Assistance needed- “No violence required.”

Salih Booker & Ann-Louise Colgan in this article for The Nation write:

The Security Council continues to hesitate on Darfur, largely because of the economic and diplomatic interests of its permanent members, who don’t wish to antagonize Khartoum. Whether the UN can be spurred to action will depend largely on the United States, and Washington has an obligation to act. One reason is its treaty obligations under the Genocide Convention. Another is its involvement in Sudan’s peace process, supported by an eclectic domestic constituency, including groups ranging from the evangelical right to the Congressional Black Caucus. A third is the unique US intelligence capacity to track militia activity in Darfur as well as the movements of the displaced. Finally, it has 1,800 troops in nearby Djibouti, some of whom could be mobilized quickly to lead a multinational force to secure the region, to facilitate humanitarian assistance and to enforce the cease-fire until a UN peacekeeping force can be assembled.

An article about the US troops stationed in Djibouti can be read here.

As lenin so optimistically stated earlier this month referring to the UK:

Therefore, if we wanted to pressure our government into acting in moral ways, we should take the Hippocratic oath. First, do no harm. Second, do the precise maximum that you can to ameliorate the situation. A few simple enough recommendations for a hypothetically moral British government. ‘We’ should immediately dispatch tonnes of food and medicine to those regions in need of it, negotiate full and uninhibited access for those who would provide it, provide funds for returning refugees who need to rebuild their homes, and refuse to allow any trade, or privileges to Sudan if it continues to abuse its citizens. British based companies should be told to extricate themselves from any involvement in Sudan as long as the regime continues its present course. We should provide expertise and aid on water. Locals should coordinate these activities themselves, insofar as they are not involved in human rights abuses. That would have an enormous, beneficial impact on the situation in Darfur, it would cost a fraction of what the Iraq war cost, and guess what – no violence is required.

I’m with him on most of his points. However “humanitarian workers fear that a forcible mass return of some 1.2 million IDPs in Darfur could result in enormous fatalities.”

I don’t know much about this site beyond the information that it was established in 2000. According to this article France was blocking the sanctions process and several bloggers picked it up and charged that oil interests were the reason for the dissent.

As you can see here they then seemed confused on that point while remaining oblivious to other concerns.

From the July 13th afrol article:

The US government indeed presented a draft resolution on Thursday, calling for sanctions and an arms embargo against the Janjaweed militias. The UN Security Council reportedly was split on the US draft, with non-permanent members Algeria, Brazil and Pakistan urging for more time to secure cooperation from Khartoum. Also permanent members China and Russia were reported to have opted for more time.

Britain and Germany, on the other hand, were reported to push for an even tougher sanctions regime. They called for a Security Council resolution that would ban any arms trade with all of Sudan, not only Darfur, in addition to travel bans for political leaders thought to be responsible for the atrocities in Darfur. Khartoum was to be given 30 days to comply with UN demands, the draft said.

According to the German human rights group GfbV (the Society for Threatened Peoples), with contacts within the Berlin government, it was however France that was emerging the main obstacle to a possible resolution sanctioning the Sudanese government. Ulrich Delius of the group yesterday claimed to know of a French campaign “obstructing the efforts of its European partner and the US” regarding UN sanctions on Sudan.

Only on Thursday, the French Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Renaud Muselier, had confirmed that his government was against UN sanctions against Sudan. “Further, France is denying the ethnic cleansing in Darfur,” Mr Delius said.

Well France certainly hasn’t been alone in that denial.

In the meantime, as this partisan finger-pointing is being sorted out from soft seats behind clacking keyboards, a relatively new development addressed by Passion of the Present in the July 16 post “Demands to declare Sudan “genocide” continue to stir public in the US“, I don’t understand why there continue to be conflicting reports that assistance is being prevented. According to Jan Egeland, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs:

Q: Are the AU monitors having any problems in Darfur?

A: They do not seem to have any serious access restrictions from the government side, but they are sitting now in a Spartan hotel in Al-Fashir without the logistical means to move out – again, [due to] a lack of vehicles, of trucks, of helicopters, of airplanes. If they are going to monitor an area bigger than France, they need all of that. I have become increasingly frustrated in all of this by seeing too many words and too little Sudanese and international action. So [we need] less declarations from fewer ministers, and more helicopters.

Trying to find out what’s really happening in the Sudan is ultimately frustrating.

JAMES JENNINGS
http://www.conscienceinternational.org

President of Conscience International, a humanitarian relief organization, Jennings has traveled to Sudan on humanitarian missions in the past and is currently organizing another one to be undertaken this year. He said today: “The crisis in Sudan is so massive and complicated that many deaths will likely occur before an adequate mechanism for humanitarian intervention can be found. There is plenty of blame to go around — one might say that the world community has once again declared the patient inoperable after carelessly watching the tumor grow for years. Even so, we need to act, even though it is late. Sudan is the largest country in Africa, and one of the poorest. A policy of sanctions followed by war, as in Iraq, can only make matters worse. What is needed is massive political engagement to exert the maximum amount of pressure on the Khartoum government, while simultaneously mobilizing the greatest possible emergency assistance for displaced people.”

via IPA

In Darfur, Sudan, 1,000 people are dying every day, and that number is rising. Over one million black Africans have been bombed and burnt out of their villages, and their crops and water supplies destroyed by Arab “Janjaweed” militias. The Government-backed Janjaweed surround the refugee camps and block life-giving food and medicine getting through. Anyone leaving is raped or killed.

The US Government estimates that 370,000 human beings are already dead or certain to die of starvation in these extermination camps. Up to 1 million could die within the next few months.

As people of faith and members of the human family, we cannot let this horror continue. Our government’s response so far has been slow and weak. Only an immediate international humanitarian intervention to protect the people of Darfur and ensure aid gets to them will stop the slaughter. Click below to send a fax to Congress telling them to vote for the bi-partisan House and Senate Resolutions demanding the US take these actions to stop the genocide in Darfur:

www.faithfulamerica.org/darfur.htm

We must act now. The people of Darfur need a miracle, and are praying for it. We must ask ourselves whether we are the instruments through which that miracle can happen.

www.faithfulamerica.org/darfur.htm

The faith community has mobilized to address this moral outrage. Daily, peaceful protests at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington DC have echoed protest tactics used against Apartheid in South Africa. Religious leaders, celebrities and political leaders are being arrested each day in acts of civil disobedience, including Reverend Bob Edgar, Congressman Charlie Rangel, and actor Danny Glover.

Blessings,
The FaithfulAmerica.org Team

For more information on the crisis in Darfur, or to get involved in activism in your community, please visit www.darfurgenocide.org