudan's main supplier of arms. Perhaps it is only to avert confrontation with the US that Russia and China are now considering supporting UN intervention.

Either way, it finally looks as if something is happening. But more needs to be done - UN peacekeepers are notoriously ineffective (The Economist states that, of 60,000 UN peacekeepers worldwide, only a few hundred are from the world's best armies). The African Union needs to be relieved, now, and the only international body capable of doing that efficiently is NATO. The member countries should put an end to years of procrastinating and send their troops in - or thousands more will die as the UN dithers.

 

Conflict in Darfur - Key Quotations

On African Union and UN ineffectiveness

"The police showed open contempt for United Nations officials when they arrived, firing tear-gas grenades and driving aggressively around the camp. African Union (AU) peacekeepers at the camp said they did not have power or mandate to intervene...

The police staged two assaults on displaced people, and wouldn't desist from bulldozing their camp, despite the presence of representatives of the UN, AU and international aid agencies... The population is terrorized and bewildered, with little faith in the power of the international community."

BBC Reporter Fergal Keane, witnessing an assault by Sudanese security forces on a Darfur refugee camp.

"We do not have the capacity as at this time to go and act as a buffer force between the armed parties. At this level, what we do, we just respond to the complaint, investigate it, and submit our report. But we cannot go and stop the fighting, no.

"It's highly restrictive because we are not even allowed to look into issues like rape and other things. It only gives us an ability to observe, verify and report."

Commander Seth Appiah Mensah, African Union observer.

On the China/Sudan relationship

"If it were not for China's involvement with us, all these punishments proposed by the American delegation would be passed."

Gutbi al-Mahdi, a Sudanese presidential adviser, speaking to the Financial Times.

"Sudan was an opportunity for them [China]. They were not facing the usual competition and the Chinese government doesn't have NGOs and human rights groups lobbying them. It's a marriage of convenience."

A western diplomat, speaking to the Financial Times.

On Western intervention in Darfur

"Targeting Sudan means you will fall into a third swamp - after Afghanistan and Iraq. There are lions here in Sudan which would like to confront the Americans."

"The door of the jihad is still open and if it has been closed in the south it will be opened in Darfur."

Mohammed Ali Abdullah, senior member of Sudan's ruling National Congress Party.

On rapes and massacres in Darfur

"Saida Abdukarim was eight months pregnant and innocently tending her vegetables when she was set-upon, raped and beaten mercilessly. Begging for the life of her child, she was told by her attackers: "You are black so we can rape you.""

The Guardian Newspaper, UK, January 2006

"Janjaweed were there and told us to dig up all the graves. I don't know why, I think just to make it worse. We had to dig people up who had been dead, and then look at the bodies, and then put them back in the earth. Just to make it worse. Just to show that they could make it worse."

Sharif Yahaya, after being made to dig up his family killed by the Janjaweed

Pictures courtesy of AFP images, AP images, and BBC.co.uk