The annoying Sudanese position
Kwendo Opanga, The Sunday Standard
July 25, 2004 — Two people have annoyed me over the past week regarding the humanitarian crisis in Darfur in the Sudan.
The first is Khartoum’s ambassador to the United Nations, one Elfaith Erwa. The other is Sudan’s foreign minister, Mr Mustafa Osman Ismail.
The reason I am angry with these two gentlemen is that some 1.2 million people have been displaced in Darfur. They have been forced to flee their homes because of Arab ‘Janjaweed’ militias who are wreaking havoc in the area.
They require food urgently on a massive scale. They need medicines and quickly. Children are being born in conditions of abject squalor by parents who are too weak to look after them, or are on the run all the time. They die before they have lived.
Women and girls, some as young as eight, have been seized by the heavily armed Arab militias and raped.
The militias maim, sexually abuse, torture and kill with the backing of the government in Khartoum.
But these gentlemen are talking as if it is business as usual in the Sudan. They are talking as if this is a small and local problem. The tenor of their language is that this local problem will take time to deal with, but there is no hurry, and, please hands off, we are working on it in stages.
Please. We are here talking about thousands who have been killed. We are talking about people who are burying their loved ones every single day and they are dying from lack of food, shelter, sickness bullets and other instruments of war.
Neither Ismail nor Erwa disputed the fact that the militias are armed and backed by the government. Neither man denies the atrocities of the militias.
What the two have been saying in interviews in New York and Paris is that the international community, the media and rights groups included, is that there is another side to this sad story which is not being told.
That is another way of saying that the international community is biased against Khartoum and that they are not highlighting the atrocities of the rebels who operate in Darfur.
They have been saying that there are rebel groups operating in the area and that the history of Darfur is one of rebellion, resistance and armed insurrection, and that it is tribal.
In effect, these gentlemen have been saying that it is alright for Khartoum to arm and support the Arab militias against their own people and watch them systematically torture and kill these non-combatant people.
Two wrongs, Ismail and Erwa have therefore been saying, make a right. What these gentlemen have been doing is to justify Khartoum’s scorched-earth policy, which impoverishes, dehumanises and degrades innocent people and turns them into refugees in their own country.
According to Human Rights Watch, the militias usually attack ahead of or immediately after Sudan’s gunships have thoroughly strafed an area. In both cases, the strategy is to ensure that nobody escapes the wrath of Khartoum and its comrades-in-arms.
The concern of the international community is that a government is backing militias to commit murders and crimes against humanity. Ismail and Erwa deny there is genocide or ethnic cleansing in Darfur. But the story as told by the people of Darfur is different. They tell of their suffering at the hands of government-sponsored Arab militias.
While Ismail and Erwa do not deny there is a crisis in Darfur, they are accusing the UN and the US of meddling. Why? Because the UN introduced a resolution at the Security Council on Thursday threatening Khartoum with sanctions.
Because US Secretary of State Colin Powell is asking for access for humanitarian agencies to the displaced people in order that they may send in food and medicine. Human Rights Watch reports that it has not been allowed access to carry out its work freely in the Sudan.
Ismail called the UN and US intervention meddling and, in fact, appeared to threaten that sanctions would only complicate the crisis. Powell’s response was that one man’s meddling is another man’s attempt to help ease the suffering of the people of Darfur.
Ismail’s argument, which is shared by Erwa, is that there is an agreement between Khartoum and the rebels and that it should be left to work even though it is taking time.
That precisely is the problem. The arrangement is not working and it is painfully slow for a people who have no food, medicine, shelter having been displaced or succour and protection from those who govern them.
It is interesting that Khartoum would regard the UN’s intervention as jumping the gun of the arrangement between the antagonists in Darfur. Progress at the UN is often glacier-like. Now, if Khartoum is slower in its movement than a glacier, how many will die before peace comes to Darfur or humanitarian agencies are allowed in?
When 1.2 million people are displaced, are hungry, sick and traumatised by militias backed by their own government that is not a little local difficulty.
If the international community waits any longer, it will not be the disputed 30,000 or 35,000 dead, but another Rwanda.