Sudan: Calling genocide by its rightful name

Like a multicolour fireworks display illuminating the skies and sending ecstatic crowds cheering for a few moments, the Naivasha Peace Agreement has faded away. The short-lived jubilation is over and with a serious hang over, the international community is waking up to the new Sudanese reality in Darfur, asking how and why it allowed it to happen?

Neither the UN nor the US has learned anything from past mistakes - Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone and RD-Congo. Less than a month ago, brushing aside the sound of machine guns coming over from Darfur, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan described the signing of the agreement a “major step forward”. Now, on a mission to Sudan he described the situation in Darfur as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”.

Before going to Darfur (as a matter of fact like Evita Peron “I have never left it”) I would like to stop a few moments in Naivasha and see who are the real beneficiaries of the Protocols signed between the Khartoum government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army. Is it a genuine “key deal” that would benefit the Southern Sudanese people?

The sad reality is that only three individuals will benefit from Naivasha. These three so-called Men of Peace have succeeded in cheating the international community, the United Nations and the 35 million Sudanese.

Beleaguered, embattled and an outcast for the past 15 years, President Omar el Beshir who since staging his coup in 1989 escalated the war in South Sudan, sent thousands of young Sudanese zealots to their death, can now claim high and loud that he is the Sudanese leader who took Sudan out of its international isolation and brought peace to the country.

One Nobel Prize to go to el Beshir! Hip Hip Hurray!!!

Fraught with dissent among his own people and justifiably tired after 21 years of fighting, Dr John Garang of the SPLA is taking control of Southern Sudan. Crowned with the blessings brought by the Naivasha deal, Dr Garang is ready to believe anyone who tells him that he is the paramount chief of the South.
Was it a mere slip of the tongue when he declared “We have reached the crest of the last hill in our tortuous ascent to the heights of peace" or did he mean “the heights of power?”

One Nobel Prize to go to Dr Garang! Hip Hip Hurray!!!

Last but not least, comes the Texan cowboy who occupies the Oval Room in the White House. Having waved carrots and sticks, sanctions and promises of aid to the Sudanese for almost two years, now George W. Bush can happily wave the Naivasha deal to his hysteria driven supporters as he campaigns for a second term. Naivasha is meant to counter Bush’s disastrous policy in Iraq.

One Nobel Prize to go to Bush! Hip Hip Hurray!!!

I do not know what are the criteria set up by the famous Swedish Academy for prize sharing but I dread to believe that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and US Secretary of State Colin Powell would join in to form the most famous peace Quintet of this millennium.

DARFUR

At the end of his visit to war-ravaged Darfur and having seen the devastation caused by the violent campaign backed by Khartoum against its African citizens of the region, Secretary of State Colin Powell said “Let's not put a label on things”. The crack of the matter is that we have to call the atrocities in Darfur by “their rightful name" as Donald Payne, Democrat member of the Congress for New Jersey and of the Congressional Black Caucus said recently. According to Payne, the atrocities committed in Darfur “meet the requirements of the 1948 UN Convention on the prevention and the punishment of the crime of genocide and therefore we have a legal obligation under international law to act". So why is everybody stalling? Why is no real decision taken? Time is running out for the people of Darfur and the atrocious memories of Rwanda are being revised while the US refuses to say the word.

But let’s not play on words, meanings and legalities. Genocide has taken place in Darfur and ethnic cleansing is still perpetrated because one million people could die before the end of this year if the international community, the UN and the US fail to intervene immediately to stop the killing and the displacement.

Secretary Powell claims that he knows what the situation is like and that the US knows what it has to do and is going to do it. In order words, take real action.
Instead the US has circulated a resolution to member nations of the U.N. Security Council calling for sanctions against the Janjaweed militias, blaming them for what has been described as a "humanitarian catastrophe" in Sudan and taking no action against the government of Omar el Bashir, the instigator of the ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

The sanctions are ridiculously irrational. They call for an arms embargo and travel restrictions on the Janjaweed militias. Is the United States serious when it circulates these sanctions to member nations of the U.N. Security Council? Does the Security Council really believe that the Janjaweed need travel documents to move from village to village to kill, rape, burn and destroy? As for an arms embargo, do the members of the UN Security Council really believe that the Janjaweed buy their weapons on the open market, with proper contracts and stamped and approved shipping documents, and that they, the supremos of the Security Council could stop these contracts? Are we to believe once again that these good people are being misled by erroneous “intelligence” reports?

The western Sudanese region of Darfur is bordered by Chad, Libya and the Central African Republic, three states where gun running is a child play and where the Janjaweed face no arms embargo and need no license to buy their lethal weapons. In addition, as they have been provided with official Sudanese armed forces uniforms one would presume they would have also free access to weapons and ammunition from the arsenals of the Sudanese army.

There is indeed a “humanitarian catastrophe and a security crisis” in Darfur as Secretary Colin Powell finally decided to acknowledge this week. But the humanitarian crisis is man made and its origins are political. The people of Darfur, like their compatriots of the peripheries (South, Nuba Mountains and Eastern Sudan) have been marginalized by all the Sudanese regimes, which took power since independence in 1956. Democratic rule, as universally understood, was never on the agenda of these regimes. Dominated by the Northern elites, the centralised governments ruled from Khartoum, seldom interested in the plight of the regional people. Ironically as it may sound, but the regional people of Sudan are in their large majority Africans – Nuba, Beja, Fur, Massaleit, Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Zaghawa and many others.

Because of the emergency of the humanitarian catastrophe, the political aspects of the Darfur crisis are being brushed aside. But, as many leading Darfur politicians have asked, the humanitarian intervention has to go hand in hand with a political solution so the 1.5million internally displaced people and refugees scattered on the Chadian borders can return safely to their farms and live in peace and security guaranteed by their constitutional rights as citizens of Sudan. While the ancestral lands of the African people of Darfur have to be restored to their rightful owners, there is no doubt that the Arab nomadic groups and the African settlers of Darfur have to live together, like they did for centuries and share the same resources – water and land – in an equitable way. This can be achieved if the political will is there. If Kofi Annan wants progress in 48 hours, this is what he should ask from the government and the Darfur factions who took up arms against Khartoum.

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* Eva Dadrian is an independent broadcaster and Political and Country Risk Analyst for print and broadcast media, who currently works as a consultant for Arab African Affairs (London) and writes on a regular basis for AFRICA ANALYSIS (London), for Al Ahram HEBDO Echos Economiques and Al Ahram WEEKLY (Cairo) and contributes to Africa Service BBC WS (London). Published reports include: Religion and Politics in North Africa; The Horn of Africa: Country Risk Analysis; The Nile Waters: Risk Analysis; State and Church in Ethiopia; Policing the Horn of Africa; Religion and Politics in Sudan; Can South Sudan survive as an independent state?

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