Category: Darfur

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Chad rebellion disaster for Darfur

As the government backed janjaweed ravaged the Darfur region of Sudan, the region’s civilians beat a retreat across the arid landscape to find safety in neighboring Chad. Despite being in another country, the former Sudanese have been consistently hounded by attackers.

At the end of last week, a rebel movement began a siege against the Chadian government, leaving the fate of thousands of refugees in question. This morning, the first sign of potentially disastrous news made its way to the AP.

Chad rebels said they overwhelmed government troops Sunday and seized an eastern town along the border with Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region in an area with more than 400,000 refugees.

While there’s been no word from the camps themselves, and even the spokesman for the rebels wasn’t able to comment on what was currently happening in the area, it’s clear that the rebel movements aren’t localized to the capital of N’Djamena. With twelve camps operated by the United Nations in the area, containing 420,000 displaced persons, it’s difficult to imagine a worse set of circumstances.

Even more alarming are the recent reports that the Chadian rebels are being armed by the Sudanese government. With their utter lack of concern for the people of Darfur, it’s hard to see how the camps will escape the grasp of the janjaweed if the rebels are able to disrupt the governing of Chad.

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Candidate positions on genocide

With the primary season in full swing, I thought it might be helpful to revisit the various candidates and see what they have to say about Darfur, genocide, and Africa.

Clinton

Edwards

McCain

Obama

Giuliani
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Giuliani has said the United States should focus its policy toward Africa on increases in trade. “U.S. government aid is important, but aid not linked to reform perpetuates bad policies and poverty,” he wrote in a September 2007 Foreign Affairs article. In that article, Giuliani also said the next president “should continue the Bush administration’s effort to help Africa overcome AIDS and malaria.”

In May 2007, Giuliani was informed that he held between $500,000 and $1 million in investments in companies that work in Sudan. His campaign spokesperson did not say whether he would be divesting (AP) from those companies.

Huckabee
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Huckabee has not made many public statements relating to U.S. policy toward Africa. His stance on U.S.action in Darfur is unknown. He has said foreign aid (Time) “should be limited to purely humanitarian efforts.”

Romney
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Romney’s positions on policy issues toward African countries are not well known. In a July 2007 Foreign Affairs article, Romney praised U2 singer Bono and other activists for their efforts to raise awareness of poverty in Africa and elsewhere. Romney said U.S. efforts to bolster the standing of moderate Muslims abroad by combating poverty and underdevelopment should be focused in Africa as well as the Middle East.

The Los Angeles Times reported on August 14, 2007, that Romney has investments in an oil company tied to the Sudanese government, which is accused of being partially responsible for the massacres in Darfur. Romney’s campaign spokesman told the Times that Romney’s attorney controls his investments and that he “had no influence over how his investments were handled.” His spokesman did not say whether Romney would divest these funds.

All position statements were drawn from the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Climate change excuses genocide?

Fred Pearce has an interesting article in the Telegraph about a trend in using climate change as an excuse for genocide.

Climate change is being used as “a convenient excuse for wars, violence, conflict and bigotry brought on by migration,” says Mike Hulme, until recently director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich.

As for the supposed helplessness of the Sudanese government in Darfur, Jan Pronk, the UN head of mission in Darfur, puts it this way: “Khartoum is booming on oil, but not a dinar is being spent on water or health care in Darfur.”

While Pearce correctly points out that the use of such explanations frequently lead to diplomatic laissez-faire attitudes, he doesn’t dig deep enough to uncover the kernel of truth that lies beneath such overly simplified statements. Darfur, to use his own example, has its roots in a massive drought that struck in the 1980s and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

It was this event, probably more than any other, that set the wheels of the current conflict in motion. As so many people were dying with little help from their capital, the residents of the region began to feel disenfranchised, which only worsened as the war between Khartoum and the South continued, creating the very real impression that the government cared little for the people of Darfur.

The simple truth is that climate change (or more accurately, unexpected climate shifts or collapses) is certainly one factor that may contribute to an outbreak of genocide. The violence itself, however, is almost always rooted in a clash of cultural ideals and misguided ideologies.

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Peace on the decline

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program at the Uppsala University Department of Peace and Conflict Research is reporting that the number of violent conflicts has seen a rise in recent years as peace initiatives are falling off. The Center’s largest number of registered conflicts took place during the 1990’s, but a steady decline began to take place thereafter and continued until 2002. Since then, the number of active conflicts has been holding steady around thirty.

“This is of course a cause of concern. Today’s ongoing conflicts are extremely protracted,” comment researchers Professor Peter Walensteen and Lotta Harbom. “This indicates that the successful negotiation efforts of the 1990s are no longer being carried out with the same force or effectiveness.”

Today’s conflicts appear to be intractable and drawn-out, and the researchers believe that the 1990s peace strategies need to be improved in order to achieve results. At the same time, there are encouraging trends. Conflicts between different groups and peoples, with no involvement of the state, are decreasing in the number of both conflicts and fatalities.

“This type of conflict often arises in the wake of civil war, but they seem to be easier to bring to an end,” says Joakim Kreutz at the Uppsala Conflict Data Program.

Not surprisingly, one of the biggest problems in recent years is the lack of negotiations in the war torn Middle East. Even as the United States takes measures to physically curtail violence, there have been few visible signs that any of the parties in question are being addressed in a meaningful way.

The Middle East is the region in which peace initiatives are most clearly conspicuous in their absence. The central importance of the region for the world’s oil supply and for world religions makes this serious. The conference in Annapolis in lat November 2007 was the first attempt since 2001 to bring the parties together. They even found it difficult to agree on the declaration that started the negotiations, notes Peter Wallensteen.

“This is a worrisome sign. At the same time, we have to welcome all attempts to bring peace to this area. It has been more than 60 years since the UN General Assembly adopted a plan for Palestine. It must be adapted to today’s reality and implemented.”

During the year other regional conflict complexes have emerged and worsened. The crisis in the Sudanese region Darfur is now spreading to the surrounding countries, such as Chad and the Central African Republic.

“These developments have prompted neighboring countries to take certain peace initiatives,” states Lotta Harbom. “The international mediators in the Darfur conflict, including Jan Eliasson, who is also a visiting professor at Uppsala University, are working to arrange negotiations among the parties. But thus far they have had no success.”

It’s likely that many of these conflicts will continue to linger until the United Nations (and others) decide to press en masse. The larger peace deals in the 20th Century were accomplished through multi-national pressure, persuasion, and promising that we’ve seen little of in the last ten to fifteen years.

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Sand and Sorrow at HBO.com

As I wrote back in August, George Clooney signed on to narrate a documentary about Darfur entitled Sand and Sorrow. The show premiered last night on HBO, and if you missed it (or don’t subscribe to HBO), you can watch the full film through their website for the next two days (Dec. 7-9).