Threats and excuses
Jul 26th 2004
From The Economist Global Agenda
International pressure is increasing on Sudan to stop the conflict in its Darfur region—which the UN says has caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. While Sudan’s government continues to deny culpability for the crisis, Darfur’s rebels are also showing signs of intransigence
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SINCE early last year, black African rebels in the Darfur region of Sudan have been in revolt against the country's Arab-led government, over many long-standing grievances. To crush the uprising, the government has armed an Arab militia, the janjaweed, and instructed it to kill, rape and terrorise black civilians. As a result, the United Nations says Darfur is now suffering a worse humanitarian crisis than anywhere else in the world. It reckons that 30,000 people have already died and more than 1m have been forced to flee their homes, often ending up in disease-ridden refugee camps. The US Agency for International Development said recently that, without help, 1m people may die, and that 300,000 will probably die whatever is done.
In the past few weeks, the world’s powers have been increasing the pressure on the Sudanese government, threatening sanctions and even talking of sending troops. On Monday July 26th, the European Union’s foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels, demanded that the UN pass a resolution threatening sanctions if Sudan’s government does not immediately take action to stop the conflict. Also on Monday, the 53-country African Union (AU) said it was trying to revive peace talks between the government and rebels, from which the rebels walked out last week. The AU is already sending a group of observers backed by around 300 troops, to monitor an oft-broken ceasefire between Darfur’s rebels and government forces. The UN is considering sending a peacekeeping force and, in the past few days, Britain, Australia and New Zealand have indicated their readiness to contribute troops.
America has circulated a draft resolution at the UN which would set deadlines for the Sudanese government to take action to stop the janjaweed’s attacks and introduce as-yet undefined sanctions if the deadlines were not met. Sudan’s authoritarian government, led by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, continues to deny arming and backing the janjaweed, though there is plenty of reliable evidence that it is doing so—and America, the EU, other world powers and humanitarian groups are in no doubt about this.
Last month, America’s secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the UN’s secretary-general, Kofi Annan, visited Sudan to insist that the government stop the conflict and allow aid workers into Darfur. Mr Bashir’s government now says janjaweed leaders are being arrested and refugees are being protected. However, as yet, the displaced Darfuris feel no more secure being watched over by Sudanese forces who have hitherto been aiding the militiamen. And America believes that the killing of civilians, and aerial bombings by the Sudanese air force, have not stopped. Unsafe in their home country, floods of Darfuris have been crossing into neighbouring Chad.
Last week, America’s Congress passed a resolution describing the killings of black Darfuris as “genocide”, though the Bush administration has so far stopped short of using this description. In an interview with a Belgian newspaper, published on Monday, Mr Bashir’s foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, insisted there was no genocide and accused congressmen in Washington of electioneering, in an attempt to win black American votes by posing as the protectors of Africans.
Mr Bashir’s regime is weak, and it should not take much concerted international pressure to make it take tougher action. Last week, Mr Annan sounded confident that disagreements among the main powers at the UN had died down and that agreement could be reached on a resolution. Nevertheless, China and Russia, both of which have a veto on the Security Council, have so far appeared unkeen on sanctions. America’s draft resolution, while not specifying the possible sanctions, does call for an immediate ban on weapons sales to any armed group in Darfur. Russia is reported to be selling fighter jets to the Sudanese government.
The peace talks between the Khartoum government and Darfur’s main rebel groups broke up last week after the rebels accused the government of breaching a ceasefire agreed earlier this year. International observers worry that the rebels are being deliberately intransigent, in the hope that the dire humanitarian crisis will force the world powers to send troops to the region. It seems clear that unless the rebels come back to the negotiating table and both sides honour the ceasefire, the job of restraining the janjaweed will be much harder.
As if the human suffering among Darfur’s refugees were not enough, any failure to end its conflict could have dire consequences for a longer-running war in southern Sudan and for another in neighbouring Uganda. Under pressure from America and others, in May the Sudanese government signed a power-sharing accord with the main rebel group in southern Sudan. If this deal leads to a formal peace settlement, it will end a north-south war that has lasted almost half a century, killed 2m people and displaced twice as many. However, if the chaos continues in Darfur it might trigger the collapse of the shaky deal between the government and the southern rebels.
This in turn might lead the Sudanese government to renew its support for the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a bizarre cross between a religious cult and a rebel movement based across the border in northern Uganda, which abducts children and makes them attack Ugandan government forces and civilians. Already, perhaps 1.8m have fled from the LRA. The resulting humanitarian crisis merits perhaps as much international concern as is now beginning to be expressed over the plight of the Darfuris.
Calling the world police
In both of Sudan’s main conflicts there is a strong case for both concerted international action and, if necessary, the dispatch of peacekeeping troops. Britain’s armed-forces commander, General Sir Mike Jackson, said at the weekend that he could send 5,000 soldiers if asked. Australia’s foreign minister, Alexander Downer, said in a television interview that there was a “good chance” of Australian troops going to Sudan.
However, policing a conflict in such a large territory (Darfur is about the same size as Iraq) would take many more than a few thousand troops. America and its allies are already overstretched, as they struggle with insurgency in Iraq and instability in Afghanistan, not to mention the conflict in Kosovo. The AU has begun forming an African peacekeeping force, which could be of great help in damping down regional conflicts such as Sudan’s. But the plan is in its early stages and many AU members have serious security problems of their own to tackle. In the absence of rapid and concerted international help, the people of Darfur will continue to die in their thousands.
