Promises
Not Kept: 2000 Die
Every Day In Darfur
By Norm Dixon
16 August, 2004
Green
Left Weekly
Despite
their public resolve and care for the people
of western Sudan, Western governments are allowing more than 2000 hungry
and sick Darfuris to die every single day for want of urgently needed
food, medicines and shelter.
The British aid
agency Oxfam has revealed that Western governments have not kept their
promises to provide aid funds to the more than 1.3 million refugees
in Darfur and 200,000 in neighbouring Chad.
In March, the UN
issued an appeal for US$350 million to fund aid operations in Darfur.
So far, less that half that amount has arrived. Oxfams Darfur-based
spokesperson, Adrian Macintyre, told Germanys Deutsche Presse
Agentur on August 11: Funds were found overnight for humanitarian
operations in places like Iraq. When there is a political interest in
a place, there is always money available.
The UNs World
Food Program has also found that Western governments crocodile
tears for the Darfuris plight have not translated into adequate
assistance to save their lives. Of the $195 million it needs for relief
operations in Darfur this year, just $123 million had been provided
as of August 12.
Despite the huge
numbers of aircraft and vehicles that the West can mobilise to wage
deadly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, just a handful of Western aircraft
have been made available for relief operations in Sudan.
Omer Osman, secretary-general
of Sudans Red Crescent Society, told Reuters on August 9 that
lack of funds was worsening the disaster in Darfur.
Washingtons
total aid pledges for Darfur of $220 million pale into insignificance
compared to the $417 billion annual war budget that US President George
Bush signed into law on August 5. According to French foreign minister
Michel Barnier, writing in the August 13 British Financial Times, the
European Union has contributed more than $270 million in aid, about
twice as much as the US. Meanwhile, the Australian government
has pledged a miserable A$8 million, which is also a microscopic proportion
of it's $11 billion annual war budget.
The Wests
preference for sabre-rattling over genuine aid could have even more
catastrophic consequences if human rights campaigner Eric Reeves
estimates of the numbers of refugees in western Sudan are correct. In
an August 9 article posted on the Sudan Tribune website (<http://www.sudantribune.com>),
Reeves wrote that evidence continues to accumulate that perhaps
as many as 1 million people have not been included in the [UN] figures
for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees. The overall level
of destruction of African villages is extraordinary well over
50% by most estimates.
North-south deal
The Wests
hypocritically callous response to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur
starkly illustrates that for Washington and the EU, Darfuris are mere
pawns in the power play to get Western access to the oil profits flowing
out of southern Sudan.
Since coming to
office in 2001, the Bush administrations highest priority in Sudan
has been to secure a peace agreement with the southern-based Sudan Peoples
Liberation Movement (SPLM). The resulting stability in Sudan
would allow Washington to lift its existing sanctions imposed
in 1997 and thus allow US oil corporations to invest in Sudan.
A final resolution
of Sudan's civil war could greatly help the country's economy, lead
to the lifting of various sanctions against the country and encourage
investment by foreign companies (including oil companies), predicted
the US governments Energy Information Administration on August
12.
Washington and the
EU all but ignored the atrocities that have taken place in Darfur since
February 2003 until, in June and July, Khartoums brutal
treatment of the Darfuris threatened to derail the north-south peace
deal. It was only then that Washington and the EU begin to apply pressure
on Khartoum to end the attacks on Darfuri villagers by the government-backed
Arab tribal militia or janjaweed.
This culminated
in the adoption on July 30 of UN Security Council Resolution 1556. This
warned that unless Khartoum made progress in reining in the janjaweed
within 30 days, the Security Council would consider further actions,
including measures as provided for in Article 41 [of the UN Charter].
Article 41 excludes military action but allows economic and diplomatic
sanctions.
Since the passage
of the resolution, Sudan's Islamist military regime has manoeuvred to
test the limits of how little it can do and still win certification
from the UN Security Council that it has made progress in
settling the Darfur conflict.
On August 9, Sudans
cabinet ratified a Plan of Action agreed between Sudanese
foreign minister Mustafa Osman Ismail and UN special representative
Jan Pronk. Sudan agreed to identify parts of Darfur that can be
made safe and secure within 30 days, to cease immediately
offensive military operations in those areas, identify those
militia over which it has influence and instruct them to cease
their activities, allow the voluntary return of IDPs,
make an unequivocal declaration of commitment to start the Darfur
peace talks as soon as possible and request support from
the AU [African Union] and Arab League to assist in resolving the crisis.
Khartoum reassured
Pronk promised on
August 5 that, if this mild agreement is implemented, he was very
hopeful that the Security Council would come to the conclusion that
there was indeed substantial progress and that there would be no need
to consider further action. He told the August 12 Khartoum daily
Akhbar al Youm that the UN does not set 30 days as a deadline
but as a period which can be renewed and amended until all provisions
of resolution 1556 are implemented.
On August 7, the
AU announced that peace talks between Khartoum and the Darfur rebel
groups would resume in Nigeria on August 23. On August 8, an emergency
meeting of Arab League foreign ministers met in Cairo at the request
of Sudan and backed the UNs approach, calling for Khartoum to
be given more time to solve the crisis and rejected any threat
of forced military intervention in Sudan.
In reality, the
UN-Sudan agreement leaves the persecuted non-Arabic-speaking farmers
of Darfur firmly under the heel of Khartoums repressive forces.
Khartoum has promised to boost the number of Sudanese police in the
region to 12,000. However, there are widespread reports that many Sudanese
police are also janjaweed thugs. Human Rights Watch claims that janjaweed
fighters are being absorbed into the police force.
There also reports
of displaced people being forced to return to their ruined villages,
where janjaweed bandits continue to murder and rape.
The UN, Washington
and Khartoum agree that the Darfuri rebels, the Darfuri peoples
only defence against the janjaweeds rampages, must disarm and
gather in camps controlled by the janjaweed-infested Sudanese security
forces.
The UN Office for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs accused Khartoum on August
10 of launching helicopter gunship bombings and janjaweed
attacks in south Darfur that same day. The next day, Pronk absolved
Khartoum of any blame, telling Reuters: So far in all my talks
I am meeting a government that is seriously trying to keep the promises
made.
Meanwhile, Sudan
is sending mixed signals over its preparedness to allow a 2000-strong
AU peacekeeping force into Darfur. While Khartoum has agreed to allow
the deployment of 300 troops from Rwanda and Nigeria, due to begin arriving
on August 14, Sudans interior minister, Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein,
told a London Arabic newspaper that my government will not accept
any foreign military presence in Sudan..., be it African or Arab.
On August 9, however,
foreign minister Hussein said that Khartoum did not have any problem
with any number of observers or forces to protect them, as long
as Sudanese forces remain in charge of peacekeeping. The
AU has not yet formally requested that Sudan agree to a change in the
forces mandate.
US officials are
backing Pronks conciliatory approach. An August 5 Associated Press
report quoted US ambassador to the UN John Danforth as saying Sudan
needed to show by August 31 that it was making a good faith effort
to abide by resolution 1556. US Secretary of State Colin Powell was
quoted in the August 8 New York Times as saying: We have to calibrate
the pressure that we need to apply on the Sudanese government to make
sure we get the results we need, and we dont create a more difficult
situation for us and for the people of Darfur.
On August 9, Agence
France Presse reported that State Department spokesperson Adam Ereli
said the UN-Sudan plan of action was a good start, the announced
resumption of peace talks was an important development and
that wed all prefer for sanctions not to be necessary.
According to the
August 11 Kenyan East African Standard, US Senator Bill Frist, who has
been at the forefront of efforts to have Sudans repression in
Darfur labelled genocide, said on a visit to Nairobi that
the US government would not send soldiers to the region because
it does not consider military intervention as appropriate.
Washingtons
approach is in line with that recommended by Chester Crocker, former
assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Reagan administration.
Writing in the June 10 International Herald Tribune. Crocker urged the
Bush administration to address the immediate crisis in Darfur,
while aggressively nailing down the broader north-south peace agreement.
The Bush administration has achieved much in Sudan... It must not be
blown off course either by the manoeuvres of the north-south parties
or by those demanding a sudden shift toward an anti-Khartoum campaign
over Darfur.