---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Eric Reeves <[email protected]> Date: Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:18:30 -0400 Subject: "Darfur and the Consequences of Impunity for Sudan" To: [email protected]
"Darfur and the Consequences of Impunity for Sudan" Dissent Magazine (on-line),September 9, 2011 http://www.dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=549 Eric Reeves Sudan is sliding deeper and deeper into a chaoticviolence from which there is no longer any apparent escape and to which thereis no meaningful international diplomatic response. Human suffering anddestruction throughout the country are outstripping the available humanitarianresources. Following the Khartoum regime's May 20 military seizure of the contestedborder region of Abyei, some 120,000 Ngok Dinka indigenous to the region wereforced to flee to South Sudan. There is no prospect for their return, despitethe deployment of an armored Ethiopian brigade under UN peacekeeping auspices,which is incapable of providing the kind of civilian security necessary for theNgok to resume their agricultural lives. Khartoum's regular forces and its Arab militia alliescontinue to pose a terrifying threat throughout Abyei. Khartoum next moved to begin a large-scale campaignof ethnically targeted destruction in neighboring South Kordofan State, nowpart of North Sudan. On June 5 the regime, in a carefully prepared military andintelligence operation, targeted the African tribal groups known as the Nuba.Using roadblocks and house-to-house searches, the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) andsecurity services rounded up as many Nuba as possible, often using membershipin the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) as pretext. The Nuba peoplesupported the Southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) duringSudan's long civil war,and continue to demand "popular consultations" to determinetheir status within North Sudan. These were promised as part of the 2005Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the civil war, but have not beenconducted in any meaningful fashion. Instead, the people of South Kordofan havesuffered large-scale targeted executions and arrests; both satellite photographic evidenceand numerouseyewitness accounts have identified what are, beyond a reasonable doubt,mass gravesites. They may hold thousands of bodies. Indiscriminate aerial bombardmentcontinues throughout the Nuba Mountains, the SPLM-N stronghold. Some 200,000civilians have been displaced and many more put at risk of starvation. Allsignificant humanitarian access to the region has been blocked by Khartoum.Valerie Amos, the head of UN humanitarian operations, who finally seems to havegrasped the significance of a crisis that has been two months in the making, said earlier thisweek, "Unlessthere is an immediate stop to the fighting, and humanitarian organizations aregranted immediate and unhindered independent access throughout South Kordofan,people in many parts of the state face potentially catastrophic levels ofmalnutrition and mortality." Khartoum remains unmoved and refuses to grant humanitarian access,clearly determined not to allow another "Darfur," with a large international relief presence,in South Kordofan. Not content with these actions in South Kordofan,Khartoum---increasinglyunder military control, with deepening rifts in the political cabal---attackedBlue Nile, another Northern state, on September 1. Again, the militaryoperation was prepared in advance, and the seizure of Damazin, the statecapital, was rapidly accomplished with large numbers of tanks and truckscarrying heavy machine guns. The house of the elected governor of Blue Nile,Malik Agar, was destroyed (Malik, who also heads the SPLM-N, is now leading themilitary resistance). Again, indiscriminate aerial bombardment has targetedcivilian villages and non-military installations. More than 20,000 have alreadyfled into neighboring Ethiopia to the east, and many more civilians aredisplaced within Blue Nile. To date, the international community has offerednothing more than the obligatory expressions of dismay and demands for animmediate cessation of hostilities. There is no pressure on Khartoum to changeits course of action, no per suasively articulated consequencdestructive military campaign. Khartoum's military and political goals (ultimatelyindistinguishable) are to prevent the growth of new sources of resistance inNorth Sudan, comparable to the resistance offered by South Sudan over manydecades of civil war. As FaoudHikmat of the International Crisis Group puts it, Khartoum's goal is toprevent a "new South of the North of Sudan." No matter howdestructive these preemptive measures, no matter what the cost to civilianpopulations, the regime will pursue its survivalist agenda. That the economyin the North is a shambles---suffering from high inflation, dramaticallyreduced oil revenues, and unsustainable external debt---only adds to theurgency of the military campaigns. Indeed, Khartoum may even attempt to seizeSouthern oil fields. Sudan is on the verge of all-out war betweenKhartoum at the center and the peripheral areas it has marginalized, includingnot only South Kordofan and Blue Nile, but the Beja regions in Red Sea andKassala states, Nubia in the far north, and of course Darfur. The most urgentquestion is whether South Sudan will be drawn into conflict: the SPLA/M in Jubais watching developments with deep alarm and intense dismay, as their formercomrades in arms are attacked without restraint from the air and on the ground,and their civilian populations denied humanitarian access. It seems unlikelythat the South will be able to remain above the conflict if present patternspersist. And active fighting by the South would ensure war throughout Sudan---fromeastern Chad in the west to Abyei and South Kordofan, to Ethiopia, and north tothe border with Eritrea. Nothing animates Khartoum's ambitions somuch as a continually sustained sense of impunity. We have known for almosteight years that crimes against humanity and genocide on a vast scale wereoccurring in Darfur, and yet ethnically targeted violence continues, millionsof people remain displaced and at growing risk, conditions of life in camps forthose displaced are deteriorating, and the UN/African Union Mission in Darfur---theinternational peacekeeping response to all this---has been a disastrousfailure. Humanitarian access and space continues to contract, and the future isunspeakably grim. Arecent study by the Lancet foundthat 75 percent of all children in Darfur camps suffered from symptoms ofpost-traumatic stress syndrome. The number of households led my mothers,grandmothers, and young girls has created profound social upheavals. And theepidemic of rape has created an environment of fear and terror so great as tothreaten social stability for a generation. The atrocity crimes in Darfur, including the use ofrape as a weapon of war, were referred to the International Criminal Court byUN Security Council Resolution 1593 in March 2005---six and a half years ago.The resolution was based on a UN investigation that, for all its politicalmanipulation, found massive evidence of crimes against humanity, echoing thefindings of human rights organizations. To date the ICC has indicted formerState Minister of the Interior Ahmed Haroun on forty-two counts of crimesagainst humanity and war crimes in Darfur; Haroun presently serves as governorof South Kordofan, following May elections rigged by the regime. Ali Kushayb, anotorious Janjaweed leader ("the colonel of colonels"), has beensimilarly indicted. President Omar al-Bashir has been indicted on multiplecounts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. It is only amatter of time until a number of other senior political and military officialsare indicted. To date Khartoum has spurned the ICC and all calls for meaningfuljustice in Darfur. Certainly nothing said or done by human rightsgroups, the ICC, the African Union, or other parties has made the slightestdifference to Khartoum's forces, regular and militia. Though there is frequently infightingbetween the various paramilitary forces that Khartoum has set up---often littlemore than recycled Janjaweed from particular Arab m ilitia forces---there isnothinviolence, against men, women, andchildren. The notion of an "international responsibility to protect" such vulnerablecivilians has died in Darfur, and its post mortem is written almost daily inthe dispatches of Radio Dabanga, like this one issued on Monday: "Three minor girls in Garsila and another inKas were gang raped by government-backed militia wearing military uniforms intwo separate incidents on Sunday, sources told Radio Dabanga. While the threegirls in Mando area of West Darfur were aged between 14 and 17 years of age,the victim in Kas, South Darfur was 16 years old. A relative of the threeteenage girls in Mando told Radio Dabanga, 'An armed group wearing military uniforms intercepted the three girlswho were on their way from the village to collect firewood. They then arrestedthem and raped them for an entire day' The girls weren’t released until the next day." "A relative of the16-year-old victim in Kas also stated that the six gunmen who attacked the girlwere wearing military uniforms. 'Four of them were riding on camels and twoothers on horses. The girl was with her mother on her way back from the farm tothe village,' the relative told Radio Dabanga. It was then that the armed groupintercepted them and arrested them. The group took turns to rape her for thenext 12 hours and also beat the girl's mother." As the father of two daughters, I struggle to keepsuch realities from overwhelming my sense of judgment and proportion. Theseunspeakably cruel crimes are violent, obscenely destructive assaults on themost vulnerable of civilians, without consequence for the perpetrators. Andsuch instances of rape have been reported continuously, voluminously, andauthoritatively for eight years by Amnesty International, Physiciansfor Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins SansFrontières (MSF/Holland),and many others. The Amel Center for the Treatment and Rehabilitation ofVictims of Torture in South Darfur has substantial records of these crimes, anda compellingoverview has been provided by the Harvard School of Public Health and theFrancois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights. There is simply nodoubt that rape and sexual violence---on a vast, often systematic, andethnically targeted basis---have profoundly defined the lives of girls andwomen in Darfur, and will for many years, and that prosecutions for thesecrimes are virtually unheard of. It is time to acknowledge frankly that the ideal ofa "responsibility toprotect" is merely that---anideal before its time, or at least before the international community hasdevised the means to make meaningful the words of the UN World Summit OutcomeDocument, unanimously endorsed six years ago by all member states voting,declaring that they were "...prepared to take collective action, in atimely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance withthe UN Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case by case basis and incooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, shouldpeaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly failing toprotect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, andcrimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles ofthe Charter and international law." Given the time, energy, and institutional andgovernmental resources devoted to promulgating a "responsibility toprotect," it seems both honest and important to acknowledgethat this has not been enough---and that without a fundamental change in theways in which the world responds to atrocity crimes of the sort we see inDarfur, impunity will continue to prevail in Sudan and throughout the world. What we are seeing now, whether in the fates of thegirls of Garsila and Kass or in the invasions of Abyei, South Kordofan, andBlue Nile, are the consequences of impunity---our refusal to confront thebrutal regime responsible for all of this, ruthless and cruel men who havelearned over many years t hat words, however strenuoulittle. Darfur has been the test case for the "responsibility toprotect," and we have failed terribly. _____________________________ Eric Reeves Smith College Northampton, MA 01063 [email protected] 413-585-3326 Skype: ReevesSudan www.sudanreeves.org -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JFD info" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jfdinfo?hl=en.
