Khartoum’s ultimatum to the AU: “Leave or stay on our terms”
The National Islamic Front regime has engineered the military conditions ensuring a security collapse in Darfur
By Eric Reeves
September 7, 2006 — The ongoing collapse of almost all civilian and humanitarian security in Darfur is the context in which we must understand the significance of Khartoum’s unrelenting opposition to a large and robustly mandated UN peace support operation for the region. It is also the context in which we must understand Khartoum’s very recent and quite explicit ultimatum to a crumbling African Union force, which presently stands as the only international security presence in Darfur:
“If you wish to stay in Darfur beyond September 30, 2006, then you must agree to do so without being converted to or incorporated into a UN peace support operation. If you do not agree to these terms, then you must leave. Moreover, if you decide to stay, then you must agree that future financing will come from our coffers here in Khartoum and those of the Arab League.”
If the African Union leaves Darfur—or even if it remains in its present badly compromised and steadily weakening state, having capitulated to Khartoum’s diktat—there will be no meaningful security for the 4 million human beings presently described by the UN as conflict-affected: 3.6 million in Darfur (figure from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs); over 250,000 Darfuri refugees in eastern Chad (according to a recent report from the UN humanitarian aid coordinator for Chad); and over 100,000 Chadians internally displaced or otherwise conflict-affected (UN High Commission for Refugees and UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs). Nor will there be any security for the humanitarian operations upon which the overwhelming majority of these people now depend.
In light of the severe attenuation of humanitarian access that has already occurred throughout Darfur—and given Khartoum’s present offensive in North Darfur, with massive civilian destruction and displacement accomplished or well underway—we must conclude that human mortality is even now exploding upwards.
The international community, given its present acquiescence before Khartoum’s adamant defiance of an urgent UN peacekeeping resolution, is on the verge of presiding—with spectacular impotence—over one of the greatest cataclysms of deliberate human destruction in recent decades. Moreover, it will simply be impossible to deny that these realities were not predicted with ferocious clarity. In the words of Jan Egeland, UN humanitarian coordinator, to the UN Security Council last week:
“I cannot give a starker warning than to say that we are at a point where even hope may escape us and the lives of hundreds of thousands could be needlessly lost. The Security Council and member states around this table with influence on the parties to the conflict must act now. Hundreds of humanitarian organizations from around the world are watching what you will be doing or may refrain from doing in the coming weeks.”
(Briefing by Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, on the humanitarian situation in Darfur Source, from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, August 28, 2006)
“The lives of hundreds of thousands could be needlessly lost.”
We must ask about this important adverb “needlessly”: it implies that with the appropriate international action—with the “needed” international action—these “hundreds of thousands of lives” might not be lost. But this of course forces the question, “what action is required to save hundreds of thousands of lives?” It is the question many are asking, with greater and lesser degrees of honesty. But before any answer can be made fully intelligible as a response to the present “need,” it must be put in the context of recent actions by Khartoum, which follow a clear if utterly brazen logic.
What is presently required, in other words, is a narrative logic that works to explain the unfolding of events over the last week—going back to last Thursday’s (August 31, 2006) passage of Security Council Resolution 1706 (proposing a large, robust UN peacekeeping operation with an appropriate mandate), through Sunday’s (September 3, 2006) peremptory decision by Khartoum to terminate the AU mission as of September 30, 2006, and concluding with what has been described as a “softer” version of this decision, as publicly offered to the AU: “You may stay, but only if you promise not to become the means for initiating, in any way, a UN mission in Darfur. And to ensure that you don’t have access even to UN funding from the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, we are insisting that we or the Arab League must pay for your continuing operations” (Khartoum’s public message as distilled from wire reports on official announcements of Monday, September 4, 2006).
THE AU HELD FINANCIAL HOSTAGE BY KHARTOUM
Khartoum’s holding the AU financial hostage has been remarked in a number of wire and newspaper reports, though not always with a full appreciation of how consequentially disabling this financial “condition” of deployment actually is. Associated Press reports from Cairo (September 4, 2006):
“On Monday, Sudan went a step further [in obstructing international peacemaking in Darfur]. Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Kerti said the AU force can remain in Darfur only if it accepts Arab League and Sudanese funding. He gave the African Union a week to agree or get its troops out, a government statement said. Kerti said he delivered the message at a meeting Monday with the African Union’s representative in Khartoum, Nigerian Ambassador Baba Gana Kingibe.”
The subsequent Associated Press dispatch (Khartoum, September 5, 2006) made clear the implications of such funding control by Khartoum and the Arab League:
“The AU force presumably would be far less independent if its funding came from Sudan—which it is policing—and from Sudan’s Arab allies.”
Reuters reports from Khartoum (September 5, 2006):
“The AU is [currently] funded by donors like Britain, Canada, the United States and the European Union. They all favour UN transition [from the AU force] and have made clear they cannot continue to fund the current Darfur mission. The Arab League says it will pay AU troops to remain, but given the pan-Arab body’s failure even to meet pledges for the Palestinians, few believe they would really foot the almost $40 million-a-month bill in Darfur.”
This skepticism about the willingness of the Arab League to fund the AU mission is fully appropriate; for the “offer” reflects nothing so much as the League’s unquestioning (and cheap) diplomatic support for Khartoum in its standoff with the international community. Moreover, the AU itself realizes quite well that its integrity would be hopelessly compromised in accepting funding from only Khartoum and the Arab League:
“The commander of the African forces in Darfur, Gen. Collins Ihikere, said in an interview last week that accepting the money would leave the African Union hopelessly compromised. ‘It could become a kind of blackmail,’ General Ihikere said. ‘The viability of the force would depend on the charity of Sudan and its friends.’” (New York Times [dateline: Kebkabiya, North Darfur], September 4, 2006)
Such “dependence” is of course precisely Khartoum’s goal in issuing this funding ultimatum. To the extent that the AU, even in its current badly compromised state, is capable of serving as a source of civilian protection, it must have an infusion of resources that will never be forthcoming from Khartoum. Indeed, it is important to recall how consequentially Khartoum’s genocidaires have worked to compromise the effectiveness of the AU mission from the beginning of its deployment in early summer 2004. There have been consistently engineered fuel shortages and outright denials; AU helicopters are granted only an exceedingly limited number of flying hours per month; Khartoum insists on gratuitous re-testing of AU pilots; Khartoum has imposed curfews on AU movements and flights (and has recently arrested AU personnel for violating these).
Most consequentially, Khartoum has intimidated the AU politically and diplomatically, with the effect of preventing the AU Peace and Security Council from asking for an effective civilian protection mandate for its mission in Darfur.
Khartoum is eager to have the AU remain in Darfur, but only on highly restrictive, indeed disabling terms. This allows the regime to point to an “international presence,” even as it denies the UN permission to deploy a force that might actually provide meaningful security. And by insisting that the AU not serve in any way as a means of UN entry into Darfur, even as a recipient for UN resources, this already hobbled force stands no chance of improving in any way.
Many in the AU are quite aware of these limitations and manipulations, and speak with great frustration. The UN’s Integrated Regional Information Networks reports from Tawilla, North Darfur (September 5, 2006):
“Simply the lack of fuel and vehicles, as well as a mandate limited to monitoring ceasefire violations, hampers even routine work. ‘We are too few and not well equipped—it makes me furious. We just patrol, show our faces, and we come back to our base,’ an AU commander said. ‘This is my ninth mission, but I have never worked in a situation like this, in terms of mandate, equipment, and procedures. We only investigate and report when something happens, but we don’t do anything about it.’”
The character of the force that will remain, if it accedes to Khartoum’s demands, was described by a senior AU official:
“One senior AU official, who declined to be named, said: ‘They will drag it out until the end of the year … but this is no way to run a peace-keeping operation.’ ‘Morale is low, we cannot pay our troops and the government makes sure we are unable to do our job.’” (Reuters [dateline: Khartoum], September 5, 2006)
“…and the government makes sure we are unable to do our job”: this tells us all we really need to know about Khartoum’s present motives in maneuvering to forestall UN deployment.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE JENDAYI FRAZER DECLARES:
“SHE IS ‘ABSOLUTELY CONFIDENT’ THE SUDANESE GOVERNMENT WILL ACCEPT A UN PEACEKEEPING FORCE”
(AUGUST 31, 2006)
One must wonder whether Ms. Frazer remains so confident in light of the emphatic, unambiguous, and unrelenting refusals from the most senior officials of the National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum:
“On Monday, Khartoum gave the AU an ultimatum: extend your mandate past September 30 with funding from Sudan and the Arab League or leave. ‘If the African Union wants to stay in Darfur as the African Union, they are welcome. But we will not accept them to become part of a UN force,’ Presidential Advisor Mustafa Osman Ismail said.” (Reuters [dateline: Khartoum], September 5, 2006)
“ Khartoum rejected a Security Council resolution passed on Thursday to deploy more than 20,000 U.N. troops and police to its remote west, setting it on a path of confrontation with the world body. [ ] [Foreign Ministry Spokesman Jamal Ibrahim] said Sudan resented AU declarations that it supported a UN transition. ‘We feel that they have no right to transfer their assignment to another party—we are the ones who decide whether we continue with the AU or not,’ he said.” (Reuters [dateline: Khartoum], September 3, 2006)
Ali Osman Taha (Second Vice President and enormously powerful within the National Islamic Front) has also expressed his opposition to UN deployment:
“Sudanese vice-president Ali Osman Taha vowed that the regime would maintain its opposition to a United Nations peacekeeping force for Darfur and hailed Hezbollah as a model of resistance, said reports on Friday [September 1, 2006]. Taha was quoted as saying: ‘We have options and plans for confronting the international intervention.’”
“[Taha] cited the toll Shi’ite militant group, Hezbollah, had ‘exacted in the ranks of the army of the Zionist enemy’ in this summer’s devastating conflict in Lebanon ‘due to the determination, patience and political will the party enjoys.’ The vice-president said: ‘We are prepared for all possibilities,’ adding that ‘the battle with the international community requires patience and strict precautions.’ He called for ‘an effective working programme and strenuous action’ to oppose the UN force approved by the Security Council on Thursday [August 31, 2006].” (Agence France-Presse [dateline: Khartoum], September 1, 2006)
And NIF President Omar el-Bashir has continued to be extraordinarily vehement in his every public comment and signal to the international community:
“On 6 September [2006], President Al Bashir reiterated that Sudan would not accept UN Security Council Resolution 1706 in a speech before a public rally in Kassala. He said that Sudan’s rejection to the resolution is final. He declared that he has ordered camps to open to train the Mujahidin (holy fighters). (UN Mission in Sudan sit rep, September 7, 2006)
These seem to be unpromising words for sustaining Frazer’s “absolute confidence” that Khartoum will accept a UN peacekeeping force. Indeed, this peculiar “confidence” invites questions about its motives: is this “confidence” really anything other than desperate contrivance? designed to forestall recognition of just how disastrously the security crisis in Darfur is accelerating? For surely there can be no disputing the fine analytic exposition by Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times ([dateline: Kebkabiya] September 6, 2006):
“The African Union said Tuesday that it would quit the war-ravaged Darfur region by the end of the month if Sudan did not agree to allow United Nations peacekeepers to take over its mission here. ‘The African Union reiterates its position that it will terminate the mission,’ said Noureddine Mezni, spokesman for the African force. But the troops will stay ‘if there is the necessity for the transition to the United Nations,’ he added.”
“The message, in effect refusing an offer from Sudan and its allies to pay the troops in Darfur with money from the Arab League, leads the crisis in western Sudan to the edge of a once unthinkable precipice: the possibility that after the end of this month there will be no outside peacekeepers at all in Darfur.”
This bears heavy emphasis: the AU’s publicly announced position,
“leads the crisis in western Sudan to the edge of a once unthinkable precipice: the possibility that after the end of this month there will be no outside peacekeepers at all in Darfur.”
And despite the “confident” talk from Frazer in Washington, and bluster by US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, the decision about UN deployment remains Khartoum’s:
“Sudan has not blinked. If anything it has become more strident in its rejection of a United Nations force, and now is turning on the African Union, giving it one week to decide whether to keep going with money from the Arab League, or to leave Darfur. It has proposed using Sudanese as peacekeepers. African Union officials have said their troops would compromise their neutrality if they took money from Sudan and its allies.” (New York Times [dateline: Kebkabiya], September 6, 2006)
In short, there is simply no evidence at hand to suggest that Khartoum will reverse course and accept the large, robust UN peace support operation specified in UN Security Council Resolution 1706 (August 31, 2006): 17,300 troops, 3,300 civilian police, and 16 Formed Police Units (of approximately 100-200 personnel per unit). This force would be guided by a mandate articulated under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter (conferring enforcement power):
“Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, [the UN Security Council] decides that the UN Mission in Sudan is authorised to use all necessary means, in the areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities:
to protect United Nations personnel, facilities, installations and equipment, to ensure the security and freedom of movement of United Nations personnel, humanitarian workers, assessment and evaluation commission personnel, to prevent disruption of the implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement by armed groups, without prejudice to the responsibility of the Government of the Sudan, to protect civilians under threat of physical violence, in order to support early and effective implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement, to prevent attacks and threats against civilians, to seize or collect, as appropriate, arms or related material whose presence in Darfur is in violation of [ ] Resolution 1556, and to dispose of such arms and related material as appropriate.” (Paragraph 12)
Although this mandate is encouragingly forceful in its articulation, and although the force-size is roughly appropriate to the security needs of Darfur (depending on the quality of troops and resources), it is precisely for this reason that Khartoum adamantly rejects the UN force. The US and UK continue to indulge the shameful fiction that under the terms of the current resolution Khartoum’s consent is not required for actual deployment, but this is expedient mendacity. As all news reports have continued to make unambiguously clear, the UN resolution does nothing more than “invite” Khartoum to accept the UN peacekeeping mission. In the key compromise language inserted to ward of a Chinese or Russian veto of the resolution, the Security Council declares emphatically that it “reaffirms” Khartoum’s claims to national sovereignty—precisely the basis on which the regime has steadfastly refused to countenance any move toward UN deployment:
“Reaffirming its strong commitment to the sovereignty, unity, independence, and territorial integrity of the Sudan, which would be unaffected by transition to a United Nations operation in Darfur…” (UN Security Council Resolution 1706, August 31, 2006).
How can it be that Khartoum’s national “sovereignty” would be “unaffected” by deployment of UN forces, when the regime has explicitly declared such deployment to be the most consequential violation of its sovereignty? By “inviting” Khartoum to participate in the decision about actual deployment, and by conferring upon the regime a guarantee of absolute respect for its national “sovereignty,” the UN has paralyzed itself. The last word continues to go to Khartoum’s genocidaires, now engaged in a massively destructive military offensive in North Darfur that makes a mockery of the terms of the Darfur Peace Agreement, and stands as the opening round of a final military solution to the Darfur crisis.
Here the sheer scale of Khartoum’s planned military deployments to Darfur—contained in a proposal of August 2, 2006 to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan—is of critical significance. The figure for this deployment has been consistently misreported by news wires and journalists. The actual force is immense: 26,500 troops and military elements of the Sudan Liberation Army (Minni Minawi faction). This was reported to the Security Council by Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Hedi Annabi on August 17, 2006. In and of itself, Khartoum’s “security plan” makes clear it had and has no intention whatsoever of allowing for a UN force:
“[The Government of Sudan] plan does not indicate a willingness on the part of the Government of Sudan to agree to a transition to a United Nations operation in Darfur. In addition, the plan seeks to address the security situation outside the framework of the relevant Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) bodies. In particular, it envisages the combined deployment of 26,500 additional Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM)/Minni Minawi troops to Darfur by the end of the year. As members of this Council will appreciate, this would not only be inconsistent with the DPA’s restriction on military deployments outside of agreed areas of control, but would also violate the arms embargo imposed by the Security Council in paragraph 7 of resolution 1591 (2005).” (Paragraph 8)
This is but another form of rejecting, preemptively, any UN deployment of a peace support operation of the sort envisioned in UN Security Council Resolution 1706.
THE AU AS A PERVERSE INSTRUMENT OF PARALYSIS
Khartoum’s actions and statements to date have a clear and consistent logic. For in working so assiduously to deny the AU force adequate resources, or any formal support from the UN, the regime hopes to have a fig-leaf international presence with which to cultivate support among the Arab and Islamic worlds, and from stalwart economic partners Russia and China. As the AU now recognizes, it is being used by Khartoum as the very means for actually forestalling UN deployment to Darfur.
Put in slightly different terms, the AU is being forced to serve as the means by which Khartoum ensures that its current military offensives are neither well observed nor in any way impeded by a consequential international presence. These offensives, primarily in North Darfur—but pending or preliminarily underway in West and South Darfur—have the additional effect, by design, of destroying the civilian base of support for the non-signatory rebel groups (those that refused to sign the highly problematic Abuja peace accord). As humanitarian groups increasingly evacuate amidst extreme levels of violence in North Darfur, they are neither able to provide life-sustaining food, medical care, shelter, and water aid nor to serve as witnesses before the accelerating avalanche of atrocities against innocent civilians—strikingly similar to the violence that was recorded by human rights organizations and others in 2003-2004.
It is important to recognize here the military dynamic set in motion by the Darfur Peace Agreement (Abuja, Nigeria; May 5, 2006): as the SLA faction of Minni Minawi agreed to be the only Darfuri signatory to the DPA, it committed itself to a course of action that would see increasing military collaboration with Khartoum. In the words of many Darfuris, Minawi’s forces have become the “new Janjaweed.” A superb recent dispatch by Craig Timberg of the Washington Post gives a harrowing account of a village attack involving Khartoum’s and Minawi’s forces, one brutal even by Darfur’s savage standards (“In Death’s Grip,” [dateline: el-Fasher], September 6, 2006 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501353.html).
Minawi’s SLA is itself badly divided now, and it is questionable which commanders are obeying him, which are in effect obeying Khartoum, and which have a new cause: looting, banditry, and other forms of opportunistic violence. There is also growing political opposition to Minawi’s role in the notional “Government of National Unity” in Khartoum, in which he serves as “Assistant to the President”: officially the number four position in the Presidency, but in reality completely meaningless (thus although Minawi is by the terms of the Darfur Peace Agreement supposed to advise the President on all matters pertaining to Darfur, the decision to oppose UN deployment to Darfur was made and announced without consulting or notifying Minawi).
To the extent that Minawi’s remaining forces are engaged in militarily purposeful action in Darfur, it is primarily to support Khartoum’s offensive in North Darfur. The Khartoum regime has been building to his offensive for many weeks. Massive quantities of weapons, supplies, and very large numbers of troops have been pouring into el-Fasher military air base. In support of these ground forces moving north, northwest, and northeast from el-Fasher, Khartoum has deployed its Antonov bombers and helicopter gunships. The former are used primarily as instruments of civilian terror in attacks on villages—those suspected of housing rebels, as well as those simply inhabited by civilians perceived (primarily on the basis of ethnicity) as supporting non-signatory rebels. Many civilians have already been violently killed. As Human Rights Watch reports yesterday (September 6, 2006):
“Sources on the ground indicate that the government of Sudan is indiscriminately bombing civilian-occupied villages in rebel-held North Darfur, Human Rights Watch said today. The bombing campaign comes as Khartoum is threatening to eject African Union peacekeepers and stymieing efforts to deploy a UN force to the region [ ]. ‘Government forces are bombing villages with blatant disregard for civilian lives,’ said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.” [ ]
“Firsthand sources report flight crews rolling bombs out the back ramps of Antonovs, a means of targeting that was often practiced by government forces in their 21-year civil war with rebels in southern Sudan. This method is so inaccurate that it cannot strike at military targets without a substantial risk of harm to civilians. International humanitarian law prohibits such attacks, which can constitute war crimes. Deliberately attacking civilians is in all circumstances prohibited and a war crime.”
EVACUATIONS OF HUMANITARIAN AID WORKERS ACCELERATE
A measure of the danger incurred by humanitarian organizations operating amidst an increasingly active war zone is the Friday (September 1, 2006) killing of a nurse for the International Rescue Committee:
“The International Rescue Committee is saddened to report the death of an IRC nurse during fighting in Hashaba, North Darfur, on Friday, September 1, 2006. The victim, a 37-year-old Sudanese national, ran the IRC’s health center in Hashaba, about 100 kilometers north of El Fasher. The health center, along with a pharmacy and guesthouse managed by the IRC, were also looted during the fighting there. With this tragic death, the toll of humanitarian workers killed in Darfur since May rises to 12, a sign of the deteriorating security situation in the region.”
“The IRC, the sole health care provider in the Hashaba area, has not been able to access an estimated population of 85,000 for more than three months due to instability there. As a result, people in this area have been denied access to the basics of human survival.” (IRC media alert, September 4, 2006)
IRC’s humanitarian presence in Hashaba was among the very few remaining at significant distance from el-Fasher (around which a number of large camps for displaced persons are clustered and now growing rapidly). As Jan Egeland reported to the Security Council last week:
“[Humanitarian nongovernmental organizations] in North Darfur are largely confined to the capital [el-Fasher]. Again, key organizations feel paralyzed and have raised the prospect of full withdrawal. Hundreds of thousands would then be left without any humanitarian assistance. The World Health Organization has reported that 40% of the population in North Darfur are not receiving health care as its NGO implementing partners have been forced to withdraw from numerous locations across the state. Vaccinations in the state have dropped from 90% in 2005 to a mere 20% in 2006. The World Food Program [WFP] have reported that 470,000 people across Darfur did not receive their monthly rations in July, up from the 290,000 who could not be reached in June. We can expect that once again this month [August] half a million people will not receive the food on which they depend for their very survival.” [ ]
(Briefing by Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, on the humanitarian situation in Darfur Source, from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, August 28, 2006)
And again, when humanitarians are forced to evacuate from Darfur, there are no other witnesses to whatever horrors may unfold. The African Union has virtually no access to rebel-controlled territory, and can do little more than monitor very partially and from a distance, with an intelligence capacity that has always been severely criticized in policy-organization assessments. In addition to the loss of humanitarian presence and witnessing, news coverage of Darfur is also slowly slipping away. The New York Times’ Lydia Polgreen has filed a series of remarkable and deeply insightful dispatches form North Darfur; but she and the Washington Post’s Craig Timberg appear to be among the last Western journalists who may give us truly revealing accounts of realities in this part of Darfur. Khartoum has recently aggressively pursued foreign journalists seeking access to Darfur without visas; and it has imposed an almost complete blockade on journalists seeking to travel to Darfur, making clear that the regime has no intention of allowing any witnesses to this next chapter of genocidal destruction.
But the world will nonetheless know full well the consequences of humanitarian evacuation: human morality on a vast scale will follow from the rising levels of malnutrition (there are no food reserves); from the immense need for water purification and pumping (pumping that very often requires delivery of fuel for the water pumps critical to providing water for such a vast population in this extremely arid region). Water has been a desperate issue in many camps for some time; loss of all humanitarian capacity for providing or assisting in water-treatment and pumping will be enormously destructive of human life.
The absence of primary medical care, and any capacity to vaccinate children, will also produce enormous human mortality. Cholera alone, in the complete absence of intravenous fluid supplies, may kill many tens of thousands in the hopelessly overcrowded camps, with sanitary conditions already deteriorating at an alarming rate in many locations in Darfur. Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) recently reported on the growing risk posed by cholera in Darfur:
“Eight people—including a child under five—have died from cholera in Mornay [West Darfur] in the last two weeks. The MSF team has already treated more than 60 patients. This tragic situation occurred after various aid agencies withdrew assistance to people living in the Darfur displaced persons’ camps. All the conditions contributing to cholera’s appearance are present in Mornay. In 2003, it was a small village of 5,000 inhabitants. Today, more than 75,000 people have taken refuge there, fleeing killings and violence. For more than two years, people have been crammed into makeshift shelters. The crowding, lack of latrines, poor waste management, and inadequate drainage combine to make the displaced persons particularly vulnerable.” (MSF “Notes from the Field,” August 29, 2006)
The conditions that MSF describes are increasingly present in camps throughout Darfur; and with funding cutbacks, lack of resources, and humanitarian evacuations, it becomes increasingly unlikely that the simple medical means of treating cholera will be available. Again, this rapidly spreading disease could alone claim tens of thousands of lives.
GENOCIDAL LOGIC
There is a clear genocidal logic to Khartoum’s counter-insurgency war in Darfur. The regime has aspired, with past, current, and impending military actions, to destroy rebel forces, as well as civilians perceived as supporting them; these people are overwhelmingly from the non-Arab or African tribal populations of Darfur. The destruction is intended to be so comprehensive that the neither rebel forces nor the ethnic groups from which the rebels come can ever reconstitute themselves as an effective military threat. In short, Khartoum is ruthlessly determined to continue its monopoly on political and military power throughout Sudan, including not only by means of key ministries and the Presidency, but by maintaining absolute control of the vast and multi-faceted military and security apparatus: the army and air force, the two major intelligence services, the Popular Defense Forces (PDF), the so-called “border police,” unsanctioned militias in southern Sudan’s oil regions, and others.
Civilian destruction is intended to be so extensive that the very demography of Darfur will be changed. This ambition was explicitly announced by Khartoum’s most notorious and amply supported Janjaweed leader, Musa Hilal:
“The ultimate objective in Darfur is spelled out in an August 2004 directive from [Janjaweed paramount leader Musa] Hilal’s headquarters: ’Change the demography of Darfur and empty it of African tribes.’” (Alex de Waal and Julie Flint, “Darfur: A Short History of a Long War,” page 39)
Precisely because Khartoum’s ambitions are so conspicuously genocidal, there are increasing worries that camps for displaced persons—which are at once more heavily militarized and increasingly polarized ethnically—will themselves be targeted by Khartoum or its proxies for direct attack. Under pretext of “disarming” the camps, large-scale and indiscriminate violence will be loosed upon overwhelmingly defenseless civilians. A report coming to this writer from an extremely well-informed source on the ground in North Darfur indicates that significant casualties have been inflicted on some of Khartoum’s regular army units in recent fighting. This highly informed source believes that such casualties may be sufficient provocation to unleash attacks on camps perceived as inhabited primarily by those of the same ethnic group as the non-signatory rebels (i.e., those elements of the Sudan Liberation Army, and to a much lesser extent the Justice and Equality Movement, that are not party to the May 5, 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement [Abuja, Nigeria]). Certainly the surviving villages belonging to members of the Fur tribe (the largest non-Arab or African tribal group in Darfur) are bearing the brunt of Khartoum’s current military offensive in North Darfur.
THE QUESTION REMAINS: WILL KHARTOUM BE ALLOWED TO VETO DEPLOYMENT OF A UN FORCE AUTHORIZED BY THE SECURITY COUNCIL?
France has been one of the countries in Europe that has to date been least responsive to the crisis in Darfur. Thus it is striking that there has been a recent dramatic change in tone from Paris. First, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy “on Wednesday [September 6, 2006] condemned what he called the ‘genocide’ in the Sudanese province of Darfur—the first time a French government figure has used the term. ‘France is taking steps to stop the genocide as fast as possible,’ he said on Radio Monte Carlo, recalling that France has backed a UN Security Council resolution to deploy a beefed-up UN force in Darfur.” (Sudan Tribune [dateline: Paris] September 6, 2006)
Douste-Blazy went on to join ranks with US Senator Barack Obama by raising what he called a “real question” about deploying a force to Darfur without the consent of Khartoum’s genocidaires:
“France’s foreign minister said Thursday that it’s a ‘real question’ whether the UN should send a force into Darfur—even in the face of resistance by Sudan’s government. Philippe Douste-Blazy said he planned to visit the troubled region and meet with Sudanese officials soon, in hopes of finding a diplomatic solution to end years of deadly violence in Darfur. He urged Sudanese authorities to accept a UN force for Darfur, which was called for in a Security Council resolution passed last week. It was quickly rejected by Khartoum. ‘Do we go there, in spite of them?’ Douste-Blazy told a news conference. ‘That’s not on the table, nobody has asked the question like that. But it’s a real question.’” (Associated Press [dateline: Paris], September 6, 2006)
It is of course a real question. All evidence suggests that it is in fact the only question, given Khartoum’s continuing refusal to permit deployment of an effective force to protect millions of innocent civilians and some 13,000 humanitarian workers upon whom this vast population increasingly depends.
Of course, the question may be addressed in various ways. Kofi Annan, while in Alexandria, Egypt, confronted this difficult question by asking another:
“‘If [UN and nongovernmental humanitarian organizations] have to leave [Darfur] because of lack of security, lack of access to the people, then what happens?” Mr. Annan asked.” (UN News Center, September 5, 2006)
But this question has already been answered, in terrifying detail, by Jan Egeland:
“In the past months I have repeatedly called for attention to the deteriorating situation in Darfur. As you have heard today our warnings have become a black reality that calls for immediate action: insecurity is at its highest levels since 2004, access at its lowest levels since that date and we may well be on the brink of a return to all-out war. This would mean the withdrawal of international staff from Darfur, leaving millions of vulnerable Darfuris to suffer their fate without assistance and with few outsiders to witness. A return to war would not just affect Darfur. It would severely impact on neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic, further destabilizing and endangering the entire region.” [ ]
“[The humanitarian gains of the past two years in Darfur] can all be lost within weeks—not months. I cannot give a starker warning than to say that we are at a point where even hope may escape us and the lives of hundreds of thousands could be needlessly lost. The Security Council and member states around this table with influence on the parties to the conflict must act now. Hundreds of humanitarian organizations from around the world are watching what you will be doing or may refrain from doing in the coming weeks.”
(Briefing by Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, on the humanitarian situation in Darfur Source, from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, August 28, 2006)
Is there some part of this extraordinary report that Annan has not read? or doesn’t understand? In fact, what was evidently on display in the Secretary-General’s comments is a ghastly willingness to settle for punishing Khartoum after the fact of massive, ethnically-targeted human destruction—not the will and political leadership to prevent the regime from actually engaging in such destruction:
“‘The Government [of Sudan] will have to assume responsibility for doing this [allowing security in Darfur to deteriorate to the point where Egeland’s predictions are realized] and, if it doesn’t succeed [in providing security itself], it will have lots of questions to answer to the rest of the world.’” (UN News Center, September 5, 2006)
What questions does Mr. Annan think will be relevant when, to borrow yet again from Egeland, the “lives of hundreds of thousands [are] needlessly lost”? Will questions about assigning blame bring back the lives of those who could now be saved? or the lives of some 500,000 human beings who have already died? Will questions about Khartoum’s responsibility for genocidal destruction in any way mitigate the shamefulness of acquiescence by the UN and the international community as genocide proceeds before their very eyes? Just what questions can possibly be posed, Mr. Annan, that will not turn to ashes in our mouths?
There is only one question that is not an obscenity of evasion or indifference: is the world community prepared to do all that is necessary to forestall the impending destruction of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, now fully poised to be “needlessly lost”?
* Eric Reeves is a professor at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and has published extensively on Sudan. He can be reached at [email protected]; website : www.sudanreeves.org