Darfur Bleeds On
by The Guardian
December 30, 2006
Iraq again dominated the global news agenda in 2006, but the crisis in Darfur has raged on unabated and under-covered. The death toll since this half-forgotten conflict erupted in 2003 is put conservatively at 200,000, the bare statistic masking a terrible catalogue of African cruelty and suffering - and international impotence. More than 2 million people have been displaced. This year ends with violence spilling over into Chad and the Sudanese government still prevaricating over the conditions in which it will accept international peacekeepers. President Omar al-Bashir appeared to have backed down this week by acquiescing in a UN role to bolster the inadequate 7,000-strong African Union force. But he has played along with other initiatives only to block them. There are signs he is again deliberately muddying the waters. Crucially, he has failed to approve the far larger force needed to defend civilians from his own army and the Janjaweed militias.
Still, the partial change of heart in Khartoum suggests that recent threats of sanctions and a no-fly zone over Darfur - to stop government bombing raids - may have been effective. Investigations by the International Criminal Court are a reminder that war criminals can be brought to account. The pressure should be maintained until the deployment of a "hybrid" force that is mostly composed of African troops but has enough international backing to carry out the UN's "responsibility to protect". Mr Bashir can have no veto power.
Several factors have allowed Darfur's crisis to go unchecked. There are big logistical difficulties, for aid agencies as well as foreign troops, in operating in a remote area the size of France. Western governments have been reluctant to endanger the agreement that ended the long-running war in southern Sudan. The rebel groups which split over last May's Darfur peace deal have committed atrocities too. China protects Sudan at the UN. Above all the disastrous invasion of Iraq has discredited the idea of western intervention and fed beliefs in the Muslim world that imperialist powers are conspiring to take back sovereignty from former colonised peoples. This, as Kofi Annan, the outgoing UN secretary-general, said on International Human Rights Day, is "utterly false".
Darfur is too often used as a propaganda tool in a political slanging match in which supporters of Israel highlight what Washington has officially called "genocide" carried out by an Islamist regime and are in turn accused of hypocrisy by ignoring what Israel is doing to Palestinians. Mr Annan's strictures about learning the terrible lessons of Rwanda and Bosnia are lost in the white heat of this argument. So global "days of action" come and go, and Darfur bleeds on.
December 30, 2006
Iraq again dominated the global news agenda in 2006, but the crisis in Darfur has raged on unabated and under-covered. The death toll since this half-forgotten conflict erupted in 2003 is put conservatively at 200,000, the bare statistic masking a terrible catalogue of African cruelty and suffering - and international impotence. More than 2 million people have been displaced. This year ends with violence spilling over into Chad and the Sudanese government still prevaricating over the conditions in which it will accept international peacekeepers. President Omar al-Bashir appeared to have backed down this week by acquiescing in a UN role to bolster the inadequate 7,000-strong African Union force. But he has played along with other initiatives only to block them. There are signs he is again deliberately muddying the waters. Crucially, he has failed to approve the far larger force needed to defend civilians from his own army and the Janjaweed militias.
Still, the partial change of heart in Khartoum suggests that recent threats of sanctions and a no-fly zone over Darfur - to stop government bombing raids - may have been effective. Investigations by the International Criminal Court are a reminder that war criminals can be brought to account. The pressure should be maintained until the deployment of a "hybrid" force that is mostly composed of African troops but has enough international backing to carry out the UN's "responsibility to protect". Mr Bashir can have no veto power.
Several factors have allowed Darfur's crisis to go unchecked. There are big logistical difficulties, for aid agencies as well as foreign troops, in operating in a remote area the size of France. Western governments have been reluctant to endanger the agreement that ended the long-running war in southern Sudan. The rebel groups which split over last May's Darfur peace deal have committed atrocities too. China protects Sudan at the UN. Above all the disastrous invasion of Iraq has discredited the idea of western intervention and fed beliefs in the Muslim world that imperialist powers are conspiring to take back sovereignty from former colonised peoples. This, as Kofi Annan, the outgoing UN secretary-general, said on International Human Rights Day, is "utterly false".
Darfur is too often used as a propaganda tool in a political slanging match in which supporters of Israel highlight what Washington has officially called "genocide" carried out by an Islamist regime and are in turn accused of hypocrisy by ignoring what Israel is doing to Palestinians. Mr Annan's strictures about learning the terrible lessons of Rwanda and Bosnia are lost in the white heat of this argument. So global "days of action" come and go, and Darfur bleeds on.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
posted by Swallowtail at 12:38
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