Moving toward a Final Solution in Darfur (Eric Reeves)
The latest comprehensive update on Darfur from the indispensable Eric Reeves.
Read the whole thing.
--Jeff Weintraub
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Eric Reeves
(Sudan Research, Analysis, and Advocacy - http://sudanreeves.org/)
October 24, 2005
Darfur in the Deepening Shadow of Auschwitz, Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda
Posted by: ereeves on Oct 24, 2005 - 04:27 PM
News Khartoum’s genocidaires accelerate efforts to create destabilizing violence
Eric Reeves
October 24, 2005
A series of extraordinarily dire warnings have recently been issued by various UN officials, a last desperate attempt to force the international community to take urgent cognizance of Darfur’s deepening crisis. Full-scale catastrophe and a massive increase in genocidal destruction are imminent, and there is as yet no evidence that the world is listening seriously. The US in particular seems intent on taking an expediently blinkered view of the crisis (see forthcoming analysis by this writer at The New Republic [on-line], http://www.tnr.com/). But European countries and other international actors with the power to speak the truth are little better; the absence of an effective voice emerging from the Blair government is especially dismaying in light of British willingness to intervene in Iraq.
Even so, there is no possible escape from the most basic truth in Darfur: Khartoum’s National Islamic Front, ever more dominant in the new “Government of National Unity,” is deliberately escalating the level of violence and insecurity as a form of “counter-insurgency” warfare, with the clear goal of accelerating human destruction among the African tribal populations of the region.
In failing to respond to this conspicuous and now fully articulated truth, the world is yet again knowingly acquiescing in genocide. But as the shadows of Auschwitz and Treblinka, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Rwanda fall more heavily over Darfur, we cannot evade this most shameful truth: we know---as events steadily, remorselessly unfold---more about the realities of ethnically-targeted human destruction in Darfur than on any other previous such occasion in history. So much the greater is our moral disgrace.
UNSURPASSABLE URGENCY
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres is reported by Reuters ("World has just weeks to save Darfur, says UN High Commissioner for Refugees”) as declaring that the Darfur “cease-fire was falling apart,” and that the “African Union peace force was hopelessly under-manned, under-equipped, and the world appeared to have lost interest” (Reuters, October 21, 2005). “Everything is getting out of control; [ ] the critical moment is from now to the end of the year. We are close to a moment in which a new major tragedy might occur in Darfur. [Such a tragedy] would have a major impact on [Darfur’s] neighbors...and on the whole African region.”
Guterres continued:
“Even our [humanitarian] staff can barely move. There is no security. What we are witnessing on the ground is a very serious deterioration.” (Reuters, October 21, 2005)
“[Guterres warned] that the cease-fire [Darfur] is unraveling, which could lead to a catastrophic increase in deaths in coming weeks and spread instability in sub-Saharan Africa. [ ] ‘People are dying, and dying in large numbers.’” (Los Angeles Times, October 23, 2005)
Subsequent to Guterres’ remarks, Reuters reported that “heavy gunfire in West Darfur’s main town [al-Geneina] kept [humanitarian] aid staff locked in their homes”:
“George Somerwill, a UN spokesman, confirmed there was gunfire in the town but could give no further details. ‘There was gunfire heard during the night in el-Geneina town and aid workers were confined to their houses,’ he said. The government [i.e., the National Islamic Front] often threatens aid agencies with closure if they comment on the security situation in Darfur. Authorities [in Khartoum] have arrested senior Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) workers and ordered heads of British aid agencies Oxfam and Save the Children to leave the country for publishing information on Darfur.” (Reuters, October 23, 2005)
This gunfire in el-Geneina, capital of West Darfur, comes after an unprecedented evacuation of non-essential UN personnel because of violence in the region. All roads from el-Geneina remain “red no-go” because of insecurity, paralyzing humanitarian organizations and leaving more and more vulnerable civilians completely cut-off from food, medicine, and water (for example, many tens of thousands of displaced persons depend upon water that is pumped by engines requiring fuel, which cannot now be transported). The UN has offered contradictory numbers on the numbers of affected people in West Darfur, but the area coordinator for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in West Darfur, Andy Pendleton, would seem to have particular credibility:
"‘With each passing day we are in a race against time to get assistance to over half a million people to whom we have lost regular access,’ Andy Pendleton, area coordinator for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in West Darfur, said in el-Geneina on Sunday. ‘The situation is desperate, more desperate than ever before,’ he warned.” (UN Integrated Regional Information Networks [el-Geneina], October 12, 2005)
That the violence throughout Darfur is accelerating, and indeed reaching unprecedented levels in various respects, is confirmed in many other UN accounts. Two weeks ago, Juan Mendez, UN special advisor on the prevention of genocide, declared of the attack on Aro Sharow camp for displaced persons: “Until last week, there have never been concerted, massive attacks of an indiscriminate nature against civilians in camps in Darfur” (Washington Post, October 10, 2005). What we must remember is that the attack on Aro Sharow, a camp of some 4,000-5,000 displaced people from African tribal groups, was conducted by Khartoum’s military proxy, the Arab militia force known as the Janjaweed. The collusion between the Janjaweed and the National Islamic Front, which retains full control of the military and intelligence services in Sudan, was recently underscored by the African Union:
“On 28 September 2005, just four days ago, some reportedly 400 Janjaweed Arab militia on camels and horseback went on the rampage in Arusharo, Acho and Gozmena villages in West Darfur. Our reports also indicate that the day previous, and indeed on the actual day of the attack, Government of Sudan helicopter gunships were observed overhead. This apparent coordinated land and air assault gives credence to the repeated claim by the rebel movements of collusion between the Government of Sudan forces and the Janjaweed/Arab militia. This incident [ ] was confirmed not only by our investigators but also by workers of humanitarian agencies and NGOs in the area.” (Transcript of Kingibe press conference, Khartoum, October 1, 2005)
The final death toll from the attack on Aro Sharow was at least 35 defenseless displaced persons. The entire population was made to flee, and the UN High Commission for Refugees estimates that about 25% of their flimsy shelters were destroyed. Kingibe went on to emphasize yet another attack, in North Darfur, that again saw Khartoum’s regular military forces attacking civilians:
“The following day, a clearly premeditated and well rehearsed combined operation was carried out by the Government of Sudan military and police at approximately 11am in the town of Tawilla and its IDP camp in North Darfur. The Government of Sudan forces used approximately 41 trucks and 7 land cruisers in the operation which resulted in a number of deaths, massive displacement of civilians. [ ] During the attack, thousands from the township and the IDP camp and many humanitarian workers were forced to seek refuge near the AU camp for personal safety and security.” (Transcript of Kingibe press conference, Khartoum, October 1, 2005)
It is important and encouraging that the AU is finally finding its public voice in speaking out about Darfur’s realities: too often the AU has kept confidential its reports of attacks involving Khartoum’s regular forces and the Janjaweed. Indeed, much of what we know about the atrocities the AU has uncovered over the past year and a half has come only from leaks (see below). But even a more honest voice from the AU can’t change its fundamental inadequacy as a force providing security for Darfur’s millions of vulnerable civilians and increasingly vulnerable humanitarian workers. UNHCR’s Guterres again offers an appropriately urgent assessment:
"‘The AU force cannot effectively protect the people of Darfur.. ..and in some cases even themselves,’ [Guterres] said, likening the task facing the fledgling force to placing one policeman in London and asking him to stop all crime there.” (Reuters, October 21, 2005)
“Likening the task facing the fledgling force to placing one policeman in London and asking him to stop all crime there”: this assessment by a senior UN official is as unexpected is it is accurate in implication (if understandably hyperbolic in formulation). The AU cannot stop genocide in Darfur; it cannot begin to provide the security that will allow current humanitarian operations to continue. The fiction that the AU is somehow adequate to the many and daunting security tasks conspicuously evident in Darfur is the mendacity of the expedient---of those who have no intention of stopping genocide themselves.
A CONTINUATION OF GENOCIDAL PATTERNS OF VIOLENCE
It is important to bear in mind that hundreds of attacks by Khartoum and the Janjaweed, such as those reported by the AU’s Kingibe, have already been chronicled---by the AU, human rights groups, the UN, humanitarian organizations, news reporters on the ground, and other observers over the past 32 months of major conflict. This very substantial chronicling, in aggregate (see bibliography in Appendix 1), allows us to understand how it is that between 80-90% of all African villages have now been violently destroyed. This percentage range is the overwhelming consensus among Darfuris in exile, many with excellent and continuing contacts on the ground inside Darfur.
The reports of attacks are relentlessly, agonizingly similar in nature, conveying not only sheer terror on the part of the defenseless victims who survived to tell their tales, but the comprehensive nature of the destruction inflicted: men and boys are killed; women and girls are raped, with many abducted; dwellings, mosques, schools, clinics, and markets are burned; food- and seed-stocks are destroyed, along with agricultural implements; fruit trees are cut down; cattle and livestock, along with valuable possessions, are looted; water wells and irrigations systems are poisoned or destroyed. Attacks are typically accompanied by hateful racial epithets, as well as incomprehensible cruelty. An all too representative attack was graphically rendered over a year ago in the Washington Post by George Wolf of Refugees International:
“On the morning of July 12, [2004] hell descended on the village of Donki Dereisa. Shortly before sunrise, Fatima Ibrahim, 28, awoke to the deafening sound of exploding ordnance falling from the sky. As she emerged from her mud hut with her 10-year-old daughter, she saw fires blazing all around and scores of heavily armed men on horseback attacking from every direction. With bullets whistling past, Ibrahim and her daughter ran for their lives, ducking into a nearby ravine, where they hid without food or water for the next two days.”
“From the ditch, Ibrahim witnessed a horrific avalanche of violence that will haunt her for life. With Sudanese foot soldiers at their side, the mounted attackers shot the panicked and unarmed villagers in cold blood. Approximately 150 people, including 10 women, were killed. But the worst was to come.”
“Ibrahim told Refugees International about a week after the attack that among those captured during the assault were four of her brothers and six young children, including three of her cousins. As Ibrahim watched in horror, several of the attackers began grabbing the screaming children and throwing them one by one into a raging fire. One of the male villagers ran from his hiding place to plead for their lives. It was a fatal error. The raiders subdued the man and later beheaded him and dismembered his body. All six of the children were burned. Ibrahim's four brothers have not been heard from since.” (Washington Post, July 31, 2004)
Along with the highly systematic nature of village destruction throughout Darfur, clearly reflecting ethnic targeting of African tribal groups, rape is the crime in Darfur that most dramatically reflects a racial/ethnic animus. A powerful study of sexual violence in Darfur published in October 2004 by Tara Gingerich, JD, MA and Jennifer Leaning, MD, SMH (“The Use of Rape as a Weapon of War in the conflict in Darfur, Sudan,” Harvard School of Public Health and the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights) makes a central claim that continues to stand without meaningful challenge:
“Our findings suggest that the military forces attacking the non-Arab people of Darfur, the Janjaweed in collaboration with forces of the Government of Sudan, have inflicted a massive campaign of rape as a deliberate aspect of their military assault against the lives, livelihoods, and land of this population.” (page 1)
Gingerich and Leaning also report on the racial/ethnic animus in the accounts of rape coming from non-Arab or African women, accounts that make clear the genocidal nature of these assaults:
“It is widely reported that during the attacks, the Janjaweed often berated the women, calling them slaves, telling them that they would now bear a ‘free child,’ and asserting that they (the perpetrators) are wiping out the non-Arabs.” (page 15)
Together, these findings offer a clear indictment for genocide. Article 2 of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide declares as specific acts of genocide: “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”; and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” Systematic, ethnically-targeted rape in Darfur causes extremely serious bodily harm, particularly the gang-rape so prevalent, as does rape accompanied by non-sexual violence, also typical in Darfur. Rape causes excruciating mental trauma. And for a variety of reasons, rape also serves as a means of preventing births on the part of women within the targeted African groups. Those girls and women raped are often socially ostracized, and become much less valued as potential wives; violent rape often leads to medical complications that make further child-bearing impossible or much riskier; and rape often carries the threat of disease and infection, including direct threats to the lives of potential mothers.
Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) also provides evidence of a racial/ethnic animus to rape in Darfur. The medical relief organization published in March 2005 an immensely powerful and clinically informed study, “The Crushing Burden of Rape: Sexual Violence in Darfur” (Amsterdam, March 8, 2005). In a revealing example, MSF reports the experience of three Fur women:
“We saw five Arab men who came to us and asked where our husbands were. Then they told us that we should have sex with them. We said no. So they beat and raped us. After they abused us, the told us that now we would have Arab babies; and if they would find any Fur [one of the African tribal groups of Darfur], they would rape them again to change the colour of their children.’ (Three women, 25, 30 and 40, October 2004, West Darfur)”
Most attacks in Darfur, on villages and people, remain unreported, and we may only infer something of the scale of human mortality from the hundreds of reports that have been recorded. There are more reports to be assessed, however, and The Scotsman (UK)---one of the most resourceful newspapers reporting on Darfur---has obtained access to “previously confidential reports from the AU investigators on attacks which took place earlier this year, and have now been made available” (October 22, 2005):
“Shocking new evidence of atrocities is emerging, [detailing] murders, rapes, and the burning of entire villages by Sudanese government forces and their armed militia allies, known as the Janjaweed.”
In fact, the AU has been unable to investigate most of the incidents reported to it, often because hamstrung by Khartoum’s officials, and has too often not made available what reports it has assembled. For reports on what AU investigators have discovered, we have in the past been too dependent upon leaks of the sort evidently made to The Scotsman.
MORTALITY
All evidence available from the AU, humanitarian organizations, the UN (including the former UN Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, Asma Jahangir), and human rights organizations, including that in a major forthcoming human rights study of Darfur, strongly suggests that a figure of 200,000 violently killed over the course of the conflict is excessively conservative (see appendix to April 30, 2005 mortality assessment by this writer). Seen in conjunction with the crudely calculated UN figure for mortality from disease and malnutrition (180,000 as of March 2005), this implies a gross mortality figure of approximately 400,000 people, the number who have now died from all causes in Darfur. This is roughly half the total of deaths in Rwanda.
Such a figure provides the context in which to hear the anguished exclamation of UN High Commissioner for Refugees Guterres:
“‘People [in Darfur] are dying, and dying in large numbers,’ [Guterres said].” (Los Angeles Times, October 23, 2005)
In fact, the most recent UN World Health Organization study of mortality (June 2005) found for most of Darfur a Crude Mortality Rate (CMR) of 0.8 (deaths per day per 10,000 of affected population). This was the figure for accessible populations of conflict-affected persons in West and North Darfur, but for South Darfur represented neither unregistered displaced persons nor resident conflict affected-persons. The total of inaccessible and non-assessed populations likely increases the overall CMR to at least 0.9 for all conflict-affected persons. Even the effects of highly impressive improvements in recent humanitarian deliveries in Darfur are almost certainly offset by dramatic increases in size---many hundreds of thousands of people---of those populations that in September and October lost access to humanitarian assistance. UNICEF has estimated the “normal” monthly CMR for Darfur to be 0.3; thus 0.6 of the current CMR is “excess,” i.e., caused by violence and war-related malnutrition and disease.
For a conflict-affected population of roughly 3.4 million (the estimate of the most recent UN Darfur Humanitarian Profile) such a CMR represents monthly mortality in excess of 6,000 human beings.
GENOCIDAL MEANS
Khartoum’s genocidal counter-insurgency war in Darfur has already profoundly reshaped the demographic realities of the region through massive displacement and mortality among the African tribal groups---the Fur, the Masseleit, the Zaghawa, the Birgid, the Tunjur, the Dajo and others. This in turn has had a series of highly significant effects on the larger agricultural economy of Darfur, with greater impoverishment of not only African tribal groups, but of nomadic Arab groups as well---many of which have not participated in the conflict but now increasingly confront the war’s deadly consequences.
The largest economic consequence of genocide in Darfur is reflected in a UN nutritional assessment (“Food Security and Nutrition Survey, September 2005), reported in the most recent UN Darfur Humanitarian Profile (No. 18, reflecting conditions as of September 1, 2005):
“Resident households have become more impoverished over the last year, with only 20% having reasonable food consumption from their own means, in comparison to 46% in 2004.” (Page 6)
By definition, those in the camps for displaced persons are incapable of supplying their own food, though some have attempted limited agricultural production if they are not too distant from their previous farmlands. But even this limited food production is deeply endangered by continuing insecurity during the current harvest season. In short, approximately 90% of the affected resident households and registered Internally Displaced Persons (now almost equal populations) have been brought to the point of at least partial food dependency.
The nomadic Arabic communities in Darfur, most of which have remained outside the conflict, are also suffering terribly, if largely invisibly, from the consequences of war and the collapse of the agricultural economy in which they played their own role. An excellent overview of the current crisis from the perspective of the Arab nomadic community has been provided by the UN’s Integrated Regional Information Networks [dateline: Kabkabiya, North Darfur], available on-line. The dispatch notes that as “the region’s economy was destroyed, markets were closed and nomads were cut off from their traditional sources of food and medical assistance” (October 19, 2005). Though mortality rates have not been measured among these people, there are highly alarming reports:
“Izzedine Zeroual, a health officer for the UN's Children's Fund (UNICEF) in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur State, said that nomadic leaders claimed they had lost up to 30% of their community through disease and violence since the war began. He noted that between June 2004 and October 2005 in North Darfur alone outbreaks of polio, measles, whooping cough, hepatitis E, jaundice, bloody diarrhoea, as well as the most virulent form of meningitis, W-135, had been recorded. ‘We don't have any data on how these outbreaks affected the nomadic communities, but they didn't have access to immunisation for four years and 14 clinics in the Kabkabiya area were destroyed during the conflict. I'm sure many of them died,’ Zeroual said.”
The nomadic communities are also extremely vulnerable to attack by the insurgents, primarily the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army:
“In addition to being cut off from most sources of income and support, many nomads live in constant fear of being attacked by SLM/A rebels---called Tora Bora by the nomads---who could mistake them for the Janjawid. ‘Since the beginning of the war we have been attacked more than 20 times,’ Umsabal Adam Bashir said. ‘We are afraid of the Tora Bora. They can attack us any time. We feel as if we are in prison.’"
The plight of innocent nomadic Arab civilians has too many perverse parallels with that of the displaced African tribal populations.
A CONTINUING CLIMATE OF IMPUNITY
The men who are responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity continue to operate amidst what all UN and other observers have described as a “climate of impunity” in Darfur. Indeed, the “climate of impunity” for the National Islamic Front’s military, intelligence, and security services extends to the entire country, including Khartoum, nominal capital of the new “Government of National Unity.” The current UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Sudan, Sima Samar, offers an unsparing indictment of the human rights record of the current “government,” one that comports fully with the abysmal human rights record of Khartoum going back to the military coup that brought the NIF to power in June 1989, deposing an elected government, and deliberately aborting Sudan’s most promising chance for peace since independence in 1956:
“Sudan arbitrarily arrests and tortures civilians and has failed to try those responsible for crimes committed [in Darfur], a senior UN rights official said on Saturday. Sima Samar, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Sudan, said there was a culture of impunity for those who raped women, especially in Darfur, and that the government's excuses for inaction were not acceptable.”
“[Samar] said emergency laws in force in Darfur in western Sudan and in the east were also being applied in the capital Khartoum. ‘People are arbitrarily arrested and held incommunicado,’ she said. ‘Detention by security forces, torture, ill-treatment and killing of civilians continues,’ Samar said, singling out mistreatment of people internally displaced by conflicts.”
“Samar, who visited Darfur and southern Sudan as well as prison facilities in Khartoum, said the security forces appeared to act above the law, and gave the example of the recent arrest and torture of students who were demonstrating peacefully in Khartoum. ‘The detention and torture of students...is an indication that the national security continues to function above the law and without any accountability,’ she said.”
“Samar [said] [Khartoum’s special national court for war crimes in Darfur] ‘was not really [tackling] the crimes committed during the war in Darfur,’ adding the court's chief justice had said that of 72,000 complaints filed in Darfur, it had tried only three cases. The government says the national court will be a substitute for the International Criminal Court which is investigating alleged war crimes in Darfur. But investigators have yet to be granted permission to visit Sudan. ‘Unfortunately the minister of justice clearly said that they are not going to cooperate with the ICC,’ Samar said.” (Reuters [dateline: Khartoum] October 22, 2005)
This failure of the National Islamic Front to cooperate in any meaningful fashion with the ICC or lead prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is hardly surprising; indeed, it is all that we may expect so long as the NIF controls the new “government,” including the Ministry of the Interior, the military, the security/intelligence apparatus, and the Presidency. It is thus peculiar in the extreme for Juan Mendez, UN special advisor on the prevention of genocide, to claim twice in his recent report to the Security Council, that “it is in the self-interest of the Government of Sudan to cooperate with the ICC prosecution as a way of creating an atmosphere conducive to reconciliation” (Report of October 4, 2005, Paragraph 36).
This statement is deeply wrong in its assumption, and thus inevitably in its conclusion: there is simply no evidence that the NIF desires “reconciliation” in Darfur. The point of the NIF’s recent military attacks in Darfur, in concert with the Janjaweed, is precisely to poison the atmosphere, to ensure that the insurgency movements will find it more difficult to commit to the peace process in Abuja, and to preserve the deadly status quo---a grim genocide by attrition. Moreover, many of the genocidaires in Khartoum are among the 51 men referred by a UN Commission of Inquiry to the ICC for investigation for crimes against humanity.
Since there is undoubted complicity on the part of men like Saleh ‘Gosh’ (head of the security services, the Mukhabarat), former First Vice-President Ali Osman Taha, as well as others still powerful within the NIF, it is quite unclear what Mendez means to suggest by declaring that it is in their “self-interest to cooperate” with the ICC. It is no more in the “self-interest” of these genocidaires to “cooperate” than it is to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1556, “demanding” that Khartoum disarm its Janjaweed allies (July 30, 2004). Such disarmament, as Mendez himself reports, is essential for peace in Darfur, even as Mendez also reports, “to date [ ] there has been no serious effort to disarm the Janjaweed, as demanded repeatedly by the Security Council and as agreed to by the Government of Sudan” (Paragraph 19).
Obduracy, genocidal brutality, and ruthless self-interest define the National Islamic Front and the government these cruel men still dominate. Contrary assumptions amount to an enabling expediency.
WHAT WE ARE WITNESSING
A month ago, UN aid chief Jan Egeland issued the essential warning:
"‘My warning is the following: if [insecurity] continues to escalate, if it continues to be so dangerous on humanitarian work, we may not be able to sustain our operation for 2.5 million people requiring lifesaving assistance,’ Egeland said. ‘It could all end tomorrow---it's as serious as that.’" (Associated Press, September 28, 2005)
We are a month closer to the day Egeland warned of---and a month closer to the hideous reality Egeland rightly insists we contemplate:
"‘My question is, is [Darfur] a repeat of the so-called safe areas of Bosnia again? We keep people alive, we give them food, we give them medicine, schools, but we do not protect them, or protect our own unarmed staff. Then the massacres happen,’ [Egeland] added.” (UN News Center, September 28, 2005)
Egeland has called for a force “three times” the size of the presently deployed AU monitoring mission---a force thus of approximately 20,000 troops and police, obviously far in excess of what the AU can provide on its own. UN High Commissioner for Refugees Guterres has declared that, “the African Union force cannot effectively protect the people of Darfur...and in some cases even themselves,” and has “likened the task facing the fledgling force to placing one policeman in London and asking him to stop all crime there.”
These are not considered military analyses, though they comport well with the general tenor of a variety of military assessments. They do suggest all too well the degree of international failure to respond to genocidal destruction...again.
Eric Reeves
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
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413-585-3326
ereeves@smith.edu
http://www.sudanreeves.org/
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Appendix 1: Websites of organizations that have produced multiple studies of the scale and consequences of violence in Darfur, and URL’s for particularly important studies:
International Crisis Group: http://www.crisisweb.org/
(see especially “Darfur: The Failure to Protect,”)
Human Rights Watch: (see especially “Darfur Destroyed: Ethnic Cleansing by Government and Militia Forces in Western Sudan,” http://hrw.org/reports/2004/sudan0504/)
Amnesty International: http://www.amnesty.org/
(see especially “Darfur: ‘Too many people killed for no reason,’”)
Physicians for Human Rights: (see especially “Evidence of Intentional Destruction of Livelihoods in Darfur,”)
Report of the Coalition for International Justice, “Documenting Atrocities in Darfur,” August 2004, (crucial data for understanding violent mortality in Darfur)
"Sudan: genocide has killed more than the tsunami," synopsis of Darfur mortality analysis by Jan Coebergh, MD Parliamentary Brief (UK), February 2005 (Volume 9, No. 7).
Coalition for International Justice Darfur mortality analysis, by Professor John Hagan, Northwestern University, and Patricia Parker, University of Toronto,
The Lancet, October 1, 2004, “Violence and mortality in West Darfur, Sudan (2003-04): epidemiological evidence from four surveys,” http://www.thelancet.com/journal [requires (free) registration].
UN World Health Organization (WHO) study announcement [September 13, 2004] supplemented by October 15, 2004 update and press release.
A month ago, UN aid chief Jan Egeland issued the essential warning:
"‘My warning is the following: if [insecurity] continues to escalate, if it continues to be so dangerous on humanitarian work, we may not be able to sustain our operation for 2.5 million people requiring lifesaving assistance,’ Egeland said. ‘It could all end tomorrow---it's as serious as that.’" (Associated Press, September 28, 2005)
We are a month closer to the day Egeland warned of---and a month closer to the hideous reality Egeland rightly insists we contemplate:
"‘My question is, is [Darfur] a repeat of the so-called safe areas of Bosnia again? We keep people alive, we give them food, we give them medicine, schools, but we do not protect them, or protect our own unarmed staff. Then the massacres happen,’ [Egeland] added.” (UN News Center, September 28, 2005)
[T]here is no possible escape from the most basic truth in Darfur: Khartoum’s National Islamic Front, ever more dominant in the new “Government of National Unity,” is deliberately escalating the level of violence and insecurity as a form of “counter-insurgency” warfare, with the clear goal of accelerating human destruction among the African tribal populations of the region.
In failing to respond to this conspicuous and now fully articulated truth, the world is yet again knowingly acquiescing in genocide. But as the shadows of Auschwitz and Treblinka, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Rwanda fall more heavily over Darfur, we cannot evade this most shameful truth: we know---as events steadily, remorselessly unfold---more about the realities of ethnically-targeted human destruction in Darfur than on any other previous such occasion in history. So much the greater is our moral disgrace.
Read the whole thing.
--Jeff Weintraub
=====================
Eric Reeves
(Sudan Research, Analysis, and Advocacy - http://sudanreeves.org/)
October 24, 2005
Darfur in the Deepening Shadow of Auschwitz, Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda
Posted by: ereeves on Oct 24, 2005 - 04:27 PM
News Khartoum’s genocidaires accelerate efforts to create destabilizing violence
Eric Reeves
October 24, 2005
A series of extraordinarily dire warnings have recently been issued by various UN officials, a last desperate attempt to force the international community to take urgent cognizance of Darfur’s deepening crisis. Full-scale catastrophe and a massive increase in genocidal destruction are imminent, and there is as yet no evidence that the world is listening seriously. The US in particular seems intent on taking an expediently blinkered view of the crisis (see forthcoming analysis by this writer at The New Republic [on-line], http://www.tnr.com/). But European countries and other international actors with the power to speak the truth are little better; the absence of an effective voice emerging from the Blair government is especially dismaying in light of British willingness to intervene in Iraq.
Even so, there is no possible escape from the most basic truth in Darfur: Khartoum’s National Islamic Front, ever more dominant in the new “Government of National Unity,” is deliberately escalating the level of violence and insecurity as a form of “counter-insurgency” warfare, with the clear goal of accelerating human destruction among the African tribal populations of the region.
In failing to respond to this conspicuous and now fully articulated truth, the world is yet again knowingly acquiescing in genocide. But as the shadows of Auschwitz and Treblinka, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Rwanda fall more heavily over Darfur, we cannot evade this most shameful truth: we know---as events steadily, remorselessly unfold---more about the realities of ethnically-targeted human destruction in Darfur than on any other previous such occasion in history. So much the greater is our moral disgrace.
UNSURPASSABLE URGENCY
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres is reported by Reuters ("World has just weeks to save Darfur, says UN High Commissioner for Refugees”) as declaring that the Darfur “cease-fire was falling apart,” and that the “African Union peace force was hopelessly under-manned, under-equipped, and the world appeared to have lost interest” (Reuters, October 21, 2005). “Everything is getting out of control; [ ] the critical moment is from now to the end of the year. We are close to a moment in which a new major tragedy might occur in Darfur. [Such a tragedy] would have a major impact on [Darfur’s] neighbors...and on the whole African region.”
Guterres continued:
“Even our [humanitarian] staff can barely move. There is no security. What we are witnessing on the ground is a very serious deterioration.” (Reuters, October 21, 2005)
“[Guterres warned] that the cease-fire [Darfur] is unraveling, which could lead to a catastrophic increase in deaths in coming weeks and spread instability in sub-Saharan Africa. [ ] ‘People are dying, and dying in large numbers.’” (Los Angeles Times, October 23, 2005)
Subsequent to Guterres’ remarks, Reuters reported that “heavy gunfire in West Darfur’s main town [al-Geneina] kept [humanitarian] aid staff locked in their homes”:
“George Somerwill, a UN spokesman, confirmed there was gunfire in the town but could give no further details. ‘There was gunfire heard during the night in el-Geneina town and aid workers were confined to their houses,’ he said. The government [i.e., the National Islamic Front] often threatens aid agencies with closure if they comment on the security situation in Darfur. Authorities [in Khartoum] have arrested senior Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) workers and ordered heads of British aid agencies Oxfam and Save the Children to leave the country for publishing information on Darfur.” (Reuters, October 23, 2005)
This gunfire in el-Geneina, capital of West Darfur, comes after an unprecedented evacuation of non-essential UN personnel because of violence in the region. All roads from el-Geneina remain “red no-go” because of insecurity, paralyzing humanitarian organizations and leaving more and more vulnerable civilians completely cut-off from food, medicine, and water (for example, many tens of thousands of displaced persons depend upon water that is pumped by engines requiring fuel, which cannot now be transported). The UN has offered contradictory numbers on the numbers of affected people in West Darfur, but the area coordinator for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in West Darfur, Andy Pendleton, would seem to have particular credibility:
"‘With each passing day we are in a race against time to get assistance to over half a million people to whom we have lost regular access,’ Andy Pendleton, area coordinator for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in West Darfur, said in el-Geneina on Sunday. ‘The situation is desperate, more desperate than ever before,’ he warned.” (UN Integrated Regional Information Networks [el-Geneina], October 12, 2005)
That the violence throughout Darfur is accelerating, and indeed reaching unprecedented levels in various respects, is confirmed in many other UN accounts. Two weeks ago, Juan Mendez, UN special advisor on the prevention of genocide, declared of the attack on Aro Sharow camp for displaced persons: “Until last week, there have never been concerted, massive attacks of an indiscriminate nature against civilians in camps in Darfur” (Washington Post, October 10, 2005). What we must remember is that the attack on Aro Sharow, a camp of some 4,000-5,000 displaced people from African tribal groups, was conducted by Khartoum’s military proxy, the Arab militia force known as the Janjaweed. The collusion between the Janjaweed and the National Islamic Front, which retains full control of the military and intelligence services in Sudan, was recently underscored by the African Union:
“On 28 September 2005, just four days ago, some reportedly 400 Janjaweed Arab militia on camels and horseback went on the rampage in Arusharo, Acho and Gozmena villages in West Darfur. Our reports also indicate that the day previous, and indeed on the actual day of the attack, Government of Sudan helicopter gunships were observed overhead. This apparent coordinated land and air assault gives credence to the repeated claim by the rebel movements of collusion between the Government of Sudan forces and the Janjaweed/Arab militia. This incident [ ] was confirmed not only by our investigators but also by workers of humanitarian agencies and NGOs in the area.” (Transcript of Kingibe press conference, Khartoum, October 1, 2005)
The final death toll from the attack on Aro Sharow was at least 35 defenseless displaced persons. The entire population was made to flee, and the UN High Commission for Refugees estimates that about 25% of their flimsy shelters were destroyed. Kingibe went on to emphasize yet another attack, in North Darfur, that again saw Khartoum’s regular military forces attacking civilians:
“The following day, a clearly premeditated and well rehearsed combined operation was carried out by the Government of Sudan military and police at approximately 11am in the town of Tawilla and its IDP camp in North Darfur. The Government of Sudan forces used approximately 41 trucks and 7 land cruisers in the operation which resulted in a number of deaths, massive displacement of civilians. [ ] During the attack, thousands from the township and the IDP camp and many humanitarian workers were forced to seek refuge near the AU camp for personal safety and security.” (Transcript of Kingibe press conference, Khartoum, October 1, 2005)
It is important and encouraging that the AU is finally finding its public voice in speaking out about Darfur’s realities: too often the AU has kept confidential its reports of attacks involving Khartoum’s regular forces and the Janjaweed. Indeed, much of what we know about the atrocities the AU has uncovered over the past year and a half has come only from leaks (see below). But even a more honest voice from the AU can’t change its fundamental inadequacy as a force providing security for Darfur’s millions of vulnerable civilians and increasingly vulnerable humanitarian workers. UNHCR’s Guterres again offers an appropriately urgent assessment:
"‘The AU force cannot effectively protect the people of Darfur.. ..and in some cases even themselves,’ [Guterres] said, likening the task facing the fledgling force to placing one policeman in London and asking him to stop all crime there.” (Reuters, October 21, 2005)
“Likening the task facing the fledgling force to placing one policeman in London and asking him to stop all crime there”: this assessment by a senior UN official is as unexpected is it is accurate in implication (if understandably hyperbolic in formulation). The AU cannot stop genocide in Darfur; it cannot begin to provide the security that will allow current humanitarian operations to continue. The fiction that the AU is somehow adequate to the many and daunting security tasks conspicuously evident in Darfur is the mendacity of the expedient---of those who have no intention of stopping genocide themselves.
A CONTINUATION OF GENOCIDAL PATTERNS OF VIOLENCE
It is important to bear in mind that hundreds of attacks by Khartoum and the Janjaweed, such as those reported by the AU’s Kingibe, have already been chronicled---by the AU, human rights groups, the UN, humanitarian organizations, news reporters on the ground, and other observers over the past 32 months of major conflict. This very substantial chronicling, in aggregate (see bibliography in Appendix 1), allows us to understand how it is that between 80-90% of all African villages have now been violently destroyed. This percentage range is the overwhelming consensus among Darfuris in exile, many with excellent and continuing contacts on the ground inside Darfur.
The reports of attacks are relentlessly, agonizingly similar in nature, conveying not only sheer terror on the part of the defenseless victims who survived to tell their tales, but the comprehensive nature of the destruction inflicted: men and boys are killed; women and girls are raped, with many abducted; dwellings, mosques, schools, clinics, and markets are burned; food- and seed-stocks are destroyed, along with agricultural implements; fruit trees are cut down; cattle and livestock, along with valuable possessions, are looted; water wells and irrigations systems are poisoned or destroyed. Attacks are typically accompanied by hateful racial epithets, as well as incomprehensible cruelty. An all too representative attack was graphically rendered over a year ago in the Washington Post by George Wolf of Refugees International:
“On the morning of July 12, [2004] hell descended on the village of Donki Dereisa. Shortly before sunrise, Fatima Ibrahim, 28, awoke to the deafening sound of exploding ordnance falling from the sky. As she emerged from her mud hut with her 10-year-old daughter, she saw fires blazing all around and scores of heavily armed men on horseback attacking from every direction. With bullets whistling past, Ibrahim and her daughter ran for their lives, ducking into a nearby ravine, where they hid without food or water for the next two days.”
“From the ditch, Ibrahim witnessed a horrific avalanche of violence that will haunt her for life. With Sudanese foot soldiers at their side, the mounted attackers shot the panicked and unarmed villagers in cold blood. Approximately 150 people, including 10 women, were killed. But the worst was to come.”
“Ibrahim told Refugees International about a week after the attack that among those captured during the assault were four of her brothers and six young children, including three of her cousins. As Ibrahim watched in horror, several of the attackers began grabbing the screaming children and throwing them one by one into a raging fire. One of the male villagers ran from his hiding place to plead for their lives. It was a fatal error. The raiders subdued the man and later beheaded him and dismembered his body. All six of the children were burned. Ibrahim's four brothers have not been heard from since.” (Washington Post, July 31, 2004)
Along with the highly systematic nature of village destruction throughout Darfur, clearly reflecting ethnic targeting of African tribal groups, rape is the crime in Darfur that most dramatically reflects a racial/ethnic animus. A powerful study of sexual violence in Darfur published in October 2004 by Tara Gingerich, JD, MA and Jennifer Leaning, MD, SMH (“The Use of Rape as a Weapon of War in the conflict in Darfur, Sudan,” Harvard School of Public Health and the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights) makes a central claim that continues to stand without meaningful challenge:
“Our findings suggest that the military forces attacking the non-Arab people of Darfur, the Janjaweed in collaboration with forces of the Government of Sudan, have inflicted a massive campaign of rape as a deliberate aspect of their military assault against the lives, livelihoods, and land of this population.” (page 1)
Gingerich and Leaning also report on the racial/ethnic animus in the accounts of rape coming from non-Arab or African women, accounts that make clear the genocidal nature of these assaults:
“It is widely reported that during the attacks, the Janjaweed often berated the women, calling them slaves, telling them that they would now bear a ‘free child,’ and asserting that they (the perpetrators) are wiping out the non-Arabs.” (page 15)
Together, these findings offer a clear indictment for genocide. Article 2 of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide declares as specific acts of genocide: “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”; and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” Systematic, ethnically-targeted rape in Darfur causes extremely serious bodily harm, particularly the gang-rape so prevalent, as does rape accompanied by non-sexual violence, also typical in Darfur. Rape causes excruciating mental trauma. And for a variety of reasons, rape also serves as a means of preventing births on the part of women within the targeted African groups. Those girls and women raped are often socially ostracized, and become much less valued as potential wives; violent rape often leads to medical complications that make further child-bearing impossible or much riskier; and rape often carries the threat of disease and infection, including direct threats to the lives of potential mothers.
Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) also provides evidence of a racial/ethnic animus to rape in Darfur. The medical relief organization published in March 2005 an immensely powerful and clinically informed study, “The Crushing Burden of Rape: Sexual Violence in Darfur” (Amsterdam, March 8, 2005). In a revealing example, MSF reports the experience of three Fur women:
“We saw five Arab men who came to us and asked where our husbands were. Then they told us that we should have sex with them. We said no. So they beat and raped us. After they abused us, the told us that now we would have Arab babies; and if they would find any Fur [one of the African tribal groups of Darfur], they would rape them again to change the colour of their children.’ (Three women, 25, 30 and 40, October 2004, West Darfur)”
Most attacks in Darfur, on villages and people, remain unreported, and we may only infer something of the scale of human mortality from the hundreds of reports that have been recorded. There are more reports to be assessed, however, and The Scotsman (UK)---one of the most resourceful newspapers reporting on Darfur---has obtained access to “previously confidential reports from the AU investigators on attacks which took place earlier this year, and have now been made available” (October 22, 2005):
“Shocking new evidence of atrocities is emerging, [detailing] murders, rapes, and the burning of entire villages by Sudanese government forces and their armed militia allies, known as the Janjaweed.”
In fact, the AU has been unable to investigate most of the incidents reported to it, often because hamstrung by Khartoum’s officials, and has too often not made available what reports it has assembled. For reports on what AU investigators have discovered, we have in the past been too dependent upon leaks of the sort evidently made to The Scotsman.
MORTALITY
All evidence available from the AU, humanitarian organizations, the UN (including the former UN Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, Asma Jahangir), and human rights organizations, including that in a major forthcoming human rights study of Darfur, strongly suggests that a figure of 200,000 violently killed over the course of the conflict is excessively conservative (see appendix to April 30, 2005 mortality assessment by this writer). Seen in conjunction with the crudely calculated UN figure for mortality from disease and malnutrition (180,000 as of March 2005), this implies a gross mortality figure of approximately 400,000 people, the number who have now died from all causes in Darfur. This is roughly half the total of deaths in Rwanda.
Such a figure provides the context in which to hear the anguished exclamation of UN High Commissioner for Refugees Guterres:
“‘People [in Darfur] are dying, and dying in large numbers,’ [Guterres said].” (Los Angeles Times, October 23, 2005)
In fact, the most recent UN World Health Organization study of mortality (June 2005) found for most of Darfur a Crude Mortality Rate (CMR) of 0.8 (deaths per day per 10,000 of affected population). This was the figure for accessible populations of conflict-affected persons in West and North Darfur, but for South Darfur represented neither unregistered displaced persons nor resident conflict affected-persons. The total of inaccessible and non-assessed populations likely increases the overall CMR to at least 0.9 for all conflict-affected persons. Even the effects of highly impressive improvements in recent humanitarian deliveries in Darfur are almost certainly offset by dramatic increases in size---many hundreds of thousands of people---of those populations that in September and October lost access to humanitarian assistance. UNICEF has estimated the “normal” monthly CMR for Darfur to be 0.3; thus 0.6 of the current CMR is “excess,” i.e., caused by violence and war-related malnutrition and disease.
For a conflict-affected population of roughly 3.4 million (the estimate of the most recent UN Darfur Humanitarian Profile) such a CMR represents monthly mortality in excess of 6,000 human beings.
GENOCIDAL MEANS
Khartoum’s genocidal counter-insurgency war in Darfur has already profoundly reshaped the demographic realities of the region through massive displacement and mortality among the African tribal groups---the Fur, the Masseleit, the Zaghawa, the Birgid, the Tunjur, the Dajo and others. This in turn has had a series of highly significant effects on the larger agricultural economy of Darfur, with greater impoverishment of not only African tribal groups, but of nomadic Arab groups as well---many of which have not participated in the conflict but now increasingly confront the war’s deadly consequences.
The largest economic consequence of genocide in Darfur is reflected in a UN nutritional assessment (“Food Security and Nutrition Survey, September 2005), reported in the most recent UN Darfur Humanitarian Profile (No. 18, reflecting conditions as of September 1, 2005):
“Resident households have become more impoverished over the last year, with only 20% having reasonable food consumption from their own means, in comparison to 46% in 2004.” (Page 6)
By definition, those in the camps for displaced persons are incapable of supplying their own food, though some have attempted limited agricultural production if they are not too distant from their previous farmlands. But even this limited food production is deeply endangered by continuing insecurity during the current harvest season. In short, approximately 90% of the affected resident households and registered Internally Displaced Persons (now almost equal populations) have been brought to the point of at least partial food dependency.
The nomadic Arabic communities in Darfur, most of which have remained outside the conflict, are also suffering terribly, if largely invisibly, from the consequences of war and the collapse of the agricultural economy in which they played their own role. An excellent overview of the current crisis from the perspective of the Arab nomadic community has been provided by the UN’s Integrated Regional Information Networks [dateline: Kabkabiya, North Darfur], available on-line. The dispatch notes that as “the region’s economy was destroyed, markets were closed and nomads were cut off from their traditional sources of food and medical assistance” (October 19, 2005). Though mortality rates have not been measured among these people, there are highly alarming reports:
“Izzedine Zeroual, a health officer for the UN's Children's Fund (UNICEF) in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur State, said that nomadic leaders claimed they had lost up to 30% of their community through disease and violence since the war began. He noted that between June 2004 and October 2005 in North Darfur alone outbreaks of polio, measles, whooping cough, hepatitis E, jaundice, bloody diarrhoea, as well as the most virulent form of meningitis, W-135, had been recorded. ‘We don't have any data on how these outbreaks affected the nomadic communities, but they didn't have access to immunisation for four years and 14 clinics in the Kabkabiya area were destroyed during the conflict. I'm sure many of them died,’ Zeroual said.”
The nomadic communities are also extremely vulnerable to attack by the insurgents, primarily the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army:
“In addition to being cut off from most sources of income and support, many nomads live in constant fear of being attacked by SLM/A rebels---called Tora Bora by the nomads---who could mistake them for the Janjawid. ‘Since the beginning of the war we have been attacked more than 20 times,’ Umsabal Adam Bashir said. ‘We are afraid of the Tora Bora. They can attack us any time. We feel as if we are in prison.’"
The plight of innocent nomadic Arab civilians has too many perverse parallels with that of the displaced African tribal populations.
A CONTINUING CLIMATE OF IMPUNITY
The men who are responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity continue to operate amidst what all UN and other observers have described as a “climate of impunity” in Darfur. Indeed, the “climate of impunity” for the National Islamic Front’s military, intelligence, and security services extends to the entire country, including Khartoum, nominal capital of the new “Government of National Unity.” The current UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Sudan, Sima Samar, offers an unsparing indictment of the human rights record of the current “government,” one that comports fully with the abysmal human rights record of Khartoum going back to the military coup that brought the NIF to power in June 1989, deposing an elected government, and deliberately aborting Sudan’s most promising chance for peace since independence in 1956:
“Sudan arbitrarily arrests and tortures civilians and has failed to try those responsible for crimes committed [in Darfur], a senior UN rights official said on Saturday. Sima Samar, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Sudan, said there was a culture of impunity for those who raped women, especially in Darfur, and that the government's excuses for inaction were not acceptable.”
“[Samar] said emergency laws in force in Darfur in western Sudan and in the east were also being applied in the capital Khartoum. ‘People are arbitrarily arrested and held incommunicado,’ she said. ‘Detention by security forces, torture, ill-treatment and killing of civilians continues,’ Samar said, singling out mistreatment of people internally displaced by conflicts.”
“Samar, who visited Darfur and southern Sudan as well as prison facilities in Khartoum, said the security forces appeared to act above the law, and gave the example of the recent arrest and torture of students who were demonstrating peacefully in Khartoum. ‘The detention and torture of students...is an indication that the national security continues to function above the law and without any accountability,’ she said.”
“Samar [said] [Khartoum’s special national court for war crimes in Darfur] ‘was not really [tackling] the crimes committed during the war in Darfur,’ adding the court's chief justice had said that of 72,000 complaints filed in Darfur, it had tried only three cases. The government says the national court will be a substitute for the International Criminal Court which is investigating alleged war crimes in Darfur. But investigators have yet to be granted permission to visit Sudan. ‘Unfortunately the minister of justice clearly said that they are not going to cooperate with the ICC,’ Samar said.” (Reuters [dateline: Khartoum] October 22, 2005)
This failure of the National Islamic Front to cooperate in any meaningful fashion with the ICC or lead prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is hardly surprising; indeed, it is all that we may expect so long as the NIF controls the new “government,” including the Ministry of the Interior, the military, the security/intelligence apparatus, and the Presidency. It is thus peculiar in the extreme for Juan Mendez, UN special advisor on the prevention of genocide, to claim twice in his recent report to the Security Council, that “it is in the self-interest of the Government of Sudan to cooperate with the ICC prosecution as a way of creating an atmosphere conducive to reconciliation” (Report of October 4, 2005, Paragraph 36).
This statement is deeply wrong in its assumption, and thus inevitably in its conclusion: there is simply no evidence that the NIF desires “reconciliation” in Darfur. The point of the NIF’s recent military attacks in Darfur, in concert with the Janjaweed, is precisely to poison the atmosphere, to ensure that the insurgency movements will find it more difficult to commit to the peace process in Abuja, and to preserve the deadly status quo---a grim genocide by attrition. Moreover, many of the genocidaires in Khartoum are among the 51 men referred by a UN Commission of Inquiry to the ICC for investigation for crimes against humanity.
Since there is undoubted complicity on the part of men like Saleh ‘Gosh’ (head of the security services, the Mukhabarat), former First Vice-President Ali Osman Taha, as well as others still powerful within the NIF, it is quite unclear what Mendez means to suggest by declaring that it is in their “self-interest to cooperate” with the ICC. It is no more in the “self-interest” of these genocidaires to “cooperate” than it is to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1556, “demanding” that Khartoum disarm its Janjaweed allies (July 30, 2004). Such disarmament, as Mendez himself reports, is essential for peace in Darfur, even as Mendez also reports, “to date [ ] there has been no serious effort to disarm the Janjaweed, as demanded repeatedly by the Security Council and as agreed to by the Government of Sudan” (Paragraph 19).
Obduracy, genocidal brutality, and ruthless self-interest define the National Islamic Front and the government these cruel men still dominate. Contrary assumptions amount to an enabling expediency.
WHAT WE ARE WITNESSING
A month ago, UN aid chief Jan Egeland issued the essential warning:
"‘My warning is the following: if [insecurity] continues to escalate, if it continues to be so dangerous on humanitarian work, we may not be able to sustain our operation for 2.5 million people requiring lifesaving assistance,’ Egeland said. ‘It could all end tomorrow---it's as serious as that.’" (Associated Press, September 28, 2005)
We are a month closer to the day Egeland warned of---and a month closer to the hideous reality Egeland rightly insists we contemplate:
"‘My question is, is [Darfur] a repeat of the so-called safe areas of Bosnia again? We keep people alive, we give them food, we give them medicine, schools, but we do not protect them, or protect our own unarmed staff. Then the massacres happen,’ [Egeland] added.” (UN News Center, September 28, 2005)
Egeland has called for a force “three times” the size of the presently deployed AU monitoring mission---a force thus of approximately 20,000 troops and police, obviously far in excess of what the AU can provide on its own. UN High Commissioner for Refugees Guterres has declared that, “the African Union force cannot effectively protect the people of Darfur...and in some cases even themselves,” and has “likened the task facing the fledgling force to placing one policeman in London and asking him to stop all crime there.”
These are not considered military analyses, though they comport well with the general tenor of a variety of military assessments. They do suggest all too well the degree of international failure to respond to genocidal destruction...again.
Eric Reeves
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
---------------------------
413-585-3326
ereeves@smith.edu
http://www.sudanreeves.org/
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Appendix 1: Websites of organizations that have produced multiple studies of the scale and consequences of violence in Darfur, and URL’s for particularly important studies:
International Crisis Group: http://www.crisisweb.org/
(see especially “Darfur: The Failure to Protect,”)
Human Rights Watch: (see especially “Darfur Destroyed: Ethnic Cleansing by Government and Militia Forces in Western Sudan,” http://hrw.org/reports/2004/sudan0504/)
Amnesty International: http://www.amnesty.org/
(see especially “Darfur: ‘Too many people killed for no reason,’”)
Physicians for Human Rights: (see especially “Evidence of Intentional Destruction of Livelihoods in Darfur,”)
Report of the Coalition for International Justice, “Documenting Atrocities in Darfur,” August 2004, (crucial data for understanding violent mortality in Darfur)
"Sudan: genocide has killed more than the tsunami," synopsis of Darfur mortality analysis by Jan Coebergh, MD Parliamentary Brief (UK), February 2005 (Volume 9, No. 7).
Coalition for International Justice Darfur mortality analysis, by Professor John Hagan, Northwestern University, and Patricia Parker, University of Toronto,
The Lancet, October 1, 2004, “Violence and mortality in West Darfur, Sudan (2003-04): epidemiological evidence from four surveys,” http://www.thelancet.com/journal [requires (free) registration].
UN World Health Organization (WHO) study announcement [September 13, 2004] supplemented by October 15, 2004 update and press release.
posted by Jeff Weintraub at 10:34 AM
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