UN Ban under-fire for emphasizing drought theory in Darfur
By Steve Paterno
September 8, 2007 — The U.N. Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon went to Sudan , for a first visit as Secretary General for important mission—the mission that according to him has important attachments both personally and officially. Personally Ban Ki-Moon visit to Sudan is important because Sudan is a place where his daughter started her career with the UNICEF, and officially it is important because Sudan has been on the center of U.N. agenda due to its conflict.
Keen in resolving the Sudan’s conflict, Ban Ki-Moon did not waste more time while in Khartoum. Upon landing on Khartoum’s airport, Ban Ki-Moon immediately rushed into delivering his speech without taking some rest, showing his keenness and seriousness. Unfortunately, as he tried to analyze the conflict in Darfur, Ban Ki-Moon could only impress Khartoum and its allies. According to him “…the fact remains. Lack of water, and a scarcity of resources in general, has contributed to a steady worsening of Sudan ‘s troubles.” Therefore, the solution is, “the Government with international assistance will have to ensure that the people of Darfur have access to vital natural resources—water being chief among them.”
With such blunt declaration from the chief of the U.N., depicting the conflict in Darfur in such simple terms, now there is no doubt on why the U.N. does not accept the ongoing conflict in Darfur as the ethnic cleansing which eventually led into genocide. No one on his right mind can deny the historical rivalries between the African and Arabs of Darfur, which have been in existence for ages due to their different ways of life including competition over scarce resources. However, what is important is to put this into the proper political context of the current ongoing conflict in Sudan. Of course, Ban Ki-Moon could be excused for his ignorance or from borrowing his talking points from the pages of Khartoum government as he does not know better.
Historically, the successive governments of Khartoum have been successful in exploiting ethnic rivalries for their objectives and in the process committing ethnic cleansing and subsequently committing genocide. Ethnic cleansing is defined as a policy of “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove from a given area persons of another ethnic or religious group.”
The historical ethnic rivalries in themselves are not ethnic cleansing, but it becomes ethnic cleansing when the government institute policies along ethnic lines. When individuals from Darfur were used within Khartoum government to go to the South Sudan to burn villages, pillaged their way through, and commit mass murders, it is again not Darfurians committing ethnic cleansing against the South Sudanese people, but Khartoum government committing genocide against the Southern Sudanese people. First of all, those policies for committing mass murders in South Sudan were not made in Darfur and surely were not made by Darfurians. Secondly, those Darfurians who constituted largest manpower for Khartoum armed forces did not do so as Darfurians but as individuals. There was no consensus among the Darfurians to join the army and fight the Southern Sudanese. Instead the choices were made individually whether voluntarily or by circumstances by those Darfurians who found themselves fighting in the South Sudan . Luckily, whether they made their choices voluntarily as individuals or by circumstances, some of them were punished for their actions by having bullets drilled in their skulls by the Southern Sudanese freedom fighters. Their bones, which scatter throughout Southern Sudan is a testimony to that fact. For those reasons and in political perspective, the Southern Sudanese hold neither grudges against Darfurians nor interest in punishing Darfurians as a whole for the atrocities committed by Darfurians soldiers who served in Khartoum armed forces.
The ethnic cleansing in Sudan is distinctively clear as the government exploits on the long history of ethnic rivalries so as to escalate it in both scale and magnitude for Khartoum’s own interest.
In Darfur, the government in Khartoum designs policies, doctrines, and means of executions to systemically deal with Darfurians. The Khartoum government goes on to arm the Janjaweed militias and provide them with all other supports, which are morally, logistically and materially. The government uses its airpower as cover for Janjaweed ground forces to uproot the Darfurians from their homeland. Unlike the individually constituted Darfurians who were in Khartoum armed forces who fought in the South Sudan, the Janjaweed do exist as an entity with a single aim to uproot Darfurians. The very government in Khartoum develops its international diplomatic policies in covering up what is happening in Darfur .
In South Sudan, the successive governments in Khartoum also exploit ethnic rivalries among different Southern Sudanese ethnicities for the same purpose of committing ethnic cleansing and obtaining their objectives. One cannot be surprise that in South Sudan, the so called militias, the creation of the Khartoum government are composed ethnically. There are plenty of those militias, where for examples, the Nuers are set against the Dinkas or verse versa; the Toposas are set against Didingas or verse versa; the Mundaris are set against the Dinkas or verse versa; and the list can go on. In short, all several militia groups in South of Sudan exist distinctly along ethnic lines; supporting the fact that ethnic cleansing has been in existence in South Sudan and is continuing to exist to this day.
It is these facts in putting into context Khartoum’s exploitation of ethnic rivalries, which the U.N. chief missed in his point when he tried in vain to address the core of the conflict in Sudan in general and in Darfur in particular. But what is interesting is that if ethnic cleansing did happen in Balkans, then one wonders why the chief of the U.N. cannot learn some lessons from there as oppose to picking directly his lines from the pages of Khartoum government as he tried to address the situation of Darfur. Well, the U.N. chief has a lot to learn, especially when he is trying to involve himself in resolving the complex conflicts as the one in Sudan. It is understandable that he is only new on the job, but with time, hopefully he will know better. But it is not also surprising that he is under attack by various Darfur groups, who feel that the chief of the U.N. could have known better.
*Steve Paterno is a Sudanese residing in the U.S.A and the author of the upcoming book, The Rev. Fr. Saturnino Lohure: A Roman Catholic Priest Turned Rebel, The South Sudan Experience. He can be reached at [email protected]