Prospects for peace in Darfur dim: genocide conference
October 13, 2007 (MONTREAL) — Prospects for an end to violence in Darfur remain bleak despite a UN plan to deploy 26,000 troops to the war-torn region, delegates at a global conference on preventing genocide in Montreal said.
“Now we have less humanitarian aid and more people in need, and more difficulty in getting the humanitarian aid going. We don’t have a clear presence of troops that can really protect people and we don’t have a peace process either,” Juan Mendes, who served as the UN’s special advisor on the prevention of genocide from 2004 to 2007, told AFP.
Mendes was among diplomats, academics, human rights activists and survivors of genocide who attended the three-day conference sponsored by McGill University’s law faculty.
The crisis of Darfur, described as “genocide in slow motion,” dominated discussions at the event, which wrapped up on Saturday.
At least 200,000 people have died in Darfur and two million others have been displaced since the Sudanese government enlisted a militia to put down an ethnic minority revolt that broke out in 2003.
The Arab militia has been accused of widespread rape, murder and the destruction of rebel villages.
The United Nations now plans to send thousands of peacekeepers to the region to reinforce poorly equipped forces from the African Union.
But UN officials admitted this week that the new joint force lacked crucial equipment such as aircraft and night-vision technology.
Gerard Prunier, author of “Darfur, the Ambiguous Genocide,” said he doubted the peacekeeping mission could make a difference.
“I do not believe that an international force deployed in Darfur is going to amount to much and do much of anything,” he told AFP. “Right now they don’t even have any combat helicopters and even if they had them, would they have the mandate to use them?”
“Right now the poor guys (from the African Union force) have almost no equipment,” Prunier said.
“Most of them haven’t been paid for months and months, because their superior officers or the African Union or whoever it is, is stealing the money.
“So the European Union is putting the money for their salaries and they’re not paid.”
Many panelists accused Sudan’s government, and in particular President Omar al-Beshir, of defying the international community at every opportunity.
Mendes said Beshir had divided the African Union, “held UN initiatives hostage to the decisions of the Sudanese government” and portrayed the interests of the international community as a “war between the West and the Arab world.”
Irwin Cotler, former Canadian justice minister and attorney general, said Beshir’s appointment of Ahmed Haroun — a Sudanese minister wanted for war crimes — to lead an investigation into rights violations in Darfur was “scandalous.”
“It is scandalous, scandalous that Ahmed Haroun, the minister of humanitarian affairs for Sudan, named in an indictment by the international criminal court, is subsequently named by the government of Sudan to be the person responsible for hearing and vetting human rights complaints,” said Cotler.
“What more scandalous and indeed Orwellian inversion of law and morality and impunity can there be?” he asked.
Russian and Chinese support of Khartoum, along with the US government policy in Sudan, were also examined at the conference.
Gregory Stanton, a former US State Department official who now heads Genocide Watch — an organization that works to prevent genocide and promote awareness — said Washington showed it has “conflicting policy priorities” by meeting with Salah Gosh, Sudan’s security chief.
“We see it now in Sudan. The US wants to get along with Mr. Gosh, because he seems to be some kind of asset for our intelligence services and yet he’s also one of the planners of the Darfur genocide,” Stanton said.
US intelligence officials had consultations with Gosh in ongoing efforts to get information on Al Qaeda, according to Stanton.
(AFP)