Watching Hotel Darfur

Darfur and Northern Uganda: Shrugging at genocide
Philadelphia Inquirer
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
photo: United Human Rights Council

At least the United States and others on the United Nations Security Council can lay claim to being world-class dawdlers in the face of two interconnected human catastrophes. They certainly can't take credit for aggressively trying to end worsening crises in northern Uganda and Sudan's Darfur region.

The Bush administration's inadequate response will further tarnish U.S. moral credibility; the Security Council will provide more ammunition to its critics if it cannot agree on strong action.

The greatest victims, as always, will be the civilians caught in conflict.

Killings in Darfur are on the rise. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned the Security Council last week that "the looming threat of complete lawlessness and anarchy draws nearer."

U.S. resolve toward Darfur has waned since former Secretary of State Colin Powell in September 2004 said attacks by government-supported Arab militias on non-Arab villages constituted genocide. About 400,000 Darfur residents have been killed since the fighting began in 2003, and two million have been displaced from their homes.

The United States has several envoys, including Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, shuttling to the region to promote negotiations, including a seventh round of African Union-sponsored talks that began yesterday. But Zoellick will be of no help if he actually believes his recent assessment that this is a "tribal war." That's what was said about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda - and it's an excuse for the international community to again do nothing.

The international community also has largely ignored the 19-year-old war between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army. The LRA, led by Joseph Kony, has abducted about 30,000 children and forced them into being soldiers and sex slaves. At least 1.4 million people have been left homeless. Thousands have died.

The violence in Sudan and neighboring Uganda are linked: As it now supports the Janjaweed, the Sudanese government also has given aid to the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda. A mischievous Sudan destabilizes its neighborhood.

Instead of using its clout to pressure the governments of Sudan and Uganda to protect civilians, the Bush administration has coddled those nations' leaders. The State Department seems willing to doom the people of Darfur so as not to upset Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's commitment to the peace accord that ended the war between Sudan's north and south. That is a false either-or choice.

The Security Council has a worse record. It has agreed to weak resolutions on Darfur and never passed anything on northern Uganda, where violence has increased since the International Criminal Court last month issued arrest warrants for Kony and top aides. LRA members are now also killing foreign tourists and aid workers, prompting some relief groups to suspend operations.

U.S. and U.N. action can make a difference in these conflicts.

Capitol Hill legislators can pass supplemental legislation restoring $50 million for the African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan that they cut from the 2006 Foreign Operations Appropriations bill.

President Bush should make northern Uganda part of the diplomatic brief for Darfur. That effort could use some streamlining and clarifying, with one person - not Zoellick - clearly in charge.

The Security Council should expand the peacekeeping mission and give it a broader mandate for protecting civilians. Sanctions against the governments of Sudan and Uganda are an option worth more discussion.

The peacekeeping mission also should be transferred to the U.N. before January 2006. That's when Sudan is slated to take over leadership of the African Union.

Urbane Analysis: This editorial ran last week in the Philadelphis Inquirer. It was then put out on the Knight Ridder/ Tribune News Service wire, and was picked up by Fort Wayne, Indiana daily - and that was it. As far as the news business is concerned, the piece is now stale - you won't be seeing it anywhere.

Notice the slant on the editorial line. The U.S. is bad, with the wrong people working on the problem there. People who really don't care. People like Secretary of State Condi Rice and Ambassador Robert Zoellick - her special envoy to Darfur.

Notice the "call to action" of this piece: the U.N. should empower its peacekeepers to protect people in the Darfur region (currently they operate on the standard rules of engagement whereby they can only provide security to the U.N.'s own personnel - in other words, they can do nothing in the face of atrocities).

Notice that the writer of this piece made no mention of how only three weeks before - that Ambassador Robert Zoellick short-circuited the usual diplomatic run-around and vociferously made this statement to Sudanese officials, effectively doing more to directly advance the cause of human rights in Darfur than anyone ever has. Let us be clear: the U.S. State Department is doing more than any other government, news organization and more than all but a handful of N.G.O.'s - to communicate understanding and resolve on the Darfur issue by peaceful means. It is up to the news media to play a role as well - and begin to systematically cover the stories there. And the U.S. cannot succeed alone on a diplomatic track when their allies do little or nothing by way of support or understanding of the issues. Ditto for the news media.

So it appears that the editorial writers would rather be playing politics and doing the usual get-Bush scapegoating - something they have no business doing in light of the human cost of this crisis. Particularly when there is a dearth of column inches and broadcast minutes devoted to this issue. Gotcha! Mr. Media Machine.

One need only look at the fawning coverage of America's entry into Somalia in 1993 (those who saw it... will not long forget... the triumphal ride of PBS News Hour correspondent, and later NPR Africa Correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault into Mogadishu on top of an armored vehicle). When the Democratic Party goes to war, well, that's a good thing. Or so Mr. Media says...

Or the way American media served as cheerleaders to NATO's invasion of the Balkans in 1992 and 1993 - undertaken without UN sanction and over the vociferous objection of China - and with Russia's double-dealing on behalf of their Serb allies. With a ham-handed cruise missile landing on the frig'gin Chinese Embassy for chrissakes. Yet these were the wars of the Clintons, and therefore above reproach by the media - and to the extent that they weren't "good" they were ignored. Like the hundreds of cruise missiles launched on Africa and South Asia during that time - which did nothing to weaken al-Qa'ida, and in fact only bolstered its credibility among the Muslim people those missiles landed on - and sparked the outrage of viewers of the Al Jazeera network. Apparently Mr. Machine doesn't have a problem with cruise missiles.

Did I ever tell you about my liberal friend who, upon getting excited, reverts into the same manner of speech (apparently) as her father, and refers to anyone with brown (or black) skin as...

Wogs?

By the way, how many cruise missiles has George Bush launched on Africa? The answer is zero. Nada. Zip. Nary a one. And while the U.S. must certainly have military special operators in Africa - the Bush administration has landed no troops in Africa as well. The goal is peaceful change - and that requires a media to do its job - not one which will (by turn) stretch or ignore the truth in order to serve its wider goal of undermining the Bush presidency. Can I call you Media?

As for the $50 million in peacekeeping/security funds - that would be paying the fox to guard the hen house, since Sudan will be heading the African Union in only a matter of weeks. It is a clear non-starter. Big-time, as VELCRO might say. No way should we be rewarding Sudan's behavior - one might not have read or heard a thing about the real situation in Darfur (like, if you suscribe to the New York Times), yet one could decipher as much from a careful reading of this very piece from the wannabe Inquirer. So what that newspaper argues for here makes no sense - it contravenes the logic of their own arguments.

I do know something even worse than the media's confusion regarding Darfur: the way they ignore Darfur. That's where cynicism disects outrage. A commentator on the long-ago Balkan conflict summed up that very problem in a way that echoes today as admonition regarding ignored crisis points all over the planet: "The failure to put across this fundamental geometry of the conflict, through willfulness or incompetence, remains the greatest failure of the Western media and the Western political leadership of the time."