Darfur: Millennium Development Grotesquery

By Eric Reeves, The New Republic

October 14, 2008 — Incredibly, the regime committing genocide in Darfur is now meant to be
in charge of a critical U.N. poverty- and disease-eradication program.
Eight years ago, nearly all United Nations member states and many
international organizations committed to a series of ambitious steps
designed to respond immediately to critical needs within the developing
world, and particularly in Africa. Known as the “Millennium Development
Goals” (MDG), these included the eradication of extreme poverty and
hunger, achieving universal primary education, reduction in child
mortality, and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other major diseases.
2015 was set as the deadline for meeting specific targets in all of
these areas. Africa has been a particular focus of concern in
articulating and pushing for the MDG. But the re-convening of the U.N.
General Assembly last month proved yet another occasion for lamenting
our distance from meeting the 2015 MDG’s deadline for specifically
targeted programs. Blame lies on both sides of the “developmental
divide.” Richer nations, especially in the developed West, have
provided neither sufficient financial resources nor the essential tools
for developing nations to confront the daunting challenges they face.
And poor governance, corruption, and financial mismanagement have
plagued many of the nations most desperately in need.

But the largest and most influential group of developing nations has
added an ill-considered and wholly gratuitous burden to the challenges
of the MDG. They have selected the Sudan regime—which continues to
perpetrate genocide in Darfur in front of the eyes of the world—to be
chair in the coming year. The “Group of 77,” as it’s known, made this
extraordinary decision at the very moment the General Assembly and the
U.N. Secretariat were highlighting a number of discouraging shortfalls
in MDG progress. The Group of 77 now has 130 members (77 was the number
at its inception in 1964), including virtually every African nation.
Since it was the turn of the African countries to pick the chair of the
organization, and since the selection of Sudan was supported by China,
the outcome—however outrageous—is hardly surprising. Strong support
from the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference
helped ensure Khartoum’s diplomatic victory. But this diplomatic
accomplishment is no merely symbolic exercise, though the symbolism of
the choice is intensely dispiriting. For it comes at a time when the
head of the regime faces a likely arrest warrant from the International
Criminal Court—for crimes against humanity and for the genocide in
Darfur.

Certainly the evidence of genocide, as gathered and reported by the
world’s most distinguished human rights organizations, is overwhelming
and serves to indict not only President Omar al-Bashir, but
Vice-President Ali Osman Taha (who represented Khartoum at the U.N. last
month and carried the Darfur portfolio through 2005), Defense Minister
Abdelrahim Hussein (Interior Minister during the most violent phase of
the genocide), Saleh “Gosh” (head of the regime’s ruthlessly efficient
security apparatus), and influential senior presidential adviser Nafi’e
Ali Nafi’e (who currently holds the Darfur portfolio). It is a regime
of brutal génocidaires, and yet now it carries primary responsibility
for advancing the collective economic interests of 130 member states as
well as increasing the organization’s capacity to negotiate with the
U.N. and its various bodies.

A glance at the regime in Khartoum’s record on the economic interests of
the Sudanese people, let alone let alone its responses to the U.N. and
other international bodies, underlines the cruel joke of this
appointment.

Eastern Sudan has e
xceedingly high rates of poverty (especially among
the non-Arab populations), pervasive unemployment, and widespread
malnutrition. Southern Sudan remains a region ravaged by the effects of
decades of brutal civil war, and a total absence of national investment.
There are extraordinary development needs in the South, arguably the
greatest in all Africa. Moreover, Khartoum is making threats to
withdraw from the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (January 2005, Nairobi).
Such movement could quickly lead to all-out North/South war. In western
Sudan, Darfur’s grievances over violent racial discrimination and the
acute lack of developmental and economic opportunity led to rebellion in
2003, and in turn to Khartoum’s ongoing genocidal counter-insurgency
campaign. And even as malnutrition runs to emergency levels in much of
Sudan, the regime and its cronies benefit handsomely from food exports
by their large-scale agribusinesses. The National Islamic Front regime
has run up huge debts with profligate military spending, which continues
to this day. With approximately $29 billion in external debt, oil-rich
Sudan is arguably the most indebted nation in the world on a per capita
basis.

Additionally, Khartoum has obstructed the relief work of the U.N. and
other international nongovernmental humanitarian relief organizations.
It has stymied the work of the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights
in Sudan. It has refused to cooperate in any way with the International
Criminal Court—and this was true well before the Court was close to
issuing arrest appeals. It deliberately bombed the work-sites of the
International Committee of the Red Cross in Southern Sudan, and has
deliberately exacerbated insecurity for this courageous and resolutely
neutral organization in Darfur. Khartoum and its Janjaweed militia
allies have also repeatedly attacked U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur, and
relentlessly impeded deployment of the U.N. force.

Is this a regime capable in any way of speaking credibly to the
developed nations of the West about achieving Millennium Development
Goals? Who could possibly think that these génocidaires have the moral
standing to support these crucial global ambitions and needs, given
their own domestic ambitions? These are questions to be asked as well
about Khartoum’s destructive attitude to the African Union, whose
military forces are the ones that have been targeted in Darfur. At
every step, African initiatives to provide robust civilian protection,
to secure adequate resources and access, are denied. Khartoum has
succeeded in these efforts by wielding its blackmail card: withdrawal
from the A.U., thereby creating a possibly fatal split between
sub-Saharan and Arab Africa. Knowing full well that the Arab League will
support it without serious qualification (as will the Organization of
the Islamic Conference), Khartoum has defied both the A.U. and the U.N.

The Group of 77 has chosen Khartoum to be its chair at a critical moment
in the world’s pursuit of Millennium Development Goals. International
development aid will surely contract in the wake of the economic crisis
facing the United States, Europe, and Asia. Even China, a member of the
Group of 77, is likely to be more tight-fisted as it also faces the
prospect of a severe economic contraction. Making the case for large
outlays to fund international development efforts was already difficult;
with widespread needs for domestic fiscal stimulus and support for
foundering credit markets, that case is becoming much more difficult.
Choosing a genocidal regime to lead the Group of 77 could hardly be a
more irresponsible decision by the very nations most likely to suffer if
Millennium Development Goals are not met.

* Eric Reeves is author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide. He can be reached at [email protected]. www.sudanreeves.org