Darfur Week of October 3, 2008

Darfur This Week
UNAMID police deployment (from 12 countries) nears 50% of authorized strength

During the last month 189 police advisors, including 17 female advisors, from 12 countries have arrived in Darfur to join UNAMID. They are training Community Policing Volunteers in the camps and are training Sudan Police to improve their standards of policing to meet international acceptable standards. They are also training patrols in the IDP camps.
Sudan UN envoy says Georgia war eased international pressure on his country

Abdel-Haleem Abdel-Mahmood, Sudan’s envoy to the UN, told the Inner City Press that the conflict between Georgia and Russia shifted focus from Sudan and relieved international pressure. He also stated that Sudan is opposed to the independence of Kosovo.
US Presidential Candidates answer questions on Darfur
Three organizations asked the Democratic and Republican candidates ten questions about their plans of action on the continuing crisis in Darfur. The interview is very helpful in understanding what the candidates’ position are on Darfur and their views on the ICC, UNAMID and their approaches to foreign affairs with countries doing business with Sudan and US punitive measures.
Key differences in the candidates include:
On how to engage China to use its leverage to help end the genocide:
Obama: he has urged more constructive approach to Sudan in talks with Chinese Ambassadors
McCain: he will have discussions with Chinese leaders and states that China should pay the price for obstructionism if it blocks the alleviation of the humanitarian disaster
On bringing to justice perpetrators:
McCain: support granting ICC jurisdiction and calls for Khartoum to comply with its obligation to turn over perpetrators to be brought to trial
Obama: supports ICC and having indicted criminals turned over to ICC if they travel overseas and calls for political and economic pressure on Khartoum
On making Darfur a priority:
Obama: Yes, from day One
McCain: Yes, denouncing the genocide is not enough and we must provide assistance to victims
on failure of CPA agreement of 2005:
McCain: very critical of failure and that the objective must be human security and inalienable right of self-determination of people in Darfur
Obama: wants more preventive policies
on how they would promote lasting peace:
Obama: implement CPA of 2005 in full; appoint a senior special envoy for all of Sudan to fulfill this mission to ensure implementation; work with regional leaders in the international community to rekindle peace process
McCain: honor peace accords on the books including rights of citizens of South Sudan to determine whether they want to be part of Sudan
on ensuring UNAMID is well deployed:
McCain: says he would do more than currently is being done to aid the force and to address the problem that Sudan has been allowed to hamstring the size of the force by a string of delaying tactics and impossible demands. He would work closely with allies to assure flow of assistance and protection
Obama: while acknowledging the obstacles that Sudan has introduced in terms of UNAMID deployment he calls for stiff penalties to be imposed by the US and broader international community for these obstructions. He would work with allies to impose sanctions in response to obstructions. He also would work with NATO to develop a plan for enforcing the UN ban on offensive military flights by the Government of Sudan. He would reduce Chinese support for Khartoum. He would increase monitoring of UN arms embargo and ensure full effectiveness of UNAMID. He would assist African countries to enhance their readiness to deploy.
Darfur Janjaweed leader criticizes 2nd VP agreement with Minnawi
Musa Hilal was appointed in January 2008 as an advisor for the Ministry of Federal Government. Formerly having robbed a bank and widely regarded as the top Janjaweed leader in Darfur, he has denied on videotape any leadership roles in any atrocities. According to Human Rights Watch, government documents have urged that security units allow the activities of the mujahedeen and those who in the name of Hilal secure the vital needs in North Darfur. Those who act in the interest of Hilal have been known, through witness accounts, to prevent people seeking to return to farming lands outside Kebkabiya in Merguba. Instead, it has become known as the land of Musa Hilal.
In an interview with Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper, he criticized an agreement between the Second Vice President Al Osman Taha and the senior presidential assistant Minni Arcua Minnawi which renews both sides’ adherence to the DPA and puts in an order to enforce it within a month. Hilal says that Minnawi has gotten more than he deserves.
Doha urged to act in Darfur refugee crisis
At a seminar on the prospects of peace in Darfur organized by the Doha-based Arab Democracy Foundation (ADF), Dr. Mohamed Suleiman, director of the Institute for African Alternatives in London, said that the conflict in Darfur started as a result of dispute over water resources and grazing, but after the Islamists came to power it turned into a conflict about identity and ideology.
In response to Qatar’s interest in brokering a peace deal between the parties of the conflict, Dr. Suleiman stated that Qatar is not ready to do so and requested that Qatar take other measures currently to convince the Sudanese government to stop killing the Darfur people.
The head of the Darfur People League in Qatar called upon the armed militia groups in Darfur to meet in Doha. The head of the Sudanese community in Qatar urged that the rebels should put down their weapons and practice their rights by participating in elections. Both defend that Qatar would be a good place for talks since it is neutral.
My Perspective
International pressure on Sudan needs to increase. The open ended war that has gone on has not provided closure on direct actions taken on Darfurians and for those who can not rest until there is more than an acknowledgement of the conflict. Is it possible that Darfur may become another South Ossetia or Abkassia? What will be decided in July 2010 by referendum? I’m not sure, but I do know that we can look at other international conflicts and see that from voting booths of many continents, people chose to demand their liberty. That liberty was for all kinds of reasons: race, religion, freedom to live without fear, and a freedom to not be persecuted or to be treated as criminals. The differences among people can be seen as either threatening or can cause an interesting cultural exchange that does not necessarily lead to the loss of one’s cultural identity.
That liberty is in the eyes of the small child who sees the world as holding opportunities for a life worth living. It is that liberty that is protected by the laws that were written by those who stayed in touch with the needs of the people. It is the liberty that fearful refugees find foreign when they have been reduced to merely surviving.
When we look at the societies that people are born into, cultural identity and national integrity are important. Still when we hear radical leaders argue that they see it as a threat to the sovereign character of a country when the international community sees a difference in norms in how they are treating people within a nation’s border, we cannot allow this to be an obstacle in our pursuit of peace and justice in the world. In fact, the Treaty of Westphalia is the foundation on which the nation state system worked since its inception. It has been modified since the 1600s most notably by the Charter of the UN.
Resolution 1244 approved in 1999 by the UN Security Council also seriously changed the dimensions of how tall of a curtain nation states around the world could build to avoid the international accountability. The world turned into what has been called the post-Westphalian world. That resolution on Kosovo redefined the sovereign character of the nation state. To emphasize that the world watches very critically while a government does not comply with international norms to stop an internal conflict rather adds to it, a series of agreements by the UN on Human Rights among Member States were shaped. These were calls for cooperation among all nations. When a nation argues that it is its sovereignty that it protects, this is actually no longer a valid argument when choosing whose interests are being served. We are in a post-Westphalian world. NATO and the UN worked together to enforce that there were legitimate concerns by the international community and that there were sufficient grounds to question the behavior of the Yugoslav government in terms of human-rights considerations. This was pursued even given the fear that countries would be held accountable for their own governance. It established a precedent.
If a people are against a government’s policies, it is not the government’s option to destroy those people. It is their responsibility to defend their policies or to consider why the policies are not being well received. It has been well documented in many news sources, that the Janjaweed, backed by Khartoum, kill members of tribes that are known to be critical of Sudan’s policies in regards to their own welfare and then move onto to the very land where they have performed their vicious attacks. That’s war with the purpose of genocide.
Now for the evidence. There have been numerous victim accounts – including drawing of children, accounts by raped women – statements by international human rights NGOs, and news sources around the world that have brought to light the statements of witnesses to crimes and struggles regarding the peace agreement and support for measures to end the violence. Increasingly, we watch UNAMID strengthen its efforts and share its policing knowledge, norm-building efforts and confidence-building measures to improve the living conditions and fight the winds of oppression and imposed control that leave a people to continue a fight without the means to end it. For what purpose?
There’s still a lack of human security in Darfur. If I were sitting in a refugee camp wondering about how my non-Arab Muslim faith had anything to do with the access I should receive to natural resources, I might wonder why I had to have endured racial epithets and had to live in fear. If I were in that camp, I might not know about the “Documenting Atrocities in Darfur” report on Darfur Genocide that was released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research in September 2004. (Interviews in that report reveal incriminating evidence of the acts of violence experienced and witnessed in Darfur. Those statistics include 55% witnessing or personally experiencing the destruction of personal property, 61% witnessing or personally experiencing the killing of a family member, and 81% witnessing or personally experiencing village destruction. One of the findings in that report said that 91% of the refugees said that many villages were not defended at all against attacks.) With the pain of repression sitting squarely on my chest and having deeply rooted itself into my being, how would all of those interviews bring me back to regaining what was lost?
How can it? The people who sit in the refugee camps deserve to reclaim what has been lost. It is in everyone’s interest. Everyone loses otherwise.