Category: Darfur

As reactions to President Bush’s announcement to increase sanctions against the Sudan government begin to mount, John Prendergast, Colin Thomas-Jensen and Julia Spiegel of the ENOUGH Project took some time yesterday to respond to the rather toothless nature of this new rhetoric. Not only did they point out what’s wrong with this new initiative they also outlined what we ought to be doing:

We at ENOUGH will continue to hammer home the point that Plan B – punishment – is the right direction, but what is required now is a Plan B with teeth – multilateral, escalating, and biting. This would include:

* Multilateralized Sanctions Against Sudanese Companies Supporting the Regime: The U.S. should work with the UN Security Council to impose sanctions against the Sudanese companies already targeted unilaterally by the U.S. Unless the current U.S. list of 161 is made multilateral, these sanctions will be meaningless. A UN Panel of Experts should also be established to further investigate which companies are conducting the business necessary to underwrite Sudan’s war machine.

* Pressure on International Banks to Stop Doing Business with Sudan: U.S. officials should engage with a number of international banking institutions to strongly encourage them to stop supporting oil transactions with Sudan, with the implication being that if such business continues, then all transactions conducted by those banks with U.S. commercial entities (and those of other countries willing to work with us) would eventually be banned.

* Reinforcement of Divestment Efforts: President Bush should sign an Executive Order putting into law all of the legally possible elements of existing Congressional bills in support of divestment. The executive should be supportive of efforts across the U.S. to pressure university endowments, municipal and state pension funds, and private mutual funds to sell equity holdings in a targeted list of companies whose business bolsters the operations of the Sudanese regime.

* Support for the ICC Indictment Process: The U.S. should provide information and declassified intelligence to the International Criminal Court to help accelerate the process of building indictments against senior officials in the regime for their role in orchestrating mass atrocities in Darfur. The U.S. has the most such intelligence and should come to agreement with the ICC about what information to share.

* Accelerated Credible Military Planning: The U.S. also should develop credible plans for decisive military action, not only to enforce a no-fly zone, but to protect civilians with ground forces without consent from Khartoum should all else fails. This military planning is both a practical necessity, and a means to build and utilize leverage against the regime.

One of the things that I’ve always loved about John Prendergast (and that I’m beginning to love about the ENOUGH Project) is his positive-activist approach to pushing government in the right direction. Which is why it’s not surprising to find a list of steps at the end of the article that everyone can take:

Concerned individuals should also write letters, send emails, set up meetings in home districts, and call 1-800-GENOCIDE to leave a message for President Bush, your Senators and member of Congress to tell them to:

* push for the U.S. to introduce – and diplomatically invest in – a UNSC resolution that imposes targeted sanctions on key leaders and on the companies already sanctioned by the U.S.;

* urge President Bush to provide information and declassified intelligence to the International Criminal Court; and

* call on President Bush to put credible plans in place for a no-fly zone and non-consensual force deployment to protect civilians if the situation deteriorates in Darfur and the Sudanese regime continues to block the UN-led hybrid force.

I would also recommend one additional step which you’re hopefully already taking – educate yourself. Knowing about these issues is no doubt what brings you to a site like this, but continue to read, discuss, debate, and learn. That’s the only “magic bullet” for preventing these kinds of atrocities in the future.

The Bush Administration is set to announce it will be imposing stiffer sanctions against the Khartoum regime in response to the ongoing bloodshed in Darfur. As everyone no doubt knows at this point, the violence has been continuing unabated for the better part of six years without a particularly substantive response from the international community.

Fortunately, advocacy groups have been pushing Washington, the United Nations, and various corporate interests non-stop since 2003 in an attempt to leverage a more dramatic stance against the crimes that President Bush himself has previously referred to as genocide.

U.S. lawmakers and advocacy groups, meanwhile, have criticized the Bush administration for a tepid response to Darfur despite tough rhetoric from the president, and it was uncertain last night whether they would welcome the long-awaited implementation of what has come to be known as “Plan B” for the region. Religious and humanitarian groups, which have pressed states, universities and corporations to disinvest from Sudan, have criticized as insufficient the elements of Plan B.

Bush has been under intense pressure from these groups to do something about the violence in Darfur, which began in 2003 when government-sponsored Arab militias attacked African villages in an effort to quell a rebellion. Eventually, about 2,000 villages were burned, as many as 450,000 people were killed and more than 2.5 million were displaced in continuing violence. The United States labeled it a “genocide” in 2004.

Under the new sanction plan to be announced today, 30 companies owned or controlled by the Sudanese government will be added to the 130 already blocked from using the U.S. financial system. The senior administration official said that the U.S. government has devoted considerable resources in the past six months toward figuring out how to bring greater financial pressure on Sudan, and he noted that with today’s announcement most of the joint ventures responsible for oil production will be under sanctions.

It was reported that Bush was supposed to announce the new sanctions last month while he was speaking at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum but was asked to hold off by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, who wanted more time to negotiate with Khartoum.