Raise your hand if you bought a green “Save Darfur” magnetic ribbon for your car. What about a Save Darfur shirt or rubber bracelet? How many articles about the genocide in Darfur did you share in 2007 compared to how many you share today? Many US citizens were once poised to respond to the genocide in Darfur, but compassion fatigue set in and the many people who were once vocal about ending the genocide in Darfur have fallen silent.
Today the violence in Darfur continues, and the fighting has spread to other areas such as Blue Nile, South Kordofan, and the Nuba Mountains. The notorious Janjaweed continue to perpetuate violence in communities throughout Sudan—all on the orders of the central Sudanese government in Khartoum. The President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir has severely restricted humanitarian aid from reaching people in dire need of life-saving supplies; while other aid organizations have been expelled from Sudan all together. Most recently Human Rights Watch reported that mass rapes were committed during the fall of 2014. More than 200 women and girls were raped and tortured by the Sudanese army in the town of Tabit over a three day period. It is clear that the violence in Sudan continues to grow worse each day despite the lack of media attention.
If the current news coming out of Sudan isn’t enough, the numbers are staggering: more than 450,000 people have died and 2.8 million have been displaced from their homes since the violence began. Omar al-Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, yet he remains a free man due to the international community’s indifference.
The violence in Darfur and in other regions of Sudan can seem overwhelming, but there is something you can do. Darfur Women Action Group (DWAG) advocates for the people in Darfur and DWAG has a unique opportunity for you to make a difference. Join their Rapid Response Network and be on the forefront of change. As a Rapid Responder you will receive the most up to date information about the situation in Darfur; you will be included in monthly conference calls with anti-genocide activists and be well-positioned to hold community events and lobby Congress for change to the way the US handles situations of mass atrocities. Darfur Women Action Group launches this Rapid Response Network with urgency as the situation on the ground in Darfur continues to deteriorate. You have the power to become an advocate for change in Sudan.
JOIN OUR RAPID RESPONSE NETWORK AND BECOME A VOICE FOR THE PEOPLE OF DARFUR!
You may have heard about the genocide in Darfur, but what you may not know is that it still continues. Hundreds of thousands of women, men, and children have been brutally murdered, displaced, or stranded without any humanitarian aid. Rape and sexual violence remain prevalent and are systematically used to terrorize young girls and women. These massive human rights abuses are sponsored and committed by the government of Sudan, led by President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
Most of the world is unaware of what is happening in Darfur, however, some of those who are knowledgeable on the issue and are in position of power choose to turn a blind eye to the devastation and do nothing to stop it. Darfur Women Action Group (DWAG) is determined to both raise awareness about the horrific human rights abuses occurring daily in Darfur and change the way the international community addresses genocide, in general. An example – in October, 2014, over 200 young girls and women were gang raped in a village in Darfur by government forces over a period of several hours, yet few people either know or have responded to this horrifying atrocity. So few people speak out and demand action; we want to change that. However, we cannot do it alone, which is why we are asking you to join us as a Rapid Responder.
We are inviting individuals from all over the United States who want to be inspired and inspire others to make a difference in the lives of those who need it most. As a Rapid Responder, you will receive up-to-date information about the situation in Darfur, allowing you to educate yourself and those around you about the Darfur genocide. You can also post this information on social media to increase the scope of your influence. For example, you can post links to news articles on your Facebook wall or tweet special alerts using our hashtag #Respond2Darfur. Through social media attention, we can increase awareness and work towards ending this long-standing genocide.
With our assistance and resources, you can also:
• Organize movie screenings of survivors’ stories and see how genocide has devastated people’s lives and the region as a whole.
• Send letters or make appointments to speak to your elected representatives to express your concerns about the situation in Darfur.
• Participate in DWAG’s monthly conference calls to receive information on Darfur and upcoming events, as well as train to become an anti-genocide activist.
• Hand out DWAG’s educational materials to family, friends, classmates, co-workers, and anyone else who might be interested in learning about this genocide and helping the people of Darfur.
If you would like to participate in any of the aforementioned events, DWAG members will assist you every step of the way. We will provide materials, resources, and any additional assistance you may need. We are also available 24/7 to answer any questions you may have. We want to help you in every possible way so that together we can raise awareness to ultimately end the first genocide of the 21st century – the longest genocide in history.
Since the Holocaust, modern world leaders have failed to respond to genocide, when and where it occurs. Genocide is the ugliest form of humanity and we aim to change how the world reacts to it. Every action, big or small, makes a difference for the women, men, and children living in these horrific conditions. Thank you for choosing to help the millions of suffering Darfuris by taking action and joining the Rapid Response Network. Please e-mail Maggie Costello at outreach@darfurwomenaction.org with your name, city, and state to become a Rapid Responder for Darfur Women Action Group today.
The Armenian Genocide, the Khartoum Regime, and the National Prayer Breakfast | 4 February 2015
Eric Reeves
The “National Prayer Breakfast”—a sixty-two year tradition in Washington, held annually on the first Friday in February—will this year commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. Bringing together a wide range of guests from all fifty states and more than 100 countries, the event is hosted by the U.S. Congress and is designed to facilitate engagement between various social and religious groups. This year President Obama and the Dalai Lama are headline guests.
karti Khartoum’s Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Karti
But we must wonder about the appropriateness of one of those invited, Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Karti of the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime in Khartoum, Sudan. Any perusal of Karti’s “record of service” to this cabal of génocidaires should make all in attendance uneasy, particularly given the terrible genocide of a century ago that is being commemorated on this occasion. For Karti has long been a key member of the regime and done some of its dirtiest work, particularly as head of the Popular Defense Forces (PDF)—a militia organization notorious for its savage attacks on civilians (Karti was appointed in 1997). The PDF were particularly active in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, where the Nuba people were targeted for most of the 1990s in a brutal campaign of extermination. No student of the period characterizes the actions by Khartoum and its military and militia forces in the Nuba Mountains as anything other than genocide.
And Karti is presently the international face of a regime that remains committed to genocidal counter-insurgency in Darfur. Indeed, efforts to destroy the lives and livelihoods of the non-Arab or African tribal populations of Darfur have accelerated dramatically over the past three years, particularly in 2014, when some 500,000 people were newly displaced. The UN Panel of Experts on Darfur has recently reported that in the first five months of 2014, more than 3,300 villages were destroyed—overwhelmingly those of the region’s African tribal groups. As has long been the case, displacement and violence in Darfur correlate extremely highly. North Darfur is presently the region that is enduring the worst atrocities committed against civilians, including mass rape, indiscriminate bombardment of civilian targets, village destruction, land appropriation, and murder on a large scale. Again, the targets are inevitably the African tribal groups of the region perceived as supporting the longstanding rebellion; and Khartoum is using not only its regular Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), but the new Arab militia force known as the Rapid Response Forces (RSF), a part of the legacy of the PDF that Ali Karti once headed.
Currently some 3 million Darfuris are internally displaced or refugees in eastern Chad; many more are in critical need of relief efforts, efforts by distinguished international humanitarian organizations that Khartoum has, for more than a decade, systematically obstructed, harassed, expelled, and intimidated.
And yet Karti has attempted during his tenure as Foreign Minister—he was appointed in January 2010—to minimize the genocidal destruction in Darfur. In August 2011, speaking to a pending UN resolution—Karti’s office declared at his behest:
“The resolution is full of negative and obsolete references to be resolved within the framework of the tripartite mechanism, such as visa problems and allegations of aerial bombardment and the violation of human rights,” the foreign ministry said. (Agence France-Presse [Khartoum], 2 August 2011.
In fact, what Karti referred to as “allegations” had for years been substantiated by every human rights group working on Darfur (until they were all expelled, along with all independent journalists). These include Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Physicians for Human Rights. The civilian bombings were and have continued to be verified by the UN Panel of Experts on Darfur. To refer to confirmed atrocity crimes as mere “allegations” tells us that above all, Karti represents the NIF/NCP regime, not the people of Sudan. And there is nothing “obsolete” about the daily reports of atrocity crimes committed in Darfur.
In short, Khartoum continues to wage genocidal counter-insurgency war in Darfur, and efforts by Karti to minimize these realities make him deeply complicit.
The regime Karti represents to the world also continues its campaign of more than three years against the people of the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State. Relentless aerial and ground assaults in the two areas have left more than one million people displaced and without humanitarian resources; many are close to starvation because Khartoum has imposed an embargo on all relief efforts in areas controlled by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-North (SPLM/A-N). It is nothing less than a repeat of the genocidal campaign of the 1990s in the Nuba. And for this, too, Karti makes no apology—even when SAF combat aircraft deliberately strike at hospitals, as has been the case at the Mother of Mercy Hospital in Gidel and the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Frandala, South Kordofan. The latter, winner of the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize, has been attacked twice in the past year, despite apprising Khartoum of their location.
Because Karti is well-spoken, and has made some of the right noises for Western audiences, he is the point-person in Khartoum’s present charm offensive, particularly as it is addressed to the U.S. and the Obama administration. Karti has met with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and twice with current Secretary of State John Kerry. The effort, evidently encouraged by the Obama administration, is to achieve a détente between Washington and Khartoum. So lustful for counter-terrorism intelligence is the Obama administration that it is willing to overlook all the crimes this regime must answer for. Notably, for example, at a meeting on October 1, 2013,
Secretary of State John Kerry met his Sudanese counterpart [Karti] for talks on Monday on the South Sudan peace process and conflict-hit areas like Darfur, but did not raise U.S. concerns over the government’s crackdown on protesters, the State Department said. (Reuters [UN/New York], 1 October 2013)
This meeting followed immediately upon an extraordinarily bloody effort by the regime to put down a popular uprising over rapidly declining economic conditions. Amnesty International reported at the time that security personnel had been given “shoot to kill” orders in dealing with demonstrators, and many hundreds were killed or wounded in Khartoum, Omdurman, and other major towns in Sudan. Kerry knew this, but chose not to raise the issue with Karti. Karti for his part would have subsequently reported to the génocidaires in Khartoum that the U.S. was not inclined to press the regime on human rights abuses of the worst sort, this in exchange for putative counter-terrorism intelligence provided by Khartoum (which hosted Osama bin Laden from 1992 – 1996, the years during which al-Qaeda came to fruition).
Nor has the Obama administration pushed for a humanitarian corridor to be opened to the people of the Nuba or Blue Nile; indeed, the administration never speaks about these scenes of terrible human suffering and destruction. Thousands have already died from malnutrition and disease, and some 200,000 have fled to Ethiopia or South Sudan. People have fled their homes and villages to live in caves or ravines—desperate to escape the shrapnel-loaded barrel bombs that are a daily reality, particularly in the Nuba. For this Karti makes no apology; indeed, he and other civilians in the regime have long ceded decisions about war and peace to senior military officials. One of these men, Defense Minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, has been indicted by the international Criminal Court for massive crimes against humanity in Darfur; President and Field Marshal Omar al-Bashir has been indicted by the Court on multiple counts of crimes against humanity and genocide.
The failure of the Obama administration to push hard and publicly for a humanitarian corridor to provide food, medicine, and shelter to many hundreds of thousands of human beings gives us all too clear a picture of the cost of doing business with the regime Karti represents.
Karti has arrived in the U.S. for the National Prayer Breakfast with a visa issued by the Obama administration’s State Department. He is accompanied by a less conspicuous but no less savage regime survivalist, political secretary of the NIF/NCP Ibrahim Ghandour, who was also issued a visa by the State Department. Ghandour’s views are revealed in the leaked minutes of a secret August 31, 2014 meeting of the most senior military and security officials, where he reveals his support for (among other policies) a scorched-earth campaign in the Nuba Mountains, designed to “starve”—the word accurately translates the Arabic—the Nuba people by burning their fall sorghum crop, the staple grain of the region. His comments from the minutes are excerpted and annotated at http://wp.me/p45rOG-1AO . His main task is clearly to rig the “re-election” of President al-Bashir; and the lengths to which the regime is prepared to go to orchestrate a “legitimizing” electoral process are both extraordinary and extraordinarily comprehensive—and completely corrupt.
The Obama administration has already declared its willingness to stand by the regime despite its record of serial genocides, which includes the massive human destruction and displacement of the Nuer people during the “oil war” (1997 – 2002) in what was then Western Upper Nile, now Unity State. Karti’s PDF militias were active participants in the conflict at this point. Former special presidential envoy for Sudan, Princeton Lyman, declared in late 2011—after the campaigns of annihilation were well underway in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, and continuing in Darfur:
“We do not want to see the ouster of the [Khartoum] regime, nor regime change. We want to see the regime carrying out reform via constitutional democratic measures.” (Asharq Al-Awsat, 3 December 2011 | http://www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=3&id=27543
By “we” Lyman meant the Obama administration, which has expediently indulged this preposterous political scenario. This is the same administration that decided to “de-couple” Darfur from the issue of real strategic interest: counter-terrorism cooperation with Khartoum. The word “de-couple” was used by an unnamed senior State Department official, but was reported in the official transcript.
The Armenian genocide should be commemorated at a National Prayer Breakfast; the refusal to recognize this genocide—and the belated recognition by much of the world—is a failure to acknowledge the terrible suffering and destruction of the Armenian people a century ago—it remains a “stain on our soul.” But this is the same phrase that candidate Obama used to describe Darfur in 2007:
“When you see a genocide in Rwanda, Bosnia or in Darfur, that is a stain on all of us, a stain on our souls …. We can’t say ‘never again’ and then allow it to happen again, and as a president of the United States I don’t intend to abandon people or turn a blind eye to slaughter.” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEd583-fA8M#t=15 )
Obama’s attendance at this year’s National Prayer Breakfast, in the company of Khartoum’s Foreign Minister Ali Karti, signals precisely that he is “turning a blind eye” to realities in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile—that he has “abandoned” them to on the going slaughter in which Ali Karti is deeply complicit.
The international community is at present bearing witness—albeit with eyes largely averted and no willingness to act—to the disintegration of Darfur. This disintegration marks a new phase in the twelve years of catastrophically destructive conflict, with staggering numbers of civilians dying and displaced. Notorious Janjaweed leader Musa Hilal spoke for the Khartoum regime in August 2004, declaring as their joint ambition “changing the demography” of Darfur and “emptying it of African tribes.” To an extraordinary degree, the regime and its militia allies—primarily now the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—have achieved their goals.
Musa Hilal, the most notorious of the Janjaweedcommanders during the first phase of the Darfur genocide
That the international community has no contingency plans to halt the current disintegration is unforgivably callous; that Khartoum has demanded that the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UN DPKO) draw up withdrawal plans for the painfully inadequate UN/AfricanUnion Mission (UNAMID) in Darfur is ominous in the extreme; that Khartoum pays no price for its calculated chaos and destruction is the conspicuous reason millions of Darfuris are endangered.
Villages in Darfur, overwhelmingly those of African tribal groups, are again being destroyed by the thousands (photograph by Brian Steidle, 2005)
UNAMID’s current authorization runs through June 2015; even should the Mission be re-authorized, Khartoum will insist that it be substantially reduced in size and the scope of its mandate. There will be resistance, if largely on face-saving grounds, from the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and perhaps France, Britain, and the U.S. on the Security Council (the “P3“). But they must contend with a China that will steer its own course in maintaining relations with Khartoum: Beijing has too much invested in Sudan to ignore what will certainly be increasingly strident demands from the regime that there be reductions in force size, scope of operations, and the civilian protection mandate. Moreover, Putin’s veto-wielding Russia poses an extremely serious threat to re-authorization: there is no substantial Russian commercial investment in Sudan, only profits to be made from continuing arms sales. The number of Russian MiG-29s, Sukhoi-24s, MiG helicopter gunships, and tanks the regime has acquired over the years represents the very worst in the international arms trade. And Putin will certainly relish the opportunity to thwart any action—including re-authorization of UNAMID—that is pushed by the P3.
A Russian-built Sukhoi-24, one of the main aerial weapons against civilians deployed by the Khartoum regime
The upshot is that the current rapid deterioration in security will only accelerate. The consequences of this deterioration are chronicled daily by Radio Dabanga, but by virtually no other news source.
Acceleration in the genocidal process is unmistakably clear from any number of these reports. What follows is the first in a continuing series of compilations containing the most telling dispatches from Radio Dabanga and occasionally other sources. They cannot, of course, be fully reflective of all Darfur’s horrors, but there must be some present reckoning. Some of the dispatches I have commented on in italics; others stand alone as horrifying revelations of what the non-Arab or African people of Darfur are now enduring on a daily basis.
When the mass graves are excavated, when families and villages are finally able to assess their losses in lives and livelihoods, when the devastation of agricultural farm-life is revealed, when the “changed demography” of Darfur becomes undeniable to even the most hardened cynics, there will be no excuses of ignorance about the scale of the genocide. We know now, now, that Darfur and its people are being deliberately destroyed by a regime still animated by its racist and Islamist ideology.
The remains of a destroyed Darfur village, 2007 (photograph by Mia Farrow)
Although the need to survive at any cost has produced various pragmatic changes in its policies of destruction, radical Islam remains central to the project of the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime, as the insistence on maintaining a strategic relationship with Iran makes clear, along with support for various radical Islamic groups and jihadists. But survival matters most to these unsurpassably brutal men, and their efforts to ensure this are nowhere more consequential than in Darfur.
• Central Darfur’s Mukjar “horror movie after sunset,” Radio Dabanga, 31 January 2015 | Mukjar
Groups of the paramilitary Central Reserve Police (popularly known as Abu Tira) are terrorising the population of Mukjar, and the neighbouring camp for the displaced, in Central Darfur. Several residents of Mukjar told Dabanga on Friday that “for the past four days, the town turns into a horror movie after sunset.”
They related how large groups of Abu Tira gunmen arrived on Monday, and began raiding their homes, shops, or assaulting people on the streets. “They robbed and beat the people, and threaten to kill us under the pretext that we are supporting the rebel movements,” one of them said. “We have begged the UNAMID peacekeepers based in Mukjar to protect us, to no avail,” he added. The victims appealed to the Central Darfur state authorities to intervene, stop the abuses, and bring the assailants to trial.
Mukjar was formerly part of West Darfur before Khartoum contrived to create two artificial new Darfur states: “Central Darfur” and “East Darfur.” Among other things, this made it difficult to place just where various small towns are (or to use as easily the invaluable UN Darfur Field Atlas). But Mukjar is infamous for having been at the epicenter of the massacres of Fur men and boys in 2004, most notoriously Wadi Saleh. We know a considerable amount about these ethnically-targeted murders from reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. (See especially from Human Rights Watch: “Darfur Destroyed: Ethnic Cleansing by Government and Militia Forces in Western Sudan,” May 2004 Vol. 16, No. 6 [“Mass Executions of captured Fur men in Wadi Saleh,” page 21 ff., http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/sudan0504/]). Tellingly, the politically corrupted UN Commission of Inquiry (2004 – 2005) did not investigate the massacres at Wadi Saleh and elsewhere in the Mukjar area, despite being given precise locations of the mass graves—ER.
• Ten villages torched in Darfur’s Jebel Marra, Radio Dabanga, 26 January 2015 | Golo
Ten villages in the area west of Jebel Marra were reportedly destroyed by fire today. More than 200 families, who fled from Golo and the surrounding villages, have arrived at the Nierteti camps for the displaced. According to Mustafa Tambour, the spokesman for the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Abdel Wahid El Nur, government forces stationed in Golo started shelling the villages west of the Sur Reng rebel base, this morning. “The villages of Bardani, Takaro, Nouni, Tari, Tagana, Delgo, Tariya, Tero, Aradeiba, and Karma burned to the ground. “A number of people who fled the villages with everything they could take with them, were robbed by militiamen on their way to safer places,” the rebel spokesman said.
This is the face of genocide in Darfur, a decade ago; the reprise we are witnessing is all too similar
Tambour also reported that one of their reconnaissance units combing the area west of Sur Reng, found the body of Lt. Hanafi Hassan El Tileib, an administration officer of the paramilitary Border Guards stationed at El Geneina, capital of West Darfur. A sheikh of Nierteti North camp for the displaced informed Dabanga that more than 200 families have reached the Nierteti camps. “They told us that there are more people on their way to the camps, fleeing from the militia attacks on Golo and the surrounding villages,” he said, appealing to relief organisations to provide aid to the newly displaced.
It must be remarked that the level of detail provided by this invaluable source is truly extraordinary: village names, names of victims, of sheikhs and other camp leaders, and those responsible for many of the atrocity crimes are consistently reported in detail.
But the specific myriad incidents reported by Radio Dabanga have been confirmed in general terms by the improved UN Panel of Experts on Darfur in their newest report (23 January 2014); it notes in words that could have been written in 2004:
“a pattern of deliberate targeting of and/or indiscriminate attacks on civilians with actual or perceived allegiance to the armed opposition groups…” “The effects of this have resulted in 3,324 villages being destroyed in Darfur over the five-month period surveyed by the Darfur Regional Authority, from December 2013 to April 2014,” the report said. (Reuters [UN/New York], 23 January 2015)
“3,324 villages destroyed over the five month period survey”: this is staggering level of destruction, and although the UN Panel does not describe the ethnic patterns of destruction, we may be sure that—despite significant intra-Arab tribal fighting—the overwhelming majority of these villages were African. The violence in Darfur continues to be genocidal counter-insurgency, orchestrated by Khartoum—ER.
• Population “trapped” in Central Darfur’s Golo, Radio Dabanga, 31 January 2015 | Golo (Jebel Marra)
The Sudanese Air Force continued bombing the area of Golo, Jebel Marra, in Central [formerly West] Darfur, on Thursday. Many people fled to the town hospital and government buildings. Speaking to Dabanga, a resident of the Berdani district in the southern part of Golo, reported that the bombardments destroyed several houses in the neighbourhood. “Hundreds of people sought refuge in the town’s hospital, and the Golo locality offices,” he said. “We fear for our lives, also because members of the Rapid Support Forces and other militiamen are dominating Golo.
“We are trapped in the now overcrowded buildings, without food and water, and in constant fear of being attacked by militia forces, or bombed by an Antonov.” He appealed to the international community, and humanitarian organisations, to “intervene as soon as possible, and save the lives of those trapped in Golo.”
Golo and other areas in Jebel Marra have been under a humanitarian blockade that is now five years old. Recent military successes by Khartoum’s Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF have made continued control of the Jebel Marra stronghold doubtful. We may be sure that where the SAF and RSF prevail militarily, there will be a great deal more village destruction, more tens of thousands of people displaced, and horrific mortality that no one is recording or even estimating—ER.
• Militiamen attack cars, camp in North Darfur, Radio Dabanga, 30 January 2015 | Jebel Marra / ZamZam IDP camp
Militiamen robbed two vehicles in separate incidents in western Jebel Marra and North Darfur on Wednesday. All passengers were severely beaten, and six of them sustained serious injuries. The displaced living in Zamzam camp, near El Fasher, lost 200 cows to raiding militiamen the same day.
The Janjaweed have been re-cycled into Khartoum’s current militia force of choice, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)The RSF are better equipped, have heavier weapons, and more cohesive units than the Janjaweed—and are openly embraced by Khartoum
One of the passengers of an ambushed Nissan vehicle told Dabanga that militiamen on camels appeared on the road in Abu Hamra. The vehicle was on its way to Shadad camp for the displaced in Shangil Tobaya, North Darfur, carrying a group of people who had fled the ongoing fighting and bombardments in Sawani in East Jebel Marra. “The militiamen opened fire on our vehicle at about 3pm in Abu Hamra. They forced us out and beat us, including the driver. Then, they robbed us of all our properties. The vehicle was severely damaged by their shooting.” The wounded were brought to El Malam, which is in the area, for treatment.
In North Darfur too, militiamen robbed a rental vehicle which was on its way from El Fasher to Tawila. “Four government-backed militiamen on camels stopped our vehicle in Bawabat Sigili at gunpoint,” one of the victims explained. “They ordered all the passengers to come outside and lie on the ground, before they beat and whipped us.” Besides taking their money, mobile phones and other belongings they had with them, the militiamen also took the goods from the back of the vehicle, and took off.
Militiamen enter camp without a fight
Displaced people living in Zamzam camp, south of El Fasher, witnessed a large cattle theft by militiamen on Wednesday. The camp residents hid inside their homes, when men stormed the camp just after sunset. The robbers stole about 200 cows. A witness said that none of the government forces, stationed at six points in the camp, intervened.
The impotent UN/African Union “hybrid” mission in Darfur (UNAMID) has proved unwilling to confront those who are directly threatening civilians, even if before their very eyes
The growing number and violence of the assaults on camps for displaced persons represents perhaps the most dangerous development over the past two years; this trend shows all signs of accelerating. Moreover, there are reliable reports from the ground that Rapid Response Forces deployed to South Kordofan suffered severe losses at the hands of the battle-hardened Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N). They are reported to be returning to Darfur, where they will be looking for “soft targets,” such as displaced persons camps and villages.
It is worth remarking that ZamZam camp for displaced persons is approximately ten miles south of el-Fasher, capital of North Darfur and headquarters for the failed peacemaking force UNAMID—ER.
• RSF militia sows terror in Kalma camp, South Darfur, Radio Dabanga, 29 January 2015 | Kalma Camp
A group of paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) entered Kalma camp for the displaced in South Darfur on Wednesday. “RSF troops in an armoured vehicle positioned themselves strategically at the camp market, terrifying the more than 160,000 displaced living in the camp,” Hussein Abu Sharati, chairman of the Darfur Displaced and Refugees Association, told Dabanga. Abu Sharati stressed that the arrival of the militia troops at the camp is not a coincidence. “It is most probably a foreboding of a launch of widespread attacks by the RSF on the camps for the displaced in the area.” He urged the UN Security Council and the UNAMID peacekeepers to act, and “protect the displaced in the camps from renewed attacks by government forces.”
Displacement if accelerating at a terrifying pace: 400,000 in 2013, 500,000 in 2014—and likely more this year. The majority are women, children, and the elderly.
Khartoum has wanted to empty the displaced persons camps for a decade. They are undeniable evidence of massive displacement and violence, and provide the most conspicuous rationale for a continuing international humanitarian presence. The regime is now clearly willing to empty the camps forcibly and to deny humanitarian access to them in unprecedented fashion of humanitarian Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)-Belgium suspended its work in Sudan because of this relentless denial of access, including to two regions in Darfur—ER.
• Villagers fleeing attacks in North Darfur could die of thirst, Radio Dabanga, 28 January 2015 | Um Baru, North Darfur
A trader was killed in attacks launched by Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Um Baru locality, North Darfur, on Tuesday. Thousands of livestock were stolen. Villagers fled to the wilderness, where water sources are hard to find. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sudan a considerable increase of newly displaced in the locality is expected.
The independent MP for Um Baru and Karnoi localities, Mohamed Ahmed Minawi Digeish, reported that “RSF troops in dozens of heavily armed vehicles, mounted with various weapons, raided Um Mahareik, Khazan Ambar, Mandar, Donki Jibril, and Goz Tahir, on Tuesday morning.”
“Merchant Zakaria Idris Dugo was shot dead. The people told me that 1,214 camels and 1,700 sheep were stolen. Traders at the Um Maraheik market were robbed of about SDG2 million in total,” he reported. The MP said that the attack led to the flight of large numbers of villagers to “sandy areas, valleys and mountains”, and expressed his concern that “especially children, pregnant women, and elderly may die of thirst.”
Dying and despairing in Darfur
Nearly 21,000 new displaced verified in North Darfur
“More people are fleeing their homes as a result of ongoing fighting between government forces and armed movements in parts of Darfur,” OCHA in Sudan stated in its latest weekly bulletin, released today. The UN agency states that humanitarian organisations have assessed and verified more than 20,700 newly displaced in North Darfur who fled their homes since December 2014. “This figure,” the bulletin reads, “is expected to increase further as reports received from Um Baru locality in North Darfur indicate a considerable increase in the number of new IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons, RD) seeking shelter near the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) Um Baru base.”
This account is largely confirmed by an urgent UNICEF press release (see below). It has always been the case that mortality in Darfur is frequently the direct result of flight from violent assaults on villages and camps: dehydration can kill quickly in this arid land; exposure to the sometimes very cold night temperatures is also often fatal, especially to young children; and some—the elderly and infirm especially—cannot make what is often a dangerous and arduous trip to the nearest camp—ER.
• UNICEF Press Release, January 29, 2015
Sudan: UNICEF Emergency Supplies Flown in As Crisis Worsens in Darfur
Khartoum — UNICEF flew in today emergency supplies in response to the growing influx of displaced persons into Um Baru locality, north east of the State capital, El Fasher, in North Darfur. Over the last two weeks some 4,000 additional people have arrived to the locality, most of them are women and children. Their number continues to increase daily. “The deepening humanitarian crisis in Darfur is worrying,” said Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF Representative in Sudan. “Children have no responsibility in any of the conflict, but are at risk of having both their present and future jeopardized.”
We will certainly see more such reports in the coming months and beyond. Last year 500,000 people were newly displaced in Darfur(http://wp.me/p45rOG-1zc), and this year promises to be worse (this continues a trend that began in 2012; in 2013 more than 400,000 people were newly displaced—see http://wp.me/p45rOG-12V).
At the same time aerial attacks on civilian targets continue with undiminished savagery—ER:
The mainstay of Khartoum’s war of aerial terror is the Russian-built Antonov cargo plane, from which crude, shrapnel-loaded barrels bombs are simply pushed out the cargo bay with no siting mechanism, and at very high altitudes (to avoid ground fire). They have no militarily useful precision, but are potent weapons of civilian terror and destruction.
• Golo burns as air raids on Darfur’s Jebel Marra continue, Radio Dabanga, 27 January 2015 | Jebel Marra
A number of houses and farmlands near Golo, west of Jebel Marra, Central Darfur, were torched this morning. In Tawila locality, North Darfur, elements of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) removed the engines of three water wells on Monday. Speaking to Dabanga, villagers who fled from Golo said that an Antonov of the Sudanese Air Force began bombing the area early this morning. No casualties were reported, but the explosions started fires that burned a number of houses in Dorsa village, and several farms in the area of Golo. A camp sheikh at Nierteti North camp said that people displaced by the air raids and attacks by government forces on Golo and the surrounding villages on Sunday, continue to arrive at the Nierteti camps.
He reported that a girl from Golo, Asraa Ibrahim, and Ibrahim Daldoul from Guldo, were injured during heavy shelling of the area by militia forces on Monday. “They were transferred to a hospital in Zalingei for treatment.”
“Crime against humanity”
In Tawila locality, popularly known as East Jebel Marra, RSF troops removed the main engines of the water wells in the area of Nemra, Kira, and Dady. “They loaded the engines on their vehicles, and left,” several residents of the area told Dabanga. They called the action a “crime against humanity,” saying that “the government intends to displace the entire population of Jebel Marra.”
Lines for water—when it is available—can seem interminable; often there is simply not enough water for all in concentrated camp areas.
Some of the actions by the RSF are clearly designed to making living impossible in certain areas; eastern Jebel Marra has been a particular target. One of the surest ways to displace people is to poison, destroy, or remove the means for supplying water. Displacement is also ensured by Khartoum’s regular armed forces and their relentless bombing of a great many civilian locations in Darfur, but most intensely in Jebel Marra. Every single aerial attack is a direct violation of the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 1591 (March 2005—ten years ago) concerning military flights by Khartoum within Darfur. There have been many, many hundreds of such violations (see www.sudanbombing.org). Khartoum continues with impunity, despite multiple reports from the various UN Panels of Experts on Darfur tasked with monitoring the banning of military flights—ER.
• Boy dies as Sudanese MiG strafes Jebel Marra farms, Radio Dabanga, 26 January 2015 | East Jebel Marra
A boy was killed in an air raid on farmlands near Khazan Tunjur in East Jebel Marra today. About 56 families from the area, who arrived at the Kabkabiya camps in North Darfur, are in dire need of aid. A farmer told Dabanga from Khazan Tunjur that Abdelgader Omar (8) from Goz Dor village was killed, when a bomb dropped by a MiG fighter jet of the Sudanese Air Force exploded near to him. He and other sources reported that at the same time, an Antonov bombarded the area south and west of Deribat. Some 56 families who fled attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces on their villages in East Jebel Marra, reached the camps for the displaced near Kabkabiya town, last week. A sheikh of El Salam camp A in Kabkabiya told Dabanga that the camp coordinators submitted a list with the names of the newly displaced to representatives of the UN World Food Programme, the Sudanese Humanitarian Affairs Commission, and the Sudanese Red Crescent, but “up to now, no relief has been provided.”
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Other dispatches from Radio Dabanga over the past week suggesting just how critical the security and humanitarian situation has become in all regions of Darfur. This list is far from comprehensive:
The Darfur region in the west of Sudan was once a focus of extraordinary American civil society activism; there was also once regular international news and human rights reporting from Darfur. None of this is true now. Moreover, despite the morally high-minded rhetoric from candidate and President Obama, proclaiming Darfur to be the site of “genocide” and a “stain on our souls,” almost none of this rhetoric informs his administration’s Sudan policies. Indeed, a senior State Department official proclaimed on the record (November 2010) that the U.S. had “de-coupled” Darfur from the bilateral issues between Washington and Khartoum that matter most: the regime’s anger at its continuing presence on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and Washington’s lust for the putatively valuable counter-terrorism intelligence can Khartoum provide: it is an ongoing and cynical quid pro quonegotiation. Troublingly, this policy originates not with the State Department but rather with the various agencies that make up the U.S. “intelligence community” (a powerful oxymoron if one credits various reports of in-house fighting between the various agencies).
The regime in Khartoum, always quick to exploit weaknesses or hesitation, saw this “de-coupling” as a signal from the Obama administration that they could “finish business” in Darfur without de-railing negotiations on issues of terrorism or indeed affecting any other feature of U.S policy in greater Sudan. And now, with much heightened military actions, completion of the genocide that began in 2003 is well underway. In fact, Darfur may present us with the first large-scale genocide in modern history that has a “sequel”; this “sequel,” however, relies on essentially the same plot, the same tools, the same goals, and the same victims as the “original”: non-Arab/African farmers, almost 3 million of whom have been driven from their homes by the Khartoum-orchestrated violence of the past decade, including half a million who are refugees in eastern Chad or who haven’t made it to a camp.
The main difference is Khartoum’s replacement of the notorious Janjaweed, Arab militia forces that worked in concert with Khartoum in the early years of the genocide, but then increasingly on a “free-lance” basis, often fighting among themselves.Khartoum has reconstituted these brutal militia forces as the Rapid Response Forces (RSF), and in the main they are same men, though augmented by recruits from Chad, Niger, and other countries to the west of Sudan. What is different, however, is as important as the similarity in their “services rendered” to the regime.
The RSF are much more heavily armed than the Janjaweed, with weapons considerably more powerful and lethal. Khartoum intends for the RSF to finish the job in Darfur, and no expense will be spared in ensuring that they have superior firepower in fighting the Darfuri rebels. The RSF are more cohesive than the Janjaweed ever were, and represent a critical component of the Khartoum regime’s military power. This is made clear at various moments in the minutes recording a secret meeting on August 31, 2014, involving the top military and security officials of the regime (the minutes were leaked to me by a Sudanese source of unqualified honesty and integrity, and have been judged almost universally as authentic).
The RSF are the shock troops for the regular forces — Khartoum’s Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) — who are battle-weary, with some mid-level officers close to deserting. What is particularly dismaying to some professional soldiers in the SAF is that this time around the men in Khartoum haven’t even bothered to deny their connection to these paramilitary units; rather, the regime has openly welcomed the RSF at all stages of recruitment, training, and deployment. No matter that many are driven solely by the desire for booty and have no true military training, and know nothing about international law governing the conduct of war.
With the RSF — more potent, more cohesive, and more tightly bound to the regime — Khartoum’s génocidaires have a weapon that is providing a decisive military edge. The evidence of the past few months has repeatedly links the RSF to large-scale atrocity crimes throughout Darfur; this information comes to us by way of Darfuris speaking to Radio Dabanga, far and away our best and most detailed source of information from the ground in Darfur. The bloated, ineffective UN/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) has failed dismally in fulfilling its civilian protection mandate, and has done little to provide security. As a consequence more than 2 million Darfuris have been newly displaced — most by violence — since UNAMID assumed its mandate in January 2008. Nor does UNAMID gather evidence about the endless bombing attacks on civilian targets, the epidemic of rape that defines life for many hundreds of thousands of Darfuri girls and women, or the increasingly numerous and violent military assaults on camps and villages near camps. Large new swathes of African agricultural land have recently been lost to the RSF and other opportunistic Arab militia.
In short, RSF violence is re-enacting the early years of the genocide, when many thousands of villages were burned or destroyed. Moreover, Khartoum is again coordinating militarily (now openly) with the RSF in attacks, often using aerial assets that range from the highly advanced Russian-built MiG-29 to helicopter gunships to the clumsily retrofitted cargo planes (also Russian-made) called Antonovs. Crude, shrapnel-loaded barrel bombs are simply pushed out the cargo bay from high altitudes, ensuring that they have no militarily useful accuracy but an immensely destructive effective on civilians. All such flights violate UN Security CouncilResolution 1591 (March 2005).
The reports we have been getting from Radio Dabanga for the past couple of months reveal a large convergence of RSF elements in North Darfur, particular in the area of eastern Jebel Marra and regions immediately to the east of the massif (and to the west of the capital of North Darfur, el-Fasher). Many scores of villages have been burned or destroyed, hundreds of people killed, and hundreds of women and girls raped. These are conservative figures; if we had a fully effective and mobile professional reporting force on the ground, we might discover that these figures drastically understate the destruction and violence.
At the same time, in a year during which almost half a million Darfuris were newly displaced, the camps to which they flee have become increasingly limited in services they are able to provide (e.g., young children in North Darfur are experiencing acute malnutrition at three times the emergency threshold). International nongovernmental humanitarian organizations, and even the UN itself, are being roughly muscled by Khartoum through its security services and the absurdly named Humanitarian Aid Commission. There have been many expulsions of organizations and individuals over the years, and this past year was especially depleting. In addition to other UN officials,Ali Ala’atari of Jordan — head of the UN’s humanitarian mission in Sudan — was expelled on preposterous charges in late December 2014. Ominously, UNAMID’s current authorization runs only through June 30, 2015; it is unlikely to be renewed because of the threat of a Russian or Chinese veto. It will certainly be gutted in any event.
“Awakening” to the Continuing Nightmare of the Darfur Genocide
Eric Reeves, 17 December 2014
The Obama administration seems finally to have found its voice again in speaking about ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. More than a decade after rebellion and conflict began, some three million people are internally displaced or refugees in neighboring Chad. More than 800,000 have been displaced in the past two years; some 2 million human beings have been newly displaced since the disastrously conceived and badly failing UN/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) took up its civilian protection mandate in January 2008. The death toll from the direct and indirect consequences of violence now exceeds 500,000—and mortality looks to be poised to rise steeply given reduced humanitarian capacity.
After seven years of distinguishing itself only by being the largest, most expensive, and least effective peacekeeping operation in UN history, UNAMID seems to be close to an ignominious demise. Khartoum recently demanded that the UN make plans to pull UNAMID out of Darfur in the near term—probably a period defined by the expiration of the current UN Security Council authorization (through June 2015). Not coincidentally, this demand comes after UNAMID’s botched investigation and public report on the mass sexual assault against the women and girls of Tabit, North Darfur. Tabit is a village of some 7,000 people (estimates vary, especially since so many have fled in the wake of the assault, fearing retribution by Khartoum for having been the highly publicized victims of the regime’s brutality). From October 31 – November 1 more than 200 girls and women were raped, typically gang-raped—a reality confirmed by a great many eyewitnesses and Darfuri sources. Using material from Radio Dabanga, the Times of Australia reports:
The Sudanese soldiers entered the village in Darfur about 8pm. Systematically, they went from house to house, beating the men and raping the women and girls. “They raped 210 women and their daughters,” said an elder in the village of Tabit, northern Darfur. “We counted them all.” He said that “more than 500” soldiers came into the village of about 7,000 inhabitants after a soldier was reported missing.
“They entered every house, sometimes 10 together. The only ones who were not raped were those who could pay money.” The ordeal went on through the night. “There was nobody there to help,” he said. In another part of the village a mother of three sobbed and screamed as she described how four soldiers burst into her house, assaulted her husband and turned on her young daughters. (15 December 2014)
UNAMID’s anodyne and deeply disingenuous public report on its “investigation” at Tabit concluded:
None of those interviewed confirmed that any incident of rape took place in Tabit on the day of that media report. The team neither found any evidence nor received any information regarding the media allegations during the period in question. (UNAMID report on its investigation of reports from Tabit, North Darfur, 10 November 2014; notably, the report can’t easily be found on the UNAMID website, but may be accessed here)
But the “internal” report on the investigation—leaked to me by a highly reliable source and also briefly reported on by Agence France-Presse—made clear that there was in fact no meaningful investigation, merely questions asked of people who were clearly terrified of speaking the truth (For a detailed time-line of the events and investigation at Tabit, see my account of 10 November 2014). Each investigator was accompanied by two or three security or military personnel. Interviewees were photographed by security officials. One paragraph in particular gives a sense of how deeply misleading the public UNAMID report is:
Beside access issue, significant challenges were faced on the ground during verification exercise. The Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) personnel were present in sizable numbers – in uniform and civil clothing – in Tabit. They followed the sub-teams during the verification exercise. Some of the sub-teams reported the interviews being captured on recording devices (mobile phone) by the SAF members. The behavior and responses of interviewees indicated an environment of fear and intimidation. Some of the sub-teams had to ask the military personnel to stop following them and also asked them to allow the conduction of interviews in some privacy. (UN/AU Tabit Integrated Field Mission, November 11, 2014; internal document received by email, 20 November 2014. Posted at | http://wp.me/s45rOG-5903 )
Here we should also consider the broader issue of UNAMID’s credibility. The Mission has been authoritatively reported, by a wide range of sources—including the former spokeswoman for the Mission—to have withheld and distorted critical information, and on most occasion simply hasn’t bothered to investigate or report at all, even when it has received real-time reports of significant and accessible atrocity crimes. An egregious case was reported by Reuters in September 2010, detailing UNAMID’s cowardly, finally despicable response to the massacre at Tabarat, North Darfur (see http://wp.me/p45rOG-Gi ).
In understanding what occurred at Tabit, we would do much better to look to another investigation, unimpeded by Khartoum’s military or security forces:
A delegation of five members of the Coordination Committee of Refugees and Displaced Persons in Darfur had also visited the village: “We just returned from Tabit on Friday [November 7] with a delegation, after two days of investigation. There we met 60 women and girls, we looked into their eyes while they told us they were raped by soldiers from 8 pm [on Friday, October 31] until 5:00am [on Saturday, November 1]. (Radio Dabanga [Tabit] 11 November 2014; full text of this crucial dispatch appears at | https://www.radiodabanga.org/node/83429 )
The Khartoum regime, however, took UNAMID’s public report as exoneration, even as it was clear to all who read the internal report that that the investigation had been worthless. The Security Council and others have thus demanded a full and authoritative investigation, but it is now certainly too late: Tabit has been largely deserted, especially by women and girls. Finding the victims of the brutal gang-rapes would be exceedingly difficult, although human rights investigators continue to seek direct, person-to-person interviews. Moreover, Khartoum has adamantly refused to allow any further investigation (Sudan Tribune, 17 November 2014). Such outrageous defiance is part of what lies behind the decision by International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to “hibernate” the UN Security Council-mandated investigation of atrocity crimes in Darfur:
“Given this council’s lack of foresight on what should happen in Darfur, I am left with no choice but to hibernate investigative activities in Darfur as I shift resources to other urgent cases,” said Bensouda in a briefing to the UN Security Council (UNSC) on 13 December. (Sudan Tribune, 14 December 2014)
It must be said as well that even the raping of more than 200 girls and women in Tabit can give us only a partial sense of the real scale of sexual violence in Darfur and the challenges Bensouda faces in securing justice in a land where impunity reins for all who serve the regime. Over the past decade many tens of thousands of rapes, chiefly gang-rapes by Arab militia forces, have occurred (see lengthy overview of what we know at | http://wp.me/p45rOG-Kw ).
Life and Death in Darfur
Malnutrition has skyrocketed and other humanitarian indicators have grown increasingly ominous for many months. There are water shortages at many camps as water tables drop perilously with such unprecedented human concentrations. Primary medical care and medicines are simply not available in many places, and Radio Dabanga regularly reports on significant mortality from disease among children and the elderly. Children under five, the most vulnerable population, have also been victimized by the UN’s refusal to release critical malnutrition data, particularly the most telling measure: Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM). I have written angrily for years about the refusal to provide critical malnutrition data, and perhaps that anger generated sufficient pressure that an internal UNICEF document was leaked to Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, who posted the entire report on his New York Times blog site ( http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/malnutrition-crisis-in-sudan/?_r=0 ). Among the highlights in the grim, and still confidential, report on malnutrition are specific figures (note: humanitarians generally consider the “emergency” or “crisis” level for GAM, among children under five who live in a conflict zone, to be 10 percent):
North Darfur: 28 percent acute malnutrition among children
South Darfur: 18 percent acute malnutrition among children
East Darfur: 15 percent acute malnutrition among children
South Darfur: 13 percent acute malnutrition among children
A second set of statistics, measuring chronic malnutrition—wasting or “stunting”—is equally terrifying and gives a sense of how long food shortages have been defining the lives of children:
Central Darfur: 45 percent
East Darfur: 40 percent
West Darfur: 35 percent
North Darfur: 35 percent
South Darfur: 26 percent
The report indicates that the World Health Organization cutoff point for “high” prevalence of chronic malnutrition is 30 percent, and for “very high” prevalence is greater than 40 percent. To put this in perspective, the percentage of under-fives who are moderately or severely wasted/malnourished in Sudan is so great that it places fourth from the bottom among the world’s ten countries with the highest levels of malnutrition (see my full account of the UNICEF report at | http://wp.me/p45rOG-1pL ).
Violence has been accelerating in Darfur for three years now, and is reaching a ghastly crescendo. Armed attacks on camps for displaced persons are commonplace, and the goal is clear: empty the camps and remove the rationale for a continued international humanitarian presence, something Khartoum has been pushing for over four years. This “mechanism” was referred to tersely by First Vice President (and Major General) Bakri Hassan Saleh at a meeting of the regime’s most senior military and security officials on August 31, 2014 (the minutes of this extraordinary meeting were leaked to me by a Sudanese of unimpeachable honesty and integrity, and have been judged, virtually unanimously, to be authentic by Arabic speakers familiar with the regime as well as those who study Sudan). Bakri’s order?
“Support the mechanism intended to disperse or empty the IDP camps.”
The increasing violence and brutality of assaults on camps as well as rural areas by the new Janjaweed—known as the “Rapid Response Forces” (RSF)—have been more frequent, more violent, more destructive. The RSF have also been deployed by Khartoum to do the regime’s genocidal bidding in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states in the southern part of Sudan.
“Slumbering”?
But I began by noting that the Obama administration seems finally to have found its voice again in speaking about Darfur. This may be true, but only with significant qualification. There has been no commitment to help provide security, even as UNAMID has struggled mightily for lack of the kinds of equipment only militarily advanced countries such as the U.S. could provide—particularly helicopters. Condemnation of the relentless bombing of civilians and civilian targets has been desultory at best. There has been no sustained outrage over the epidemic of sexual violence, or the immensely consequential and dangerous appropriation of non-Arab farmland and farms by Arab groups, typically heavily armed.
Peace cannot be made if such vast land theft is not reversed, and to date neither the U.S. nor the Europeans have made significant diplomatic commitment to resolving this explosive issue. At the same time, there has been no effective pressure on Khartoum to grant the promised freedom of movement for UNAMID and unhindered access for humanitarians.
Indeed, much U.S. diplomacy has been counter-productive. Former U.S. special envoy for Sudan Scott Gration proved a disastrously incompetent diplomat, and failed fundamentally to understand the Khartoum regime and what is was capable of. Gration is the major reason that the ill-conceived and completely unsupported Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD) remains the only basis for negotiating a just and lasting peace, much to Khartoum’s satisfaction, since the regime is well aware the DDPD has no support within Darfuri civil society or the main rebel groups.
Not surprisingly, during Gration’s tenure, a senior State Department official declared (as recorded in a State Department transcript) that Darfur was to be considered “de-coupled” from the major strategic issue between Khartoum and Washington: terrorism and counter-terrorism intelligence.
Here it is worth remembering that Senator, candidate, and President Obama repeatedly referred to Darfur as the site of “genocide,” and declared in one particularly unctuous moment:
The United States has a moral obligation anytime you see humanitarian catastrophes… When you see a genocide in Rwanda, Bosnia or in Darfur, that is a stain on all of us, a stain on our souls …. We can’t say “never again” and then allow it to happen again, and as a president of the United States I don’t intend to abandon people or turn a blind eye to slaughter. (Video recording of the statement available at | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEd583-fA8M#t=15).
The words are exceedingly difficult to square with Obama’s Sudan policies in the face of what he has described as genocide—in the Senate, as a candidate for President, and as an elected President. And there certainly can be no justification for “de-coupling” in any way Darfur’s agony from our policy priorities in dealing with the serial génocidaires in Khartoum. Whatever words we use, there can be no disputing the vast, chaotic violence that engulfs all of Darfur, putting millions of lives at risk. One might think this enough.
But now we are to believe that the U.S. is (once again?) engaged. Associated Press reports (12 December 2014) that speaking at the UN, a U.S. deputy ambassador, David Pressman, declared:
“We must collectively and urgently wake from our slumber,” a U.S. deputy ambassador, David Pressman, told the council.
But “slumber” seems a particularly inappropriate word choice, given all that Pressman and others in the Obama administration (and officials in the Bush administration) have been well aware of since the beginning of fighting in early 2003. “Slumber” implies an unconscious state; what Pressman is really referring to is a sustained failure of attention—a refusal to respond meaningfully to Darfur’s all too conspicuous human suffering and destruction. And this failure, this refusal, has taken various forms: silence in the main, but also disingenuous statements, expedient policy decisions, and outright mendacity.
No, it is not that the U.S. has been “slumbering”; rather, Darfur provides yet another example of the continuing priority given to certain lives and not others in U.S. foreign policy. Tragically for Darfuris, they have nothing going for them other than their humanity, nothing the might increase their international profile or the “value” of their lives. The region sits remotely and largely inaccessibly in the very middle of the African continent; it has no valuable resources underground (with the possible exception of the Jebel Amer gold mining area); and the people are both black and Muslim; they harbor no terrorists nor can they help in the “global war on terrorism.”
All this militates against the possibility that Darfuri lives will be seen as valuable in the way that European, or Arabic, or Asian lives are. Khartoum is well aware of all this, and has made the problem more acute by denying all access to independent journalists and human rights reporters. And again, as if to remind the world of its attitude toward reporting on Darfur, the regime ordered UNAMID to close it human rights office in Khartoum. The regime has made it possible for the international community to treat Darfur as a “black box,” emanating no information, when in fact there is significant news flowing through the extraordinary Radio Dabanga, Sudan Tribune, and the occasional human rights report—all using sources inside Darfur.
So girls and women will continue to be raped despite Pressman’s declared “awakening”; the bombs will continue to fall on civilians and civilian targets in eastern Jebel Marra and elsewhere; land appropriations become more permanent by the day, threatening the chances of any meaningful peace agreement. Humanitarian conditions will continue to deteriorate, with corresponding increases in morbidity and mortality.
And when UNAMID is forced to withdraw, this will inevitably compel the withdrawal of international humanitarian organizations that have persisted in their work despite intolerable insecurity and the UN’s refusal to allow them to speak about what they know of the horrors of Darfur. Pressman and others, to the extent they believe that they are awakening from a “slumber,” must confront the all-too-real nightmare that is daily life for the people of Darfur.
[Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College, has published extensively on Sudan, nationally and internationally, for the past fifteen years. He is author of Compromising with Evil: An archival history of greater Sudan, 2007 – 2012 (September 2012)]
Displacement if accelerating at a terrifying pace: 400,000 in 2013, 500,000 in 2014—and likely more this year. The majority are women, children, and the elderly.
Dying and despairing in Darfur
