Save Darfur Briefing Paper

The Genocide in Darfur - Briefing Paper

Background

Sudan is the largest country in Africa, located just south of Egypt on the eastern edge of the Sahara desert. The country's major economic resource is oil. But, as in other developing countries with oil, this resource is not being developed for the benefit of the Sudanese people, but instead, for an elite few in the government and society. As much as 70 percent of Sudan's oil export revenues are used to finance the country's military.
Darfur, an area about the size of Texas, lies in western Sudan and borders Libya, Chad and the Central African Republic. It has only the most basic infrastructure or development. The approximately 6 million inhabitants of Darfur are among the poorest in Africa. They exist largely on either subsistence farming or nomadic herding. Even in good times, the Darfuri people face a very harsh and difficult life; these are not good times in Darfur.
The current crisis in Darfur began in 2003. After decades of neglect, drought, oppression and small-scale conflicts in Darfur, two rebel groups - the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) - mounted a challenge to Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir. These groups represent agrarian farmers who are mostly non-Arab black African Muslims from a number of different tribes. President al-Bashir's response was brutal. In seeking to defeat the rebel movements, the Government of Sudan increased arms and support to local tribal and other militias, which have come to be known as the Janjaweed.[1] Their members are composed mostly of Arab black African Muslims[2] who herd cattle, camels, and other livestock. They have wiped out entire villages, destroyed food and water supplies, and systematically murdered, tortured, and raped hundreds of thousands of Darfurians. These attacks occur with the direct support of the Government of Sudan's armed forces.
No portion of Darfur's civilian population has been spared violence, murder, rape and torture. As one illustration of how Khartoum has waged its war, the Sudanese military paints many of its attack aircraft white - the same color as UN humanitarian aircraft - a violation of international humanitarian law. When a plane approaches, villagers do not know whether it is on a mission to help them, or to bomb them. Often, it has been the latter.
This scorched earth campaign by the Sudanese government against Darfur's sedentary farming population has, by direct violence, disease and starvation, already claimed as many as 400,000 lives. It has crossed over into neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic. In all, about 2.3 million Darfuris have fled their homes and communities and now reside in a network of internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Darfur, with at least 200,000 more living in refugee camps in Chad. These refugees and IDPs are completely dependent on the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations for their very livelihood - food, water, shelter, and health care.
Another 1 million Darfuris still live in their villages, under the constant threat of bombings, raids, murder, rape and torture. Their safety depends on the presence of the underfunded and undermanned African Union (AU) peacekeeping force, numbering just 7,400 troops and personnel. However, the so-called "AMIS" force, in Darfur since October 2004, lacks a civilian protection mandate as well as adequate means to do stop the violence; its sole mandate is to monitor and report ceasefire violations and it has done little more, due to its limited mandate but also because of its anemic capacity.
Current Humanitarian Situation
The situation on the ground is deteriorating. The regime continues its military operations directly and via the Janjaweed. In recent weeks, there has been an increase in attacks, resulting in tens of thousands of new arrivals to the many IDP and refugee camps.[3]
Visitors to these camps, including from the Save Darfur Coalition, have reported on the dire conditions their inhabitants endure. It is remarkable they have survived for this long, in the face of such overwhelming hardship, and with so little progress toward resolving the underlying cause of their dislocation and insecurity. Only the herculean efforts of the UN and non-governmental humanitarian relief agencies have made this possible. They have 13,000 aid workers in 100 refugee camps in Darfur and Chad, working in very difficult security and logistical conditions, and constantly hampered and harassed by Sudanese government obstruction and red tape.
Humanitarian workers and operations are increasingly being targeted by both government and fragmenting rebel movement elements. Vehicles are being hijacked and robbed; aid workers are assaulted and intimidated while carrying out their work; and offices are broken into and looted.
In the first two months of 2007, according to the UN, over 80,000 more people entered into the IDP camps, fleeing the ongoing violence. Both the UN and non-governmental humanitarian agencies have warned that their ability to sustain operations is at risk in the face of government harassment and worsening security problems. Any interruption in the flow of humanitarian aid could spark deaths on a scale even worse than that seen to date: UN officials say that the death rate in Darfur could rise as high as 100,000 people per month if the fragile humanitarian life-support system collapses.
U.S. and International Diplomatic Efforts
U.S. Actions
The human suffering in Darfur continues despite the fact that the United States Congress, President Bush, and two U.S. Secretaries of State, have all labeled Darfur a genocide - the first time in U.S. history that a conflict has been labeled as such while it was still going on. The U.S. government has failed to engage in a sustained and coherent manner to address and lead international resolution of this genocide. President Bush has given tough speeches, Congress has passed legislation authorizing stringent sanctions targeted at Sudan's leadership, and the Administration (usually only after Congress has insisted) has provided significant - though still insufficient and sporadic - funding for humanitarian aid and peacekeeping.
On April 18, 2007, President Bush stated that he was tired of Sudanese obfuscation and evasion as it pursued its genocide; he demanded prompt action by Sudan's President al-Bashir to end the genocide and cooperate with international demands that he admit UN peacekeepers to Darfur and cease obstructing humanitarian aid. The President warned that he had decided that the U.S. would impose unilateral targeted economic sanctions on the Sudanese regime[4] and work for the same globally in the UN Security Council. On May 29, 2007, President Bush announced the implementation of said sanctions against Sudan.[5]
While the U.S. is also a major funder for both AU peacekeeping and humanitarian aid efforts in Darfur, the actual costs related to Darfur have often outpaced the projections due to the changing nature and scope of the crisis, creating dangerous gaps in funding and the need for frequent emergency measures to address the shortfalls. Within the President's proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2008, there is a projected $186 million shortfall for Darfur peacekeeping, and a $6 billion shortfall for America's core humanitarian assistance. If these gaps are not addressed, the impact to international peacekeeping and aid efforts could negatively affect millions of Darfuris.
Multilateral Actions
International diplomacy also has failed the people of Darfur. For four years, an endless parade of envoys and officials from the United States, many other countries and the UN have visited Khartoum with messages to President al-Bashir. The diplomacy has been sporadic, uncoordinated, incoherent and mutually-cancelling. Promises and threats have gone unfulfilled. The Khartoum regime has become adept at playing one envoy and peace initiative off against another - all in keeping with its overarching strategy to deny, to delay, and to defy a weak-willed and disunited international community as it pursues its genocide relentlessly in Darfur. To limit world awareness of that genocide, al-Bashir severely restricts access to Darfur by diplomats, humanitarian workers, and journalists - anyone who might tell the world community what is going on there. However, information from those who do visit and from aid workers and UN and AU personnel on the ground has provided broad evidence of ongoing Government attacks.
Among the key multilateral diplomatic initiatives that have sought to end to the conflict:
Darfur Peace Agreement: On May 5, 2006, under strong pressure from the AU, the U.S., and others in the international community, the Sudanese government and one rebel (SLM/A) faction signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) in Abuja, Nigeria. However, other rebel groups found the DPA inadequate in addressing Darfurian grievances and refused to sign, and the violence Darfur has in fact worsened in the year since the DPA was signed. In August, Sudanese government forces launched a major offensive in northern Darfur. That attack however was quickly bogged down in the face of successful rebel counterattacks, achieving little other than renewed hostilities. While it quickly became clear that a military victory for Khartoum is impossible, the attempt at that victory made progress towards a peaceful solution nearly impossible as well. The UN and AU are currently working together to try to revitalize a political process to bring all parties back to the table to work on a revised and improved DPA, but this effort is being hampered by rebel disunity and by Sudanese obstruction, which has repeatedly come in the form of the Sudanese air force bombing locations where rebels are to meet under UN/AU auspices to unify their positions in order to become capable of negotiating properly.
UN Security Council Resolution 1706: The United Nations has passed 16 resolutions on Darfur. One of the most important was Resolution 1706 of August 31, 2006 that authorized a robust UN peacekeeping force of 22,500 troops to be deployed in Darfur with a mandate to protect its civilian population. More than eight months have passed; due to Sudanese stonewalling and a failure of UN member states to enforce their will, less than 200 UN advisors have actually been deployed. The current model being pursued by the U.S. and other countries is to deploy a "hybrid UN-AU force," a deal reached in Ethiopia in November 2006, supposedly "accepted by al-Bashir, but then reneged upon."[6] Khartoum continues successfully to drag out the process, often rejecting proposals outright, and when pressure builds, making modest concessions to buy more time. If the UN fails to deploy a peacekeeping force in Darfur, it will be the first time in that institution's history that UN troops have not deployed after being authorized to do so by the Security Council.
UN Human Rights Council: A high-level mission of the United Nations Human Rights Council, led by Nobel Peace laureate Jody Williams, issued a report on March 7, 2007, and said: "The situation is characterized by gross and systemic violations of human rights and grave breaches of international humanitarian law. The principal pattern is one of a violent counterinsurgency campaign waged by the Government of Sudan in concert with Janjaweed militia, targeting mostly civilians." Sudan sought to have the report rejected by the Council because the mission had not visited Darfur - which was true, but only because Sudan refused to issue visas to the mission members. That effort to quash the report failed, and a new high-level delegation was appointed to follow up on the Mission's report in a visit to Sudan as well as in other ways, and to report back to the Council's next session this summer. Sudan is unlikely to cooperate with this second delegation.
In sum, there has been woefully inadequate international pressure on the Sudanese government:
The European Union has not enacted any sanctions against the regime, nor discouraged European companies from doing business in the country. It hides behind a "requirement" that the UN enact mandatory global sanctions first, but then has done nothing to work for such sanctions in New York.
Arab states have tended to run interference on Khartoum's behalf in international fora and in terms of regional public opinion, and President al-Bashir has played to their instinct to view this conflict as Western interference in a fellow Arab state. Recent Egyptian, Libyan and Saudi diplomacy to "end the conflict" has been confused, obscure and founded on deference to Khartoum.
China, Sudan's largest trade and foreign investment partner, has been its most vocal defender on the world stage and has used the threat of its veto to water down any potentially tough UN Security Council action. The Chinese have modestly increased their engagement with Khartoum about Darfur under pressure of international public scrutiny of the 2008 Beijing Summer Games with their "One World, One Dream" theme while a nightmare persists in Darfur. Still, Chinese "quiet diplomacy" on Darfur is couched in the contradictory context of a flourishing economic and military relationship that China publicly prizes.
While African leaders denied President al-Bashir the presidency of the African Union in January for the second year running, they have done little else to pressure the Sudanese government. Sudan is a significant player in Africa and uses diplomacy where it works, and arm-twisting where it's needed, to limit the impact of those African leaders who have backed pressure on Khartoum for an end to the genocide. Al-Bashir has plenty of African allies and apologists, and African capacity to engage meaningfully is in any case hampered by weak and ineffective institutions.
What Needs to Be Done to End This Genocide
The Save Darfur Coalition calls for emphasis of the following objectives toward which the United States, the UN, and the international community must focus their efforts in order to end this crisis. They must apply strong pressure to accompany more intensive and coherent diplomacy with Khartoum:
Ceasefire: There needs to be a ceasefire respected by all parties to the conflict. There have been cease-fires agreed to in the past, notably in the 2004 DPA and again when New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson visited Khartoum in January 2007, but the Government in particular has ignored them all. The international community must back the UN and AU envoys as they work for an internal political negotiating process, including a real ceasefire respected by all actors.
Effective and Credible Peacekeeping Force to Protect Civilians: The full UN or UN/AU hybrid peacekeeping force established by Resolution 1706 needs to be deployed urgently to protect the civilian population. In the short term, this means helping the UN deploy the remainder of Phase I. It also means pressure on Khartoum to live up to its agreement to accept the Phase II "heavy support package" from the UN, and on the UN and its member states to staff, fund, equip and deploy that Phase II package urgently. But above all, it means a deepened effort to compel the Sudanese government to cease its rejection of the full Phase III 22,500-strong peacekeeping force, with its core civilian protection mandate, and with UN command and control free of government influence. Only such a force can protect Darfur's vulnerable people and ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid. This effort should include a mix of diplomacy, pressure, and punitive actions when necessary.
Renewed Darfur peace process: In order to achieve a permanent end to the genocide in Darfur, the effort to find a political solution must be renewed. A peace agreement must create the following three conditions: (1) a secure environment that allows displaced persons to return to their homes-if they chose to do so; (2) a sustainable political agreement embraced by all armed groups - as well as non-combatant groups representative of large portions of Darfuri society - and which deals with the root causes of the conflict; and (3) accountability for all those who committed or can be shown to have had command responsibility[7] over violations of human rights or international humanitarian law. A renewed and inclusive peace process must begin immediately, must include all the necessary stakeholders, and must ensure a voice for the people of Darfur themselves. While said efforts should be led by the UN and AU envoys, the United States and other key international actors must reinforce their work by sustained engagement and pressure on the Government and rebel groups.
What Needs to Be Done to Achieve Those Key Goals
The Save Darfur Coalition insistently calls for various measures to pressure Khartoum to end the genocide, something it has made clear it will not do in response to diplomacy alone. Such steps should include:
President Bush and world leaders must make peace in Darfur a top priority: It has been over two years since President Bush declared Darfur a genocide, and yet it continues. The President and his administration have made little progress; the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate. The performance of nearly all other world leaders has been much worse. The deterioration in Darfur demands more than tough rhetoric. The President must take a leadership role in building a coalition of key international actors to force Khartoum to end the killing. In the most immediate terms, that means the implementation of multilateral sanctions against targeted government officials and entities.
The UN Security Council must enact and enforce tough multilateral sanctions against the Government of Sudan and individuals complicit in the genocide: The UN Security Council should immediately take up and pass a resolution freezing the assets and banning the travel of individuals who continue to obstruct efforts to bring peace to Darfur. The Security Council should also expand the Darfur arms embargo to include the Sudanese government. This will require strong U.S. diplomacy.
China must use its leverage on Khartoum: China has a great deal of influence on Sudan given its status as Sudan's top trading partner, its strong military ties and its protective role in the UN Security Council. China has displayed increased unease and engagement regarding Darfur, but more must be done. China is deeply image-conscious, especially with regard to the growing possibility that the 2008 Summer Games will be marred by Darfur-related activities. Chinese oil investments in Sudan, which benefit the regime but not the people and help fund government military operations in Darfur, are also susceptible to pressure through the growing global divestment movement. All this leverage needs to be consistently applied to get China, which is in a unique position to influence Khartoum's calculations, to pressure al-Bashir to end the genocide.
No-Fly Zone: The international community must set up and enforce a no-fly zone in Darfur to monitor, report on and halt hostile Sudanese military flights, thereby preventing the bombing of villages. NATO and NATO member states could easily set up a no-fly zone over Darfur, without taking military resources away from any other conflict or region in the world. The U.S. should lead the international community in realizing this goal. Given the realistic dangers of Sudanese retaliation against those on the ground in Darfur, a no-fly zone must be coupled with increased civilian protection efforts if it is to be effective, as well as adequate contingency planning for the event of a complete security collapse in Darfur.
Humanitarian Aid: While efforts are pressed to protect civilians with peacekeepers and to broker internal agreement for a lasting end to the conflict, humanitarian aid and free access all over Darfur for it must be sustained. This means continued funding of aid programs, and an international push to end Sudan's obstruction of aid efforts. The Government of Sudan is likewise guilty of innumerable violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, which must be stopped immediately. Given repeated UN and NGO warnings of the fragility of their efforts, the international community must prepare a contingency plan for a collapse of current aid programs.
[1] Janjaweed loosely translates to "devil on horseback."
[2] It is important to understand that all Darfuris are Muslim and black. The distinction between "African" and "Arab" is primarily descriptive of lifestyle, and is common local parlance in Darfur: the "Arabs," who are roughly 35% of the population, are nomadic herders; the "Africans," roughly 65% of the population, are sedentary farmers. Traditionally, the two groups coexisted and had arrangements for passage of nomads through farm land areas. These arrangements started failing under the pressure of desertification and population growth, but were managed through traditional dispute resolution mechanisms. When the Sudanese government launched its genocide in 2003, it instrumentalized the underlying tensions over land use by arming certain "Arab" clans and inciting them to attack "African" villages, with the promise of control of the diminishing land and water resources.
[3] The AU force commander told Save Darfur Coalition (SDC) visitors in January 2007 that there were approximately 65 "registered" IDP camps in Darfur and a further 35-40 "unregistered" camps, each with populations ranging from 20,000 to 160,000.
[4] The "Plan B" sanctions, as they are commonly referred to, target 31 companies owned, controlled or affiliated with the Sudanese government. They also sanction Ahmad Muhammad Harun, Sudan's state minister for humanitarian affairs, and Khalil Ibrahim of the Justice and Equality (JEM) rebel movement.
[5] The United States has had trade and investment sanctions in place against Sudan since 1997, when it was harboring Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders.
[6] On November 17, 2006, the international community and the Sudanese government agreed after long meetings in Addis Ababa to deploy a hybrid UN-AU peacekeeping force to deploy to Darfur in three phases: a "light support package" of 160 UN advisors to help the AU peacekeeping force already there; a "heavy support package" of 3,000 UN military and police logistics personnel to do the same; and finally a large-scale force comprised of at least 10,000 additional UN and AU troops. President al-Bashir immediately went to work on weakening this agreement, and thus far has allowed only Phase I to deploy. Recently, he formally agreed to Phase II deployment, which will take around six months and which he is likely to obstruct, and he continues to flatly reject Phase III.
[7] Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, Art. 87(3). This provision is applicable to domestic armed conflicts as well, such as the one in Darfur.