Darfur Update
This morning’s New York Times reported that the last few months have seen fewer attacks in Darfur. At first glance, this seems like good news. But the reason for the reduction is chilling:
State Department officials say because government-financed militias and others have been so successful at intimidating or killing civilian residents, now almost everyone who might have been a target is either dead or living in a refugee camp. The camps, spread across Darfur and over the western border in Chad, now hold more than two million people.
Yet the militias remain armed and poised in the western provinces, American government officials say. The militias also continue to train and arm recruits. At a recent ceremony for 400 recruits, senior Sudanese military officers applauded the graduates, African peacekeepers who saw it told aid workers.
The militias are running out of victims. How on earth did we let this happen?
Eric Reeves, a Darfur expert from Smith College, has been given the keys to The New Republic’s blog for the week, and he’s using that platform to publish a primer on the history, demographics, causes, and possible responses to the ongoing genocide. The entire five-part series is well worth your time:
Part 1: How the genocide started
Part 2: What motivates the Sudanese government
Part 3: Why the genocide is not abating — and may, in fact, be getting worse
Part 4: The feckless international response
Part 5: What should be done
Reeves points out that, while the attacks may be lessening, the likelihood of continued genocide by attrition is still alarmingly high. The grave threat from malnutrition, starvation, and disease kills as many as 6,000 Sudanese a month, and that number is rising.
Ominously, the militias have begun to focus their attacks on the humanitarian groups that are doing the heroic work of feeding and treating the refugees. Reeves writes:
Jan Egeland, U.N. Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs, has warned that the toll may climb to 100,000 per month if insecurity forces humanitarian organizations to withdraw from Darfur. Banditry, hijacking of humanitarian convoys, and attacks on humanitarian workers have grown relentlessly in recent months, even as there has been a decline in major conflict between Khartoum’s regular forces and the insurgency groups.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is currently in Sudan, conducting talks with the government in an attempt to end the government’s support for the atrocities in Darfur. But it’s hard to believe that any promises the government makes will not be as empty as the past assurances they’ve given foreign diplomats.
The Darfur Accountability Act is still slowly making its way through Congress. But yesterday’s Save Darfur Coalition mailing reported the following:
The Senate unanimously agreed to an amendment (SA 1290) to the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill (HR 3057) that would provide an additional $50 million to the AU mission in Sudan. The amendment’s co-sponsors were Senators Corzine (NJ), DeWine (OH), Durbin (IL), Brownback (KS), and Obama (IL).
However, House and Senate negotiators will meet to work out difference in this legislation and finalize amendments. The AU has said it lacks $200 million for its mission in Darfur, so it is extremely important that the conference committee members decide to retain SA 1290 in the final version of the bill.
As Reeves points out, the current African Union monitoring force alone is not likely to be strong enough to disarm the militias and provide enough security for people to return to their villages. But it’s a start. And they need financial and logistical support from countries like the U.S. So head on over to the Save Darfur Coalition site to contact your representative regarding HR 3057.
For additional resources and regular information, I’d also highly recommend a regular visit to the Coalition for Darfur. Passion of the Present is also excellent.
Update: I’ve posted the link to Reeves’ must-read fifth and final post. He outlines a case for NATO intervention that is quite compelling. But he also has some pretty stark condemnation for the world’s response so far:
We have failed in Darfur. The only question now is the ultimate moral scale of our failure.
[...]
The plan I have laid out above for NATO intervention is unlikely to be implemented. Even so, it is important that the stark moral choice confronting the international community be absolutely clear. History must not record this moment as one in which our decision was uninformed by either the scale of the human catastrophe or an understanding of what is required to stop genocidal destruction.
[...]
In other words, the genocide in Darfur will continue. We could stop it. We have simply chosen not to.