Calls for Urgent Action in Darfur by LA Times / Boston Globe / Daily Star / PBS News 10:53pm 20th Feb, 2006   March 10, 2006    UN Readies for Darfur Mission after African Union cedes Control. (Bloomberg)    The United Nations will prepare to deploy peacekeeping troops in the violence-plagued Darfur region of Sudan in September, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said after the African Union decided to hand the mission to the world body.    African Union leaders meeting today in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, agreed in principle to keep their current force of 7,000 troops in Darfur, and then to support a transition to UN authority. Jan Pronk, the UN"s top envoy to Sudan, has said more troops would be added to create a contingent of up to 20,000 to help end rapes and murders by militias and resettle thousands of refugees.    “We are pleased with the decision," Annan told reporters at the UN in New York. “We have been working on contingency planning and should now be able to send an assessment mission to work with the African Union.”    Physicians for Human Rights, in a report on Darfur, said estimates of deaths there since early 2003 range as high as 400,000. A survey by the World Health Organization estimated that 70,000 uprooted people died in a seven-month period in 2004. About 2 million people have been forced from their homes and are living in camps in Darfur and neighboring Chad.    The emergency began when the Sudanese government, responding to rebel attacks, organized nomadic herders and Arab tribal militias into a force to attack farming settlements.    Mobile Force    Annan has appealed to the U.S. and the European Union to provide equipment and aircraft for a highly mobile UN force. U.S. President George W. Bush, while offering military planners to help prepare for the UN mission, has suggested that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization take a leading role on the ground.    While Sudan"s government has rejected a UN force in public statements, Annan and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said Sudan"s government was easing its opposition. The government in Khartoum might agree to a UN mission after a peace accord is signed between all parties to the Darfur conflict, the Associated Press reported.    “We don"t have time to waste," Zoellick told reporters yesterday in Paris. There are heartbreaking conditions in Darfur and they risk worsening. These are problems that have been exacerbated by the tensions on the Chad border. The African Union forces have done a tremendous job, but they came in to enforce a cease-fire, and that cease-fire has broken down."    Rations Cut    The UN World Food Program said it has been forced by cash shortages to cut rations to more than 6 million people needing food aid in Sudan, the scene of its biggest operation.    The announcement today by the UN"s Rome-based emergency food aid arm came as the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said it is slashing assistance for refugees in Sudan"s Darfur region by almost half because of spreading violence.    International donors have provided WFP with 15 percent of the $746 million it has requested for this year to feed people in Darfur, as well as central, eastern and southern Sudan, where a 21-year civil war ended in January last year. As a result, rations of sugar, salt and beans have been cut, the agency said in a statement from Khartoum, Sudan"s capital. The cuts don"t affect supplies of cereals.    March, 9 2006    Darfur"s moment of decision. (LA Times)    The ongoing slaughter in Sudan is as well documented as it is disturbing. The 7,000-member African Union "peacekeeping" force there doesn"t keep much peace or protect many civilians, but it does monitor the massacres. As a result, there is voluminous evidence of widespread rape and murder by Sudanese government troops and government-armed militias, villages burned to the ground and children orphaned, mutilated or simply hacked to pieces. But little is done to stop it.    An estimated 200,000 people have been killed in Sudan"s Darfur region, victims of a struggle justified by Khartoum as an effort to put down a rebellion but that looks more like ethnic cleansing by an Arab-dominated government against black African villagers. International intervention could end the violence, but the budding consensus in favor of such a move is dangerously fragile. The decision could hinge on a meeting of the African Union on Friday, when members will vote on whether to allow United Nations peacekeepers to take over the mission in Darfur.    Because the U.N. is reluctant to intervene without African permission, and because China and Russia have steadfastly blocked action by the Security Council, the fate of thousands of innocent civilians is in the hands of the African Union. Approval of a U.N. mission seemed like a certainty a month ago; now it"s very much in question as the Sudanese government lobbies to keep foreign troops out of the country. On Wednesday it encouraged a protest, as 30,000 marched in Khartoum against U.N. intervention.    Although the African Union is trying hard to build a reputation for openness and respect for human rights, it is showing disturbing signs of becoming as toothless as its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity. In January, it very nearly elected Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir to its chairmanship, instead settling for a Congolese leader, whose only marginally better. The United States, which is pushing hard for U.N. and even NATO intervention in Sudan, needs to make clear that the African Union"s international credibility will be destroyed if it doesn"t approve a U.N. peacekeeping mission. That credibility is vital in a region where most governments are heavily reliant on foreign donors.    It is essential that the United Nations take action soon, with or without permission from the African Union. The United States and NATO can and must help by providing intensive air and logistical support. NATO should also send troops now for a short-term assignment, because it will take at least six months for U.N. peacekeepers to deploy; so far, NATO leaders have expressed zero appetite for the job.    Inertia and apathy ruled as killers ran amok in Rwanda and Somalia in the 1990s. Now the world has a chance to demonstrate whether it has learned from its mistakes.    March 3, 2006    An Exported Genocide. (The Boston Globe)    The genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan goes on and on because outside powers refuse to mount a humanitarian intervention with the required level of force.    In the past couple of months, raids on African villages like those that Arab janjaweed militias and their Sudanese government backers have perpetrated inside Darfur are being staged in eastern Chad. In the words of a new Human Rights Watch report, the Darfur crisis "is now bleeding freely across the border."    Commendably, the report does not present the spillover of Darfur"s crimes against humanity as an unintended consequence of counter-insurgency warfare. In the words of Human Rights Watch: "The government of Sudan is actively exporting the Darfur crisis to its neighbor by providing material support to janjaweed militias and by failing to disarm or control them, by backing Chadian rebel groups that it allows to operate from bases in Darfur, and by deploying its own armed forces across the border into Chad."    Antagonism between Sudan and the government of President Idriss Deby of Chad must not be used by outside powers as an excuse for not intervening to end the genocide. On the contrary, the cross-border export of Darfur"s atrocities to Chad ought to clarify the international responsibility to do what the United Nations Genocide Convention requires: prevent and punish the crime of genocide.    What all parties to that solemn international pact have to recognize is that the horrors of Darfur are now afflicting targeted tribal groups in Chad because, for three years, governments capable of stopping the murders, rapes, and destruction of villages have declined to take the actions necessary to prevent and punish genocide.    President George W. Bush spoke recently, in vague terms, about a security force for Darfur larger than the ineffectual 7,000-strong African Union monitoring contingent currently there. He said the enlarged force will need "NATO stewardship, planning, facilitating, organizing." But he did not say if NATO troops would be deployed or what the capabilities and mandate of such a force would be.    A recent bipartisan Senate resolution, introduced jointly by liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, is much more apt. It calls for deployment of NATO troops with powers to protect the two million refugees in Darfur, open up corridors for delivery of humanitarian goods, and deter the Sudanese regime from using its bombers and helicopter gunships to attack villages in coordination with janjaweed raiders. The NATO troops would provide security until an appropriately large and well-armed UN peacekeeping force could be deployed to Darfur.    It will take something like this to end the Darfur nightmare. This, and the will to end it.    February 28, 2006    It"s time for regional leaders to stop playing the blame game over Darfur. (The Daily Star)    For over three years, in the western Sudanese province of Darfur, government-backed militias have been terrorizing, killing and raping civilians. It is baffling that a crisis of such magnitude - with up to 300,000 people killed and some 2.4 million civilians forced to flee their homes - could be ignored and forgotten for so long. We could blame the United Nations for not responding quickly to the crisis, we could blame the media for not drawing enough attention to the atrocities and we could blame Western governments and citizens for caring too little about the plight of African villagers. But the greater burden of responsibility for the tragedy lies closer to home, where regional officials are still allowing the killings to take place.    Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is quick to lay blame on others for the death and displacement of his citizens. He has charged that the West has invented a "conspiracy" to plunder his country"s resources, and denied his government"s well-documented participation in the killings. On Monday, Bashir reiterated this same theme while warning that "Darfur will be a graveyard for any foreign troops" that might intervene. But it is Bashir"s own failure to protect the lives and livelihoods of its citizens that has invited external intervention. This failure has already forced Bashir to withdraw his bid for the African Union presidency, and it will probably soon force the international community to send peacekeeping troops. If foreign troops arrive in Sudan, Bashir will have only himself to blame.    Likewise, the Arab League, whose next summit will be hosted by Sudan, has exonerated Khartoum in Darfur, blaming other factors for the conflict, including drought, tribal disputes and underdevelopment. The league has rejected sanctions or foreign intervention in Darfur, saying that Khartoum needs more time to resolve the crisis. After three years of killings, the Arab League is still content to stand aside and wait for the conflict to resolve itself.    The people who are losing their lives and livelihoods in Darfur are citizens of Sudan who live under the umbrella of the Arab League, just like citizens of Cairo or Riyadh. It is therefore the responsibility of Sudan and the Arab League to address the crisis by doing everything possible to stop it.    Broadcast: February 16 , 2006    Calls for Urgent Action in Darfur. (PBS Online Newshour)    U.N. officials, U.S. congressmen have called for increased involvement in the Darfur region of Sudan where three years of violence has claimed more than 200,000 lives and displaced millions. Sens. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Barack Obama, D-Ill, discuss the political situation in Darfur and what the United States could do to help the suffering.    GWEN IFILL: Since pictures of attacks on African villagers were sent around the world in 2004, the situation in western Sudan has by all accounts grown only more desperate. At least 200,000 people have been killed and 2 million people displaced in a conflict where local militia known as Janjaweed have attacked civilians and destroyed villages.    Half of Darfur"s 6 million people rely on outside aid for survival, and international observers have said Sudan"s government may be supporting the Janjaweed. The human suffering has spread into neighboring Chad, prompting international officials like United Nations envoy Jan Pronk to declare the response so inadequate that "people on the ground are just laughing."    Seven thousand peacekeepers from African Union nations have taken the lead in stabilizing the region to little effect.    At the White House Monday, Kofi Annan said the United Nations must play a greater role. Annan, who met with President Bush in the Oval Office, later elaborated in an interview on CNN. He said that any UN force must prepared to respond quickly to new violence.    KOFI ANNAN: And this is going to require troops from governments with capacity, well-trained, well- equipped troops. It should include troops from western countries, troops from third world countries who have participated over the years in peacekeeping. And we all need to pull together to make it happen. And the president is in agreement with me.    GWEN IFILL: Last week, the UN Security Council agreed to commit thousands of additional peacekeepers to Darfur. The United States, however, has resisted sending American forces.    Two senators from opposite sides of the aisle have joined together to call for increased U.S. involvement in Darfur. They are Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, and Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois. Sen. Brownback was in Darfur in 2004 and Sen. Obama is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.    Gentlemen, you both co-authored an op/ed piece in the newspaper in which you called for increased U.S. involvement and you said that the situation in Darfur is dangerously adrift. Sen. Brownback, what does that mean?    SEN. SAM BROWNBACK: It means people are dying. It means the genocide continues. It means that there"s been inadequate international force in place to be able to stop the people from being slaughtered by the Janjaweed, by militia being supported by the government in Sudan. It means that we have got a bad situation and it has not stabilized and we need to do more to be able to stop the carnage from taking place.    GWEN IFILL: Sen. Obama, to what do you attribute the bad situation that Sen. Brownback talked about?    SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, essentially you"ve got a protection vacuum. Originally the thinking was that as a consequence of a negotiated settlement between Northern Sudan and Southern Sudan, that you could broker a peace deal between the Sudanese government and rebels. And that would then take some pressure off the people who were being displaced. And we also hoped that an African Union force could ramp up sufficiently quickly to provide some protection. That has not happened.    Essentially the African Union force has never been of sufficient size or force nor has it had the mandate to provide real protection to ordinary Sudanese who are being attacked by the Janjaweed, and there has been essentially no real progress in terms of political settlement. So you have a situation where just recently 30,000 displaced persons as a consequence of attacks are wandering Western Sudan.    You"ve got situations in which you continue to have rapes and assaults on women who are trying to gather firewood. You"ve got 2 million people who are displaced, 300,000 dead and you don"t have any kind of force on the ground that can really provide them the protection that they need.    U.N. and NATO peacekeepers    GWEN IFILL: Now, Sen. Brownback, Kofi Annan was in Washington this week meeting with President Bush and among the things that he was talking about was increasing the U.N. peacekeeping force, something which the Security Council has agreed to at least start the wheels in motion but that might not happen for a year. Is that soon enough?    SEN. SAM BROWNBACK: It"s not soon enough. Something needs to take place now. That"s why a number of us have been pushing the idea, let"s get NATO involved at this point in time; that there"s a discussion of changing the African Union force into a U.N. force. It"s still going to have to be upgraded in size, scale, ability and mandate.    But in the interim, let"s get NATO involved in this process because every day you wait, you"re going to have more people dying.    GWEN IFILL: If NATO gets involved, Sen. Brownback, I"ll turn this question to Sen. Obama, if NATO gets involved, does that increase the chances that there will be US troops involved on the ground?    SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, I don"t think that the issue right now is US troops. The issue is US leadership. What we can do is to insist that NATO forces provide a bridge as was indicated by Sen. Brownback. Otherwise you could have a situation, even if the U.N. finally does authorize a larger force, let"s say of 20,000, it may take a year, year and a half to create that force and get it on the ground.    In the interim, having NATO forces there that could be supplied by some of the middle powers, Canada, Australia, others that have experience in peacekeeping would be absolutely crucial. We also need to provide additional funding for the A.U. troops who are already on the ground. There"s been some talk that funding may discontinue sometime this year for that force and if they don"t have any kind of support, then it"s going to be fair game across the board for the people who are being assaulted by the Janjaweed.    The main thing that we"ve got do is use the kinds of political pressure that we can bring to bear on other countries when we really think that something is of our national interest. And this is a situation where not only for humanitarian reasons should we be concerned but situations of failed states like this are going to continue to come up in the coming years.    And if we don"t have an international structure that"s prepared to deal with failed states, genocide, displaced persons, refugees, ultimately that is going to create a situation that undermines a world order in which we have an enormous stake.    GWEN IFILL: Sen. Brownback, Sen. Obama just talked about the need for US leadership. You may know that Vice President Cheney told Jim Lehrer in an interview last week that the United States is doing all that it can. How do you respond to that?    SEN. SAM BROWNBACK: Well, I think the United States is doing a lot, and I think we"ve done more than any other country regarding the genocide that"s taking place in the Sudan. But it"s not enough. And people continue to suffer in very large numbers, in the millions. And it would not take that large of a group from NATO or a larger group from the African Union with mobility, with a broader mandate, to stop the killing from taking place. So I applaud the Bush administration leadership relative to the rest of the world but still not enough is occurring that it"s stopping this -- as former Secretary Albright called it -- this rolling genocide that continues to occur.    African Union capabilities    GWEN IFILL: There are 7,000 African Union peacekeepers on the ground, Sen. Brownback. Do you think the African Union is capable of bringing around the - bringing about the peace that you"re suggesting?    SEN. SAM BROWNBACK: Not with that size and scale. You"re talking about an area of size of France. They don"t have the mobility. They don"t have the intelligence information that they need. And they don"t have the mandate enough. I think you"re going to need a much larger troop. They have done some good; by being there they have stopped some of the killing and they"ve stabilized the situation in some places but it"s escalated again.    And as the forces against the Janjaweed were at one point in time united, they"ve now fractured and so you"ve got a lot of different places where attacking and pillaging is taking place and people are being driven away from their homes. You need a larger force with a broader mandate and greater mobility.    GWEN IFILL: Sen. Obama, you referred to the need to have - for the US to use its leverage to make other countries does what it ought to do. I assume you"re referring to countries like Chad and Libya and China even. Is Khartoum listening to anyone?    SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, I don"t think that they"re listening right now because they"re not feeling enough pressure. I mean, part of what we have to stay to our allies and part of what we have to communicate to countries like China is that this is an important national priority for us, that we expect sanctions on Sudan if it is not willing to abide by basic humanitarian standards, that we may choose to freeze assets. We may impose travel bans. We expect support from other countries who claim that they"re concerned about humanitarian issues. And that kind of pressure on a consistent basis in a sustained basis is not something that we"ve seen.    I completely agree with Sam that, in fact, the United States has done more than our European allies, for example, and that"s a scandal. But that does not excuse the situation on the ground. We still have a lot of work to do. We have more weapons in our arsenal diplomatically that we have not yet deployed, and would I hope that the sense of urgency that"s needed remains in the administration.    I was concerned that Under Secretary for Africa Frazer, suggested recently that maybe this wasn"t a genocide after all. When 300,000 people have been killed, 2 million displaced, I think that that is the kind of disaster that merits world attention and world action.    Options for Congress    GWEN IFILL: Sen. Brownback, what can Congress do to jumpstart this process?    SEN. SAM BROWNBACK: We can pass the Darfur Accountability and Peace Act. We"ve cleared it through the Senate. It"s in the House of Representatives. I urge the action to take place there.    There"s been negotiations back and forth of what all should be in that but basically this is a bill that provides for key sanctioned language and aggressive sanctioning taking place against the perpetrators in the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed leadership. I think that"s something we could do.    Second is we"ve got a fund and helping the funding of the African Union force. We"ll have supplemental bills coming through and I"m hopeful that we can get that funding pushed forward there.    And third, I think we need to continue to push this administration and NATO to get much more aggressively involved. I applaud the actions by a recent U.S. gold medalist at the Olympics where he"s going to give everything that he gets out of this to Darfur. There is support in the country, particularly on young people - young people on college campuses to do something against this genocide; we should listen to those urging us and get some of these things done.    GWEN IFILL: And Sen. Obama, Robert Zoellick, the State Department official who has been the most on the ground - four times in the past year, representing the United States in Darfur, was quoted recently at saying if people are determined to kill each other, there"s not a lot the United States can do. What is your -- and he is one of the most involved people in this process. What is your response to that?    SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, the people who have been displaced are not killing anybody. They"re being killed. They"re being raped. There may be great difficulty in bringing back - bringing about a political settlement between the rebels and Khartoum, the Sudanese government.    What we have is a situation in which millions of people have been displaced, murdered, raped and threatened who are essentially innocent bystanders to this conflict. And I think we can"t be cavalier about that. That"s happened before in Rwanda, and at some point we say to ourselves that it is in our interests to make sure that those kinds of events don"t happen again.    It"s also in our national security interest because as things like this occur, over and over again, not just in Africa but potentially in other parts of the world, this not only creates the seeds of terrorism, it also creates the kind of despair that over time spills over into our own country.
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