Home > Genocide in Africa...Again
"At what point do we ask the uncomfortable question,
why does the U.S. seem to consider it acceptable for
such genocidal acts to occur in Africa?" It was a
rhetorical question, posed by Africa Action Executive
Director Salih Booker on April 7 as the world marked
the tenth anniversary of the genocide that left at
least 800,000 Rwandans dead. Two week’s later,
President George Bush answered Booker’s question in the
usual manner: the U.S. has more pressing business at
hand than ending a genocide-in-progress, this time in
the western region of Sudan.
While U.S. diplomats feigned outrage at the UN Human
Rights Commission’s weak response ("grave concern") to
massive ethnic cleansing of Black Africans in Darfur —
the committee could not bring itself to even whisper
the terms "rape" or "forced removals" — Bush last week
vouched for the Khartoum government’s good faith in
ending a much longer campaign of genocide against
Blacks. As Newsweek reported:
President George W. Bush certified, as required
every six months under the 2002 Sudan Peace Act,
that the Islamist regime in Khartoum is negotiating
in good faith for an end to Sudan’s other civil
war: the decades-old rebellion in southern Sudan.
If the president had withheld his signature, he
could have unleashed severe economic sanctions
against Khartoum. But a southern peace framework
seems tantalizingly close, so policymakers faced a
tough choice. "It’s frustrating," says a senior
State Department official, "but given all the
progress, we couldn’t say they weren’t
cooperating."
What tantalizes the U.S. is Sudanese oil reserves,
which are at issue in negotiations between non-Muslim
Black southerners and the Arabized rulers in Khartoum.
American and European companies are anxious to return
to their operations in the oil-rich Abyei region,
abandoned during the North-South war that claimed two
million lives. Stability in Abyei weighs far more
heavily than the lives of one million Blacks in oil-
poor Darfur, victims of Khartoum’s "strategy of ethnic-
based murder, rape and forcible displacement,"
according to a Human Rights Watch report.
In a Euro-American dominated world, Sudan’s rulers are
permitted to launch a second genocidal race war, so
long as they allow oil to flow from the scene of the
first holocaust. Declan Walsh, Africa correspondent for
the UK’s Independent, describes ethnic cleansing in
Darfur:
The first sign is the ominous drone of a plane.
Ageing Russian Antonovs sweep over the remote
Sudanese village, dispatching their deadly payload
of crude barrel bombs. They explode among the
straw-roofed huts, sending terrified families
scurrying for safety — but there is none.
Next comes the Janjaweed, a fearsome Arab militia
mounted on camels and horses, and armed with AK-47
rifles and whips. They murder the men and boys of
fighting age, gang-rape the women — sometimes in
front of their families — and burn the houses. The
villagers’ cattle are stolen, their modest
possessions carted off.
Under cover of ending the southern genocide, Khartoum
unleashes ethnic cleansing in the West — with
impunity. Although both sides in the Darfur conflict
are Muslims, there is no doubt this is a race war. As
the Independent’s Walsh reported: "One 18-year-old
woman told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that her attacker
stuck a knife into her vagina, saying: ’You get this
because you are black.’"
The UN Human Rights Commission ignored both the HRW
report and its own investigators, who concluded that
Khartoum has engaged in "crimes against humanity" in
Darfur. Apparently, it is a far worse crime to leave
oil in the ground, in Abyei.
American diplomats scored easy propaganda points by
voting for stronger UN language on Darfur while their
President withheld sanctions that might have actually
forced Khartoum to abandon its newest genocidal
campaign. Europeans, finding few excuses for doing
nothing to stop genocide in the present, pretended to
make big plans for the future. According to the EU
Observer:
While EU and UN diplomats discuss the possibility
of an EU-led peacekeeping mission to the Sudan
region of Darfur, the European development
commissioner has warned against hasty decisions.
Speaking to journalists on Wednesday (28 April),
Poul Nielson urged "not to let things happen
without professional, well-analyzed co-ordination."
The Dane went on to state that time was needed for
"collective analysis" between the EU member states
in order to ensure a mission with "maximum
authority." He suggested that a possible mission
might fail under disagreements between EU member
states. "If one man can fix a tire in 10 minutes
this does not mean that 10 men can fix a tire in 1
minute," he said. As an alternative, the
Commissioner said he favors a peace-keeping mission
under the umbrella of the African Union, which
enjoys EU financial aid worth 250 million euro to
conduct its own peace-keeping operations.
The Europeans issued a statement on the crisis that
scrupulously avoids asking anyone in particular to stop
killing anybody:
The European Commission today launched a strong
appeal to warring parties in the Darfur region of
Western Sudan to secure "safe humanitarian access"
so that the enormous needs of the population can be
properly addressed. The Commission also announced
that ECHO was preparing a new $10 million
humanitarian aid decision to assist the victims of
the conflict that has claimed thousands of lives
and resulted in huge population displacements. The
proposed decision will shortly be submitted to the
Member States. Speaking at the launch of the
European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Office
Annual Review ("ECHO 2003"), Poul Nielson,
Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid,
highlighted the "tragic situation" in Darfur.
Threats to the "humanitarian space" is the central
theme of ECHO’s Annual Review this year.
Having done their bit to save humanitarian "space," if
not the human beings themselves, the EU got on with the
business of—business.
African states make up 14 of the 53 members of the UN
Human Rights Commission, 50 of whom voted for the
toothless resolution on Darfur. Two abstained; only the
U.S. called for stronger language. Clearly, the African
Union (AU) is seeking unity, above all else.
The AU expressed "concern" over violations of a
(clearly non-existent) ceasefire in Darfur, and
announced it would send a team of military observers to
the region. The U.S. offered to help the AU with
unspecified "logistical support" — as well it might,
since American Special Forces, Marines and contract
mercenaries now operate in nearly every country of the
Sahel. The European edition of Stars and Stripes
reported:
Late last year, soldiers from the 10th Special
Forces Group began training military forces in
Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Niger under the Pan-
Sahel Initiative, a $7 million State Department
program designed to help the security forces of
those impoverished nations defend against
terrorists.
The extent of recent American military penetration of
Africa just below the Sahara can be glimpsed from the
accompanying Stars and Stripes interview with Army Col.
Vic Nelson, the Department of Defense’s country
director for West Africa:
The whole reason [for the Pan-Sahel Initiative] is
regional cooperation, so that the terrorists can’t
use these artificial state borders at the seams,
against us. "Aha! I’m in Algeria! Aha! I’m in Mali!
Aha! I’m in Algeria!"
[Including more states] would foster regional
cooperation, which is what this is all about. The
policy is, helping Africa build the capacity to
enable them to deal with these problems as a force
multiplier for our own forces in the global war on
terror. Well, what does it mean, that buzzword?
That means, if they can do it, we don’t have to do
it. And they want to do it, they want to help us
and be partners in the global war on terror. They
have needs, training and equipment needs.
As a force multiplier, if I don’t have to put a
battalion of U.S. guys down, but I have a battalion
of Chadians, well, then good, a force multiplier.
At least 110,000 survivors of the ethnic cleansing in
Darfur have fled across the border to Chad.
The U.S. goal in the Sahel, says Col. Nelson, is to
establish direct ties ("mil-to-mil") with African
militaries:
It’s important to have U.S. military trainers to
establish the mil-to-mil relationship; to foster
cooperation among the militaries, both bilaterally
and regionally, and in my experience, you don’t get
as much bang for the buck using contractors,
because you don’t establish the mil-to-mil
relationship. You can’t. They’re not military. They
don’t have contractor generals.
American military tentacles now stretch across the
Sahelian belt of Africa, from Djibouti on the Gulf of
Aden to the Atlantic. They are there for the oil, and
to cultivate relationships with the generals, and
would-be generals — men whose purchase can yield more
barrels for the buck than negotiations with governments
beholden to fractious civil societies.
In 1994, Canadian General Romeo Dallaire tried
desperately to convince the United Nations to reinforce
his peacekeeping mission in Rwanda. President Bill
Clinton’s administration used every device to sabotage
an international rescue effort. (See Paul Street, April
15.) Last week, Dallaire testified before the U.S.
House Subcommittee on Africa:
"Rwanda simply had no strategic value in its
geography or in its resources. As [one country’s]
interlocutor, who came in to do an assessment
whether or not to send troops to support me, said,
’The only thing you’ve got here in Rwanda is a lot
of people — and too much of [them].’
"That was not sufficient to influence that power
and many others to actually come in and stop what
had become the start of a genocide within a civil
war."
Dallaire fears "the nature of the political interplay
in the world has not fundamentally changed" in the last
decade.
Let’s revisit Salih Booker’s rhetorical question, and
put it slightly differently: At what point will the
U.S. commit itself to effectively oppose genocide in
Africa?
Answer: When acts of genocide impair US ability to
extract what it wants from the continent. In the case
of Sudan, stability in the oil fields takes precedence
over the lives of Darfur’s one million displaced and
hunted persons.