Acknowledgments
I would like to express my appreciation to Sean Woo, Legislative Aide for Foreign Affairs to Senator Sam Brownback, for his time in discussing Darfur and relaying his own experiences in traveling with the Senator to the refugee camps and villages in Summer 2004. I would like to thank Jerry Fowler, Staff Director, Committee on Conscience, at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for his time in discussing Darfur and the international response to the genocide-emergency there. I would also like to thank Keith Younger, a fellow member of the University of Kansas Summer 2004 African Institute, for providing me with his advocate paper, "Looming Disaster: A Look at Darfur." It is because of the advocacy and passion of people like Keith that the victims of genocide, in Darfur, have reached the attention of Washington, and caused Congress and the State Department to act.
"They're killing us! They're killing us!" was the cry heard from desperate Sudanese as Senator Brownback, his legislative aide, Sean Woo, and others left one village in the Darfur region of western Sudan several weeks ago. In response to this cry for help and the overwhelming evidence from international aid organizations, the U.S. State Department, and the United Nations, the United States Congress, as its last act before the summer recess, responded by unanimously passing House Concurrent Resolution 467 (the Senate concurring) by "declaring that the atrocities unfolding in Darfur, Sudan, are genocide."
This monumental step, taken after months of focus on the horrors of the immense humanitarian crisis in Darfur, is the first time that the United States Congress has taken such an action, but what remains unclear is what exactly this means in terms of concrete actions on the ground in the Sudan. The Congressional Resolution, like Resolution 1556 (2004) adopted by the United Nations Security Council on 30 July 2004, calls on the Sudanese government to stop the atrocities in Darfur and to protect its own citizens. Given that the United Nations, the U.S. government, and other international observers believe the government in Khartoum is complicit in the bombing of villages and arming and encouraging of Arab militias (referred to as the janjaweed) to carry on a systematic pattern of ethnic cleansing among the predominately black Sudanese in the Darfur region by the murder, rape, and torture of its own citizens while burning their crops and villages, it seems unlikely that the government will effectively comply. As of 4 August, 2004, the response of the government of Sudan to the UN Resolution was defiance - rallying 100,000 protestors in the streets of Khartoum against outside interference from "the West" in the internal affairs of Sudan. General Mohamed Beshir Suleiman, a spokesman for the Sudanese armed forces, said of the UN Resolution, "[t]he Sudanese army is now prepared to confront the enemies of the Sudan on land, sea and air...The door of the jihad is still open and if it has been closed in the south it will be opened in Darfur."
The situation in the Darfur region, an area the geographic size of France, and the effectiveness of any international response must be considered within the context of 1) the historic relationship between successive Sudanese governments and the West over issues of extensive humanitarian abuses in the Sudan, 2) the willingness of the West, and the United State in particular, to directly intervene with peacekeeping troops in Africa, 3) the complex issues of "genocide" and the response of the international community, and 4) international laws that are in place, mainly through the mechanisms of the United Nations, to address humanitarian issues within member-states.
At all times it is vital to keep in mind that the U.S. interests in this region, and its historic relationship to Africa in general, are not the same as the members of the European Union-most particularly Britain and France, also permanent members of the Security Council. Oil concessions in southern Sudan, particularly for the French and especially the Chinese, are a critical part of any political equation in addressing the current crisis in Sudan. Religion, as both a rhetorical tool and a call to rally the faithful, Islamic and Christian alike, is the fuse that ignites not only the Sudan but its Arab neighbors to the north and the Islamic faithful throughout the region. In addition, the entire political dynamic must be considered within the context of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the ongoing tensions between Israel and Palestine, and the fact that exactly ten years ago, the United Nations, pressured by the United States, did nothing to prevent the genocide in Rwanda. If the same diplomatic actions had been applied to Rwanda as are in evidence for Darfur, the genocide would have had the exact same outcome, given that over 800,000 were killed within 100 days, and the current genocide has been ongoing for over a year . While this does not take into account the UN peacekeeping force on the ground in Rwanda, which was withdrawn mainly at the insistence of the United States, it does expose one of the obvious weaknesses of diplomatic solutions in a humanitarian crisis-while the international community attempts to ascertain the "facts" and find proof of "genocide"-the mounting, bloated bodies, mutilations, rapes, tortures, disease, and starvation are stark daily reminders of the costs of delay.
To consider the relationship between successive governments in Sudan and the West over humanitarian issues is to almost immediately be drawn back into ancient times. Long before Sudan's 1 January, 1956 independence, the late nineteenth century rise of the Mahdi, Gordon's futile death and Britain's revenge; before the influence of Islam and Arab slave trading, back, in fact, to the Old Testament and what is seen by the Christian West as the curse of Sudan-the Lord damning the land and its occupants to be without hope and without future.
"Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia:
That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying 'Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled'"
Isaiah 18
While this may seem like an odd place to start, there is an extent to which the Sudan, and in particular its western region of Darfur, has fulfilled Isaiah's prophecy of woe, especially in the past thirty years. The words of Isaiah may also exemplify the West's diffident, relatively simplistic, and generally uninformed relationship with the entire African continent. This is particularly true in Sudan, where civil wars, over three decades, have continually been caste by Western governments, and the Western media, in terms of the Islamic North attempting to impose its religious views and laws on the Christian South, as opposed to a complex set of issues that deal not only with religion, but also with power, politics, and who will control and benefit from Sudan's oil fields, which are predominately in southern Sudan. In addition, the flood of money and, particularly, arms of the Cold War fuel the ongoing wars of the region, notably Ethiopia and Eritrea; civil wars in Chad and the Central African Republic, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism beginning in the late 1970s and the concurrent military and political influence of Libya, particularly in Chad and the Darfur region, have all added significantly to the picture, because each have caused millions of deaths, not only through the violence of war, but also through its fellow riders, starvation and disease, as hundreds of thousands of people caught between warring sides have attempted to flee to some kind of safety, usually provided, with varying degrees of success, by international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs).
What is striking about the current crisis in Darfur is the extent to which it replicates the actions and reactions of Khartoum and the West over the past 20 years, and presents a disturbing pattern of words and inaction to humanitarian abuses in the Sudan-one that may bolster the Sudanese government's bluster and defiance in the face of the current UN and U.S. resolutions. While successive humanitarian crises and civil conflicts have caused the deaths of as many as three million people, mainly black Sudanese, over the past two decades, peacekeepers have not been part of any international response. In fact, following the 1993 deaths of 18 U.S. servicemen in Somalia, the U.S. has loathed to commit any forces in Africa, and U.S. peacekeeping forces in Africa have been limited to a small contingent serving in Liberia in 2003, quickly replaced by members of the African Union. The strongest response by the U.S. to the actions of the Khartoum government came during the 1990s, when Sudan harboured Osama bin Laden and the U.S. imposed economic sanctions. Later, in the Clinton Administration, in response to terrorist threats related to bin Laden, the U.S. bombed a pharmaceutical factory it claimed was being used for terrorist activities. Even while imposing economic sanctions, the U.S. continued to distribute humanitarian aid, but distribution of aid by any INGO, and access to various regions of Sudan, is always with the permission and at the discretion of Khartoum.
In 1984, famine relief and humanitarian aid to those caught in the drought that gripped not only Sudan, but also Chad, causing massive numbers of refugees to spill over into western Sudan, was withheld from predominately non-Arab tribes as punishment for warring with traditional Arab nomadic tribes that roamed over the same lands. Darfur received little international attention at the time, as it was a remote and wild area-desolate and without the oil that caught the attention of Western interests in southern Sudan.
There is long standing evidence that the government of Khartoum has consistently armed Arab militias and tribes, encouraging them to burn villages, kill, rape, and take women and children as slaves. Referring to the March 1987 massacre of Dinka tribesmen at the Ed Da'ein railway station, Muslim investigators from the University of Khartoum reported "Rizeigat militia made a practice of selling Dinka women and children to Arab families in South Darfur for use as servants, farm workers, and sex slaves. 'The kidnapping of Dinka children, young girls, and women, their subsequent enslavement, their use in the Rizeigat economy and other spheres of life and their exchange for money-all these are facts…Moreover the existence of slavery in the area has generated some beliefs among the Rizeigat that the Dinka is subhuman. All psychological barriers to terminating his existence have been broken down-that was what made the massacre at Da'ein possible-without fear of reprisal from the government whose representatives were present.'"
By 1992/1993, the civil war that gripped southern Sudan, including areas in the Darfur region, was having a massive effect on native populations, particularly black Sudanese, "[t]elevision pictures emerging from southern Sudan are eerily similar to the images that six months ago made Somali towns such as Baidoa and Baadheere synonymous with mass starvation; emaciated people, stick-like limbs, the hollow eyes of malnourished children." By spring 1993, UN experts were describing the situation in southern Sudan as "the most urgent need for emergency assistance in the world." These words were echoed again some ten years later by Jan Egeland, United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator on 5 December 2003 referring to Darfur, "[t]he situation in the Western Darfur region of the Sudan continues to deteriorate, with insecurity now reaching unprecedented levels. "The humanitarian situation in Darfur has quickly become one of the worst in the world."" Just a few short months later, Kofi Annan would call Darfur the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world.
There are noted and hopeful differences between 2004 and the past, mainly the international press has found and highlighted the situation in Darfur with a constant drumbeat, reminiscent of its continued coverage of the atrocities and genocide in the Balkans in the early 1990s, which finally caused the Western powers to act. The apocalyptic plight of vast numbers of starving and dying women, children , and the aged who are trapped between the janjaweed, and the torrential rains of August and September, are being captured and played on the nightly news in the United States and Europe. Kofi Annan has continually brought Darfur to the attention of the world, warning of the consequences to over a million people if action is not taken. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary-General Annan were in Darfur, in July, visiting refugee camps and finding out first-hand what was happening to victims of the Sudanese government's policies of ethnic cleansing. The U.S. Congress has acknowledged that the situation in Darfur is genocide. However slow the process, there is some hope that something more robust than words will occur this time. The African Union, which has proved anemic in past efforts of peacekeeping, has sent observers to the area-albeit only about 70 –but as of this writing, Kofi Annan is actively seeking a much larger presence from the African Union with a mandate to do more than observe but instead, provide real security and protection for the vast numbers of helpless victims. The African Union, meeting this week in Accra, Ghana, has expressed a willingness to "take the lead in resolving the crisis in Darfur that has led to up to one million black African Sudanese being chased from their homes by Arab militias," but it is problematic whether they will be able to do so without logistical and financial support from the West.
One question that must be considered is why is the international community was so slow to respond, and so measured in their responses to ethnic cleansing and genocide? With the refrain of "Never again" echoed after the Holocaust, how is it that, in the last half of the 20th century, the United Nations and the West have been singularly unwilling to even use the word "genocide" let alone take action against it? The answer to that is complex and glaringly simple: global politics and strategic interests. This is clearly borne out in the reality that, from its unanimous passage by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948, it would be forty years before the United States would ratify the treaty (ratified with qualifications on 25 November 1988) and "fifty years would elapse before the international community would convict anyone for genocide"- the Convention has few teeth and the mechanisms to bring states, or individuals, to justice for their crimes are convoluted and time-consuming. In fact, the norm of international law is "non-interference in other states' internal affairs-at least when no strategic interests are at stake." This is particularly true when the genocide is embedded within a civil conflict or rebellion, which is the case in Darfur, where "in response to an insurgency on the part of rebel groups demanding greater political representation in Khartoum, the government of General Omar al-Bashir has unleashed a scorched-earth policy across tracts of the province."
When a Member-state can claim they are responding to an internal matter, their demand for non-interference is even stronger. This position is evident within the language of the United Nations Charter itself, Chapter 1, Art. 1(7) states:
Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state, or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter, but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII.
It is under Chapter VII, "Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace and Acts of Aggression," that Resolution 1556 (2004) operates, although it specifically does not put in place the use of armed force or peacekeeping forces under the provisions of Article 42-but instead, "expresses its intention to consider" [emphasis included] such "measures" as are "provided for in Article 41 of the Charter of the United Nations on the Government of Sudan, in the event of non-compliance," within 30 days. Article 41 of the Charter states:
The Security Council may decide what measures, not involving the use of armed force, are to be employed to give effect to its decision, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.
What Resolution 1556 (2004) does do is punt to the African-Union and its "ceasefire commission and monitoring mission in Darfur." The Secretary-General is now trying to extend and expand the African-Union mission to include peacekeeping in Darfur.
For the one million people trapped in Darfur, and in camps in Eastern Chad, the picture is grim ,at best. The rainy season has already arrived in Darfur, trapping many in inaccessible locations where they will starve or die of disease before any form of help can reach them. Those who have made it to camps, with nothing, sick, starving, barely clothed, have found that there is no food, no clean water, and that aide workers are completely overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. And in Darfur, the janjaweed, with the complicity of the Khartoum, continue their process of ethnic cleansing by raping and murdering, by far the largest and well-armed force in the area. What will be the outcome of this genocide - thousands will die before the international community gathers its reports and takes its measures. And the government of Khartoum will learn that the machinery of international law moves slowly, and there are few consequences to genocide.
Bibliography
I have chosen to cite articles, press releases, and sources on the Internet only within the footnotes. The following are secondary sources used for background information on the Sudan, international law, and genocide.
(Editor's Note: These footnotes may be read in the DOC version of this document.)
Anderson, G. Norman, Sudan in Crisis, The Failure of Democracy, Gainesville: University Press of Florida (1999).
Burr, J. Millard and Robert O. Collins, Africa's Thirty Years War, Libya, Chad, and the Sudan 1963-1993, Oxford: Westview Press (1999).
Requiem for The Sudan, War, Drought, and Disaster Relief on the Nile, Oxford: Westview Press (1995).
Goldstein, Joshua S., International Relations, 4th ed., New York: Longman (2001).
Green, Deborah, Gender Violence in Africa, African Women's Responses, New York: St. Martin's Press (1999).
Hartley, Aidan, The Zanzibar Chest, A Story of Life, Love, and Death in Foreign Lands, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press (2003).
Hoagland, Edward, African Calliope, A Journey to the Sudan, 2d ed., New York: Lyons & Burford (1995).
Janis, Mark W., An Introduction to International Law, 3rd ed., New York: Aspen Law & Business (1999).
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Powell, Eve M. Troutt, A Different Shade of Colonialism, Egypt, Great Britain, and the Mastery of the Sudan, Berkeley: University of California Press (2003).
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