An American Witness to Sudan's systematic killing

Nicholas D Kristof

American soldiers are trained to shoot at the enemy. They're prepared to be shot at. But what young men like Brian Steidle are not equipped for is witnessing a genocide but being unable to protect the civilians pleading for help.

If President George W Bush wants to figure out whether the U S should stand more firmly against the genocide in Darfur, I suggest that he invite Steidle to the White House to give a briefing. Steidle, 28, a former Marine captain, was one of just three U S military advisers for the African union monitoring team in Darfur - and he is bursting with frustration.

'Every single day you go out to see another burned village, and more dead bodies,' he said. 'And the children - you see 6-month-old babies that have been shot, and 3-year-old kids with their faces smashed in with rifle butts. And you just have to stand there and write your reports.'

While journalists and aid workers are sharply limited in their movements in Darfur, Steidle and the monitors traveled around by truck and helicopter to investigate massacres by the Sudanese government and the janjaweed militia it sponsors. They have sometimes been shot at, and once his group was held hostage, but they have persisted and become witnesses to systematic crimes against humanity.

So is it really genocide?

''I have no doubt about that,'' Steidle said. ''It's a systematic cleansing of peoples by the Arab chiefs there. And when you talk to them, that's what they tell you. They're very blunt about it. One day we met a janjaweed leader and he said, 'Unless you get back four camels that were stolen in 2003, than we're going to go to these four villages and burn their villages, rape the women, kill everyone.' And they did.''

The African Union doesn't have the troops, firepower or mandate to actually stop the slaughter, just to monitor it. Steidle said his single most frustrating moment came in December when the Sudanese government and the janjaweed attacked the village of Labado, which had 25,000 inhabitants. Steidle and his unit flew to the area in helicopters, but a Sudanese general refused to let them enter the village - and also refused to stop the attack.

''It was extremely frustrating - seeing the village burn, hearing gunshots, not being able to do anything,''Steidle said. ''The entire village is now gone. It 's a big black spot on the earth.''

When Sudan's government is preparing to send bombers or helicopter gunships to attack an African village, it shuts down the cell phone system so no one can send out warnings. Thus the international monitors know when a massacre is about to unfold. But there's usually nothing they can do.

The West, led by the Bush administration, is providing food and medical care that is keeping hundreds of thousands of people alive. But we're managing the genocide not halting it.

''The world is failing Darfur,'' said Jan Egeland, the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs. ''We're only playing the humanitarian card, and we're just witnessing the massacres.''

Bush is pushing for sanctions, but European countries like France are disgracefully cool to the idea - and China is downright hostile, playing the same supportive role for the Darfur genocide that it did for the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Steidle has just quit his job with the African Union, but he plans to continue working in Darfur to do his part to stand up to the killers. Most of us don't have to go to that extreme of risking our lives in Darfur - we just need to GET OFF THE FENCE AND PUSH OUR GOVERNMENT OFF, TOO.

At one level, I blame Bush - and, even more, the leaders of European, Arab and African nations for their passivity. But if our leaders are acquiescing in genocide, that's because we citizens are passive, too. If American voters cared about Darfur's genocide as much as about, say, the Michael Jackson trial, then America's political system would respond. One useful step would be the passage of the Darfur Accountability Act, to be introduced Wednesday by Senators Jon Corzine and Sam Brownback. The legislation calls for such desperately needed actions as expanding the African Union force and establishing a military no-fly zone to stop Sudan from bombing civilians.

As Martin Luther King Jr. put it: ''Man's inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating INACTION of those who are good.'' (Capital letters inserted by me)

email nicholas@nytimes.com

Why isn't there a subforum for the events going on in Sudan?

My thoughts exactly. Thanks.

I agree that it's our fault, the government has never taken a strong enough position against genocide without substantial pressure from the public. A lot of the efforts have fallen apart because there was minimal public support.

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...topic=16676&hl=

that'd be my thread on darfur in daily news section.
archived and buried DEEP by now.

nobody else ever bothered to post, and almost nobody else ever bothered to read the thread, too.

so, in answer to your question - there was no demand for it.

<_<

Hmmmm.... Well maybe if we keep talking about Darfur then maybe others on this forum will get involved in the discussion.

Here is a good resource for the common questions about the genocide occuring in Darfur. If anyone is not familiar with this subject, this is a good place to start educating yourself about what is going on in Sudan.

" Q&A: Sudan's Darfur conflict"
from the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3496731.stm

Does this mean we are generally racist, or selfish? No doubt the same thing happened in Hitler's day while he was exterminating Jewish people.

In fact I blame the news editors for putting the Darfur news on the inside pages instead of splashed over the front sheet of the paper with graphic photos in colour. (I got this from a suggestion in the letters page of the International Herald Tribune,) maybe in answer to mine which was published earlier in the week. I suggested that the Sudanese embassies be closed and the ambassadors sent home, because until the elite, over there, suffer there will be no real attempt to get the culprits.

Today the letters are all about Africa, and its various problems, whereas the front page completely ignores Africa...almost by policy.

I believe that the helicopter gunships and arms come from money from Saudi Arabia. The South is rich in oil and it is in the interest of the west to let the indigenous people die so that we can all enjoy the oil wealth. I am not the only one who believes this.

Thanks, Gabriellemy, for all your posts. At the time I was ill and not using this forum or any other. We must keep this issue hot. This week and last week Nicholas Kristoff has written in the IHTribune. These thinks are NOT going to stop unless

a Some body or other intervenes.
b All the blacks in the South are dead.

Shame on both China and France for not wanting sanctions on Sudan. Unless EVERYONE agrees on sanctions, sanctions are worthless.

Sunday Mar 6 CNN

Nicholas Kristof appeared twice. Once in the morning and once in the evening, interviewed for approx. ten minutes. The interviewer asked some very interesting questions such as 'Why do you think people have ignored the Darfurian situation?' The answer being suggested that it was the distance from them that it was happening at, or that the media themselves were to blame. Nicholas Kristof's answer was probably that it was a day after day thing, not just one event. He said that it was possible for reporters and journalists to go over there. He said there were thousands of archived photos, he could recall actual sights similar to those on the photos, and that everyone had similar stories, nobody ever suggested that there was anything untrue in the reports from the victims, through the journalists and observers.

Another interesting question was 'If you were George Bush what would you do about it?' The reply was three things

the threat of sanctions would be enough to worry them, they are not like the Taliban, they can be negotiated with

Second, freezing their assets as a government.

Thirdly, enforcing a no-fly zone over the area in question so that if a helicopter gunship was in the area it would be shot down at once.

A couple of other interesting things.

The war was not religious but racial. Arabs against the three black African tribes in the area, who are also muslim.

The Chinese do not wish to do anything that will prevent deals for the Sudanese oil in the area. (Perhaps the same applies to the French.)

Brackets are my own addition.

We can keep this subject at least hot in the letters columns of any newspaper that will print a letter for us. Please do something. Contact your senator, congressperson, MP, whoever.

Suggest that your local newspaper takes up the stories at least in the editorial pages. They should be encouraged to bring it further towards the front of the papers.

This is a hard place to go mentally...... thus I think, the lack of response on the forum.

As has been pointed out, in so many words, Arabs are the persecutors, so Bush is not going to further alienate them. And he has the dwindling troops spread to thin already.

And, the persecuted are black and African. Neither of which concerns Buchco in the least.

Sickening

Maybe I am too cynical but I think that it is all about preserving relations with future oil contracts in South Sudan.

Sudan updates

http://news.amnesty.org/pages/sudan

Which countries are arming Sudan with what

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAFR541392004

One of the biggest suppliers of small arms was China. In fact the Biggest.

I guess a general boycott of Chinese made goods is in order.

Yes, boycotting is a good idea,if only enough people do it.

Belarus was the biggest provider of large equipment.

From PREDA.org (Fr Shay Cullen) 5 Jan 05

''These so called prestigious companies have paid money to the Khartoum (Sudan's capital I think) government in return for oil and other business that enables the government to arm the fierce militias and build up their own armed forces and even buy Mig jets-29s. The horror is continuing according to Human Rights Watch. Have these corporations something to answer for? Until they stop trading or giving money to Sudan I will never buy a German Siemens product like a cell phone, or insurance from ABB Ltd of Switzerland, Tatneft of Russia and PetroChina. Allegedly they are the biggest supporters of the Sudanese government empowering and enabling it to oppress the minorities.'' (Brackets are my comments.)

Sudan aid promises not kept, UN official says

by Warren Hodge

United Nations NewYork: the world is failing t provide promised aid to the people of southern Sudan, putting at risk a peace agreement that was praised as a model for resolving ethnic was afflicting Africa, the top relief official for the United Nations said.

''In the south of Sudan, the world has really achieved something fantastic in putting an end to the bloodiest war in this region,'' said the official, Jan Egeland. ''But now it is not willing to foot the bill of building the peace and providing for the return of refugees.''

Speaking from Nyala in the Darfur region of western Sudan where he arrived Sunday after touring the south, Egeland said that only $25 millio of the $500 million pleadged last October for he south had been received and that a half-dozen UN agencies and 30 outside aid groups involved in the area had under-used capacity because of the shortfall.

''My people have built up very dramatically in anticipation that the money will be coming because they simply cannot believe that the donor community will not assist them,'' Egeland said.

Egeland warned that in the absence of assistance, ethnic conflict in southern Sudan could erupt again, endangering the fragile peace only months after the settlement.

The Islamic government in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum and rebels from the Christian and animist south signed the peace agreement on Jan 9 ending a 21 year war that the United Nations estimates cost 1.5 million lives and forced four million people to flee their homes.

Under the agreement, John Garang, leader of the principal rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, has become the first vice president of Sudan in a government of national unity under President Omar al-Bashir, and the south has been promised a referendum on independence in six years.

The United States, a principal promoter of the accord, and the United Nations had expressed the hope that the January signing would speed peace-making in Darfur, where a campaign of ethnic cleansing by government-supported arab militias has made refugees of as many as two million black African villagers and cost the lives of an estimated 300,000 people.

As the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called an emergency meeting in his office on Monday with members of the Security Council to sound the alarm about the deteriorating situation in Sudan.

The concerns encompass both the south, where the relief effort is being jeopardized by lack of money, and Darfur where the aid effort is threatened by continuing violence.

Egeland said that in southern Sudan, four countries - Britain, the Netherlands, Norway and the United States - were largelyliving up to their pledges , but that 20 other weealthy nations in Asia, Europe and the Persian Gulf were not.

He said that relief workers were feeding 400,000 people in the south but would need to provide for 1.9 million by summer.

Critical efforts to repatriate refugees and reintegrate former combatants have stalled, Egeland said.

''I saw a small project where we have started to make carpenters, tailors and masons out of those who were in the trenches for years, but the project had money only for 50 ex-fighters and it should hav had enough for several hundred,'' he said.

''The local population is growing increasingly frustrated because their countrymen who were war refugees are returning from neighboring countries with no money for food and education, and they become a burden on the community.''

The south might have beeen neglected because of the attention paid to crises elsewhere, like the tsunami in Asia, he said.

Egeland praised the work of the UN peacekeepers already on the scene, sent by the African Union, the nascent origanization representing African governments, but said that there were too few of them.

''There is a big misunderstanding that they are impotent and ineffective, but I have hardly ever seen a more effective confidence-building effort anywhere in the world,'' he said. ''The problem is that there are only 1,900 of them in an area as big as France.''

Noting that the original deployment was to have reached 4,000 by now, Egeland said, ''There should be as many as we are - the humanitarians - and the US, the EU and the UN all promised to bring in a big force last summer, and we have failed,'' Egeland said.

Egeland said he met with rebel leaders in Darfur recently and told them that while the Sudanese government was responsible for more of the attacks on civilians in Darfur than the rebels, they also had to stop their armed actions, which were on the rise.

''They had the himpression the world is supporting them against the governmen,'' Egeland said, but ''this is not about good guys and bad guys anymore; it 's now bad guys fighting bad guys.''

The New York Times

The above article seems to contradict other opinions. Like the fact that there is any peace at all, and the fact that it is bad guys against bad guys. The evidence does not point to either any kind of end to the troubles, or to it being two armies facing each other. It is the victimization of civilians IMO, and also in my opinin the above article is a whitewash to make people feel better about doing nothing to prevent what is happening out of our eyesight and unreported by the main media.

I doubt if Egeland saw one dead body in the whole of his short visit. He was probably debriefed in an airconditionned room with guards protecting them.

mhm

President Obasanjo of Nigeria talks of Darfur and says that he thinks they have been very strict on the Sudanese Government.

http://www.nigeria.com/Channels/_News_Room...n/guardian.html

For the above article look down the right hand side column and it is the third story.

UN DEADLOCK DELAYS SUDAN PEACE EFFORTS by Farah Stockman The Boston Globe

Washington. The US and other members of the UN security Council remained deadlocked over how war crimes committed in Sudan should be punished, continuing a standoff that has delayed the deployment of 10,000 UN peacekeeping troops to the troubled country for two months, during which thousands of Sudanese civilians have died.

US officials had hped to put forward a Security Council resolution Thrsday to resolve the issue, but continuing disagreements over its details prompted them to postpone their formal proposal.

France and Britain, among other Security Council members, are insisting that any resolution to deploy peace keepers include a referral of accused war criminals to the International Criminal Court, the global legal body that is adamantly opposed by the Bush administration.

The US wants instead to send the suspects to a special court that would be set up in Arusha , Tanzania.

Nigeria, which currently holds the charimanship of the African Union, attempted Wednesday to break the stalemate by offering another proposal: trying the accused through an African justice and reconciliation panel. The panel would be established with the blessing of the Sudanese government, which has been implicated in the killings.

Insecurity and lawlessness have become so widespread in the wesern Sudan region of Darfur that the United Nations announced Wednesday that it had withdrawn all its international staff to the region's capital.

The mandate of the current UN mission in Sudan expired Thursday.

But since members failed to reach an agreement on a resolution that would replace it, UN officials said Wednesday night that they expected the Security Council to extend the mandate for one week, the second such extension.

The battle at the Security Council, which also involves major unresolved disagreements over whether to place sanctions on Sudan, has dismayed human rights advocates.

Continued/

[COLOR=blue]
UN Deadlock Delays Sudan Peace Efforts/cont

''It's not just that people are dying. People are dying amidst a genocide that will unltimately claim more lives than the genocide in Rwanda,' said Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College in Massachusetts who has produced some of the most comprehensive estimates of the death tolls in Sudan.

The Security Council needs to get its priorities right, Reeves said. ''The point is to stop the genocide.''

In January, a UN inquiry recommended that 51 suspected Sudanese war criminals be referred immediately to the International Criminal Court. European countries seized on the recommendation to try to get the U S to accept the role of the court. They have rebusffed U S efforts to send peacekeeping troops without an agreement on how to prosecute the criminals.

A senior U S official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the European attempts to force the U S to accept the international court as blackmail.

''The Europeans are holding the peacekeeping resolution hostage,'' said one Washington-based U S official involved in the impasse. ''They are turning the debate to make us look bad, but they are the ones preventing the peacekeepers from going in.''

But international justice advocates and some European allies blame the US for the long delay, arguing that the U S refusal to be flexible about the international court has hampered efforts to rally other nations behind tough sanctions.

''The U S dithering on this question in the face of strong support from 12 other Security Council members is a major factor in the delay,'' said Heather Hamilton, vice president for programs at Citizens for Globe Solutions, a non-governmental organization that promotes international justice. ''This is essentially an ideological battle being waged by the Bush administration.''

[COLOR=blue][/COLOR]
U N Deadlock delays Sudan Peace Efforts/cont

In addition to the tug-of-war over the court, there are major disagreements about whether the resolution should prohibit Sudan from selling its oil and impose a travel ban and seizure of assets on key Sudanese government figures implicated in the killings. Russia, which sells arms to Sudan, and China, a major consumer of Sudanese oil, both adamantly oppose such sanctions.

One thing that the 15 nations on the Security Council appear to agree on is that a 10.000-member U N peacekeeping force should be deployed as soon as possible to monitor the newly signed peace agreement between Sudan's government in Khartoum and the rebels in the south. U S officials said Wednesday that these troops could also be rerouted to Darfur where government backed militias have forced more than 2 million people from their homes and killed and raped tens of thousands o people in attacks that the U S government has termed genocide.

But other U N diplomats said the current draft of the U S - sponsored resolution still leaves it unclear whether peacekeepers in the south will have a mandate to protect civilians in Darfur.

For nearly two years, the Sudanese givernment has been accused of arming Arab militias that have destroyed villages of African tribes who are not seen as loyal to the government. Sudanese helicopters have also been spotted bombing villages, according to news reports.

But only 2,000 poorly equipped peacekeeping troops from the African Union are on the ground to monitor Darfur, an area roughly the size of France. Their mission is limited to observing the conditions there, and their powers to protect civilians are severely constrained.

''The fact that the council has not been able to take any meaningful steps to stop it is a sad legacy,'' said Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch. ''Various governments are putting narrow interests above protecting innocent civilians at risk.''

snuff's at news: http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...ic=23468&st=80#

mine:
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...topic=23711&hl=

traced reuters:
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=...storyID=7976514

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Violence, starvation and disease are killing people in the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan at a pace four to six times greater than the usual mortality rate in sub-Saharan Africa, a report said on Tuesday.

The finding, based on studies made at three sites in South Darfur, reinforce "the need to mount appropriate and timely humanitarian responses," said the report from doctors in Amsterdam working for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).

The report, published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association, cataloged conditions in parts of the region where tens of thousands have been killed since a rebellion erupted in 2003 due to tribal conflicts over scarce resources.

Thousands are dying every month in squalid camps which house almost 2 million people who have fled their homes in the vast, arid region.

The humanitarian group's members said they surveyed 137,000 displaced people in August and September 2004 at three sites where the group had been providing food and medical care -- Kass, Kalma, and Muhajiria.

"The crude mortality rates at all three sites were considerably higher than the one per 10,000 per day that is recognized internationally as defining an emergency situation and four to six times the expected rate in sub-Saharan populations," the report said.

"Deaths from medical causes predominated in Kass and Kalma with diarrheal diseases responsible for many of those deaths affecting mainly young children under five and adults older than 50," it added.

At Muhajiria violence was the major cause of death in 72 percent of all cases, with all but one of the violent deaths in men, the report said.

Malnutrition runs high, particularly in Kalma where nearly 24 percent of children younger than five suffered from it, the doctors said.

Even among those who had access to food and nonfood items, many still did not have safe water and sanitation, the report said.

"Additional efforts from humanitarian and governmental actors are urgently needed to guarantee acceptable living standards for these populations," the authors concluded.

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=...storyID=7977073

U.S. Wants Quick Vote on Sudan Despite Veto Threats
Tue Mar 22, 2005 05:34 PM ET

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States decided on Tuesday to split its draft U.N. resolution on Sudan into three parts because of an inability to reach agreement on action against perpetrators of atrocities in Darfur.

The first resolution, which is likely to be adopted without problems, would authorize a 10,000-strong peacekeeping force in southern Sudan to monitor a key agreement that ended a 21-year old civil war between Khartoum and southern rebels.

The second one would impose a stiffer arms embargo and sanctions against human rights violators and those who violate cease-fire pacts in Darfur, in the west of Sudan.

Russia and China, which have veto power, as well as Algeria and possibly other nations object to some of these measures.

The third resolution would deal with where to try those responsible for heinous crimes in Darfur. The United States rejects the new International Criminal Court in The Hague, which most council members support, and has proposed a new U.N.-African Union tribunal, which few nations back.

To complicate issues, Nigeria, president of the African Union, has suggested a special panel to hear cases and foster reconciliation. Sudan approves of this plan but its details are still vague.

"The United States has run out of patience on Sudan and has circulated three draft resolutions: one of resolutions, one on peacekeeping, one on sanctions and one to provide for measures to end impunity," said Anne Patterson, the acting ambassador.

"It is clear there is very broad support for the peacekeeping resolution and that is very very critical because it will strengthen the new government in Sudan and get more boots on the ground," she told reporters.

Patterson wants a vote on Wednesday or Thursday in what promises to be gripping diplomatic theater if two of the resolutions encounter successive vetoes.

Tens of thousands have been killed in the two-year-old rebellion in Darfur, with thousands dying every month in miserable camps which house the almost 2 million people who have fled their homes. Arab militia, known locally as Janjaweed, have begun to threaten relief workers.

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=...storyID=7978534

UN Council May Act in S. Sudan But Not in Darfur
Tue Mar 22, 2005 09:29 PM ET

NITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council may adopt a resolution this week sending peacekeepers to relatively calm southern Sudan but take no action against perpetrators of atrocities in Darfur.

The United States decided on Tuesday to split its draft resolution on Sudan into three parts, with only the peacekeeping force for southern Sudan fairly certain of approval.

The two main measures on the Darfur region -- sanctions and a venue to try war crimes suspects -- face opposition.

"We were literally running out of time on Sudan and we felt strongly that we had to move ahead," Anne Patterson, the acting U.S. ambassador, told reporters.

"So what we have done is circulate three draft resolutions, one on peacekeeping, one on sanctions, and one that would provide for measures to end impunity," she said.

The United States hopes to have at least the peacekeeping resolution adopted this week. Council members are consulting their governments before consultations on Wednesday.

"It is clear there is very broad support for the peacekeeping resolution and that is very very critical because it will strengthen the new government in Sudan and get more boots on the ground," Patterson said.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the 2-year-old rebellion against the government in Darfur over power and resources. Thousands are dying every month in miserable camps that house the almost 2 million people who have fled their homes after attacks from Arab militia, at times backed by the Khartoum government.

The peacekeeping resolution would authorize a 10,000-strong peacekeeping force in southern Sudan to monitor an agreement that ended a 21-year civil war between Khartoum and southern rebels. That accord calls for power-sharing in both the army and government.

The second resolution would impose a stiffer arms embargo on Darfur and initiate sanctions against human rights violators and those who jeopardize a cease-fire in the region. Russia and China, which have veto power, as well as Algeria and possibly other nations object to some of those measures.

Patterson said the third resolution, on making war criminals accountable, kept all options open and "makes no judgment as to which would be preferable, but simply enables discussions to continue until a decision is reached."

Most council members support the new International Criminal Court in The Hague, which the Bush administration rejects. The United States has proposed a new U.N.-African Union tribunal, which few nations back. To complicate issues, Nigeria, president of the African Union, has suggested a special panel to hear cases and foster reconciliation.

Ronaldo Moto Sardenberg, Brazil's ambassador and this month's council president, said the council needed to take some action after weeks of talks. "I always thought if you were to have a single resolution, it is much more difficult," he said.

The International Criminal Court, the world's first permanent tribunal for war crimes, mass human rights violations and genocide, was recommended as the best place to try Darfur suspects by an inquiry commission requested by the council.

Washington fears its officials abroad could be targets of the new court. Nine of 15 council members have ratified the treaty creating the court -- Britain, France, Brazil, Greece, Denmark, Argentina, Romania, Tanzania and Benin.
------------------------

yeah, god forbid they should act in darfur...

Sudan issue forces US into awkward choice on court
by Warren Hodge (New York times)

International Herald Tribune 25 March 05
UNITED NATIONS, New York

France, in a direct challenge to the United States, has proposed a UN Security Council resolution referring war crime cases from Sudan to the International Criminal Court, a move that gave Washington the choice of validating a tribunal it strongly opposes or casting a politically awkward veto.

The French resolution on Wednesday was among the latest attempts by the UN members to reach an agreement for sending help to the Darfur region of western Sudan, where an ethnic-cleansing campaign has left as many as 300,000 people dead and two million villagers displaced. Disagreements over where to try accused war criminals and whether to press for sanctions against the Sudanese government have delayed a UN response for weeks.

A UN commission on Darfur recommended in January that war crimes be referred to the international court in The Hague, but the United States, citing its objections to the court, proposed setting up a new tribunal in Tanzania. The U S plan drew scant support from other members of the 15-nation UN Security Council.

The Bush administration, which revoked the Clinton-era signature on the treaty establishing the court, opposes the court on the basis that it might bring frivolous or mischievous legal actions against Americans abroad.

With criticism over the Security Council's inaction mounting, the United States circulated three resolutions this week in the hope of separating measures that have full Council support from those that do not.

The first resolution calls for a ten thousand member peacekeeping force to monitor a cease-fire in southern Sudan and to lend assistance to African Union peacekeeping troops already in Darfur. It was scheduled for a vote Thursday and has broad, perhaps unanimous backing.

The second resolution, calling for sanctions, including a travel ban and asset freeze on people suspected of war crimes, is opposed by at least three Council members - Algeria, China and Russia - and was not put up for a vote.

The third, also held back, says a 'climate of impunity in Sudan' should be ended without delay and the Council should take into account three propositions - the Tanzanian tribunal, a vaguely defined court suggested last week by Nigeria and the International Criminal Court.

The French put forward their counterproposal calling for a referral to the international court, and said they would call for a vote on Thursday. The French mission said it had assurances of at least 11 votes in favor.

Only nine votes are needed to pass a Security Council resolution, although it could be vetoed.

Asked if the resolution was in competition with the American one, Jean Marc de la Sabliere, the French ambassador to the UN, said, 'No, it's a draft resolution which is complementary.'

He said it was the broad conviction of the Council that action had been put off for too long. 'We had to act now,' he said.

He also noted that the resolution specifically exempted from investigation or prosecution, citizens of countries, like the United States that are not ratifiers of the court treaty.

'We think that this paragraph meets American concerns,' he said. 'So we hope they'll vote for the resolution.'

The United States has argued in recent weeks that any referral to the international court - even one with language protecting Americans - would be opposed by Washington because it would confer legitimacy on the tribunal.

US diplomats have discouraged suggestions that the US might abstain from voting rather than casting a veto.

Richard Grenell, the spokesman for the American mission, said, 'With respect to using the International Criminal Court, our views are well known and still unchanged.'

END

10,000 Peacekeepers to be sent to Sudan
by Warren Hodge (New York Times)

International Herald Tribune Pg 3 (26 March)

UNITED NATIONS New York: The Security Council passed a resolution establishing a 10,000-member peacekeeping force for Sudan to reinforce a peace agreement in the south of the country and to lend assistance in the conflicted Darfur region in the west.

The measure, introduced by the United States, drew the support of all 15 council members Thursday.

Passage followed France's postponement of consideration of a resolution that would refer war crime cases from Sudan to the International Criminal Court. The resolution was seen as a challenge to the United States and likely to provoke an American veto. That vote was rescheduled for March 30.

The vote Thursday followed two months of delay in which the council and member countries were subject to rising complaints that world powers had failed to respond to what the United Nations has called the world's worst human crisis.

Council members disagree over placing sanctions on Sudan, an idea opposed by Algeria, China, and Russia, and over which court should try perpetrators of atrocities. America objects to the international court.

Secretary General Kofi Annan sent a message to the council after the vote, pointing out that there was a 'clear recommendation' by a UN special commission to Darfur in January to send the war crime cases to the court and saying that 'sanctions should also be kept on the table.'

'While I welcome today's resolution,' he said, 'I also look forward to the council's decisions on those issues.'

Stuart Holliday, a deputy US ambassador, made a brief statement saying, 'We remain very concerned and disturbed by the situation in Darfur and will continue working with council colleagues.'

The Bush administration, which revoked the Clinton administration's signature on the treaty creating the Hague court, opposes it out of concern that it could bring politically motivated legal actions against Americans abroad.

Nine of the 15 council members have signed and ratified that treaty, and the French believe that they have at least 11 votes to pass their resolution.

The resolution passed Thursday calls for a peacekeeping force of 10,000 military personnel and 715 civilian police officers to monitor progress in the south of Sudan and help the African Union, which has 2,000 troops in Darfur.

The peace agreement that the force is pledged to reinforce was signed on Jan. 9 by the Islamic government in Khartoum and rebels from the Christian and animist south, ending a 21 year war that the United Nations estimates cost 1.5 million lives and forced four million people to flee their homes.

While there is no direct connection between the conflicts in the south and the west, the United States and the United Nations have expressed the hope that the January signing will speed peacemaking in Darfur.
END

Why does US not accept the international penal court solution ? Little easy to blame "France" (as usual) about the locking of the situation.

A US embargo about chinese products ? Why not, it is just you will have to find other sources for 60% of your imports... and quickly.

Good questions.

My answer to the problem is easy to say but nobody has even considered it. That is to send all Sudanese ambassadors home, close all Sudanese embassies, and let the elite suffer. They would begin to find the culprits and punish them. For some reason (future oil contracts?) nobody wants to isolate Sudan to that extent. As usual big oil companies comes before poor indigenous people.

UN to send 10,700 peacekeepers to Sudan
(Number of estimated dead 180,000)

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/breaking/032505_un_sudn.php

Sojourners email

Darfur duo

Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and Sam Brownback (R-KS) have crossed partisan lines to unite for a greater cause. The dynamic duo introduced the Darfur Accountability Act, which calls for U S and international intervention in the African crisis. The bill calls for several specific actions, including creating a new U N Security Council resolution with sanctions; freezing assets and denying visas to those responsible for the genocide and other war crimes; and making Darfur a military no-fly zone.

See TheGlobalChinese's post in Breaking News Vol 7 Page 15 (29 March 05)

Arrests for Sudanese war crimes have been made.

BBC World News 30th Oct 05 The UN say that possibly the violent deaths in the Darfur region amount to some 300,000 (three times what was previously reported.)

They are talking about targetted sanctions against individuals found to have been involved in the killings. Why did they not have targetted sanctions against individuals thought to be involved in WMDs in Iraq. May I suggest that it is because they may work in a hundred years time. Or was it that there was a need for the Iraqi people to be sacrificed for democracy. I suggest also that this is the way we all behaved when Saddam was gassing the Kurds or whatever other genocide he was up to. We ignored it. Now is the time, if it is too late even, we must act to stop any further lives being lost in Darfur and targetted sanctions is pathetic, in my opinion. If they know who the killers and the leaders are, then why are they not arresting them at the very least.

Glad to hear that the UN has belatedly addressed this issue. It would be nice for a change if we actually did something on the front end rather than just wait to punish people on the back end.

On a separate note:

To watch President Bush make a midnight flight back to Washington to sign the Schiavo legislation but not do anything about Darfur is very telling.

When thousands were lost to a natural disaster in December (26th) people were very moved and immediately reached out to offer a helping hand. When it is black people who have nothing, who live in an oil rich land, nobody appears to be up in arms at the PREVENTABLE evil of what their government is doing to them. It is time to totally isolate Sudan and the wicked leadership. If that means punishing other rich Sudanese, so be it.

For the past two years a totally unnecessary war in Iraq has acted as a cover for the Sudanese to do what they want, knowing the world was not tuned into their area. In this sense Bush was responsible for this coverup. When reporters from CNN eventually got into the area the silence from the Pentagon was deafening, even as the refugees were fleeing from one camp to another.

You are so right about people not paying attention. I know I went to several of the Darfur websites and signed petitions to take action in Darfur. Unfortunately, just like the torture issue no one seems to care. They think both are lost causes. I am reminded, however, of the movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" where the Jimmy Stewart character (Jefferson Smith) tells the corupt politician played by Claude Raines -- Lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for. Both of these issues are worth our time and our effort.

International Herald Tribune (Page 6) Thurs March 31

When a whole way of life is destroyed

by John Hefferman and Michael Van Rooyen

Sitting in fron t of his United Nations-supplied canvas tent in a refugee camp along the Chad-Sudan border, a frail farmer, Nourein, 70, told us how his village was destroyed by eight months of aerial bombardments followed by a ground assault. Without protection from the attacks and assurance that his livelihood will be restored nourein is not likely to return home. 'I have lost my home, my camel, my cows. My crops have been burned, and the medical clinic has been looted,' said Naourein, a father of six, grandfather of 30 and lifelong reesident of Farawiya, in North Dafur.

Nourein's story highlights a little-noticed effect of the genocide that has killed 300,000 people in Darfur: what the UN Genocide Convention calls the inflicting of 'conditions of life' calculated to bring about a group's demise. The systematic plundering and destruction of houses, wells, crops, livestock and assets, ombined with restricted access to humanitarian aid and continuing violence, has devastated the way of life of non-Arab Darfurians. The cultural identity tied to their villages and the fabric of their social structures have been virtually eliminated.

Consider the plight of Nourein's village, Furawiya, which we visited last month. Furawiya and its outlying settlements, once inhabited by 13,000 people , were productive and intensely interdependent. Families farmed their own fields, handed down for generations, while relying on their neighors for trade, social and financial exchange and pooling of resources to build and maintain mosques, clinics and schools.

Livestock - sheep, goats, cattle, camels - was the main measure of disposable wealth; some families owned dozens of adult camels valued at $500 to $1000 each. Everyone, no matter how poor, had a donkey for transport.

Nourein told us that he had 15 camels, 10 cows, two donkeys and more than 150 goats and sheep. Two years ago, he was able to pay two camels and 10 sheep to get a medical operation.

When the proxy forces of the government of Sudan arrived in Furawiya, those herds and flocks, along with everything else, disappeared. The robbery of their camels has destroyed the ability of residents of Furawiya to return and rebuild their lives. Killing a donkey is like bombing the family car. Withut it, transport, access to food, water and safety become impossible.

Continued/