Does the International Will Exist?

The new analysis from Eric Reeves is now available

Truly meaningful international response is now so belated that it is increasingly difficult to see how the mortality total for Darfur will not eventually exceed that of the Rwandan genocide, whose grim anniversary (April 7th) is fast approaching. Last year’s tenth anniversary produced a large outpouring of commentary that linked events in Darfur to international acquiescence in the slaughter of 1994. A full year later those links are all the more conspicuous, and all the more shaming. Despite this, there are no signs that international leaders---in the UN, the US, or Europe---are willing to intervene to protect civilians in Darfur, though they are as vulnerable to famine, disease, and the Janjaweed as the Tutsis and moderate Hutus of Rwanda were vulnerable to the violence inspired by the Interahamwe.

We have failed Darfur and as has been the case for many months, the only issue is the scale of that moral failure.

Daily Darfur

France says it expects the Security Council to vote today on a resolution that would send the crimes in Darfur to the ICC and the AP reports that the US has agreed to drop its objections to the move in return for assurances that Americans would not be subject to ICC prosecutions.

From The Guardian

An alliance of MPs, human rights groups and survivors of the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan today launched a campaign for bolder international intervention to stop the bloodshed.
More than 100 MPs and peers have signed a parliamentary statement calling for the UN to authorise peace-enforcement operations to be led by African Union troops, supported by wealthy countries.

The Protect Darfur campaign, which is being coordinated by the Aegis Trust, a charity that campaigns to prevent genocide, was launched at the House of Commons.

Sudan Watch has the latest U.N. Sudan Situation Report.

Christian Aid shares the story of Dr Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, chairperson of the Sudan Social Development Organisation, and his arbitrary arrest.

Not On My Watch

Go to Aegis Trust and watch the short film "Not On My Watch."

Senator Nelson on Darfur

Half-Cocked reports that people are contacting their representatives regarding Darfur, judging by this recent letter to the editor from Sen. Ben Nelson

I previously co-sponsored Senate Bill 495, the Darfur Accountability Act, which reconfirms that genocide is occurring in Darfur and calls for several steps aimed at stopping it.

These steps include calling for a new U.N. Security Council resolution with sanctions, concerted diplomacy to achieve an effective Security Council resolution, an extension of the arms embargo to cover the government of Sudan and the freezing of assets and denial of visas to those responsible for genocide.

This bill further calls for accelerated assistance to the African Union mission in Darfur, a military nonfly zone and a presidential envoy for Sudan.

I share Katie's concern for the victims in Darfur. I co-sponsored this bill with the hope that renewed focus could effect change in Darfur.

Media Coverage of Darfur

I mentioned this article in the American Journalism Review earlier examining the lack of media coverage of the genocide in Darfur and I just wanted to highlight a few sections

Serious reporting on the subject largely has been absent on the networks and on cable. Last year the three network nightly newscasts aired a meager total of 26 minutes on the bloodshed, according to the Tyndall Report, which monitors network news. ABC devoted just 18 minutes to Darfur, NBC five and CBS three. By contrast, Martha Stewart's woes received 130 minutes, five times as much.

Later in the article, AJR interviewed editors at five papers across the country regarding their coverage of Darfur and they offered a variety of excuses as to why they haven't dedicated more space to the genocide, though they also insisted that their papers had been covering it.

Douglas C. Clifton of the Cleveland Plain Dealer claimed that "When news of the mass killings first surfaced, the story 'broke page one repeatedly and then moved inside.'"

Steve Merelman of the Raleigh News & Observer claimed that "We have spilled a fair amount of ink over Sudan, including a few front page stories."

I did a quick search of the 5 papers AJR questioned to see just how many stories mentioning Darfur had appeared on their pages in the last two years.

Here are the results

Dallas Morning News - 40
News & Observer - 43
Kansas City Star - 156
Orlando Sentinel - 146
Cleveland Plain Dealer - 15

The Plain Dealer and the News & Observer have, combined, run less than 60 stories mentioning Darfur. By no stretch of the imagination can that be considered "a fair amount of ink."

In comparison, here are the results of a search for the number of stories that mentioned Martha Stewart during the same time period

Dallas Morning News - 226
News & Observer - 125
Kansas City Star - 385
Orlando Sentinel - 404
Cleveland Plain Dealer - 134

On average, these five papers have run 80 stories mentioning Darfur in the last two years and 240 mentioning Martha Stewart.

ICC Vote Delayed

From AFP

A controversial vote on whether to refer war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region to the International Criminal Court (ICC) was postponed on Wednesday after a US request, diplomats said.

The council, which late Tuesday authorised sanctions for Sudan, was mulling a vote Wednesday morning on a French resolution that would bring the matter to the ICC, which is opposed by the United States.

But Washington said it wanted to propose some changes and France agreed, putting off one of the thorniest issues on the council related to the Darfur crisis.

Rwanda: Deja Vu

Via Passion of the Present we get this important article from the American Journalism Review

In an eerie echo of the past, the American news media have drastically underplayed genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region just as they did a similar catastrophe in Rwanda a decade ago. But some individual journalists have done outstanding work.

Get Active

Donald Steinberg, the former U.S. Ambassador to Angola, said the world needs to act to help those in Darfur and encouraged his audience to write letters to their representatives

Among other suggestions for how students can actively work to relieve the crisis in Darfur, Steinberg said writing letters to congressmen is an effective step. “(Working in the White House), when we received 40 letters about an issue, we paid attention to it,” he said.

Ad Populum has a good sample letter for you to use.

Daily Darfur

The UN Security Council has voted to impose a travel ban and an asset freeze on those responsible for crimes in Darfur. The resolution also strengthens the arms embargo on Sudan and forbids the Khartoum government from launching offensive military flights into Darfur.

You can find the text of the resolution here.

Sudan says there is "no justification" for the UN's actions.

Attacks on outsiders continue as gunmen wounded three African Union monitors in an ambush on Tuesday.

A British parliamentary committee said the death toll in Darfur has been grossly underestimated. It estimates that the death toll is somewhere around 300,000.

The International Herald Tribune has this op-ed

Nourein's story highlights a little-noticed effect of the genocide that has killed 300,000 people in Darfur: what the UN Genocide Convention calls the inflicting of "conditions of life" calculated to bring about a group's demise. The systematic plundering and destruction of houses, wells, crops, livestock and assets, combined with restricted access to humanitarian aid and continuing violence, has devastated the way of life of non-Arab Darfurians. The cultural identity tied to their villages and the fabric of their social structures have been virtually eliminated.

Benefit Concert to Prevent Hotel Darfur

A preventable humanitarian crisis, affecting more than two million people, is raging in the Darfur region of western Sudan right this minute! Not since the Rwanda genocide of 1994 has the world seen such a calculated campaign of slaughter, rape, starvation and displacement. Government-backed militias, known collectively as the Janjaweed, are systematically eliminating entire communities of African tribal farmers. Villages are being razed, women and girls raped and branded, men and boys murdered, and food and water supplies targeted and destroyed.

It's time to give this cause the attention it desperately needs - we need to make some noise, heighten our much needed awareness, and make a statement that this is completely unacceptable!

Join New Yorkers as we celebrate local musicians and heighten awareness about this dire situation.

When? WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13TH @ 8 PM (DOORS OPEN @ 7:30 PM)
Where? TONIC (NYC) - 107 NORFOLK STREET
$16 ADMISSION - INCLUDES ONE FREE DRINK

Ask President Bush to Help Stop Mass Murder in Darfur

From Human Rights First

On March 30, the U.N. Security Council is scheduled to vote on a resolution that would authorize an international court to investigate and prosecute the mass murder in Darfur. If the resolution does not pass, an opportunity for the international community to take decisive action on the grave situation in the Sudan will be lost -- possibly forever.

The United States, which has until now taken a leadership role in focusing the world's attention on the atrocities in Darfur, does not support the resolution because of its objections to the court, the new International Criminal Court (ICC). As an alternative, the United States proposes further discussion.

But this would only mean additional delay.

It is time for the U.S. government to raise its objections to the ICC in another venue. In this instance, the ICC represents the best, and perhaps the only, realistic mechanism for justice.

Please join with us in asking President George W. Bush to ensure that the United States does not veto a Security Council referral of the situation of Darfur to the ICC.

Never Again: Again and Again

In her 2001 article "Bystanders to Genocide," Pulitzer Prize winning author Samantha Power recounts how President Clinton was shocked and outraged by an article written by Philip Gourevitch recounting the horrors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, prompting him to send the article to his national security advisor Sandy Berger with a note scrawled in the margin reading "Is what he's saying true? How did this happen?"

After taking office, President Bush reportedly read Power's article on the Clinton administration's failure to intervene during the genocide. He too scrawled a message in the margin - "NOT ON MY WATCH."

Yet we are now faced with another African genocide, this time in Darfur, and the United States and the rest of the world are responding exactly as they did during Rwanda - with paralyzed inaction.

Though there are many key differences between what is taking place in Darfur and what occurred in Rwanda a decade ago, there are also many similarities.

In 1993, the world watched "Schindler's List" and wondered how such horrors could unfold and why they were not stopped. In 2004, it watched "Hotel Rwanda" and asked the same questions. In each case, those questions went unanswered.

Just as in Rwanda, the international military force on the ground in Darfur is far too small, poorly equipped and operating under an extremely limited mandate that does not allow them to protect civilians at risk.

Just as in Rwanda, the genocide is taking place against a backdrop of "civil war," leading the international community to focus more on establishing a cease-fire than protecting those being killed.

Just as in Rwanda, the death toll is nearly impossible to determine.

Just as in Rwanda, the United Nations is more or less paralyzed as individual nations seek to protect their own national interests rather than helpless men, women and children.

Just as in Rwanda, media coverage is almost nonexistent, Congress is all but silent, and the human rights community is having difficulty get the nation to pay attention to a genocide in progress.

Just as in Rwanda, a genocide is unfolding - but this time it is happening on our watch.

We ask you to join the Coalition for Darfur as we attempt to raise awareness of the genocide in Darfur and raise money for the live saving work Save the Children is doing there.

Fear and Chaos in a Fragile Land

A new story from the National Catholic Reporter

This is what war in Darfur looks like.

In “zones of conflict” a village stands one day and is gone the next. Women and children flee; only a few may return. Teenagers man military guard posts; old and young men alike tend to their war wounds.

Seeming quiet one moment gives way to bombing the next.

In early December, in a place less than an hour’s drive from this city, a group of displaced women who had encamped in a field tried to find a bit of rest and solace in the quiet of the cool morning. By 10 a.m., it is hard to escape Darfur’s bracing heat.

Living with little more than plastic sheets and a few supplies that could be quickly bundled up in case they had to flee on a moment’s notice, the women swept the ground outside their makeshift homes, giving even their temporary lean-tos a sense of fragile dignity.

Within a week, the place had been destroyed.

2.4 Million

That is the UN's most recent estimate regarding the number of people who have been displaced in Darfur

The number of people displaced from their homes as a result of the conflict in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region has reached 2.4 million, well above previous estimates, the United Nations said Tuesday.

"The number of the IDPs in the region has now reached 2.4 million with the basic services being offered to 1.6 million," said Radhia Ashuri, a spokeswoman for UN Sudan envoy Jan Pronk.

[edit]

"The situation in Darfur is not reassuring as only yesterday some 700 new IDPs (displaced persons) arrived at Abu Shuk camp near El-Fashir," the spokesperson said.

Does This Sound Consensual?

This article has little to do with the situation in Darfur, but I think it illustrates the government's obvious disdain for its own citizens and its willingness to boldly lie regarding their treatment

The governor of Khartoum said on Tuesday displaced people had agreed to move to remote camps outside the Sudanese capital and had fabricated stories about forcible resettlement to obtain aid.

[edit]

U.N. officials and those involved say authorities have forced tens of thousands of people in the past few months to move from the suburb of Shikan to the desert camp of al-Fatha, away from the city centre.

Their new home, 40 km (25 miles) out of town, has no running water, electricity, health facilities or shelter. Residents said nine children died from cold during the move.

Asked why all the people in al-Fatha told the same story of the authorities driving them out and demolishing their houses without warning, Mutafi said they were lying to get help.

When asked why schools and health centres are not built before the government forcibly moves people, al-Mutafihe replied, "We don't have the money." He added that if the UN doesn't like how it is treating these people, "Let them come to help. I don't like to be told how to transfer my people."

Spectator to Genocide

World Magazine has this article on Brian Steidle and is displaying some of his photos

Brian Steidle's only weapons against mass killing were his pen, paper, and camera. The former Marine captain catalogs what they caught in Darfur, Sudan, with quick-fire urgency: toddlers with their faces smashed in, men castrated and left to bleed to death, charred bodies of villagers locked in huts later burned down. Charged only with monitoring ceasefire violations in the war-wracked region, he soon grew weary of playing spectator to genocide.

So after six months, the 28-year-old Mr. Steidle returned to the United States a month ago and launched his own offensive to stop the killing. In mid-March he criss-crossed Washington, meeting with lawmakers and Bush administration officials and sandwiching media appearances in between. His eyewitness accounts—bolstered by hundreds of photographs—provide some of the most damning evidence yet of the Sudanese government's murderous campaign against the Darfuris.

Hearing on Darfur

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be holding a hearing on "U.S. Assistance to Sudan and the Darfur Crisis" on April 28th.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to testify.

Daily Darfur

The UN's Integrated Regional Information Networks has this interview with Jan Egeland

Q: Assuming that agencies did get the funds to operate properly in Sudan, what are your concerns about deteriorating security? Do you think that the international community is doing enough to improve security?

A: No we are not. I look with alarm at the security situation in west Sudan. The world has really only responded to the horrors of Sudan by sending in humanitarians. There are now ten thousand humanitarian employees in Darfur, nine thousand of which are Sudanese, with one thousand internationals.

Luckily, no lives were lost when a clearly marked aid convoy of USAID and IRS came under fire yesterday [22 March]. Colleagues from a French organisation, Solidarité, whom I myself visited just two weeks ago and who do phenomenal work in South Darfur, were jailed for three days.

So I am not sleeping well at night, wondering how long we can carry on in this situation. And those responsible are not just the security forces; it's also the Janjawid, and the rebels. They are all to blame for this. The rebels have abducted eight vehicles, which they have kept to this day.

The African Union force is doing a great job, but they are one-fifth of what they should have been. The deployment has been too slow and the plans I've seen [for further deployments] are also far too slow. And one argument that I really don't hope anybody will be producing is that it is too costly to deploy African Union observers, because that will lead to a worse situation than the one we have today.

During a press briefing in which the State Department released the report "Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The U.S. Record 2004 - 2005," Acting Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Michael Kozak was asked about Darfur

QUESTION: I just was going to ask if you could talk briefly about Darfur, where -- what we can do, given that, frankly, efforts so far have failed.

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Yeah. And thanks for raising that because that is one of the most acute human rights problems in the world right now, as is outlined in the report. And in fact, we -- as the report spells out, one of the things we did last year, one reason we know how bad the problem is, is that we put together a sort of unique approach. We realized that everybody was looking at Darfur and there were a lot of stories about it, about the militias there and so on. But there was a real lack of clarity as to just how these attacks were going down, what was behind them and so on.

So last summer, we worked together with the USAID and with our Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and put together a team that was comprised largely of people from our bureau -- Democracy, Human Rights and Labor -- and people from a couple of legal NGOs we hired. And we went out, we worked up -- the reason intelligence and research people were engaged was we worked up a script with them for taking a really scientific type of poll of people in the refugee camps in Chad, you know, how to do a random selection and how to ask questions with cross checks and that kind of thing. And then we deployed and did that.

The result of that was that contrary to a lot of the information that we had before, we determined that each one of these attacks was preceded by a Sudanese air force attack on the city. In a majority of cases, the Sudanese regular army showed up next and further destroyed villages. And then the militias come around and molest people and so on. But it wasn't -- in other words, what this showed was that it wasn't a case of some out of control militia. It was a case of deliberate policy on the part of the government. So that gave us a new angle on what to do. And we were able to then corroborate that with other information. But knowing exactly when and where and how an attack could occurred, we could go back and look at other things and say, yeah, that verifies that.

So we were able to go and confront the Sudanese authorities with this. When Secretary Powell went out there, he had that in hand. We turned all this data over to the UN Commission of Inquiry, which we, I think, helped take the lead on the Security Council getting set up. They, likewise, came to the same conclusions and got more data that further validated this.

Now, that's the problem. What's the solution? I mean, we've all been saying to the Sudanese that if you want to get the benefits of the North-South peace agreement, which should be substantial for the country, you've got to end the violence in Darfur. They keep bobbing and weaving on this. You know, we keep trying to escalate the pressure in the Security Council. They're looking at further sanctions.

What will it take? I don't know. So, I mean, basically right now, we're trying to do a couple of things. One is maintain a flow of humanitarian relief because people who don't get killed by these marauding militias and government troops -- and by the way the rebels are not totally blameless in this either. They themselves have not been particularly nice towards civilian populations. But, you know, we're trying to maintain access for humanitarian relief efforts. We're trying to get more AU monitors in there as a deterrent against further attacks. And we're trying to put more pressure on the government to take it seriously and to cut this out. Hasn't worked yet. But that's the line of approach that we're trying.

Kofi Annan met with representatives of the NGO community

For their part, the NGOs discussed the urgent need for further action by the Security Council - including on the question of adopting targeted sanctions and on referring the Darfur situation to the International Criminal Court, as recommended by the International Commission of Inquiry appointed by Mr. Annan to probe allegations of human rights abuses.

The Los Angeles Times shines light on the sad lives of Sudanese slaves.

Open Season on Aid Workers?

The American Prospect's Mark Leon Goldberg has written this new article on Khartoum's alleged campaign to target aid workers in Darfur

The paltry number of AU monitors in Darfur is nowhere near sufficient to protect humanitarian workers and keep roads clear for humanitarian convoys. Further, their mandate does not grant any specific authority to protect civilian populations. Unless the AU’s role in Darfur rapidly expands by both numbers and purpose, Khartoum’s new campaign against humanitarian workers may yet succeed.

Read the entire thing.

News That's Not Fit to Print

Northeastern University has issued this press release in conjunction with the publication of a new book by Northeastern University professor of journalism Laurel Leff, "Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper"

Why was the American media’s coverage of Tsunami victims so extensive, but the coverage of the genocide in the Darfur region of the Sudan so sparse? Leff maintained that the extensive coverage of the Tsunami resulted from the general public ability to grasp a tangible solution to the disaster– send money, send man power to rebuild, and help citizens return to normal, productive lives.

“How the media covers genocide is problematic universally. Genocides tend to take place in Africa and Asia, far away from America and American interests,” says Leff. “Before the Tsunami the press did not cover or were not able to get the American public to care about small villages in Sri Lanka.”

According to Leff news coverage gravitates toward places where American interests lie, and American interests don’t often extend to the issues of Africa or South East Asia, even when it comes to mass deaths among the residents. The genocidal massacre of more than 900,000 people in Rwanda in 1993 inspired very little coverage, and with more than 1.2 million people displaced and the ever-increasing tally of rape, murder and torture victims in the Darfur region of the Sudan still fails to pique the interests of most major papers, says Leff.

Said Leff, “There was no immediate identification with the victims of the Tsunami for many Americans; it was not as popular a vacation destination as in Europe, but the press was able to make connections that got people’s interested in the stories. So it is interesting to explore why the connection is not made in situations of genocide. One thing about natural disasters is it is easy to know how to feel and to know what to do to help. In cases of genocide, often governments in the perpetrating counties and the American government deliberately try to make it a murky topic. Ethnic and Tribal conflicts can be difficult to understand and it is difficult for people to know what to do.”

The Story of Brian Steidle

Global Grassroots, the organization with which Brian Steidle is now working, has this page dedicated to his eyewitness account of the genocide in Darfur

The difference between the government and the rebel groups is that, for the majority of the time, the rebel groups target military and police positions, while the Government targets civilians. The purpose of the rebel attacks are to gain ammunition, weapons, logistical stores and to show the government that they are still a force with which to be reckoned. I believe that one of the purposes of the Government attacks is to kill or drive the African tribes from Darfur.

[edit]

People at the grassroots level worldwide have the power individually to help stop the killing. It is critical for individuals to write their government leaders and ask them to take action. Speak out and tell others of the atrocities. For the first time, we might be able to stop genocide in the making. Please help. We cannot fail the men, women and children of Darfur.

Activism from Within

Lt. Gen Romeo Dallaire headed the ill-fated United Nations mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) in 1994 and was forced to stand by helplessly as nearly 1 million people were killed in just 100 days.

Upon being relieved of his command in Rwanda, Dallaire, suffering from Post traumatic Stress Disorder, became suicidal and tried to take his life on several occasions. Since then, with the help of therapy and drugs, he has become a tireless human rights advocate and an outspoken critic of the international community's failure to protect those most in need.

He has repeatedly spoken out regarding the need for intervention in Darfur and called upon Canada, his home country, to take a leading role in confronting the unfolding genocide.

And now, after years of activism in the academic and NGO community, Dallaire will now be taking his activism to the halls of government - as a Senator

The 58-year-old retired general, who lost his mental equilibrium and eventually his military career to the horrors of the 1993-94 Rwandan genocide, was named to the Senate on Thursday by Prime Minister Paul Martin. Dallaire says he relishes the idea of getting inside government instead of preaching from outside.

"That's one of the fundamental reasons I accepted," he said in an interview. "Now I've been given an opportunity to get into entrails of government in caucus and the like.

"Hopefully, I'll be able to bring a more specific influence into decisions that are being taken."

Let us hope that Dallaire's appointment amounts to more than a purely symbolic gesture and that his experience and views will help shape Canada's response to the genocide.

15 Arrested

From Reuters

Sudan has arrested for the first time military and security officials accused of rape, killing and burning villages in the Darfur region, the justice minister said Monday.

Ali Mohamed Osman Yassin told reporters a government committee had arrested 15 members of the police, military and security forces in Darfur for human rights abuses and they would immediately be sent to court.

"They are military people … from army, military and security," Yassin said. "(They are accused of) different crimes. It includes rape, killing, burning and other things — different kinds of atrocities."

Daily Darfur

Sudan is rejecting any attempt to refer the crimes in Darfur to the International Criminal Court and has announced that it will try 164 suspects, including some government officials, for alleged crimes committed in Darfur.

B'nai B'rith International is calling for intervention in Darfur.

The Gleaner reports that the USAID worker who was shot last week is to return to the US

Marian Spivey-Estrada is still undergoing treatment in a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, after she was hit in the face by a bullet while on a humanitarian mission in Sudan last week, her sister said Saturday.

"They have finally done the surgery to remove the packing from her nose, so she can breath through her nose again," Sarah Simon of Santa Claus, Ind., said. "She will be there until Friday and will return via a medical plane ... (to) D.C. Saturday or Sunday."

Simon said she has been preparing her sister's apartment for her return and was able to meet with Marian's work colleagues at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Marian had been working with that office in western Darfur when she was shot while in a four-vehicle convoy that was headed to a refugee camp.

"Marian's now completely physically stabilized, and as far as her emotional health, counselors will be working with her," she said. "Our thanks to the community for their outpouring of support for Marian and her family. Marian needs to be strong and we need to be strong for her."

Via Passion of the Present, we learn that the Washington Times, the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun all ran editorials on Darfur on Sunday.

The University of Toronto's student newspaper covered a lecture on Sudan featuring Dr. Norman Epstein, the founder of Canadians Against Slavery and Torture in Sudan (CASTS) and Dr. Achol Dor, a native of Southern Sudan (registration required to view article)

Epstein explained to the 100 students assembled in the Innis Town Hall that the authorities released convicts from the capital cities' prisons to attack villages in Darfur. Often these ground attacks were preceded by aerial bombings authorized by Khartoum. "This is just indiscriminate killing," Epstein said. "Men are killed, women and children enslaved, wells are poisoned and villages are burned." Since the outbreak of the rebellion in February 2000, over four thousand people have been killed and at least two and half million are displaced. Although the United Nations has passed a number of resolutions condemning the violence against the inhabitants of Darfur, the international community has not intervened.

Epstein expressed his outrage at the absence of international intervention in the region.

"Are not African lives just as cherished as other lives?" he asked. "Are we not all equal?" Epstein said that the Darfur genocide is an opportunity for Canada to show leadership: "Canada can transform itself from a respected middle power to a moral superpower," he said.

Dr. Dor brought a personal element into the lecture, describing her experiences living amidst the turmoil in Sudan. "I was born in the problem and grew up with it. I am away from Sudan but its still hounding me now." Dor's father was a chieftain in Southern Sudan who targeted by the Khartoum government because his village participated in a rebellion. She recounted how government soldiers came to her home when she was seven, raping her older sister and murdering her father in the presence of the whole family. "I was very traumatized by the way my Dad died. I had a fear of soldiers and though I was a good student in high school, I never did well in Arabic as it was the language the soldiers spoke." Dor eventually became a medical doctor, practicing in Sudan until government threats forced her to leave the country.

Genocide Intervention Fund

Elisabeth Jaquette, a student at Swarthmore College working with the Genocide Intervention Fund, was kind enough to send CFD the following information:

Come make noise and take action to STOP THE GENOCIDE IN DARFUR!

Join us for a press conference Launch and CongressRUSH in the nation's capital!

You can register here.

When: 11AM, Wednesday, April 6th

Where: The Senate Hart Building in Washington, D.C.

What: Since February 2003, the Sudanese Government, using Arab "Janjaweed" militias, its air force, and organized starvation, has killed more than 380,000, displaced almost 3 million, and continues to kill at least 15,000 Darfurians each month. The UN Secretary-General has called it "little short of hell on earth."

April 6th marks the 11th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide that resulted in 800,000 Rwandan deaths. We will remember the 100 days of Rwandan genocide by taking action against the genocide in Sudan.

Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ), and Congressman Donald Payne (D-NJ), the congressional leaders on this issue, will speak on this issue and the launch of the Genocide Intervention Fund at a press conference in the Senate's Hart building (room 216) from 11AM-12PM.

We hope to fill the room with concerned citizens from all over the country - our representatives will see Americans demanding action in Darfur.

CongressRUSH will follow the press conference. We will break into teams to meet with our senators and representatives to urge them to co-sign the Darfur Accountability Act and other pertinent legislation. Lunch and lobby training will be provided. Help make "Never Again" a reality - your presence is needed on this day to exert political pressure on our congressmen.

Don't Talk Action, Take Action! Come to Washington, D.C. and make noise!

You can register here.

Or by e-mailing Jennesa Calvo-Friedman at calvo@genocideinterventionfund.org.
Include:
* Your full name
* Your preferred e-mail address
* Your address, state, and zip code (So you can meet with your
representative)
* Your phone number

For more information about the Genocide Intervention Fund, 100 Days of Action, and the situation in Darfur, please go to the Genocide Intervention Fund's website

Rice on Darfur

Secretary of State Rice granted an interview to the Washington Post - Darfur was discussed

Q: How many peacekeepers do you think it would take to stop the genocide in Darfur?

SECRETARY RICE: I can't give a number. The problem right now is that we've got to find a way to leverage the north-south agreement for both a stronger government that is unified and able to address Darfur, and a government that has something at stake and where we have leverage.

So we've focused on trying to get the north-south agreement complete, well supported internationally which means that it's a good thing that the peacekeeping resolution went through yesterday because now you can get the ten thousand peacekeepers in the south and you can solidify the north-south agreement.

The next issue is what we do about sanctions. If [inaudible] act.

The third is to fill out the AU monitoring mechanism because in fact the AU monitoring mechanism has done relatively well where it is. I mean it has diminished the violence considerably where it is but it's a very small number at this point, 1,700 or 1,800. And it meets, you know, the ceiling, I'm sorry maybe a little bit more than that now, 2,300 now, but the ceiling is 3,400 and the AU has said they'd like to go to five or six thousand. I think we ought to try to fully realize that,

Q: But hence my question. I mean if you go to six thousand would that be enough?

SECRETARY RICE: Well it's a monitoring mechanism that has a chance of making a big difference as even a small monitoring mechanism has made.

One of the problems right now is I'm not sure what kind of peace you would be keeping. You've got rebels, you've got the Janjaweed, you need their supporters to rein them in, and that's been a lot of the conversation with Khartoum. It's also the conversation with John Garang now about his responsibilities in Darfur.

The other piece of this is to try to reestablish on the humanitarian side some of the progress that we've made over the last several months, it's worsened over the last month, the access has, and so we're trying to reestablish that,

And then the final piece is to try to get the AU peace process moving a little bit more rapidly.

So those are the steps that we've been taking, and the other thing that the United States has done is that we've been kind of constantly trying to shine the light on Darfur to remind people that this is a responsibility and that we should not be hung up about issues that get in the way of our trying to deal with this. So that for instance getting the Chinese and the Russians to deal with sanctions would be very, very useful.

Q: [Inaudible] said in December to the Financial Times that if the deterioration of humanitarian access continued, he could imagine 100,000 people dying a month, which would put the number at about six times the death toll in 2004. Does that sound like a plausible -- --

SECRETARY RICE: I just can't judge. We spend every day trying to avoid the problem, trying to solve the problem, and on the humanitarian side the disappointing thing is that we had(n't)? made a lot of progress, largely, you know, opening the third route through Libya and the like. When I met with NGOs, it must now have been several months ago, it was certainly before November, I think it was around September/October of last year, they felt they were getting pretty good access. The security situation was still difficult but they were getting pretty good access.

We've got to immediately reestablish that. Immediately.

Rice's talk there being "no peace to keep" echoes the view of the Western world during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The UN and the rest of the world focused on the need to establish a cease-fire between the RPF and the government troops before it would even consider sending troops, but as the OAU report "The Preventable Genocide" (pdf file) makes clear, it was this narrow focus on a cease-fire that allowed the genocide to unfold unimpeded

Here was a clear-cut case of rote diplomacy by the international community. As the UN's own Department of Peacekeeping Operations later concluded, "A fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the conflict... contributed to false political assumptions and military assessments." Security Council members blithely ignored both the discrete realities of the situation and the urgent advocacy of the non-governmental agencies who were crying out the truth to whomever would listen. Instead, the automatic reflex was to call for a cease-fire and negotiations, outcomes that would have coincided perfectly with the aims and strategy of the genocidaires. The annihilation of the Tutsi would have continued, while the war between the armies paused, and negotiators wrangled. In reality, anything that slowed the march of the RPF to military victory was a gift to Hutu Power. In the end, its victory alone ended the genocide and saved those Tutsi who were still alive by July. We count Rwanda fortunate that a military truce - the single consistent initiative pursued by the international community - was never reached.

The problem in Darfur is that there is no "peace to keep" - peace needs to be established.

The lack of peace is the reason action must be taken - not an excuse for inaction.

Daily Darfur

The UN Security Council has agreed to send 10,000 troops to help implement the North/South peace agreement. The resolution also contains lots of vague and seemingly meaningless language about how this new mission will "liaise and coordinate" with the current AU mission.

The resolution stressed that no military action could solve the problems in Darfur and it called on the Sudanese Government and the rebel groups, especially the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) to resume peace talks rapidly and without preconditions in Abuja, Nigeria.

The resolution can be read here.

The Sudan Tribune has the text of the French resolution referring the crimes in Darfur to the ICC.

The Global IDP Project has released a study of the challenges faced in getting millions of IDPs to return home in Sudan.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Secretary of State Rice was asked about Darfur

QUESTION: On Darfur, it seems that the Sudanese are, in fact, getting away with what the U.S. has called genocide.... Is this an example of the U.N. basically failing? Will you be continuing the efforts that so far have been futile to get the Chinese and the Russians to actually do something about this, or do you go outside the U.N. process to do something about this situation?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we have worked very hard on Darfur. We've taken a ... three-pronged approach -- let me use that word. On the one hand, we have clearly tried to deal with the humanitarian situation and to simply do something to alleviate the suffering. And we've put a lot of money into it. We've worked with the Libyans to have another supply route. It was going pretty well for a while. I think there's been some slowing in that over the last month or so. We're very concerned about it and we're pressing that issue very hard with Khartoum, because the first goal here has to be to try to save lives, and so we are trying on the humanitarian side.

Secondly, we are working with the AU [African Union] to try, as much as we can, to strengthen their capability for monitoring because it's understood that where there is monitoring ... there seems to be less violence. And so we'd like to at least get to the ceiling, which had been 3,400 AU monitors, but I understand while I was away that the Sudanese have said maybe 5- or 6,000. We need to get that organized and get those monitors in.

The third element has been to work through the United Nations to, first of all, try to solidify the north-south agreement so that you have a unified Sudanese government with responsibility and a possibility to deal with this situation. We made some progress when, hopefully, there will be a resolution voted on peacekeeping later today. That would allow them 10,000 peacekeepers who ... would be responsible for the north-south [cease-fire].... And that would be a very good step forward.

Secondly, we have a sanctions resolution that we think would bring additional pressure on Khartoum. We have been, frankly, disappointed that there are those who don't seem to know -- see the need for this kind of sanctions resolution. We're working with the Chinese and the Russians and others who have been reluctant to have one, and hopefully we can get a sanctions resolution fairly soon.

The question about accountability is still there. We, obviously, care a great deal about accountability. There are differences not just with us and the Europeans about accountability but also the -- several Africans, including Obansanjo, who is the head of the AU, to say that they would rather have an African tribunal of some kind. And so there are wide variations in what people think the accountability means ought to be but there, I think, is no variation in the fact that everybody wants to see accountability for war crimes in Sudan.

So that is the way in which we've been working. Now, ultimately, this is only going to get resolved if you have some kind of political process in which all parties in Sudan disarm themselves and become part of the political process. In order for that to happen, the Khartoum government has simply got to stop the violence for those militias that are associated with it, and there also has to be pressure on the rebels to stop the violence. And we then believe that the context for this political discussion that the AU, again, is sponsoring might improve.

But those are the steps we're trying to take. We've obviously tried to give visibility to it. Secretary Powell went there. We will continue to try to give visibility to it because this is really just a horrible situation and the world needs to be focused on it and we need to move quickly. It's one reason we were pleased that we were actually able to break out the resolutions because it had gone on too long, circling around about our disagreements rather than on the things that we agree, which is there ought to be a peacekeeping arrangement.

The Black Book

Alex Cobham, Supernumerary Fellow in Economics at St Anne's College in Oxford, alerted us to this paper he wrote which examines the government's use of the Janjaweed as simply the latest step in a campaign to undermine development in every region beyond the government's control - exactly as it had been explained in the infamous "Black Book"

The Black Book of Sudan claims to identify a pattern of political control - by people of its northern regions - which is unbroken during the post-independence period. This is the basis for the view of many of the rebels in the south and west of the country that the conflicts are the result not of racial or religious discrimination but rather of regional marginalisation. This paper uses the available data to evaluate the extent to which differences in regional access to power have resulted in differential human development progress. Indicators ranging from infant mortality to adult literacy, coupled with data on regional expenditure allocations, offer substantial support to the idea that policy has discriminated against the population of the southern and western regions, not least Darfur. The danger is that development community efforts that do not recognise the basis for the conflict may facilitate a continuation of the same distortions and sow the seeds for future conflict even before peace is achieved.

Daily Darfur

Yesterday it was reported that the US had split its proposed Security Council resolution into three parts in order to avoid having the entire thing bogged down by the dispute over the International Criminal Court. Today it is being reported that France, in a direct challenge to the US, has proposed its own resolution referring cases from Darfur to the International Criminal Court. This puts the US in a very awkward position of having to either join the majority of the Security Council in supporting such a referral to a court the US opposes or veto such a referral despite the fact that the US has called the crimes in Darfur "genocide."

The French-sponsored resolution reportedly contains, in an attempt to win US support, a clause specifically exempting other nations that have not ratified the ICC from investigation or prosecution by the ICC.

Human rights organizations are warning that political squabbling over this issue is only delaying much-needed action on the ground and allowing violence to spread.

The USAID worker who was shot in the head in an ambush in Darfur was a 26 year old woman from Kentucky - Marian Spivey-Estrada

Spivey-Estrada's sister, Sarah Simon of Santa Claus, Ind., said the convoy was en route to a refugee camp from Nyala to Kass on a road that had been cleared by the government for travel. She was traveling in a properly marked Red Cross convoy when it was ambushed, Simon said.

"Marian was the only one who sustained any injury at all," Simon said. "She was shot in the head and they (the doctors) have promised us that there is no brain or spinal cord damage. The injuries were very serious and extensive surgery was required. We are praying for the healing process to go as fast as it can."

The International Rescue Committee has started a blog

Daily Darfur

The United States is circulating three separate resolutions to the UN Security Council in an attempt to get around the impasse over the ICC. One resolution deals with the deployment of a peacekeeping force to southern Sudan and potentially increase the number of troops in Darfur. The second resolution would impose sanctions and a travel ban as well as freeze the assets of those responsible for violations in Darfur. The final resolution deals with the venue for trying the crimes committed in Darfur. Reuters reports that the only one likely to pass is the one sending peacekeepers to the south.

The State Department is asking the African Union to investigate yesterday's shooting of a U.S. aid official.

The BBC examines modern-day slavery in Sudan.

Humanitarian Workers at Risk

Last week, the United Nations was forced to withdraw its staff from parts of western Sudan after the Janjaweed militia declared that it would begin targeting foreigners and U.N. humanitarian convoys.

Yesterday, a 26 year-old USAID worker was shot in the face when the clearly-marked humanitarian convoy she was traveling in was ambushed in broad daylight.

It is still unknown just who carried out this ambush, but Sudan expert Eric Reeves reported yesterday that he had "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."

If such a plan is truly in the works, it will have dire consequences for the people of Darfur. Last year, Jan Egeland, the UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, warned that as many as 100,000 people could die in Darfur every month if those providing humanitarian assistance were forced to withdraw due to insecurity.

Save the Children has already lost 4 of its aid workers in the last year, yet they continue to provide medical care, food, water, shelter, and protection to more than 200,000 children and families in Darfur each month.

The members of the Coalition for Darfur are working together to raise money for Save the Children and if each coalition partner can raise a mere $10 dollars a week, together we can generate $2,000 a month to support Save the Children's life saving work.

We hope that you might consider making a small donation.

Convoy Ambushed III

From Reuters

A U.S. aid worker was shot in the face in Sudan's Darfur region on Tuesday when gunmen ambushed the aid convoy she was traveling in, aid workers said.

They said the woman, who works for USAID, had been taken to Khartoum for treatment. Her condition was not immediately known.

"They were on the road in a convoy and a stray bullet hit this lady," Sudan's under-secretary for humanitarian affairs, Abdel Rahman Ahmed Abu Doam, told Reuters. "She was shot in the face -- probably the eye was hit," he said.

Sources in the aid community in Khartoum said the aid convoy was ambushed by unknown gunmen in South Darfur state. The woman, who was not named, was the only casualty.

"She works for USAID and was hurt quite badly," said one aid worker, who declined to be named.

Abu Doam said it was just a stray bullet and not an ambush.

The fact that aid workers say it was an ambush and the government says it was a stray bullet leads me to think that the Janjaweed was probably responsible.

Convoy Ambushed II

The Sudan Tribune (via AFP) has this update

An unidentified woman working for the US Agency for International Development was shot and wounded while traveling in a relief convoy in western Sudan's embattled Darfur region, the Sudanese foreign ministry said.

The reports are not saying who was responsible for this ambush, but in his update today, Eric Reeves noted that he has been informed that Khartoum has been planning to carry out just these sorts of attacks

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.

Death Rates in Darfur

Apparently the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association has a new report by doctors working with Medecins Sans Frontieres - from the Melbourne Herald Sun

VIOLENCE, starvation and disease are killing people in the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan at a pace four to six times greater than the usual mortality rate in sub-Saharan Africa, a report said today.

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Thousands are dying every month in squalid camps which house almost two million people who have fled their homes in the vast, arid region.

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"The crude mortality rates at all three sites were considerably higher than the one per 10,000 per day that is recognised internationally as defining an emergency situation and four to six times the expected rate in sub-Saharan populations," the report said.

"Deaths from medical causes predominated in Kass and Kalma with diarrhoeal diseases responsible for many of those deaths affecting mainly young children under five and adults older than 50," it said.

At Muhajiria violence was the major cause of death in 72 per cent of all cases, with all but one of the violent deaths in men, the report said.

Malnutrition runs high, particularly in Kalma where nearly 24 percent of children younger than five suffered from it, the doctors said.

A Year of Dying in Darfur

Mortimer's Dad alerted us to this article that appeared on the front page of the Globe and Mail in Canada

A year ago Saturday, Mukesh Kapila, the United Nations' humanitarian co-ordinator in Sudan, declared the violence and forced displacement of people in Darfur to be "the world's greatest humanitarian crisis."

The phrase has since been used by the UN Security Council and by almost every Western leader about the conflict in Sudan's western region.

But despite the strong rhetoric, two million people in Darfur have now been uprooted from their homes — twice as many as when Mr. Kapila declared the disaster.

No one has returned home.

While this sort of front page coverage is extremely valuable, it makes me wonder why long articles about Darfur always seem to appear on Saturdays. I've noticed this same tendency in the Washington Post.

The Saturday paper is generally the one with the lowest circulation and the lowest sales.

Convoy Ambushed

From the Sudan Tribune

An official of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was wounded by gunfire in Sudan's western Darfur region, said the Sudanese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday.

The ministry said in a statement that a USAID motorcade was ambushed while on the way from Kass to Niyala in Darfur, but it did not reveal further details.

Daily Darfur

An Arab summit is being held in Algeria today and Sudanese rebels want it to pass a resolution respecting the rights of non-Arabs in Arab countries and supporting the referral of crimes committed in Darfur to the International Criminal Court.

On the other hand, Sudan is calling on the international community to put pressure on the rebels. In an interview with the Washington Post, Sudan's vice president Ali Uthman Muhammad Taha demanded that the rebels to lay down their guns before any lasting peace can be achieved in Darfur

We need a strong, unequivocal message that the rebels have to honor the cease-fire," said Taha

Brian Steidle, speaking at the Holocaust Museum on Friday, estimated that the government was responsible for 90% of the cease-fire violations the AU investigated and catalogued during his 6 months in Darfur.

Taha also denied that genocide is taking place

"This was not genocide, but an unfortunate internal conflict . . . that has nothing to do with ethnic cleansing. We urge people to see the difference between the innocents caught in the middle and the rebels who are escalating their claims to gain sympathy."

Chainz at Restless Mania takes issue with the Post interview and says the that Post should publish an opinion piece tomorrow putting Taha's words in their appropriate context.

Eric Reeves latest analysis is now available: Will humanitarian intervention truly offer civilian protection?

11,000 IDPs were forced to move after the government destroyed their camp.

The UN is reporting that meningitis is appearing in IDP camps.

Eyewitness: Brian Steidle

On Friday, I went to see a presentation by Brian Steidle hosted by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience.

I have attended a handful of such events hosted by the Committee on Conscience, but this was by far the most important.

Steidle explained a bit about how he had come to end up serving in Darfur and admitted that though he had already spent several months monitoring the cease-fire in the South, when he was transferred to Darfur he had no real understanding of what has taking place in the region and that he was completely unprepared for what he was going to see.

A few weeks ago, Nichols Kristof published a column entitled "The Secret Genocide Archive" that contained photos Steidle had taken during his 6 months working with the AU in Darfur. This "genocide archive" served as the basis of Steidle's presentation as he showed dozens of photos on a screen behind the stage and meticulously explained where they were taken and what they showed.

Unfortunately, these photos are not available on line, but one of the first photos that he showed can be seen here. It is of a 1-year old girl who had been shot in the back as her mother fled a government attack. Steidle limited the graphic photos to about three (the others were of a man who had been shot in the head decomposing in the desert and a charred corpse trapped inside of a hut that had been burned down.) Steidle explained that he didn't want to focus only on the carnage but pointed to a series of binders stacked on the floor of the stage that contained hundreds more photos.

When the event was over, I went up to look at them and they were pretty horrific. The binders contained many, many more photos of destroyed villages, decomposing bodies and charred corpses. The most disturbing photo was one of a small boy, no more than 4 or 5, who had had his head smashed in by the butt of a rifle.

By my count, there were six binders full of such photos - and Steidle claimed that there were still 700 more photos out there that had not been included.

Steidle's eyewitness testimony was riveting, providing lots of detail and important evidence regarding what is taking place in Darfur. He explained how the government attacks villages, first cutting cell phone service and then strafing villages with helicopter gunships before allowing the Janjaweed to move in to kill civilians and burn the village to the ground. As payment, the Janjaweed are allowed to loot whatever they can. As evidence of this, Steidle showed several photos of government helicopters hovering over villages and Janjaweed militia men burning down villages and dividing up the looted goods.

The photos of the destroyed villages were really quite amazing and you cannot get an understanding of the meticulous way in which these villages are destroyed until you see them. In viewing them, it becomes clear that fires are not just being set and allowed to destroy what they will, but that huts and shops are burned in an attempt to completely destroy the entire village. In the villages, several huts are grouped together on small plots of land, forming small block and these blocks are separated by roads. During an attack, each one of the huts on a block would be reduced to ash, but the trees in the middle of the roads still stood unharmed. As such, it is clear that the fires are not simply spreading throughout the village but that each block of huts are set on fire and reduced to ash.

Steidle also showed several photos of IDP camps, some housing as many as 175,000 people. They are hellish places and terrifyingly insecure. Though the government of Sudan has placed police offices in some camps, there are far too few to provide any security and those who venture outside of the camps in search of wood or water are routinely raped and/or killed by the Janjaweed. Even those living on the outskirts of these camps are constantly at risk of being attacked by the Janjaweed.

The government is working with relief agencies to build newer, better camps for the IDPs, but of course the government intentionally undercounts the numbers living in these camps. They then insist that the IDPs must move to the newly built camps and come in at night with troops and bulldozers and destroy the camps, forcing thousands of people to flee toward camps built to house no more than a few hundred.

After seeing these photos and listening to Steidle's presentation, there can be no doubt that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed militia are intent on removing the black Africans from the region - and destroying them entirely, if need be.

It is genocide.

If you have the opportunity to see Steidle speak, I strongly recommend that you go. Hopefully, this one man's gripping eyewitness testimony and photographic evidence will serve as the long-needed catalyst for international action.

Daily Darfur

Brian Steidle had an article in the Washington Post this weekend entitled "In Darfur, My Camera Was Not Nearly Enough."

During my time in Darfur, as I listened to the victims, I was astounded at their composure. Their unwavering faith provides some rationale to what seems to me an inexplicable horror. By handing over their lives to God, somehow each day is a gift, despite the massacres. "We're going to die," they acknowledge with fear, "but we hope to survive . . . Inshallah [God willing]." Unfortunately, they just don't have a choice.

We do.

I went to see Steidle speak at the Holocaust Museum on Friday and I am going to write more about it later.

The World Food Program is reporting that it doesn't have enough food to feed those in need

"But so far, WFP doesn't have enough food to provide for the 5.5 million people who need assistance in 2005 in the east, transitional areas, the south and Darfur. If the numbers continue to rise, Sudan will face a new catastrophe unless more food gets here fast," he added.

The News Hour with Jim Lehrer ran a segment on Darfur featuring interviews with Sen. Sam Brownback and Kenneth Bacon of Refugees International.

The American Bar Association is urging President Bush to refer the crimes in Darfur to the International Criminal Court.

The New York Times examines the crises in Darfur and the Congo.

The Wall Street Journal says that if the UN cannot figure out some way to deal with the crisis in Darfur, "the U.S. may be tempted to look for another coalition of the willing."

The Dangers of Peacekeeping

As many of us call for an increased military presence in Darfur, it is vitally important to be aware that soldiers serving in this capacity are putting their lives on the line - and could quite possibly end up losing them.

In 1994, the UN had a small mission of some 2,500 soldiers serving in Rwanda. They were ill-quipped, ill-trained and were operating under a very limited mandate. When the genocide erupted, 10 Belgian peacekeepers were murdered by the Rwandan army and within days, 90% of the peacekeepers had been pulled out of the country.

10 years later, while many of us wonder why the world abandoned Rwanda in its hour of need, Belgium wants to know why it wasn't warned that the UN had intelligence that Belgian troops were going to be targeted and why nobody tried to rescue these solders when it became clear that they had been captured and some had already been killed.

Lt. General Romeo Dallaire, the head of the UN mission in Rwanda, says that he did not have the capability to mount a rescue mission, but as this article make clear, the families of those soldiers who died do not find much comfort in that.

Three years later, Sandrine Lotin, widow of the 29-year-old lieutenant, still wants to know why her husband died in that far-away African land. So do the families of the other nine men. So does much of Belgium. "I could understand my husband dying on a mission," says Mrs. Lotin, who was pregnant at the time. "But they didn't die as soldiers. They were murdered."

Any peackeeping mission to Darfur will, most likely, consist mainly of African troops, so this sort of problem will not necessarily impact Western nations.

Nonetheless, the lives of African soldiers are no less valuable than the lives of Western soldiers and the fact remains that peacekeeping missions are dangerous and that those involved in them face the risk of injury or death.

Proper equipment, proper training and a proper mandate are all vital to the success of any peacekeeping mission. But equally vital is our ability to explain why soldiers are dying in peacekeeping missions in some far off country.

This is not a decision to be made lightly.

Sanctions

All Africa has an interesting article on Africa's growing opposition to the UN Security Council's willingness to impose sanctions on African countries

As the 15-member U.N. Security Council keeps dragging its feet over a proposed military and economic embargo aimed at punishing Sudan for mass killings in Darfur, the world body has renewed its longstanding debate over the use of sanctions to penalise errant member states.

The 53-member African Group has expressed strong reservations over "the increasing trend in the application of U.N. sanctions -- especially on African countries."

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"The Security Council's power to impose sanctions should be exercised in accordance with the U.N. charter and international law," Randrianarivony told delegates Monday.

"Sanctions should be considered only after all means of peaceful settlement of disputes under chapter VI of the charter had been exhausted -- and a thorough consideration of the effects of sanctions -- undertaken," she added.

Counting the Dead

AlertNet has this piece by Debarati Guha-Sapir, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Louvain, Brussels. She explains that while accurate death tolls are important, they are extremely hard to get. She also notes that, in situations such as this, most of the deaths result from disease and malnutrition, not violence.

Why is so hard to get an accurate death toll?

First, death rates will differ according to who gets surveyed. This clearly applies to the different population groups in Darfur. Internally displaced populations live in appalling conditions and have death rates far above any emergency threshold.

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Second, estimates will differ according to the timing of surveys. There are months in the year where deaths are frequent because of temporary escalation of violence, seasonal disease outbreaks or breakdowns in food supply.

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Third, how do you calculate how many people would have died, if the conflict had not occurred?

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Fourth, be careful of jumping to conclusions – it may be surprising, but outright violence is rarely the main cause of death among populations affected by conflict.

Daily Darfur

Save Darfur's "100 Hours of Conscience" is now underway.

Brian Steidle was interviewed on NRP (I have a copy of the transcript. If you would like to read it, just send me an e-mail.) Steidle also testified before the House Committee on International Relations

I have clear evidence that the atrocities committed in Darfur are the direct result of a Government of Sudan of Sudan military operation in collaboration with the "Janjaweed" Arab militias. To begin, Government of Sudan officials and Arab militias come together in coordination to attack a village. Before these attacks occur, the cell phone systems are shut down by the Government of Sudan so that villagers cannot warn each other. Helicopter gunships support the Arab militias on the ground by firing anti-personnel rockets at civilian targets. These rockets contain flashettes, or small nails with a stabilizing fin on the back. Each gunship contains four rocket pods, each rocket pod contains about twenty rockets and each rocket contains about 500 of these flashettes. These flashettes are used only to kill or maim people on the ground. Flashette wounds look like shot-gun wounds. One small child, I remember, looked as if his back had been shredded. We were able to get him to a hospital, but we did not expect him to live.

[edit]

We cannot fail the men, women and children of Darfur. We must stop the ongoing genocide.

The UN envoy to Sudan says Darfur needs 8,000 troops to provide security. Brian Steidle estimates Darfur need 25,000-50,000.

Eric Reeves released his latest analysis. In it he makes clear that the recent announcement by the Janjaweed that they would begin targeting foreigners and humanitarian workers "must be heard as a threat ordered or sanctioned by Khartoum." He also reminds us that, a few months ago, Jan Egeland warned that as many as 100,000 people could die per month if insecurity forced the withdrawal of humanitarian assistance.

China continues to oppose the idea of placing sanctions on Khartoum and the Security Council remains deadlocked over how to deal with the crimes committed in Darfur.

The Boston Globe has this editorial

But the argument between Washington and the Europeans about the ICC is irrelevant to ending the horrors in Darfur. The genocidal regime in Khartoum has made it plain that it will not send any citizens of Sudan to a foreign court to be tried. And since Janjaweed militia figures arraigned abroad might incriminate complicit Sudanese Army and government authorities, Janjaweed killers are no more likely to be extradited to the ICC than the Sudanese president and his ministers.

Instead of playing puerile political games while human beings are perishing by the thousands in Darfur, Security Council members should be creating a NATO-style peacekeeping force of 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers to stop the killing and make certain that humanitarian aid is delivered to more than 2 million displaced people.

History will not forgive the powerful people who could have ended yet another genocide but preferred to play their pitiless games.

Human Rights Watch released this statement

The ICC remains the only course of action with the speed and staying power to ensure that those most responsible for serious crimes in Darfur are held accountable, Human Rights Watch said. The recent proposal by the Nigerian government to establish an "African panel for criminal justice and reconciliation" could potentially serve as a complementary effort to ICC prosecutions to ensure justice for human rights violations in Darfur. However, this proposal is no substitute for what will be a limited number of prosecutions of those most responsible by the ICC.

For Canadians

Mortimer's Dad alerted us to this petition (pdf file) directed at members of Parliament

THEREFORE, your petitioners call upon Parliament to:

Take action to provide protection to the people of Darfur by calling upon and joining the United Nations Security Council, or if necessary, an alternative international intervention body working with the African Union to put quickly into place a civilian protection force capable of imposing a “no-fly zone” over Darfur and disarming the murderous Janjaweed militias.

A Dubious Distinction

For over a year now, Darfur has been referred to as "the world's worst humanitarian crisis." But now that that crisis is beginning to receive a bit more attention, that honor has been bestowed upon the ongoing war in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Jan Egeland, who estimates that 10,000 people a month are dying in Darfur, estimates that 1,000 people a day are dying in the DRC.

And they are not dying pleasantly

Militiamen grilled bodies on a spit and boiled two girls alive as their mother watched, U.N. peacekeepers charged Wednesday, adding cannibalism to a list of atrocities allegedly carried out by one of the tribal groups fighting in northeast Congo.

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"Several witnesses reported cases of mutilation followed by death or decapitation," the report said. The U.N. report included an account from Zainabo Alfani in which she said she was forced to watch rebels kill and eat two of her children in June 2003.

The report said, "In one corner, there was already cooked flesh from bodies and two bodies being grilled on a barbecue and, at the same time, they prepared her two little girls, putting them alive in two big pots filled with boiling water and oil."

The savagery is incomprehensible, but if you want to understand the roots of the conflict, I recommend that you read John F. Clark's "The African Stakes of the Congo War."

Sudan Retaliates

Unhappy with the relentless flood of negative news regarding the regime and displeased with the United States' relatively high-profile criticism, Khartoum has reportedly imposed travel restrictions on US diplomats

Sudan announced Thursday that it had imposed restrictions on the movement of US diplomats, in what it said was retaliation for similar measures ordered by Washington.

Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said US diplomats would in future be required to obtain prior authorization to travel more than 25 kilometres (16 miles) from the presidential palace in Khartoum.

Now is the Time for Decisive Action

15 UN human rights experts released the following statement yesterday

“We are gravely concerned about the ongoing violations of human rights and humanitarian law in the Darfur region of Sudan, many of which constitute serious crimes under international law, and we call upon the international community to take effective measures to end the violations on a basis of utmost urgency. The conflict in Darfur, which Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called 'little short of hell on earth', has already taken an untold number of civilian lives and is estimated to have caused the forced internal displacement of 1.8 million persons, as well as forcing more than 200,000 persons to flee across the border to neighbouring Chad. 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. Extrajudicial executions, rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture, enforced disappearances, scorching of villages and forced displacement of civilians have taken place in a widespread and systematic manner and continue on a daily basis. Members of civil society who have sought to address the violence in Darfur have suffered arbitrary arrests, detention, torture and ill-treatment at the hands of the security forces, typically after publishing reports of human rights violations in Darfur. 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.

Interview with Brian Steidle

The American Prospect's Mark Leon Goldberg has interviewed Brian Steidle, the 28-year-old former Marine captain who served as a State Department contractor with the African Union’s (AU) monitoring team in Darfur.

Steidle says the AU needs more than the 2,000 troops it currently has on the ground in order to protect civilians - Steidle estimates the AU need 25,000 to 50,000. But he also has short term solutions

There are a few things that would do some immediate good. First, we need to enforce a no-fly zone over Darfur. Once Khartoum gets a couple of its gunships shot down, I don’t think they will fly again. Those gunships are pretty valuable to them. Second, we need to impose weapons sanctions against Sudan; targeted economic sanctions are more politically tricky to impose, but weapons sanctions are definitely necessary. Most importantly, we need to increase our support for the African Union 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. That’s not in their mandate right now.

This is an important piece and I encourage you to read the whole thing.

Daily Darfur

Nigeria, as head of the African Union, has proposed creating an African-run tribunal to prosecute the crimes committed in Darfur, rather than a Security Council referral to the International Criminal Court.

The African Union says that security is deteriorating and the UN has withdrawn all international staff from parts of Darfur because the Janjaweed announced that they would start targeting foreigners and U.N. convoys in the area

"The Janjaweed militia have said that they will now target all foreigners and all U.N. humanitarian convoys so we have withdrawn all people to El-Geneina," he said. The militias gave the warning to the drivers of seized U.N. trucks, he added.

The World Food Program is warning that a severe food crisis is looming in Sudan.

Save Darfur is asking us to send a message to President Bush and Congress regarding the latest Security Council resolution

By using the electronic system below, you can urge President Bush to demand the Security Council support a larger African Union troop deployment, a general arms embargo and targeted sanctions against those most responsible for the atrocities.

This service makes it easy for you to tell President Bush why -- and how much -- you care, and to help him to support a tougher resolution. When you fill out the information below, we will send your customized letter, by email and fax, to President Bush. We will also send a copy to your Congressional representative and your senators. (We provide this service free-of-charge.)

Thank you for helping to bring peace to the suffering people of Darfur.

Human Rights First issued an alert regarding the persecution of human rights advocates in Sudan

Massive violations of human rights and humanitarian law have been committed in the Darfur region of Sudan. Civilians have been victims of mass killings, rape and other serious forms of sexual violence, burning of villages, and forced displacement.

Sudanese human rights activists have an essential role to play in informing the world about the continuing human rights crisis in their country, and they carry out their work at great personal risk.

Loaded Mouth has provided a sample letter for us to send to the New York Times regarding the paper's lack of coverage of Darfur.

The Unknown Death Toll

Many seemed surprised when UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland recently updated the estimated death toll in Darfur upwards from 70,000 to 180,000. Egeland estimates that 10,000 people have died, and continue to die, per month since the start of the genocide 18 months ago. He also admitted that the new death toll might be even higher (more than 200,000) and stressed that this new figure does not include those who have died violently at the hands of the Sudanese government or their proxy militia, the Janjaweed.

The original figure of 70,000 was an estimate, or rather an underestimate, as it covered only the mortality in camps accessible to the World Health Organization between April and early September 2004. As such, it did not include mortality rates prior to April 2004, nor did it include mortality rates among the more than 200,000 refugees in Chad, nor the mortality rates in regions inaccessible to humanitarian organizations.

It is in these inaccessible regions where most of the violence is taking place. According to Sudan expert Eric Reeves, whose continuing analysis of the situation in Darfur has been vital to understanding the widening scope of the crisis, an estimated 240,000 others have died as a direct result of government and/or Janjaweed violence.

If these numbers are correct, and we really have no cause to doubt them, it is safe to assume that some 400,000 Sudanese civilians have died in the last year and a half from direct violence, disease, or starvation.

That is more than 22,200 per month.

That is more than 740 per day.

That is more than 30 per hour.

That is one death every 2 minutes ... for 18 months.

Despite the seemingly hopeless nature of the crisis, we at the Coalition for Darfur believe that together we can raise awareness of the situation and, at the same time, raise money for the vital work that Save the Children is doing by providing food, water, shelter, and protection to over 200,000 children and families in Darfur each month.

Together, and with your support, we hope to make a small but meaningful contribution to alleviating the massive suffering that continues to plague the region.

Once Again, Never Again

A beautiful post from Leah at Corrente

In the lamentable literature of mass disaster, there is one overwhelming theme that occurs over and over again - the need for those to whom the disaster is happening to have some sense that the world is paying attention to their agony, and that the world cares. To know that, to feel it, gives to victims an expanded sense of their own humanity, a sense that they are still part of the world. We owe it to the people of Darfur to know what is happening to them, and to care.

Give Them Access

From Reuters

Sudan demanded on Tuesday that the United Nations produce evidence to support a U.N. statement which said 180,000 people had died of disease and hunger over the past 19 months in the troubled Darfur region.

I am sure that the UN would love nothing more than to conduct an accurate mortality survey in Darfur - and they would, if only Khartoum would let them

Sudan is stalling efforts by the United Nations to survey death rates in Darfur, contributing to confusion over the number of people who have died since a government-backed Arab militia launched a bloody counterinsurgency campaign nearly two years ago against the region's black villagers, according to U.N. officials.

[edit]

The World Health Organization has been in tense negotiations with Sudan for about a month over allowing a team of international epidemiologists to conduct a study of mortality in Darfur. A U.N. official familiar with the discussions said Khartoum has so far refused to grant visas to the agency's specialists because Sudan is "just terrified" that a new mortality study will heighten international criticism of the government. "They think any attempt to look at mortality is going to lead to a new headline figure that is going to dominate the news for the next couple of weeks," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing concern that the confidential negotiations could be derailed by public comments.

Considering that Sudan ridiculously estimates the death toll to be approximately 7,000, Khartoum is not in any position to demand that the UN start "producing evidence" - especially when Sudan is intentionally preventing the UN from directly gathering such evidence.

Good Quote

I have been reading the International Panel of Eminent Personalities' 2000 report on Rwanda entitled "The Preventable Genocide" (massive PDF file) and was moved by this quote

It is no tribute to our era that we are becoming experts on the phenomenon of genocide.

Daily Darfur

The UN has finally released a new death estimate for Darfur

The United Nations believes that more than 180,000 people may have died in the troubled Darfur region in western Sudan.

According to the organizations top emergency coordination official, Jan Egeland, the number refers to people who have died of malnutrition and disease, and does not cover those who have been killed in the conflict that started a little over two years ago.

Previous estimates put the number of deaths, from violence as well as illness and starvation, at 70,000.

Eric Reeves estimates in his analysis that approximately 380,000 people have died and that the current mortality rate is approximately 15,000 deaths per month. While we may never know the actual number, at least this new 180,000 figure will force the press to stop citing the outdated and inaccurate 70,000 figure they have been using for five months.

What needs to be understood here is that, even under the UN's conservative estimate, some 10,000 people are dying in Darfur every month.

[On a side note, a Factiva search of major news sources shows that, in the last week, there have been 428 reports mentioning Brian Nichols (the guy who killed 3 people in an Atlanta courthouse) compared to 204 mentioning Darfur.]

The Christian Science Monitor reports that fighting is breaking out in camps due to lack of water.

CARE has this press release

On March 19, 2004, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Sudan called Darfur the world's greatest humanitarian crisis. One year later, though many have tried to help, the situation continues, and is compounded as food shortages loom throughout the country.

[edit]

Insecurity, logistics constraints and lack of funding prevent aid agencies from reaching hundreds of thousands of people. In January, only 50 percent of people entitled to food rations received them. Others were never considered because they couldn't be reached. Even some of those in camps still lack water, food, fuel and protection from violence.

Tod Lindberg, writing in the Washington Times, lays out some of the reasons the US opposes the International Criminal Court but argues that the US, after employing some safeguards, should support a referral of the crimes committed in Darfur to the ICC

The United States can likely turn agreement to the ICC referral into leverage for more effective international action. It's only the latter that offers hope in Darfur.

Darfur Eyewitness: Brian Steidle

From the Committee on Conscience

Brian Steidle, a former U.S. Marine, was a member of the African Union team monitoring the conflict in Darfur, where he took hundreds of photographs documenting atrocities. Join us to learn what he witnessed in Darfur and to see the evidence he gathered.

Friday, March 18
2 p.m.
R.S.V.P. at 202-314-7868

Sometimes In April

For those of you with HBO, "Sometimes In April" premiers on Saturday, March 19th

In April 1994, one of the most heinous genocides in world history began in the African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of 100 days, close to one million people were killed in a terrifying purge by Hutu nationalists against their Tutsi countrymen. This harrowing HBO Films drama focuses on the almost indescribable human atrocities that took place a decade ago through the story of two Hutu brothers - one in the military, one a radio personality - whose relationship and private lives were forever changed in the midst of the genocide. Written and directed by Raoul Peck (HBO Films' "Lumumba"), the movie is the first large-scale film about the 100 days of the 1994 Rwandan genocide to be shot in Rwanda, in the locations where the real-life events transpired.

Both an edge-of-the-seat thriller and a chilling reminder of man's incomprehensible capacity for cruelty, Sometimes in April is an epic story of courage in the face of daunting odds, as well as an exposé of the West's inaction as nearly a million Rwandans were being killed. The plot focuses on two brothers embroiled in the 1994 conflict between the Hutu majority (who had ruled Rwanda since 1959) and the Tutsi minority who had received favored treatment when the country was ruled by Belgium. The protagonists (both Hutus) are reluctant soldier Augustin Muganza (Idris Elba), married to a Tutsi and father to three, and his brother Honoré (Oris Erhuero), a popular public figure espousing Hutu propaganda from a powerful pulpit: Radio RTLM in Rwanda.

The drama is set in two periods, which unfold concurrently: In April 1994, after the Hutu Army begins a systematic slaughter of Tutsis and more moderate Hutus, Augustin and a fellow Army officer named Xavier, defying their leadership, attempt to get their wives and children to safety. Separated from his wife Jeanne and their two sons (whom he entrusts to the care of his reluctant brother), Augustin gets caught in a desperate struggle to survive. Barely escaping the purge, he's haunted by questions about what happened to his wife, sons and daughter (who was a student at a local boarding school). In 2004, looking for closure and hoping to start a new life with his girlfriend Martine (who taught at his daughter's school), Augustin visits the United Nations Tribunal in Arusha, where Honoré awaits trial for the incendiary role he and other journalists played in the genocide. In the end, through an emotional meeting with Honoré, Augustin learns the details of his family's fate, giving him closure and, perhaps, hope for happiness in the future.

Involve NATO in Darfur

Senator Biden has introduced a resolution (PDF format) "Calling on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to assess the potential effectiveness of and requirements for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone in the Darfur region of Sudan."

Also, on March 10, Biden made this statement on the Senate floor

Mr. President, all of us are aware of the genocide now taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan. We passed a resolution last July that called Khartoum’s abuses in Darfur genocide which is what they have been and continue to be. Then-Secretary of State Powell made the same assessment in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations in September, 2004. And the President signed legislation imposing sanctions on Khartoum for its actions in Darfur this past December.

With the signing of the North-South peace agreement on January 9, administration officials believed that the situation in Darfur would improve. Unfortunately, it’s only gotten worse.

The government of Sudan and its proxy militias continue to attack civilians with impunity. An estimated 100 people were killed in an aerial bombardment in Sudan at the end of January. In February, an African Union official reported that the security situation in Darfur had deteriorated over the past four months and said that the government and its allied militias were primarily to blame. This month, Doctors Without Borders has reported that rape continues to be routinely used as a weapon against women with no signs of abating. Insecurity continues to hamper aid efforts. On March 6, the United Nations forbade its workers from traveling to certain areas– the latest of a series of security measures put in place after aid workers were kidnaped, and killed.

Aid organizations report that as many as a thousand people a day are dying because they lack access to food and medicine. All told, violence and insecurity have resulted in at least 70,000 dead, though some believe the total to be much higher. The number of internally displaced people has risen to nearly two million. There are over 200,000 refugees in neighboring Chad. The current registration being conducted could reveal that there are more.

The African Union force in Darfur has made a noticeable difference in the areas it is able to reach. But it does not have the size, mandate, or capability to protect civilians in Darfur. AU monitors have come under fire from government allied forces and in some instances have been prevented from investigating allegations of cease-fire violations. The AU faces a serious lack of capacity both at the headquarters level, and at the level of member states. Out of a mandated 3,000 plus troops, fewer than 2000 are on the ground. Even at full strength, 3000 soldiers is not enough to prevent further abuse of civilians and investigate cease-fire allegations in an area the size of France.

It is evident to me that the administration needs to devote some focused time and attention to addressing the issue of Darfur. Our current policy had not turned the tide. We need to re-double our efforts to bring an end to the genocide in Darfur.

Today I sent a letter to the President urging him to instruct our permanent representative to the North Atlantic Council to propose that NATO assess and report to members on the potential effectiveness of and requirements for a NATO enforced no-fly zone across the Darfur region.

Today’s Washington Post editorial page says that enforcing a no-fly zone in Darfur would require “one squadron of of 12 to 18 fighter air craft backed up by four AWACS planes, and cites a retired Air Force General as their source for believing such. Let’s find out if he’s right. I have no reason to doubt what he says, but let’s make it official. Let’s do the assessment and see what it would take.

Why propose sending a NATO mission to Darfur?

A NATO mission would do three things: First it will provide immediate security to the people of Darfur by preventing aerial bombardment by the government of Sudan. Second, it will bolster the ability of the African Union force on the ground by discouraging attacks on AU personnel and helicopters. Finally, it will send the unequivocal message that the international community will no longer tolerate Khartoum’s attacks on the people of Darfur.

Mr. President, the administration worked hard to broker the January 9 peace agreement between the government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. The signing of the agreement was a significant step forward. However, without peace in Darfur, the agreement will not have the lasting effect it could, and should have.

Given the continued genocide in Darfur, we must act quickly and decisively. Thus far I fear we have done neither.

The Sudan Peace Act

This might be old news to some of you, but it is new to me.

I have been reading a book entitled "A Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts" that contained an essay on Sudan written by Jerry Fowler, head of the US Holocaust Museum's Committee on Conscience.

The focus was on the 20 year civil war between the North and the South and it mentioned that in October 2002, Congress passed, and President Bush signed, the "Sudan Peace Act." Among the findings contained was this

The acts of the Government of Sudan, including the acts described in this section, constitute genocide as defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (78 U.N.T.S. 277).

Nearly two years later, then Secretary of State Colin Powell declared another genocide in Sudan, this time in Darfur.

Twice in the less than 3 years, the US government has declared that the government in Khartoum was responsible for committing genocide against its own people.

Daily Darfur

Eric Reeves offers a new mortality update

Building on eleven previous assessments of global mortality in Darfur, this analysis finds that approximately 380,000 human beings have died as a result of the conflict that erupted in February 2003, and that the current conflict-related mortality rate in the larger humanitarian theater is approximately 15,000 deaths per month.

The International Crisis Group has sent an open letter to the Security Council

As the Security Council continues to debate Sudan, I am writing to urge you to act forcefully and without delay to prevent further death, suffering, and destruction in Darfur. Since the crisis began two years ago, the Security Council has passed three resolutions demanding an end to the conflict. Yet, over 200,000 people have died, on the best available evidence, and thousands more continue to die each month from violence, malnutrition and disease. The emerging risk of famine in parts of Darfur, especially in places beyond the reach of relief agencies, will further compound the humanitarian crisis.

It is time to acknowledge that the nuanced approach of the international community -- including the Security Council -- has failed.

Experts discuss Darfur, one of the world's "forgotten emergencies"

On the scale of the crisis in Darfur…

In nearly 40 years of traveling the world, I have not witnessed any crisis that so vividly combines the worst of everything -- armed conflict; acts of extreme violence; great tides of desperate refugees; hunger and disease combined with an unforgiving desert climate.
Martin Bell
British journalist, former lawmaker, UNICEF UK’s ambassador for humanitarian emergencies.

The New Jersey Record ran this opinion piece

WE ARE an informed citizenry. We know what bizarre outfit Michael Jackson wears to his trial each day. We know Martha Stewart walked her dog the morning after she was released from prison.

We know Bill Clinton is having surgery today to remove scar tissue and fluid from the left side of his chest. The press spares no energy in covering these stories.

But what do we know about Darfur, the region of the Sudan where slaughter is taking place on a massive scale? Almost nothing.

NOW on PBS ran a segment on Darfur last night featuring an interview with Samantha Power. The interview does not seem to be available, but the website is providing this photo essay "The Faces of Darfur" by Michal Ronnen Safdie.

Pockets of Security

The African Union appears to be having a modicum of success protecting civilians despite its small numbers and lack of support

The limited success of the 2,200-strong force shows that a bigger force with more support from the international community could stabilize the region, said Kenneth Bacon, a former Pentagon spokesman who now heads the advocacy group Refugees International.

[edit]

Still, the tiny force that is already on the ground is making a difference in Darfur, where a campaign of violence by pro-government militia fighting rebels has forced an estimated 2 million people to flee their homes.

On Feb. 22, an AU commander negotiated the release of seven aid workers from the Catholic Relief Services who were abducted a day earlier by rebels. Earlier, peacekeepers secured the release of a group of Sudanese soldiers captured by the same group, Bacon said in a statement.

In January, another AU commander foiled an attack on Labado, a town of 27,000 people, by deploying 100 peacekeepers to the area and a nearby town. He was acting on information that pro-government forces planned to raid the town that was leveled in late December in a bid to drive out rebels.

The African Union Mission in Sudan, or AMIS, "is doing a spectacular job in the areas in which it has deployed. The best example is Labado, where it has stationed about 100 troops since January. More than 10,000 people have returned to the area because AMIS forces are providing a sense of security," Bacon said.

Daily Darfur

Reuters reports that the Security Council is still haggling over a Sudan resolution but expects to vote on it next week

The thrust of the draft resolution, under negotiation for nearly a month, is to authorize a 10,000-member U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Sudan. The troops would monitor a landmark peace accord in January that ended a 21-year old civil war between southern rebels and the Khartoum government.

In Darfur, the measure would impose a partial flight ban as well as a travel and assets freeze on perpetrators of atrocities, those who jeopardize the peace process and those who violate the flight ban.

But diplomats say differences have not yet been resolved on sanctions and on referring human rights abusers to an international court. Countless people have been killed in Darfur and at 2 million have been driven out of their homes, mainly by Arab militia fighting African rebel groups.

It also appears as if the issue of referral to the International Criminal Court is still undecided

Another key stumbling block is U.S. opposition to referring war criminals to the new International Criminal Court in The Hague, the world's first permanent tribunal for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

A U.N.-appointed international inquiry commission drew up a secret list of those who should be prosecuted by the ICC.

At the moment, the draft resolution says suspects should be "brought to justice through internationally accepted means," but does not mention a specific court.

China and Algeria say Sudan could conduct its own trials but the inquiry commission said disputed this.

Some 12 of the 15 council members favour referring Sudan to the ICC and reject a U.S. proposal for a new U.N.-African Union court in Arusha, Tanzania. China and Algeria want no referral to any court.

Several leading Human Rights organizations have sent an open letter to the UN opposing the new resolution

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.

Finally, there is this from an article (pdf) by Rwanda expert Gerald Caplan called "The Genocide Problems: 'Never Again' All Over Again" (the article is from October, but I just came across it)

Early in 2004, with the death, rape, and refugee counts mounting, the calls for action intensified. Mainstream media coverage became widespread around April with the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. An unprecedented informal coalition emerged, including the Bush administration. Maybe it’s a genocide, almost certainly it’s severe ethnic cleansing, and it is without question a world-class atrocity. Everybody now agrees the situation is intolerable.

This makes the situation almost more terrible than Rwanda’s a decade ago. Despite everything we know, despite all the demands made on the terrorist Sudanese government by the most powerful forces on earth, nothing has changed. Verbal threats are backed by mealy-mouthed resolutions promising serious consideration of future action if the militias aren’t suppressed immediately. Meanwhile, the arrival of the rainy season in May blocked sup-plies to the hundreds of thousands of displaced African refugees, and the raids continued. How many more will be added to the fifty thousand dead and the hundreds of thousands of pathetic refugees, while the world attacks with a torrent of words?

The real comparison with 1994, then, is simply inaction in the face of gross provocation. At the end of the day, no Geneva Convention on genocide, whatever its language, and no early warnings, however unmistakable, can substitute for political will among the powers-that-can. The extent of recent coverage of the Darfur tragedy suggests that media and public interest can indeed influence governments to appear to care. But garnering such interest, as Darfur plainly shows, is a long, drawn-out process, and the move from concern to action can take forever.

Brian Steidle Speaks Out

From the Santa Fe New Mexican

A retired Marine captain who spent six months monitoring the war-ravaged Darfur region in Sudan said Thursday he is on a mission to get Americans and the world to care about abuses taking place, including the raping of women, the pillaging of villages and the displacement of millions from their homes.

"I needed to come back and tell my story," said Brian Steidle, who left the region last month. "This can be stopped with the support of the world."

Steidle, 28, said he will travel anywhere and speak on his firsthand experiences and has gained some powerful connections here with several lawmakers who have traveled to the region and have called for stronger American action to end the civil war there.

[edit]

Sens. Sam Brownback, Jon Corzine and Rep. Frank Wolf all praised Steidle's efforts to focus a bigger spotlight on Darfur, calling him an American hero. All three have traveled to the region and have introduced legislation to help its people.

"There is not a more important, moral issue on the globe's agenda, on the nation's agenda, then stopping genocide," Corzine said. "What Brian is doing is bringing graphic and clear evidence that this is taking place."

[edit]

Steidle spent six months monitoring Darfur with the African Union mission in Sudan. His daily experiences included seeing burnt and looted villages, dead bodies littering the landscape, interviewing women who had been raped and dealing with rebel and government soldiers.

"We need to put police in every village with a specific mandate to protect citizens and clear roads to deliver aide," said Steidle, who retired from the Marines in 2003.

More here

Captain Steidle said his observations convince him that the Sudanese government, with support from Arab militias known as the Janjeweed, is clearly behind the atrocities he witnessed.

"This is not a tribal conflict between villages. This is not between one family and another family. This is a government-led military operation targeted at the African tribes in the Darfur region," he said.

Captain Steidle offered evidence that the Sudanese government is using helicopter gunships to attack villages, something that Khartoum has denied. He showed a photograph depicting a helicopter gunship firing on a village, and held up ammunition that he says he found in a village that had been attacked by such aircraft.

"This is a flechette, which the helicopter gunships use on the villages. Every gunship carries four rocket pods, each rocket pod has about 20 rockets, and each rocket has about 500. These are only used to maim and kill people," he said.

Captain Steidle said his most frustrating moment was in December when the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed attacked the village of Labado, home to about 20,000 people. He said a Sudanese general refused to let him enter the village.

"Standing on the edge of the village with a Brigadier General in the Sudanese army standing next to me, watching this village burn to the ground. They had just attacked it. There was shooting in the village. It was being burnt to the ground in front of us. There was a solid stream of Arab militia, the Janjeweed, coming from one side with empty horses, camels, mules, and going back the other way fully loaded with stuff they had taken from the villagers," he said.

Captain Steidle said the Sudanese general refused to stop the attack.

"We asked him what his mission was, he said it was to protect the civilians and to open the road to commercial traffic. I asked him why he did not stop what was going on. He said 'these are not my people. I do not have control over them.' He had three-thousand troops behind him," he said.

His talk was illustrated with some particularly graphic photographs and slides. Several depicted skeletons, some with clothing still attached.

"This place here, there were bodies spread 20 meters that way, 30 meters that way. There was one area that was 50 meters by 50 meters, and you could not walk around without stepping on human bones. We have no idea how many people were there. They had been half buried like this. This individual here had been tied, pants pulled down around the knees presumably to be sexually assaulted," he said.

Reminder

Tonight the History Channel will be showing "Sudan: Anatomy of a Crisis"

There are two visions of the future in Sudan--one belongs to the minority Islamic government in Khartoum and a second to the traditionally non-Arabic southern Sudanese people. Why is Sudan divided between Northern and Southern factions? Who are the rebels and why is the government raiding the Darfur region? Is the fighting just bloody civil war or is it genocide? Professor Francis M. Deng, former Sudanese ambassador to the U.S. and current Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institute in Washington D.C., joins host Alberto Coll to discuss the "War of Visions" in Sudan.

Daily Darfur

Jan Egeland says "people are getting away with mass murder" and that far more than 70,000 have died in Darfur (the number often cited in news accounts) but nobody knows just how many

Egeland said the old figure of 70,000 dead from last March to the late summer was unhelpful. "Is it three times that? Is it five times that? I don't know but it is several times the number of the 70,000 that have died altogether," he said.

He also says the world is not doing enough to stop the violence

"If you move beyond the camps, the killing continues," Egeland said. "Women are systematically abused and raped.

"I told the government at the highest levels that there was a situation totally out of control and is not being stopped," he said.

The main bulwark against atrocities is an African Union monitoring force of some 2,000 troops, who Egeland called "courageous" in stopping atrocities.

But he asked why it took 10 months to get such a small number on the ground when there were 10,000 humanitarian workers in Darfur.

"And those (troops) could have been there last summer if we had been able to deploy tsunami-style," he said. "There are many countries in Africa that could give more forces, quicker. What we need is more forces on the ground."

Aid groups are reporting a dramatic increase in polio infections in Darfur.

The Washington Post has this editorial

IT'S BEEN A YEAR since the world woke up to the mass killings in the Darfur region of Sudan, and six months since the Bush administration termed them "genocide." Revulsion at the death toll, which stands at an estimated 300,000, has produced a humanitarian relief effort and the deployment of 1,900 armed cease-fire monitors by the African Union; both responses have saved lives. But Darfur's people still live in fear of rape, murder and starvation; perhaps 10,000 of them die monthly. And the worst of it all is the low-tech nature of this butchery. Sudan's government has armed a primitive militia that goes about on horses and camels; the government has supported the militia with rudimentary airpower, which NATO could cripple easily. So many lives could be saved with relatively little Western effort. But the killing continues.

The World Food Program has issued its "Weekly Situation Report on Darfur."

A Reuters poll of experts reveals that Darfur is listed as one of the world's three biggest "forgotten emergencies."

The Spirits of Rwanda

Lt. General Romeo Dallaire says that Darfur is a test of the world's "sense of responsibility"

In Ottawa, Gen. Dallaire called on the world to answer these victims' pleas for assistance, saying that the “the spirits of Rwandans” are being joined by those killed in northern Africa.

“[They] call upon all of us to call upon our dignity and our sense of responsibility,” he said in brief remarks at Rideau Hall.

Gen. Dallaire has firsthand experience of what can happen when the world decides not to intervene. He commanded a small United Nations peacekeeping mission in East Africa and was given neither the manpower nor the mandate to be able to stop the Rwandan genocide. An estimated 800,000 people were killed in barely three months.

Dallaire made his remarks as he was awarded the Pearson Peace Medal. You can read Governor General Adrienne Clarkson's presentation to Dallaire here.

A Short History of Darfur

Update: If you have come here looking for a history of the genocide in Darfur, I highly recommend that you read this piece by Eric Reeves.

This has been provided to us by the good folks at FSB Associates

Darfur

By Robert Fay (excerpted from Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition. Edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah. (Oxford University Press; April 2005)

Former Independent Sultanate in Western Sudan

In prehistoric times, the peoples of what is now Darfur were related to those of the Nile Valley (including EGYPT), whose caravans probably reached the region by 2500 B.C.E. According to tradition, the region’s first rulers were the Daju. By around 900 C.E., Christianity had spread to the area; by the thirteenth century, however, the region had fallen under the domination of the powerful Islamic empire of Kanem-Bornu to the west, and the TUNJUR replaced the Daju as the ruling elite of the region.

The sultanate of Darfur first entered the historical record during the seventeenth century, under Sulayman. Sulayman belonged to the Keira Dynasty, which claimed Arab descent and which removed the Tunjur from power. Except for an interval during the nineteenth century, this dynasty ruled Darfur until 1916. Gradually the Keira merged with the Fur, the agricultural people over whom they ruled. (The state’s name, Dar Fur, means “house of the Fur” in Arabic.)

The slave trade figured prominently in both the formation and the expansion of the Darfur Sultanate. Parties from Darfur obtained slaves and ivory by either raiding or trading with the stateless societies that lay to its south and southwest. Not only did Darfur’s rulers export slaves to North Africa and along the “forty days’ road,” which crossed the desert from Darfur to Egypt, but slaves also served the sultan as soldiers, laborers, and bureaucrats. Sulayman’s successors expanded the state. In 1786 Sultan Muhammad Tayrab conquered the province of Kordofan from the Funj Sultanate of Sennar to the east.

In 1821, however, Egyptian forces conquered the Funj Sultanate and wrested Kordofan from Darfur. Traders from KHARTOUM then began to compete in the slave trade with those in Darfur. Turkish-Egyptian forces under Rahma al-Zubayr conquered Darfur in 1874 and overthrew the Keira sultan. In 1885 a Sudanese rebellion under a religious leader called the Mahdi overthrew the Egyptian state, which had come under increasing British influence. In 1898 British forces defeated the MAHDIST STATE and placed it under Anglo-Egyptian administration. Under their policy of indirect rule, the British restored the Darfur Sultanate under Ali Dinar Zakariyya. Ali Dinar played a significant role in an Islamic, anti-Western alliance that formed during World War I. The Anglo-Egyptian government subsequently invaded Darfur, killed Ali Dinar, ended the sultanate, and incorporated Darfur into Sudan. After Sudan attained independence in 1956, Darfur remained under Sudanese rule.

The central Darfur region of Sudan is inhabited largely by Fur farmers; the northernmost section by nomadic camel herders; and the eastern and southern zones by Arab cattle herders. Periods of severe drought since the late 1960s forced the cattle and camel herders to encroach on the rich agricultural land in the central section of Darfur. As competition for access to water and pasture intensified, small-scale raids turned into persistent battles among the different groups. Attempts by successive governments to achieve peace in the region have failed and the fighting continues.

In February 2003 two rebel groups -- the Sudan Liberation Army Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement (with members drawn from the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups) -- demanded that the Arab-ruled Sudanese government begin to share power and end the economic marginalization of Darfur. The government responded by targeting the civilian populations from which the rebels were drawn.

With support from the Sudanese government, Arab Janjaweed militias forced one million people -- mostly farmers -- to flee to refugee camps. Thousands have died or been killed; tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bibliography
Kapteijns, Lidwien, and Jay Spaulding. An Islamic Alliance: Ali Dinar and the Sanusiyya, 1906–1916. Northwestern University Press, 1994.

O’Fahey, R. S. State and Society in Dar Fur. Hurst & Co., 1980.

Copyright (c) 2005 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Excerpted by permission from AFRICANA: THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE AFRICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, SECOND EDITION. Edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah. (Oxford University Press; April 2005; 5 Volumes; 4,500 pp.; 0-19-517055-5; Special introductory price until April 30th, 2005 of US $425.00. After April 30th, 2005, the price will be US $500.00).

Ninety years after W.E.B. Du Bois first articulated the need for “the equivalent of a black Encyclopedia Britannica,” Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr., realized his vision by publishing Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience in 1999. This new multi-volume edition of the original work expands on the foundation provided by Africana. More than 4,000 articles cover prominent individuals, events, trends, places, political movements, art forms, business and trade, religion, ethnic groups, organizations and countries on both sides of the Atlantic.

About the Editors:
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of Humanities, Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies, and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University. Professor Gates is well known as an innovator in the field of African American studies and as the author of numerous works.

Kwame Anthony Appiah is the Lawrence S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. The groundbreaking Africana—now expanded to a five-volume set, unparalleled in scope, scholarship and accessibility

Available at your local libraries and bookstores. Please visit the Oxford University Press Web site for ordering information: www.oup.com/us/africana

Military Options in Darfur

Petty Officer Eddie Beaver sent us his thoughts on the use of military force in Darfur. He has written about this in the Weekly Standard and he has graciously allowed us to repost his message below

There are a good number of us in the military, especially the Navy/Marine Corps team, who would love to get the order from the president to head to the Red Sea and begin military action against the Sudanese regime and its janjaweed allies. My aircraft carrier strike group (USS KITTY HAWK (CV-63), forward deployed in Japan), the largest in the Navy, would be ideal for this operation (had to volunteer myself).

In all seriousness though, this will never happen unless we raise awareness about this genocide with the American people. Without a public outcry, Darfur will be a tragedy raged and cried about in the darkness of public ignorance. It all starts with the internet, where contacting those on the left (like Daily KOS) and those on the right (like Powerline) can accomplish a lot of good by spreading the word to blogs with massive visitor traffic, as well as increasing the traffic to this great blog. If it shows up on Powerline, Bill O'Reilly and others on Fox News and MSNBC will want to do a story about it, then more stories. If it shows up on Daily Kos, maybe Howard Dean and others demand the Democrats support the president in taking action.

As far as military action itself goes, there are three kinds (based on cost and involvement of US military assets), not even counting the bare-bones no-fly zone effort suggested earlier (the problem with it is that it would only halt one option the Sudanese have to slaughter people in Darfur). The Pentagon has plans for all of these, just in case something extraordinary (like massive public outcry) happens that causes the President to take military action.

This is a hypothetical guess as to what's in those plans, but it would probably look something like this:

Phase A –

Possibly with the assistance of the British navy, we begin a blockade of Port Sudan, preventing vital Sudanese oil supplies from leaving Sudan to customers in China and other nations. This also could put a crimp in weapons and armament shipments Sudan is receiving from various rogue states and nations like China and France. This costs little to America’s strained defense budget and exacts a cost from Sudan for its genocidal policy. The French, Chinese, Russians and Arabs will scream bloody murder at the UN, but we can release all of our evidence (and possibly get the African Union to release its archive of intelligence and genocide evidence) to the UN and global media, showcasing how these nations’ weapons and financial aid fueled the genocide effort.

Phase B-

We take all the intelligence and satellite imagery we have of Janjaweed camps and Sudanese military bases and use it to create a “package” of targets. Guided missile destroyers already on duty in the Gulf or close by in the Mediterranean or Pacific Ocean operating areas fire Tomahawks at these targets with the intent of heavily damaging them. This is a larger, more devastating version of the haphazard strike former Pres. Clinton ordered against Afghanistan and Sudan after the embassy terrorist bombings in Africa.

The upside here is heavy damage to janjaweed camps and hopefully some Sudanese air force bases. It would be a short, furious strike that at least sends the message mass murder does not go unpunished. Again, the Chinese and others would scream bloody murder, but we’ve got the evidence and the moral upper hand. We advertise to the “Arab” street and others in the world we’re doing the same thing we did in Kosovo and Bosnia, saving Muslims from mass murder.

Phase C-

The least probable of all but the most effective plan. Modeled along Operation Provide Comfort (launched in Northern Iraq after Saddam tried to kill all the Kurds after Desert Storm), it would create a barrier between the Sudanese and the tribes of Darfur, providing a security blanket to aid organizations and others to help the genocide survivors. Between 20,000-40,000 troops would be necessary for this effort, though if we had to, we could hire someone like Executive Outcomes to assist in the manning, since it is not an offensive operation but a “humanitarian intervention”. Let the Sudanese know through backchannels there are US Marines on the ground in case they want to pull something stupid and try to attack survivors. The rest of the world will alternate between screaming bloody murder and quietly applauding, with little loss to US credibility or prestige. If we shopped around for assistance with the force manning, we’d likely find willing partners in Britain, Germany, Italy, Poland, Holland, Spain (a whole host of other smaller European nations), Australia, South Korea and Japan, perhaps even India or Pakistan.

* This would require the use of a staging area in Chad, which hosts one or two French built airfields capable of hosting US military aircraft.

One proviso on Phase C: Pres. Bush could flip it and throw the gauntlet down with the African Union… in exchange for generous US assistance to African Union military training and diplomatic efforts, the AU nations supply a majority of the peace”making” force. If the EU, US and Japan foot the bill for the AU to rapidly expand its monitor force into a peacemaking group, perhaps the AU would go for it.

God bless you all doing your best to save the people of Darfur. I only hope these valiant efforts to save lives on your part and that of many other dedicated civilian activists is successful somehow.

R/

Petty Officer Eddie Beaver

USS KITTY HAWK (CV-63)
Deployed in the Sea of Japan

A Form Letter

Ad Populum offers this excellent form letter for your use

But stopping the janjaweed isn't just a moral or legal imperative. It's also a strategic imperative. Our failures to stop mass murder in the past have emboldened these killers; if we had acted strongly against the interhamwe in Rwanda, the janjaweed might never have dared being their campaign. Similarly, our action or inaction will communicate to future villains how serious we are about stopping their crimes. Strong, decisive action can save lives, now and in the future.

Daily Darfur

The JEM has declared that it will not take part in peace talks until war crimes suspects have been referred to the International Criminal Court.

AFP reports

The House of Representatives Appropriations Committee narrowly voted Tuesday to boost emergency US food aid to Sudan by 150 million dollars.

The committee approved the measure by a vote of 32 to 31.

Of course, if you look at the press release itself you see that they simply replaced the aid that they stripped out last week.

Yesterday, the International Crisis Group released a report entitled "Darfur: The Failure to Protect" that made some important points

UN humanitarian officials have repeatedly stated that the presence of expatriate relief workers should not be considered a solution to insecurity in Darfur. There is an increasing trend in conflict zones throughout the world for governments to substitute humanitarian assistance and "protection by presence" for a more robust and realistic approach to atrocity prevention. "Protection by presence" is hollow if that presence is withdrawn when a situation deteriorates so that civilians must fend for themselves. But the UN rightly points out that humanitarian workers cannot stand between two fighting forces. The strategy becomes even less tenable when armed AU elements, too few as they are, are not willing or able to step in to contain the situation.

I also thought that this section on "Khartoum's Chaos Theory" was important

The government's objective is not to resolve the conflict, but rather to weaken the negotiating position of the rebels, bog them down in local conflict to prevent them from possibly expanding beyond Darfur, and portray itself as an innocent bystander of a complex, decades-old local conflict. It has made no serious attempt to find a solution other than by the gun.

[edit]

Khartoum's strategy in Darfur is one of organised chaos. It has played a game of cat and mouse with the UN and the international community at large, promising much but delivering little, while attempting to conceal that it was its own counter-insurgency strategy that exacerbated the tribal elements and polarised the ethnic divide in the region.

Finally, there is this, which may or may not be important but certainly is interesting

Contacts between Arab leaders, in some cases Janjaweed, and the SLA have been increasing since mid-2004, when international pressure to disarm the Janjaweed was at a peak. Fearing they would become scapegoats, some Janjaweed opened channels to explore an alliance.

Some contacts go back even further. A meeting was scheduled in December 2003 between some Arab leaders fighting for the government and then SLA Secretary General Abdallah Abaker, who was killed the following month in a government attack. The government learned of the meeting and bombed the site before it could take place, thus increasing mistrust among the Arab tribes involved and the SLA. The elements within Arab tribes which have concluded the conflict does not serve their interests are now reportedly trying to establish a standalone Arab movement in Darfur, to fight against the government and establish ties on equal footing with the SLA and JEM. Khorbaj may be a manifestation of this but too little is known to be certain.

Teens for Peace Rally

On April 15, 2005 at 4:00 pm, Teens for Peace will sponsor a rally in front of the Embassy of Sudan to call for an immediate end to the genocide in the Western region of Darfur, perpetrated by the government of Sudan through its proxy militia, the Jajaweed. We, as teens, will not sit by idly and watch the senseless brutality and genocide of some of the world's poorest people. This rally is a mobilization of American teens demonstrating that we are a caring and politically involved generation determined to participate in making the world both safer and fairer.

In the face of two million internally displaced people in the Darfur region of Sudan, we must speak out on behalf of the innocent victims of this tragedy and hope that in doing so, place pressure on the government of Sudan to immediately halt this unforgivable violence. We strongly appreciate any help or support you can lend to us. As teens, we believe it is vitally important to speak out on the atrocities taking place in Sudan. There is a need for a radical social and political change in the Sudanese government and we will bring awareness to this in a non-violent and peaceful way.

Change is possible and we expect that our politicians will pay attention. As teens we have the power to effect change for a better world. We will be voting soon and we want to clearly state that we recognize the responsibility that comes with the empowerment that voting gives to us.

Proposed Date:
Tentatively, Saturday, April 15, 2005

Time:
Approximately 4:00 P.M.

There will be a candlelight vigil in commemoration of those murdered, tortured, and raped at the hands of the Sudanese government.

We hope to present a petition to a representative of the Sudanese government letting them know that the world is watching and will not allow the genocide to continue.

Location: In front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington D.C.

You can contact Teens for Peace via e-mail.

Do Something About Darfur

In May 2004, Roger Winter, the Assistant Administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development's Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, told a House committee that it was inevitable that "more than 100,000 people will die no matter what" in Darfur, Sudan by the end of the year. Winter went on to warn that, in a worst-case scenario, the number could reach as high as 350,000.

One year later, the estimated death toll stands at more than 300,000. The actual number of deaths is nearly impossible to determine given that the government of Sudan, fearing the truth, refuses to grant access to the World Health Organization so that it can conduct a mortality survey. Nonetheless, knowledgeable observers agree that thousands have died at the hands of the Sudanese government and their proxy militia, the Janjaweed (a term meaning "Devils on Horseback") and tens of thousands more have died of disease and starvation after having their villages destroyed in government-led attacks. More than 2 million Darfurians have been internally displaced, the agricultural economy has been decimated and an estimated 3-4 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance.

Nearly two years ago, the Muslim government in Khartoum was in the process of finalizing a peace accord that would end a twenty year civil war between the government in the North and the Sudan People's Liberation Army in the South that had taken some 2 million lives. Fearful that the Western region of Darfur was going to continue to be ignored in the new coalition government that was being formed, African rebels launched a series of raids against government facilities. Rather than negotiate with the rebel forces in the West, the government of Sudan enlisted Arab militias in a campaign to wipe out the rebels and anyone suspected of supporting them. In the process, hundreds of villages have been destroyed, tens of thousands have been raped and killed, and millions have been displaced.

The international community has responded in a haphazard fashion. The African Union secured the deployment of some 4,000 troops to the region, though its mandate was limited to monitoring a cease-fire that neither side honored. Less than 2,000 AU soldiers have arrived and they have limited logistical capabilities for covering this area roughly the size of Texas, nor do they have a mandate that allows them to protect civilians. The United Nations has been plagued by inaction, with China and Russia using their veto power to water down Security Council resolutions seeking sanctions or demanding accountability. A recent UN investigation detailed massive war crimes and crimes against humanity but stopped short of calling the campaign a genocide, a declaration the United States made last September. For now, much of the debate is focused on where any cases arising from this situation will be tried: the International Criminal Court or some Africa-based tribunal.

Angered by the lackluster response to what is widely acknowledged as the "world's worst humanitarian crisis," a group of bloggers have formed a Coalition for Darfur to do what little they can. We seek to raise awareness of the crisis in Darfur, but also to raise money for the vital work that Save the Children is doing by providing food, water, shelter, and protection to over 200,000 children and families in Darfur each month.

Together, and with your support, we hope to make a small but meaningful contribution to alleviating the massive suffering that continues to plague the region. Please consider making a donation via our Coalition for Darfur blog.

One Step Forward, One Step Back

Via Passion of the Present I came across these two stories.

The Guardian is reporting that the US has agreed to abstain (i.e., not veto) a Security Council resolution referring the crimes in Darfur to the International Criminal Court in exchange for targeted sanctions that the US has long wanted. As part of the negotiations, an arms ban and a freeze on assets that the US also wants have been stripped from the resolution

The most important measure in a United Nations security council resolution this week will be to send those accused of crimes against humanity to the International criminal court, according to diplomatic sources. In a big concession to international opinion, the US will agree to allow Darfur cases to go to the ICC, the sources add. The US has strenuously opposed the court, but is now prepared to abstain in the security council.

I haven't seen this reported anywhere else, and yesterday Human Rights Watch reported that the US was seeking a 45-day delay in making any decision on where to try any cases arising from Darfur so it is hard to know where this stands. But if the US has in fact agreed to support, or at least refrain from opposing, a referral to the ICC, it is indeed a huge concession.

Of course, now Reuters is reporting that the African Union cannot agree on how or where to prosecute those responsible. And according to this poorly worded article, African Union Chairman Olusegun Obasanjo seems to think that Sudan ought to be allowed to prosecute its own criminals.

If you want to know why that is a simply ridiculous idea, just read Eric Reeves' latest analysis piece.

Daily Darfur

On Thursday night, the History Channel will be showing "Sudan: Anatomy of a Crisis"

There are two visions of the future in Sudan--one belongs to the minority Islamic government in Khartoum and a second to the traditionally non-Arabic southern Sudanese people. Why is Sudan divided between Northern and Southern factions? Who are the rebels and why is the government raiding the Darfur region? Is the fighting just bloody civil war or is it genocide? Professor Francis M. Deng, former Sudanese ambassador to the U.S. and current Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institute in Washington D.C., joins host Alberto Coll to discuss the "War of Visions" in Sudan.

Save Darfur is coordinating "100 Hours of Conscience" from March 17-20.

Jan Egeland says that there is no money to implement the North-South peace accord and no security in Darfur

"The contrast between South Sudan and Darfur was a tragic paradox," Egeland observed. The south, he added, had the political and security support, but lacked the funding and capacity for humanitarian needs. Darfur, on the other hand, was strongly supported with humanitarian assistance, but the security situation remained deplorable, he said.

He noted that food distribution and health assistance had significantly improved the condition of people inside Darfur IDP camps to the extent that, in terms of malnutrition, IDPs were in a better condition than surrounding communities.

"The problem is what is happening outside the camps - the killings, the rape, the human rights violations," Egeland said. "The world is still not acting decisively to stop the perpetrators of these crimes."

ReliefWeb has this piece

The feeding center in the camp northeast of Zalingei was full of mothers and malnourished babies on this day. Raising children in a camp for IDPs is not easy. Food and water are scarce, and hygiene is poor - especially in Hamadiya camp, where more than 30,000 people live. Many children are malnourished, and the situation in the camp makes it difficult to change their condition. The IDPs also live in clouds of the red dust that is everywhere and gets stirred up by the wind.

The US is accusing Sudan of refusing to grant visas to Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and three foreign policy experts who intend to conduct a fact-finding mission on atrocities in Darfur.

Attack and Destruction of Toray Village

The Sudan Organization Against Torture released this press release

At 6am on 29 February 2005, over 500 armed militias supported by the armed forces allegedly from Nama military camp, west of Kass town, attacked and destroyed Toray village south of Jebel Marra, Kass province, Southern Darfur state. Reportedly, at least 17 civilians were killed, three women were raped and 11 wounded during the attack.

via Passion of the Present

What Should We Do About Darfur?

From Mansfield Fox

May I be so bold as to make a suggestion?

We (and by we I mean all people who want to do something to end the genocide in Darfur) ought to start publicly agitating to send a U.S. carrier group to Red Sea to enforce a no-fly zone over the Sudan.

Read the rest.

Daily Darfur

Will it make a difference?

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called a closed-door emergency meeting for Monday of U.N. Security Council ambassadors over the deteriorating situation in Darfur and in south Sudan where a peacekeeping force is awaiting council approval.

Probably not

In a revised version of the resolution, obtained by Reuters, all mention of threatened oil sanctions against Sudan is dropped. But a partial arms embargo as well as travel and an assets freeze against perpetrators of atrocities remain in the document. Diplomats said the assets freeze might be deleted to get support from Russia and China.

The main stumbling point is where to put those responsible for heinous crimes on trial. Most council members prefer the new International Criminal Court in The Hague, which the United States opposes. China and Algeria are against any referral to an outside court.

The Boston Globe has an interesting op-ed on the Genocide Intervention Fund, an organization raising money to support the African Union mission in Darfur

So far GIF has won sponsorship from six congressmen, several top Africa officials from the Clinton administration, and Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, the commander of the UN mission in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide.

Doctors Without Borders says that "women and girls in war-ravaged Darfur are continuing to suffer a high incidence of rape and sexual violence."

Women told MSF that they were beaten with sticks, whips or axes before, during or after the act of rape. Some of the raped women were visibly pregnant, as much as five to eight months, at the time of the assault.

The majority of survivors of rape and sexual violence tell MSF that the attacks occurred when women left the relative safety of villages and displaced camps to carry out activities indispensable of the survival of the families, such as searching for firewood or water.

81% of the 500 rape survivors treated by MSF reported being assaulted by militia or military who used their weapons to force the assault.

The Globe and Mail ran a related article this weekend

Fatima was 15 when she was gang-raped in front of her mother. Seven months later, the heavily pregnant schoolgirl was arrested by the Sudanese police and charged with fornication. They threatened to whip her if she didn't pay a fine.

Freelance reporter Angela Woodall reports

The villagers of war-ravaged Darfur face a famine in the coming year if the violence that has swept through this part of western Sudan is not stopped, an expert on the region said at a talk Feb. 25 at the Brookings Institute here.

You can read the Brookings transcript here. (pdf file)

David Bosco had a great article in yesterday's Outlook section on the limitations that seeking a "genocide" declaration places on the international community and how lack of such a declaration can become an excuse for inaction. Bosco also offers an interesting alternative

There is an alternative to this intense focus on genocide. The category of "crimes against humanity" -- first used to describe the massacres of Armenians after World War I and then codified at the Nuremberg trials -- is simpler and broader but still morally powerful. It encompasses large-scale efforts to kill, abuse or displace populations. It avoids messy determinations of whether the victims fit into the right legal box and whether the killers had a sufficiently evil mindset. Do we really care, after all, whether the victims of atrocities are members of a distinct tribe or simply political opponents of the regime?

Moving beyond what has by now become a warped diplomatic parlor game (who will say the G-word first?) would have the added benefit of shifting the debate from the abstract to the practical.

Timelines and Distractions

I received a copy of the new documentary Shake Hands With The Devil: The Journey Of Romeo Dallaire the other day and, while watching it, was reminded of something that has been bothering me for a while.

Over the last ten years, it has been universally recognized that the US media did a rather lackluster job in covering the genocide in Rwanda. The fact that nearly one million people were killed in 100 days yet the majority of Americans heard little or nothing about it is indeed shocking. Yet somewhere along the way is has become conventional wisdom, when explaining this fact, to claim that Americans were, at the time, obsessed with the OJ Simpson case.

The idea is that the Simpson case was taking up so much air time and space in the newspapers that coverage of the genocide was simply drowned out.

I, when I first heard this, bought the explanation myself because it seemed to be a useful way to explain how the genocide utterly failed to break through my apathy or register with me at all.

But then I did a simple Google search and came across this timeline of the Simpson case and realized that Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were not murdered until June 12, 1994 - more than 2 months after the beginning of the genocide.

Clearly the US media's failure to adequately cover the genocide in Rwanda and my failure to even realize what was taking place cannot be attributed to OJ Simpson overload.

No matter how much we try to explain away our failure to pay attention ten years later, the fact is that the media provided very little coverage of the genocide mainly because it was assumed that Americans are not interested in these sort of things.

And, for the most part, we aren't.

Until we hear about it.

The tsunami last December certainly isn't the sort of thing that Americans really care about, but the constant media coverage fed upon itself and it became the lead story for weeks afterward which, in turn, ended up generating hundreds of millions of dollars in donations for aid organizations. [As Eric Reeves notes in his latest analysis

Moreover, it must be noted that even in its commitment to humanitarian assistance, the international community is failing badly. Oxfam International reports that "the international community has provided $500 for each individual affected by the tsunami, but [ ] for Sudan, [where the UN has appealed for $1.5 billion], the [international organization] has so far received only 5% of this total. This amounts to just $16. per person." (Oxfam International [Boston], February 25, 2005)]

It has now been more than ten years since the genocide in Rwanda and there is another genocide taking place and the US media and the American public are reacting in exactly the same manner.

I wonder if, ten years from now, we will all tell ourselves that it was the Michael Jackson trial that caused us all to miss the genocide in Darfur.

It'll alleviate our guilt, but it won't be true.

Eric Reeves' Update

The latest update from Eric Reeves is now available. It analyzes the African Union's utter inability to provide security to in Darfur or curtail the continuing violence

"'Things are looking greatly better in Darfur,' [Olusegun] Obasanjo said.” (Agence France-Presse, February 28, 2005)

If we do not understand what lies behind these monstrously inaccurate words from Olusegun Obasanjo, President of Nigeria and current Chair of the African Union, then we will have little chance of understanding the full nature of international paralysis in the face of Darfur’s deepening crisis. If we do not understand why Obasanjo is willing to lie in such shameful fashion about the realities of human destruction in Darfur, and the catastrophic threat posed by impending famine, then we will have little chance of bringing to bear the international pressures that will reverse his supreme and unforgivable expediency.

[edit]

The basic moral and practical truth of this situation must be rendered as explicitly as possible:

There can be no improvement in security on the ground in Darfur without massive increases in the size and capabilities of the deploying force---increases far beyond the present abilities of the African Union. Nor can there be an adequate humanitarian response without vast increases in humanitarian capacity and logistics, increases that will ultimately require military support. And yet, despite the current extreme vulnerability of many hundreds of thousands of African Darfuris, the African Union refuses to ask for the help Darfur clearly needs, and allows brutally expedient leaders such as Obasanjo to define both the nature of Darfur’s catastrophe and its “purely African” character.

This is Africa betraying itself. And this is the international community refusing to declare such deep betrayal for what it is. The phrase “African solutions for African problems” is well on its way to becoming a terrible synonym for acquiesce before genocide in Darfur, another African legacy that will be as appalling as it is now inescapable.

Genocide - What does it Really Mean?

From Restless Mania

I don’t really believe that without the Genocide Convention, intervention would really come about any sooner. I understand the realities of the situation; American military is stretched too thin, powerful countries on the Security Council are blocking action due to economic interests, and there is an uninterested American public. But the Genocide Convention isn’t serving its purpose. Instead of acting as a stimulus for action, it has become irrelevant – ignored by the international community. And if the international community is not going to follow the spirit of the Genocide Convention, why bother having it?

Daily Darfur

The Christian Science Monitor has a good editorial on the disconnect between peacekeeping in Congo and Darfur

But the striking contradiction between the UN's relative inaction in saving Darfur and its military boldness in Congo cannot go unnoticed. Perhaps Darfur needs action by NATO or the European Union's new force. Britain and France, on their own, have used force to solve recent conflicts in their former colonies in West Africa.

I sort of made this point yesterday and Passion of the Present has a good follow-up to the topic.

Sudan's Ambassador to the US, Khidir Haroun Ahmed, denies Musa Hilal's allegations that the government has been directing the Janjaweed. Ahmed told USA TODAY that the Sudanese government "has never given any license to kill or to burn or to loot in that part of the country."

The embassy of Sudan is none too pleased with the Corzine-Brownback "Darfur Accountability Act". If the government of Sudan has ever made a more ridiculous statement than this, I haven't seen it

We hope that the members of The US Congress will give peace a chance in Sudan for the sake of millions who have been waiting long enough to make a better future for their children and for the sake of the reputation of the United States as a gentler and compassionate super power in that part of the world.

Aid agencies are warning that Darfur is going to be facing a severe water shortage in the coming months.

Stanford University held a panel discussion on US/UN/Africa relations

“Most American attitudes on Africa are not deeply fixed in any African reality,” Devlin-Foltz said. “When they are lacking information, people will fall back on general principles.”

He said he blames television news for the widely-held American view that the world is full of unrelated catastrophic events and that the United States is the only nation that can make a difference.

Panelist Heather Hamilton, vice president of Citizens for Global Solutions, followed Devlin-Foltz’s call for education with a call to action, comparing the crisis in Darfur to last year’s tsunamis in Southeast Asia. Citizens for Global Solutions is a grassroots organization that encourages public officials to promote multilateral foreign policy.

“They were a massive natural event that took hundreds of thousands of lives and provoked the largest outpouring of shock and compassion,” Hamilton said. “What we’re facing now in Darfur is a man-made catastrophe in which a government is sponsoring a genocide. Over 220,000 have died and 10,000 a month are dying. But where is that surge of horror?”

Finally, there is this from Editor and Publisher

International pressure on the United States to refer the murders and violence in Darfur, Sudan, to the International Criminal Court has produced little action so far. But the American press has remained active in its coverage of what some are calling genocide in Sudan.

The wires, especially Reuters, have continued to break news from the region on nearly a daily basis, but daily newspapers are also continuing to regularly cover Sudan, with many stories lately probing the genocide question.

EP then gives a handful of examples of major news pieces on the genocide. This seems to me to be little more than self-serving nonsense. According to a search of major US news sources via Factiva, there have been 214 media stories that mentioned Darfur in the last week.

There have been 253 that mentioned Steve Fossett.

And there have been 887 that mentioned Michael Jackson.

"A Human Face for Genocide in Sudan"

Be sure not to miss this excellent post by John Coleman over at the Ex Nihilo blog. Here's a taste:

The United States has called it genocide, but has failed to act in any substantial way (devoid of allies and too spread out militarily to field its own peace-keeping envoy); and the result has been another irreparable scar on the face of international action. Perhaps the difficulty is an inability among most in the U.S. and Europe to envision such brutality in a Western world blessed with relative peace and tranquility.

The Dangers of "Peacekeeping"

This is something to keep in mind, especially for those of us favor some form of international military intervention in Darfur:

Last week, 9 Bangladeshi MONUC peacekeepers who were securing the perimeter of a camp for the internally displaced were reportedly stripped of their weapons, ammunition, uniforms, and equipment and executed at point blank range after an ambush by militants in eastern Congo.

Just a few days later, Pakistani peacekeepers were on a mission to dismantle a militant headquarters in Ituri province when they came under fire and responded by killing some 60 militants.

Any peacekeeping mission with a proper mandate is going to put both the peacekeepers and the general population at risk. Outside intervention in Darfur is not going to magically stop the violence.

Daily Darfur

Sometimes you just have to shake your head in disbelief. House Republicans are seeking to add nearly $2 billion in defense spending onto President Bush's $80 billion war appropriation and, at the same time, cutting humanitarian aid for Darfur

Many congressional Republicans complained about portions of Bush's request, saying his proposal for about $4 billion in foreign assistance was excessive. Details obtained Wednesday of portions of the House bill reflect that unease.

About $570 million of the $2 billion Bush sought for Afghanistan's reconstruction would be cut, an aide said. That included $25 million for starting a law school and money for building courthouses and community housing and helping venture capitalists make investments.

An additional $400 million that Bush wanted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to control for U.S. allies - split between economic and military aid - was gone, the aide said. Some $150 million in food aid for refugees in Sudan's embattled Darfur province was also being excluded, said the aide.

CARE says that "as many as a million people in North and West Kordofan could run short of food from April until the November harvest unless institutional donors provide sufficient funding immediately." Of course, there will probably be no harvest in November, as more than 2 million people are now displaced and the agricultural economy has collapsed.

Sam Brownback and Jon Corzine are calling on the US government to press the UN Security Council to set international sanctions against Khartoum. They have also introduced the Darfur Accountability Act

Specifically, the bill seeks: a new UN Security Council resolution with sanctions; concerted U.S. diplomacy to achieve an effective UN Security Council resolution; an extension of the current arms embargo to cover the Government of Sudan; the freezing of assets and denial of visas to those responsible for genocide, crimes and humanity, and war crimes; accelerated assistance to the African Union mission; a Presidential Envoy for Sudan; and a military non-fly zone in Darfur.

In an interview with Human Rights Watch, Janjaweed leader Musa Hilal says he was only following orders from Khartoum.

Mark Fiore has this flash cartoon entitled "Never Again: Again" over at Mother Jones.

And the violence continues.

Restless Mania: Khartomb

From Restless Mania

It's a thoughtful and brutal depiction of all the problems plaguing Sudan, and why Khartoum is essentially exploiting all of them masterfully to oppose and distract the international community and hold onto power. However, it offers a constructive five point plan that the U.S. and other countries can use to actually solve this trifecta of regional madness. Will the international community care enough to do it? We can only hope. This does paint a diabolical picture of Khartoum, and outlines why the government is a danger to its own country and to its neighbors. Part of the reason I opposed Iraq was because I thought we should've gone for "regime change" in Sudan's theocratic government first, but I'll always be regarded as a madman for that.

Daily Darfur

Anyone who has been paying attention already knows this

African Force Too Weak to Stop Darfur Killings

Armed with a mandate to stop the widespread atrocities in the violence-prone western region of Darfur in Sudan, a militarily weak African Union (AU) monitoring force is finding itself weighed down by a shortage of troops, funds, logistical support and communications equipment.

Don Cheadle and John Prendergast have this op-ed in USA Today

It is not too soon to learn lesson No. 1 from the pathetic international response to Darfur and Rwanda: Despite the almost ritualistic pledge of "never again," no coherent international system or process is in place for responding to genocide and other atrocities. What does exist is chaotic and futile finger-pointing, while the slaughter goes on.

Nicholas Kristof continues to write about Darfur in the New York Times

If President Bush wants to figure out whether the U.S. should stand more firmly against the genocide in Darfur, I suggest that he invite Mr. Steidle to the White House to give a briefing. Mr. Steidle, a 28-year-old former Marine captain, was one of just three American military advisers for the African Union monitoring team in Darfur - and he is bursting with frustration.

"Every single day you go out to see another burned village, and more dead bodies," he said. "And the children - you see 6-month-old babies that have been shot, and 3-year-old kids with their faces smashed in with rifle butts. And you just have to stand there and write your reports."

David Scheffer, who was the top US negotiator for the International Criminal Court for the Clinton administration, says the US has nothing to fear. Scheffer himself has many reservations regarding the court and led the US delegation in voting against the Rome Statute in 1998. But in the case of Sudan, he sees things differently

Even if you're the greatest skeptic of the ICC - and there are many of them in the Bush administration - there simply is no strong argument they can come up with as to why the ICC should not be seized with the Darfur situation. An ICC investigation of Darfur need not expose any US national, or the US government, to any criminal liability whatsoever before the ICC.

And for whatever it is worth, a new poll from the Program on International Policy Attitudes shows that a majority of Americans - 60% - favor referring the genocide in Sudan to the ICC rather than creating an ad hoc tribunal, as the Bush administration prefers.

Daily Darfur

David Bosco has a very good piece on Sudan and the International Criminal Court in Foreign Policy with which I completely agree

But there is little evidence that the threat of prosecution is a meaningful deterrent to regimes like the one in Sudan. The existence of an international criminal tribunal for the Balkans—and even explicit threats of prosecution—did not stop Slobodan Milosevic from cleansing the Albanian population of Kosovo. The Rwandan government engaged in several bloody reprisals against Hutu civilians even after the United Nations set up a tribunal to investigate the earlier genocide. And the existence of a tribunal in Rwanda appears to have done nothing to staunch the bloodletting in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo.

There is plenty of evidence, however, that Western politicians use international trials as a way to dodge tough action. It was in large part because the United States and Europe couldn’t agree on an effective military response that they created a tribunal for the Balkans. The international court for Rwanda, too, was as much therapy for a shamed world as it was a meaningful response to that region’s continuing crisis. Time and again, the West has shown itself willing to spend millions on lawyers and judges after the fact but far less inclined to take risks to stop slaughters in progress.

If politicians can deploy pledges of support for trials to deflect pressure for intervention, the international justice campaign may actually be doing today’s victims a disservice. Already, the public debate has shifted from how the outside world should prevent further bloodletting in Sudan to how the crimes there should be prosecuted.

The LA Times ran a related article over the weekend

Lawmakers and diplomats said the U.S.-European dispute over the ICC, as well as Russian and Chinese objections to imposing sanctions on the government of Sudan, have created a bottleneck that could delay U.N. action for weeks — at a time when an estimated 320 people are dying in Darfur each day.

The US continues to push for any trials to be held in Africa.

The Telegraph reports that as many as 4 million people may be at risk of starvation.

In the introduction to its latest human rights report, the State Department reports

Despite the Government's repeated commitments to refrain from further violence in Darfur, the atrocities continued. Government and government-supported militias known as the Jinjaweed routinely attacked civilian villages. Typically, the Jinjaweed, often in concert with regular government forces, conducted attacks under cover of military aerial support. In September, after carefully reviewing a detailed study conducted by independent experts covering the experience of more than 1,100 refugees, Secretary of State Colin Powell concluded that genocide had been committed against the people of Darfur, saying that "Genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the Government of Sudan and Jinjaweed bear responsibility and that genocide may still be occurring."

Government forces in that region routinely killed, injured, and displaced civilians, and destroyed clinics and dwellings intentionally during offensive operations. There were confirmed reports that government-supported militia also intentionally attacked civilians, looted their possessions, and destroyed their villages.

The section on Sudan is available here.

Human Rights Watch released this statement

New eyewitness accounts from Darfur of rapes, torture and mutilation by government-backed militias underscore how the U.N. Security Council must take urgent action to protect civilians and punish the perpetrators, Human Rights Watch said today.

Last week, eyewitnesses in South Darfur told Human Rights Watch how government-backed Janjaweed militia attacked villages in the Labado area in December and January, and singled out young women and girls for rape. Male relatives who protested were beaten, stripped naked, tied to trees and forced to watch the rape of the women and girls. In some cases, the men were then branded with a hot knife as a mark of their humiliation.

And in semi-related news, nine Bangladeshi U.N. peacekeepers were killed in an ambush in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday.