The Moment of Decision for Darfur
Will humanitarian intervention truly offer civilian protection?
By Eric Reeves
March 21, 2005 — Recent statements from UN human rights specialists, international
policy organizations, human rights groups, and even the UN political
leadership make clear there is now broad international consensus on the
need for expanded humanitarian intervention in Darfur, with the primary
task of civilian protection. What is far from clear is a willingness to
provide adequate military resources for the various tasks entailed in
protecting the extraordinarily vulnerable populations in Darfur, both in
camps and less accessible rural areas. Nor is there evidence in recent
statements of considered estimates of what is necessary to provide
security for humanitarian workers and operations in Darfur, and to
augment currently inadequate humanitarian capacity.
Certainly there should be no underestimating the difficulties of this
very large undertaking. For having deferred a meaningful decision on
humanitarian intervention for such an unforgivably long time, the
international community now faces a far more challenging security
environment than in previous months. This writer argued over a year ago
(Washington Post, February 25, 2004):
“There can be no reasonable skepticism about Khartoum’s use of these
militias [the Janjaweed] to ‘destroy, in whole or in part, ethnical or
racial groups’—in short, to commit genocide. Khartoum has so far
refused to rein in its Arab militias; has refused to enter into
meaningful peace talks with the insurgency groups; and most
disturbingly, refuses to grant unfettered humanitarian access. The
international community has been slow to react to Darfur’s catastrophe
and has yet to move with sufficient urgency and commitment. A credible
peace forum must rapidly be created. Immediate plans for humanitarian
intervention should begin. The alternative is to allow tens of
thousands of civilians to die in the weeks and months ahead in what will
be continuing genocidal destruction.”
Scandalously, this assessment remains fully accurate. Indeed, the
threats to humanitarian aid delivery grow more perilous by the day: this
writer has received from multiple, highly authoritative sources
intelligence indicating that Khartoum has ambitious plans for
accelerating the obstruction of humanitarian access by means of
orchestrated violence and insecurity, including the use of targeted
violence against humanitarian aid workers (see below). Along with
increasing bureaucratic and legal obstructionism on Khartoum’s part
(highlighted recently by Kofi Annan), as well as rapidly accelerating
military activity in West Darfur, these developments suggest there is
very little that is truly “consensual” or “permissive” about current
humanitarian deployment in Darfur.
Khartoum’s inflammatory expressions of hostility toward international
humanitarian presence are notorious, and received yet further expression
in a preposterous claim reported yesterday by Agence France-Presse:
“Sudan has accused humanitarian agencies operating in the war-torn
region of Darfur of using only a fraction of funds from donors on the
crisis and retaining much of it for their own activities, the
independent al-Sahafa daily reported Sunday. The paper quoted the
governor of South Darfur state, Al-Hajj Atta al-Mannan, as saying that
just over 10% of the total amount of financial assistance donated for
the crisis in Darfur had reached the needy.”
“He claimed that the majority of the money was used to fund activities
not related directly to the plight of the people of Darfur. ‘The share
of the people of Darfur from this fund was only 12% while the remainder
was spent on administrative operations and workers of the international
organisations in Darfur,’ Mannan charged.”
“The charges are the latest by Khartoum against international
humanitarian organisations in the Darfur region. [ ] In October [2004],
Sudanese President Omar el-Beshir launched an attack on aid agencies in
the region, calling them enemies. ‘Organizations operating in Darfur are
the real enemies,’ the president [said]. And earlier in May [2004],
Sudanese Interior Minister Abdul Rahim Hussein accused a number of aid
organizations of supporting ethnic minority rebels in the region,
[claiming] that they ‘used humanitarian operations as a cover for
carrying out a hidden agenda and proved to have supported the rebellion
in the past period.'” (AFP, March 20, 2005)
These comments, while transparently absurd to most of the world outside
Sudan, are clearly designed to whip up domestic anger toward the
international relief effort in Darfur; they are in short recruitment
messages, and highly authoritative intelligence indicates they have
already generated a very considerable threat of near-term violence
against humanitarian workers and operations in Darfur.
It is critically important to recognize fully these threats to
humanitarian organizations in assessing what will inevitably be an
argument against intervention in some quarters, viz. that expanding
international intervention to protect civilians imperils the current
“consensual” or “permissive” environment for humanitarian actors.
The notion of a “permissive” or “consensual” environment in Darfur is a
transparent fiction, and to lay unqualified claim to such an environment
by way of arguing against humanitarian intervention is disingenuous; it
nonetheless must be expected and addressed.
But in assessing the consequences for humanitarian operations of robust
international intervention, we must first survey honestly the
consequences of the shameful belatedness that will define even the most
urgent action that might presently be undertaken. For the human
consequences of delayed response are already unforgivably great.
Perhaps 200,000 people have died since the moral imperative of
humanitarian intervention became clear for all to see (cf. most recent
mortality assessment by this writer [March 11, 2005] at
http://www.sudanreeves.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=44&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0).
The current UN estimate of 130,000 deaths during the period between
February 2004 (a time of particularly violent civilian destruction) and
the present is certainly low, particularly in assessing violent
mortality; but even accepted at face value, it provides what should be a
traumatizing sense of the cost of our belatedness.
We must also accept honestly that there has been no meaningful progress
in the peace process under AU auspices, nor even a clear date set for
resumption of talks. Indeed, as political and military divisions deepen
within the increasingly fractured insurgency movements, as
command-and-control issues multiply and desperation for provisions
grows, a political way forward seems increasingly unlikely in Abuja
(Nigeria).
Further, despite the explicit “demand” of UN Security Council
resolution 1556 (July 30, 2004) that Khartoum disarm the Janjaweed and
bring its leaders to justice, the Janjaweed continue to pose the
greatest threat to civilian populations and humanitarian relief in
Darfur. There has been no progress whatsoever on this essential issue,
and will not be until a robust military force has been introduced into
Darfur with a mandate that permits aggressive response to all Janjaweed
threats to civilians and humanitarian operations.
For seeing a complete absence of consequences for failing to respond to
this singular UN Security Council “demand”—eight months after it was
issued—Khartoum has continued to deploy the Janjaweed as the primary
instrument of genocidal destruction, and for many months has also
incorporated elements of the Janjaweed into police forces, the
paramilitary Popular Defense Forces, and increasingly the Border
Intelligence Guard (see excellent discussion of this transformation of
the Janjaweed in “Darfur: The Failure to Protect,” International Crisis
Group, March 8, 2005, page 8:
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=3314).
Finally, the scale of the humanitarian crisis has grown dramatically
over the past year, and humanitarian needs now (and in near prospect)
far outstrip humanitarian capacity. Insecurity is attenuating
humanitarian access and delivery at precisely the moment they should be
expanded; transport and logistical capacity are stretched to the
breaking point. At the same time, there is no prospect of a spring
agricultural planting in Darfur (and thus no likelihood of significant
fall harvest); nor are there resources adequate for responding to the
“hunger gap” (May/June through September). And the heaviest months
of the rainy season—late July through the end of September—will
again create what the UN described last year as a “logistical
nightmare.”
More than 3 million people already need humanitarian assistance in the
greater Darfur humanitarian theater, and present capacity is only
approximately half this, despite tendentious claims by the UN World Food
Program. This number of desperately needy civilians could grow to
exceed 4 million, according to a recent estimate from UN Under-Secretary
for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland (UN News Center, February 18,
2005).
Thus despite a recent decline in mortality rates within the accessible
camps for displaced persons in Darfur, hundreds of thousands of people
face death in the coming months and years because of the failures to
date to intervene in this massive, engineered crisis. All that can
mitigate vast human destruction is militarily supported humanitarian
intervention that assesses fully and honestly the security, food, water,
and medical needs of vulnerable civilians.
Such intervention requires a force of 25,000 to 60,000 military
personnel, with the ability for rapid, staged deployment and fully
adequate transport/logistics; such a force must have a fully explicit
mandate to protect threatened civilian populations, and to confront
directly any military force—regular, militia, or
paramilitary—threatening civilians; it must have a fully credible
means of deterring Khartoum’s use of aerial military assets; and it must
introduce augmented humanitarian transport capacity into and throughout
the humanitarian theater during the upcoming rainy season. Such an
intervention clearly requires that the present AU force be very
substantially augmented by non-AU personnel, resources, and equipment.
Deployment of such a task-defined intervening force faces many
difficult obstacles: inertia and political calculation on the part of
the UN political leadership and other international actors; glib
sloganeering by AU countries such as Nigeria and Libya (“African
solutions for African problems”); AU and UN rivalry over a Darfur
response (see “Darfur: The Failure to Protect,” International Crisis
Group, March 8, 2005, pages 6-7); expedient accommodation of Khartoum’s
inevitable assertion of “national sovereignty”; and a claimed poverty of
resources. If the international community allows these obstacles to
block or compromise meaningful intervention, we will only compound the
already shameful moral failure to date. We will be acquiescing yet
further in genocidal destruction.
VOICES DEMANDING INTERVENTION
Nine leading human rights groups and organizations working on issues of
international peace and security released an extraordinary open letter
to the UN Secretary-General and Security Council members on March 9,
2005, signed in eight instances by the chief executive officers of these
distinguished organizations. The document begins bluntly:
“After reviewing the most recent draft of the proposed Security Council
resolution on Sudan, we unanimously urge members to reject this
resolution on the grounds that another weak resolution will exacerbate
rather than ameliorate the situation in Darfur. The current draft
resolution sends precisely the wrong signal after one year of
unfulfilled promises and continued attacks, further emboldening the
Government of Sudan. Council members should instead adopt a strong
resolution that aims to end the crisis.”
(March 9, 2005. Signatories: International Crisis Group, Security and
Peace Institute, Physicians for Human Rights, Open Society Institute,
Africa Action, Citizens for Global Solutions, Human Rights Watch,
Coalition for International Justice, Center for American Progress)
These organizations also rightly insist that it is “unconscionable to
repeat the same stale rhetorical demands with little hope of
enforcement,” and that Security Council “responsibility and authority to
protect international peace and security [ ] requires bold and effective
measures.”
But there is, unfortunately, not nearly enough in this letter that
speaks to the specific security demands in Darfur, the actual “bold and
effective measures” required. There is here (and in many quarters)
over-reliance on a “no-fly zone” that presents currently insoluble
problems in basing the required AWACS and fighter aircraft. Chad is the
only realistic basing option, and neither the French (who have a
military presence in Chad) nor President Idriss Deby gives the slightest
sign of being willing to accept the required US or UK aerial combat
forces.
Moreover, little attention has been given to the almost impossible
difficulties of patrolling for helicopter gunships flying low to the
ground over an area the size of France. Additionally, the Antonov
aircraft that are implicated in civilian bombing attacks are the same
aircraft (and indistinguishable from the air) used for humanitarian
transport purposes and frequently carry civilians. A conventionally
conceived “no-fly zone” is impracticable in any timely fashion, faces
strong (if silent) opposition from within the US Defense Department, and
is of only limited relevance to the key security issues in Darfur.
The threat of sanctions seems similarly tangential to the essential
issues of human security in Darfur. However fully justified robust,
targeted sanctions against the Khartoum regime may be, they will have
little immediate impact on the ground. Moreover, such sanctions seem to
have no chance of political success in the Security Council, given the
clear opposition of veto-wielding Russia and China. Referral of
Khartoum’s genocidaires and other war criminals to the International
Criminal Court will have equally little impact in addressing either the
immediate protection needs of vulnerable civilian populations or the
humanitarian shortfalls that are now growing rapidly, especially outside
the camps.
The key phrase lying insufficiently articulated in this rhetorically
powerful letter is the demand for a resolution that “provides
enforceable mechanisms to protect the people of Darfur.” What
mechanisms are being referred to here? And precisely how will they
“protect the people of Darfur”—now?
The letter rightly acknowledges that the AU monitoring mission is
“laboring alone in Darfur with a near impossible burden.” But such
acknowledgement does nothing to suggest how the UN “can provide the AU
with the backing needed”—or how such backing will “send a clear,
enforceable message to Khartoum that [the UN] intends to hold the
government to its promises and treaty commitments.” The AU force is
transparently incapable of sending such a message on its own: deployment
has only now (after half a year) crept past 2,000 personnel. Moreover,
there is no acknowledgement here of the political resistance within the
AU to seek UN, European, or other international assistance.
Equally strong in its hortatory language is a statement of March 16,
2005 from fifteen distinguished UN human rights experts:
“We are gravely concerned about the ongoing violations of human rights
and humanitarian law in the Darfur region of Sudan [and] call upon the
international community to take effective measures to end the violations
on a basis of utmost urgency. [ ] Despite efforts by the international
community to commit troops and assistance to the region, the violence
continues virtually unabated in a context of wholesale impunity, and the
threat of famine is looming.”
“The violations in Darfur have been staggering in scale and harrowing
in nature. [ ] If the vow that the international community will ‘Never
Again’ stand idly by while crimes against humanity are being perpetrated
is to have any meaning, now is the time for decisive action.” (UN Human
Rights Experts Call for Urgent, Effective Action on Darfur,” UN
Information Service [Geneva], March 16, 2005)
But in calling on the international community to “take effective
measures to end the violations on a basis of utmost urgency,” these
experts provide no specific guidance. Certainly “now is the time for
decisive action”; and what is termed a “robust international solution”
is indeed “urgently needed.” But we are offered no suggestion as to
what these experts believe this solution consists in, and this creates a
dangerous policy vacuum.
[Notably, the International Crisis Group has taken the first tentative
steps in identifying the nature of an intervening force (“Darfur: The
Failure to Protect,” pages ii-iii:
“Recommends that the UN Security Council pass a resolution that:
[f] calls for close cooperation between the AU and UN missions in Sudan
and encourages the use of UN assets to support a strengthened AU
mission;
[g] recognizes that a force with fewer than 10,000 troops is likely to
be inadequate given Darfur’s size, the ongoing violence, and the largely
non-cooperative attitude of the Government of Sudan;
[h] calls on member states (African and non-African) to contribute
troops and other support to such a strengthened AU mission, and on NATO
to begin planning to assist the mission;
[i] calls on the EU, the UN, and AU to work together to augment the
civilian police capacity in Darfur.”
“Recommends that the African Union Peace and Security Council:
[14] work with the UN Security Council to facilitate inclusion and
assistance of non-African forces to supplement the mission’s force
levels and capabilities.
[15] Elaborate in conjunction with the UN Security Council and the
Secretary-General a strategy for neutralisation of the Janjaweed
militias in the absence of Government of Sudan cooperation.”
Unfortunately, a number of significant issues are unaddressed here: [1]
the appropriate size of the intervening force (the implied “at least
10,000” skirts the issue, since an appropriate size is certainly more
than double this number; [2] the nature of intervention in the event
that Khartoum works more aggressively to create a non-permissive
environment for additional deployments; [3] a strategy for pressuring
the AU to accept non-AU forces; [4] rules of engagement in confronting
the Janjaweed.]
PROPOSALS FOR AN INTERVENING FORCE
Because there has been no comprehensive discussion of civilian and
humanitarian protection requirements, the character of an expanded
“humanitarian intervention” in Darfur is already sinking toward a
lowest common political denominator, governed more by expedient
estimates and a sense of the politically practicable than by clearly
articulated security tasks.
Recent press reports suggest three different versions of a constrained
intervening force, coming from the AU, from Kofi Annan’s special envoy
for Sudan, Jan Pronk, and from UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian
Affairs Jan Egeland. All build on the premise that personnel in the
force will come virtually entirely from the AU, thereby severely
limiting the possible increase in force levels.
The African Union:
Reuters reports several key statements by AU leaders, political and
military:
“The AU is seeking to double its forces in Darfur to about 6,000
troops, a number that could stabilize Sudan’s troubled western region,
Rwanda’s foreign minister said. With security rapidly deteriorating, the
AU troop commander in Darfur has told Rwandan officials that a
6,000-strong force would be able to secure all major refugee camps and
roads, Rwanda’s Foreign Minister Charles Murigande said. ‘They have
asked us if we are willing to increase our participation, and we have
promised that we are willing,’ Murigande told Reuters in an interview
during a visit to Singapore.”
“The Nigerian commander of the AU’s force in Darfur, Festus Okonkwo,
told Rwandan President Paul Kagame that 6,000 troops would be enough to
‘bring the level of violence to probably what would be acceptable,’
Murigande said.” (Reuters, March 18, 2005)
But it is transparently clear that 6,000 AU troops are not nearly
enough to address the security issues in Darfur, though this may be an
intervention force that can secure the major camps for displaced
persons. This is certainly not a force able to “bring the level of
violence to probably what would be acceptable.” The Nigerian provenance
of this disingenuous assessment should be seen in light of Nigerian
President Obasanjo’s recent remarks on the Darfur crisis: “‘Things are
greatly better in Darfur'” (Agence France-Presse, February 28, 2005).
Obasanjo, also chair of the African Union, offers this outrageous
mendacity out of pure political expediency and a desire to forestall
non-AU participation in humanitarian intervention for Darfur.
For Obasanjo has already declared—with the Presidents of Egypt,
Libya, Chad, and Sudan—that Darfur is an “Africa only” problem:
“In a joint statement issued after the overnight meeting [in Tripoli]
the regional leaders stressed their ‘rejection of all foreign
intervention in this purely African question'” (Agence France-Presse,
October 18, 2004).
Nigerian Commander Festus Okonkwo offers not a serious assessment of
military requirements but simply the upper range of what Obasanjo thinks
the AU might plausibly claim. So, too, AU envoy (and former Nigerian
foreign minister) Baba Gana Kingibe. Though Kingibe is a skilled
diplomat, with significant political stature, he has already proved
himself capable of disingenuous commentary. While acknowledging that
the security situation in Darfur has continued to deteriorate seriously,
he declares to Reuters that, “more troops [are] not the answer.” “‘They
can do with a little strengthening (but)…even if you put 50,000 you
will still say its not enough,’ he said, pointing out that Darfur was
the size of France” (Reuters, March 18, 2005).
Who is the “you” invoked here as declaring that 50,000 troops are
insufficient? Kingibe offers no answer because he can’t. Nor does he
explain why significantly more troops are not part of the answer to the
critical security issues in Darfur. It is indeed a region the “size of
France,” and this makes the task very difficult. But how then can the
present AU deployment of 2,000 personnel be in need of only “a little
strengthening”? Why aren’t the size of Darfur and difficulty of the
operation precisely arguments for a very substantially augmented force?
Kingibe isn’t even bothering with consistency in attempting to take
non-AU participation off the table.
Jan Pronk:
Jan Pronk, whose ill-fated August 2004 “Plan of Action” has figured
prominently in much of the violence of the past half year (see “Darfur:
The Failure to Protect,” International Crisis Group, March 8, 2005, page
6-7, http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=3314), has
recently argued for limited humanitarian intervention:
“A force of 8,000 peacekeepers is needed in Darfur for the nearly 2
million people displaced from the western part of Sudan to feel safe
enough to return home, the chief UN envoy to Sudan said Thursday. ‘I
have made it very clear to the [UN] mission [in Sudan] that we need a
robust force, I mean 8,000 military, for a duration of about four
years…so that people can return to their areas,’ Pronk told a news
conference afterward.” (Associated Press [Khartoum], March 17, 2005)
That this is still an AU force, however, is made clear from a dispatch
from the UN Integrated Regional Information Networks:
“Jan Pronk [the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for the
Sudan] felt that, for the AU to strengthen its role in Darfur, it would
need to expand its capacity to 8,000 troops and adopt a mandate with a
stronger focus on protection,’ [said UN spokeswoman] Radhia Achouri.”
(IRIN, March 18, 2005)
Such reliance on the AU, which has taken six months to deploy 2,000
under-equipped and insufficiently supported personnel, is a substitute
for actions that will truly have meaning in the current environment.
Pronk is guided by political considerations, not speaking about the
intervention necessary to protect civilians and humanitarian operations.
He is certainly not speaking of a force that can oversee the return of
displaced persons or provide them with adequate security away from the
camps.
Jan Egeland:
In assessing the need for forces on the ground in Darfur, Egeland, like
Pronk, is constrained politically by what is judged within the UN to be
practicable, and this presently excludes non-AU forces. Egeland is
pleading for a force of very approximately 10,000—a figure arrived at
not through any military calculation, or assessment of the security
situation or the capabilities of the AU, but an understandably desperate
desire to increase in any fashion the security presence on the ground.
In the end he is content with the mere serendipity of one soldier for
every humanitarian worker (this numerical relationship is of course
completely unrelated to any meaningful assessment of security issues
involving hundreds of thousands of extremely vulnerable Darfuri
civilians):
“Jan Egeland, the humanitarian relief coordinator currently touring
Sudan, said the African Union needed 10,000 troops in Darfur. ‘There
should be as many AU forces as there are humanitarian workers in Darfur,’
he [said]. ‘The world is only putting an expensive humanitarian plaster
on the open wound in Darfur.'” (Reuters, March 7, 2005)
If we judge by the public comments of AU and UN officials, it is clear
that there has been no serious attempt to define the “bold and effective
measures” that human rights groups and UN human rights specialists have
called for. There is nothing contemplated that “provides enforceable
mechanisms to protect the people of Darfur.” Nor is there a proposal
for the “robust international solution”—declared to be “urgently
needed”—to “stop further death and suffering in Darfur.”
Are these mere words? Do these powerful phrases connote a willingness
to support commensurate military actions and deployment? We must hope
so, but absent a much fuller and more honest articulation of the
security issues in Darfur, skepticism must remain high.
MILITARY ASSESSMENTS OF A HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION
Two public military assessments of the crisis have come from
individuals with first-hand experience in confronting genocide in
Africa. They comport very well with analyses that have come
confidentially to this writer from military experts.
Lt. General Romeo Dallaire, UN force commander during the Rwandan
genocide, has argued for half a year now that what is required is an
intervening force of 44,000 troops of NATO-quality, with a robust
civilian protection mandate that includes disarmament of the Janjaweed.
General Dallaire most recently affirmed this force assessment during a
tour of South Africa, insisting that “44,000 troops are needed to bring
peace to the Darfur region of Sudan rather than the 3,340 the AU intends
sending to the region, [Dallaire said]” (Business Day [Johannesburg],
February 25, 2005). Darfur, Dallaire argued at the Institute for
Security Studies in Pretoria, is a “perfect example” of a “lack of
political will to prevent crises developing:
“Dallaire said the AU mandate [in Darfur]—which is similar to a UN
Chapter VI-type ‘observe and monitor’ mission—was far too weak and
would result in its being ineffectual. He said the mandate should be
more robust and allow for the protection of civilians and the
disarmament of militias.” (Business Day, February 25, 2005)
Another military assessment comes from (Ret.) Marine Captain Brian
Steidle, who served for several months as a military observer in Darfur,
attached to the AU monitoring mission. He has recently spoken out in a
number of news venues and before the US Congress. His primary
recommendations are for a vastly increased force and a “no-fly zone”:
“This success story of the African Union [creating a presence in
Muhajeryia, South Darfur, which deterred Khartoum’s extension of its
December 2004 offensive against civilians] can be replicated throughout
Darfur, but only if they see their numbers increase. Right now there are
fewer than 4,000 troops there. To repeat this kind of success all over
Darfur, they need 25,000 to 50,000 troops.” [ ]
Steidle reiterates this force assessment:
“Most importantly, we need to increase our support for the AU mission
in Darfur on all levels. We need to multiply the existing AU mission
there manifold and support a more robust force of 25,000 to 50,000.
Further, the international community needs to expand their mandate to
allow them to protect civilians and open up roads between the villages
for humanitarian access.” (American Prospect, March 17, 2005)
Both Dallaire and Steidle have made their assessments on the basis of a
survey of the requisite security tasks to be undertaken by any
intervening force. It is worth rehearsing these, if only because this
is only basis on which to calculate force requirements:
[1] Provision of security to the camps for displaced persons, with
adequate security perimeters that allow for the collection of firewood,
food, and animal fodder;
[2] Securing all humanitarian corridors to and within Darfur, both by
means of active patrols and accompanying security details for all
convoys requesting protection;
[3] The opening of safe passage routes from rural areas currently
beyond the reach of humanitarian operations, thereby allowing the free
movement of people who have depleted all food reserves;
[4] The dismantling of checkpoints on key road arteries, many of which
are now maintained by bandits and other lawless elements;
[5] Provision of safe passage and protection to civilians who wish to
return to their villages, or the sites of their former villages, in
order to resume agriculturally productive lives.
Other key military tasks include: mechanically disabling or destroying
any military aircraft implicated in violations of international law, in
particular attacks on civilian targets. (Alternatively, Khartoum must
be given an ultimatum: “Remove all military aircraft from the Darfur
region or they will be destroyed on the ground by unmanned aerial
military assets.”) And most importantantly, cantonment and eventual
disarmament of the Janjaweed (per the terms of UN Security Resolution
1556).
It is clear that no configuration or deployment of AU forces can
possibly undertake these various tasks. It is thus incumbent on those
insisting that the AU be the only international security presence in
Darfur to explain which of these tasks can be abandoned or ignored, and
why this is morally acceptable.
At the same time, it is also incumbent upon those calling for
humanitarian intervention to declare how resistance by Khartoum to the
deployment of intervening forces will be overcome. By some military
estimates, such resistance could double the number of forces required
for the security tasks articulated above.
In addition to the recommendations from the International Crisis Group,
the US House of Representatives’ “Darfur Genocide Accountability Act of
2005” offers a series of important recommendations for military
intervention in Darfur. It deserves close analysis and urgent
legislative and grass-roots support.
[This is Part 1 of a two-part analysis that will be extended in the
week of March 28, 2005.]
– Eric Reeves
– Smith College
– Northampton, MA 01063
– Tel: 413-585-3326
– Email: [email protected]
– Website: www.sudanreeves.org