Blair’s no-fly zone plan likely to be grounded despite growing crisis

By Julian Borger

March 28, 2007 (LONDON) — Tony Blair’s idea of persuading the UN to enforce a no-fly zone over Darfur is likely to be a hard sell. As one aid official put it: “British and American bombing to advance humanitarian goals is a damaged brand on the world stage.”, the Guardian reported.

The television pictures from Iraq have cut the public appetite for humanitarian intervention. But the prime minister and his aides are frustrated that there are not equally emotive pictures being broadcast of suffering in Darfur. One Downing St official pointed out that twice as many people have already died as a result of ethnic cleansing in Darfur as were killed in Bosnia, and yet there remains limited public awareness or engagement in the issue.

The decision to put Britain’s weight behind the highly controversial solution of a no-fly zone comes at a moment of crisis in the region. Last year’s hard-won peace agreement between the Sudanese government and Darfur-based rebels unravelled this month when President Omar al-Bashir sent a letter to the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, asking to renegotiate a deal struck only three months earlier allowing UN peacekeepers to bolster a small African Union force in the province.
At the same time, the humanitarian effort along the Darfur-Chad border, the largest operation of its kind in the world, is hanging by a thread as the continuing instability and violence in the region threatens the aid effort. In the face of attacks on humanitarian workers and aid compounds, UN agencies and independent groups have warned they might have to withdraw completely.

John Holmes, the UN’s new humanitarian chief, has been touring refugee camps in Darfur and Chad over the past few days, and described the aid effort as “fragile”.

“If the situation deteriorates, it could collapse,” Mr Holmes, a British diplomat, said. “The risk is high, it is not imminent but if things deteriorate people may not want to maintain their efforts, which could lead to a humanitarian collapse.”

Precarious

Humanitarian agencies would not comment on a no-fly zone yesterday. Their relations with Khartoum are precarious, and their desire to see decisive international action is balanced by fear of an escalation in the conflict.

There are now 2.5 million refugees from Darfur, most made homeless by pogroms by the Janjaweed militia with the connivance – claims a UN human rights report – of the Sudanese government.

The human stakes have been raised further by the accelerating spread of the violence from Darfur to Chad and the Central African Republic, threatening a conflagration in the heart of Africa. In the past six months, more than 100,000 civilians in the frontier region have been forced to flee their homes, as cross-border Janjaweed raids have reignited ethnic and political flashpoints inside Chad.

The Chadians homeless in their own country are even harder to feed and shelter than Darfur refugees. An Oxfam spokeswoman estimated 900,000 people are not receiving aid, and are increasingly vulnerable to attack by warring factions.

In the face of this expanding disaster, the UN and EU have been slow-footed and uncertain. Security council resolution 1591, passed two years ago, was supposed to check the movement of arms and aircraft into Darfur, but it has been flouted with few consequences for Khartoum.

An African Union monitoring force of about 7,000 soldiers is poorly equipped and hamstrung by a limited mandate. Under pressure last year President Bashir agreed to the deployment of UN peacekeepers. But after three months of delay, his letter to Mr Ban, reneging on the deal, shocked the UN.

“Up to now, Bashir has been astute enough to just do enough to get by, but this time he may have gone too far,” said a European diplomat monitoring negotiations at the UN in New York. “It’s now an issue of security council credibility.”

Britain is hoping that, in response to President Bashir’s defiance, the Chinese – Sudan’s principal backers – might be persuaded to agree to new sanctions, that would involve expanding the current arms embargo from Darfur to the whole of Sudan and expanding the list of Sudanese figures whose overseas assets are frozen because of their role in ethnic cleansing.

The British and French are also trying to get Chinese help in persuading Chad’s president, Idriss Déby, to allow peacekeepers into his troubled east. He acquiesced in December but then changed his mind in February, under Chinese and Libyan pressure, according to some UN observers.

Security council unanimity is much less likely with the inflammatory addition of a no-fly zone. As a result, the issue has put the Foreign Office, with its focus on building UN consensus, at odds with Downing St, which is more concerned with Mr Blair’s moral legacy.

(The Guardian)