MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Smith College English Professor and widely read Sudan analyst, Eric Reeves, returns to the program to discuss the deterioration of the genocide in Darfur and its spillover into Chad. With new reports of cross-border attacks, more humanitarian aid groups pulling out, and the situation rapidly worsening, Eric reports that the new agreement on a hybrid force is even more disheartening. With no concrete numbers in place and an unclear command structure, it seems that Khartoum has once again succeeded in using diplomacy to achieve its goals.
TRANSCRIPT:
JERRY FOWLER: My guest today is Eric Reeves. He is a professor at Smith College and a widely read Sudan analyst. His work is available on the internet at www.sudanreeves.org, and he has been on Voices on Genocide Prevention before. Eric, welcome back to the program.
ERIC REEVES: Good to be with you Jerry.
JERRY FOWLER: Eric, let me just ask first because I know many people are interested, how are you doing?
ERIC REEVES: I am doing well; I am in remission from my Leukemia, working out, feeling strong, deeply dispirited by what is occurring in Darfur and Eastern Chad but doing my best to stay strong.
JERRY FOWLER: The news out of Darfur and Eastern Chad does seem to be dispiriting. Can you give us just a synopsis of where things stand right now in terms of the escalating violence?
ERIC REEVES: In late August, Khartoum launched a major military offensive in Northern Darfur. They found that the resistance by the umbrella rebel organization, the National Redemption Front, was a much more significant military opponent than they reckoned. They have suffered some very serious losses, and what has happened is that they have switched their military focus to West Darfur state, and this is where we are getting these astonishing news wires of reports of Janjaweed attacks in which children are the particular focus, Janjaweed attacks supported by Khartoum’s regular military forces. West Darfur is a much softer target than North Darfur, and my own sense is that strategically Khartoum wishes to annihilate whatever military resistance there is in West Darfur and then take the Jebal Marra massive which lies between West Darfur and North Darfur and turns its attention again to North Darfur. All along what we have to keep in mind is that military offenses by Khartoum entail civilian destruction; they are built into the nature of what Khartoum considers its military strategy, and that is why the increased prominence of the Janjaweed is so telling.
JERRY FOWLER: In addition to these offensives, we are seeing new reports, and to some degree unprecedented reports, of actual attacks on camps of internally displaced persons.
ERIC REEVES: This is enormously troubling. The first such attack occurred in September of 2005, the Arosharow Camp in West Darfur was attacked frontally; some 5,000 people were all made to flee, dozens were killed, and it was an extraordinary event. At the time the African Union reported on it in great detail because of its really quite extraordinary brutality. We saw attacks on camps in South Darfur earlier this year, but in the last two weeks, there have been a series of attacks on camps for displaced persons in West Darfur. These people are completely vulnerable. There is no meaningful protection offered by the African Union, certainly nothing that can withstand a concerted attack by Janjaweed numbering in the hundreds or as many as the thousands. This is the last and potentially most destructive phase of the genocide because not only are the civilians being attacked and killed and raped, children thrown into raging bonfires, but any humanitarian presence is obviously endangered, and we are seeing more and more humanitarian organizations withdraw or scale back their activities or evacuate, but humanitarian aid is now deeply, deeply endangered, and I fear that we could see a whole scale evacuation in the near future.
JERRY FOWLER: One of the things that is obviously threatening the humanitarian operation is the insecurity, but there are also increasing reports, as I understand it, that the Sudanese government is doing what it has often done in the past in terms of obstructing the groups. For example, the Norwegian Refugee Council has recently announced that it is pulling out because its permit to operate had been indefinitely suspended.
ERIC REEVES: That is correct, and we have seen over the last two and a half years since there was a major concession, apparently on Khartoum’s part, to allow humanitarian organizations to operate in Darfur in the summer of 2004. We have seen a relentless campaign of obstruction, harassment, and intimidation, and in the case of the Norwegian Refugee Council, it was simply too much, and an organization that served 300,000 people has now withdrawn. A German humanitarian organization focusing on food relief along the Chad-Darfur border also announced today that it is withdrawing entirely because of insecurity. Every humanitarian organization I have spoken with indicates—they all indicate—that they have contingency plans at the ready to evacuate immediately; insecurity is that bad.
JERRY FOWLER: We have been mostly talking about Darfur and the deterioration there, but there are also increasing reports now of the violence which had previously spilled over into Eastern Chad escalating there as well.
ERIC REEVES: A very, very significant escalation of violence in Eastern Chad. We are about one month into the dry season which follows the rainy season, typically ending in September or early October. What that means is that it is much easier to cross the border which is an arbitrary line in the sand, and the Janjaweed are ranging further and more violently into Chad. They continue to be supported by the Khartoum government. The camps themselves are militarized in various ways, in part because of rebel recruitment within the camps, but one of the most ominous developments was reported by Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times a couple of weeks ago—maybe three weeks ago—in which she pointed out that even well away from the border, there was increasing violence between Arab and non Arab groups, and my great fear is that the ethnic animus that has defined conflict in Darfur and the far east of Chad will now spread even deeper and farther west in Chad itself and may lead to what is in some sense a race war.
JERRY FOWLER: One thing that you usually see in these cases—when you talk about the ethnic animus spreading—so called ethnic animus is not actually a disease; it is usually being used by someone for some purpose, and certainly that has been part of what has been happening in Darfur; Khartoum has been using it for their own purposes. Do you have any indications of who would be manipulating these grievances and why in Eastern Chad?
ERIC REEVES: It is a combination of factors. Chad like Darfur is a land that is poor in natural resources; the key natural resources being land, arable land, and water. These are in short supply, and competition in Chad, as in Darfur, is intense for these natural resources, and I think what has been seen very clearly is that with sufficient violence, you can take control of them. This is what has happened in Darfur; increasingly in the far east of Chad, but ominously, this seems to be what is developing in areas for the west in Chad, that the violence is animated by ethnic tensions over resources that uses as its example of how to resolve these differences the terrible violence that has occurred to the east.
JERRY FOWLER: The government of Chad has basically said that it cannot protect its borders, and it has asked for international assistance, as has the government of the Central African Republic which is slightly to the south, and there is a French force that is already in Eastern Chad—it has been there for a long time—do you have any sense of what that force is doing?
ERIC REEVES: The force itself, right now, is not doing very much. If we really want to protect this immensely long border between Darfur and Eastern Chad, we need a substantial international force on the ground, and this has been called for by human rights groups, the International Crisis Group, many others, and I certainly would strongly support the deployment of such a force, but everyone recognizes that this will require French leadership and, to date, there has been no clear French leadership. One of the problems in deploying a force, of course, is that it works inevitably to support Idriss Déby because it would provide de facto military support for his own beleaguered army, and this is something Khartoum would oppose, and the French are treading very carefully because of that potential opposition, but we cannot wait. The people in Eastern Chad are resembling all too much the horrifically suffering populations that were in evidence in Darfur in 2003, 2004 at the violent height of the phase of the genocide we were witnessing then, and whose aftermath we continue to see today.
JERRY FOWLER: Speaking of international forces, obviously the United Nations Security Council authorized a United Nations force for Darfur in Resolution 1706 at the end of August, but made that contingent upon the consent of Sudan. It now appears that 1706 has become a dead letter and there have been talks going on in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the creation of some form of hybrid force. What is going to be the outcome of that?
ERIC REEVES: I think we need to take serious stock of what it means for the United Nations Security Council to pass a Resolution authorizing a fully appropriate force—22,500 soldiers and civilian police and backup with a robust mandate for civilian, humanitarian protection, as well as to seal the borders between Chad and Darfur, Central African Republic and Darfur, and for that force as you say to become a dead gutter. Mark Malloch Brown, Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations said publicly a couple weeks ago that so far the United Nations has received commitments of only 400 personnel from a mere four countries. It did not help that Khartoum sent a threatening letter to all potential troop contributing countries last month, but it does show that the United Nations can pass resolutions that has no intention of backing up with credible resources. That leaves Khartoum in the driver’s seat with respect to the force that will emerge from negotiations in Addis Ababa and ongoing within the African Union, but the text of the Addis Ababa agreement of November 16th is a dismaying one in the extreme. It is contingent upon Khartoum agreeing to a force size, it does not actually commit Khartoum to accept a given force size, the command structure is left unclear, senior members of the National Islamist Front which dominations the merely notional government of National Unity in Khartoum has said very different things about whether or not United Nations troops will or will not be permitted to be part of the force on the ground in Darfur. This is a placeholder; it is not an agreement; it does not mean anything as it stands; in fact it literally means nothing since there are such large contingencies built into its very language.
JERRY FOWLER: What is likely to be the outcome of this? First, in terms of timing, the mandate of the African Union force which is on the ground—for what it is worth—expires at the end of December. Is there going to be any movement on reinforcing that force before then?
ERIC REEVES: I think what we will see is that what is called the light force contemplated in this agreement of November 16th—which is essentially logistics and financial support—will probably allow the African Union to stay beyond December 31st, but I certainly do not see anything in the near term that is going to change the security dynamic on the ground either in Darfur or Eastern Chad given the extraordinary levels of violence. I keep having recourse for that word extraordinary, but it is extraordinary that the international community knows full well that violence on this large scale is taking place, it is directed at civilians, we know who is responsible in the main—to be sure the rebels are responsible in many ways for the harassment and interdiction of humanitarian relief efforts, but overwhelmingly the attacks on civilians are being conducted by the Janjaweed and by Khartoum’s regular military forces. We know this, and yet, we allow it to continue, and nothing negotiated in Addis Ababa, nothing that the African Union has committed to, nothing that the United Nations seems prepared to commit to, can possibly staunch this genocidal violence or prevent its spilling even further into Eastern Chad.
JERRY FOWLER: Of course this Addis Ababa agreement is the first kind of international effort since last May when Khartoum and one rebel leader signed what has been called the Darfur Peace Agreement which in many circles is now considered to be a dead letter. Where do things stand with the Darfur Peace Agreement?
ERIC REEVES: That is an important question given the language that appears in the November 16th Addis Ababa accord. It says, and I quote, “The Darfur conflict can only be resolved through a political process, and the Darfur Peace Agreement is the only basis for this process and should not be renegotiated. It has long been Khartoum’s insistence that the Darfur Peace Agreement not be renegotiated, even as the non-signatories—the rebel groups that still fight—are convinced that without renegotiation, especially of the security provisions and the security guarantors, but also compensation. There can be no just agreement, so Khartoum has won hugely in a diplomatic sense by being able to get the United Nations to sign off on a statement like the Darfur Peace Agreement which is the only basis for a political resolution of the conflict and should not be renegotiated. The United States rammed through this Darfur Peace Agreement with the assistance of the United Nations and European Allies; it has proved to be a catastrophe, but for Khartoum to succeed in having it codified further in the form of the Addis Ababa agreement of November 16th is for them a major diplomatic triumph.
JERRY FOWLER: When he was on the program a couple of weeks ago, United States Special Envoy Andrew Natsios, said that there was the prospect of talks under the mediation of Eritrea to be held in Asmara between Khartoum and the rebels that have not signed—whether it would be to renegotiate the Darfur Peace Agreement or to add protocols to it that would help bring the non-signing rebels on board. Is there any prospect of that actually happening?
ERIC REEVES: I think whatever prospect there was, and that prospect was slim, was certainly diminished by the language adopted on November 16th. This very much strengthens Khartoum’s hand in saying, “We have negotiated the agreement, the agreement can have protocols added to it, but it cannot be renegotiated.” Since the original agreement had no guarantors, no international guarantors beyond the African Union for the various security provisions, most significantly the disarming of the Janjaweed; those security provisions are meaningless, and we see that in the form of the massive predations by the Janjaweed, especially in West Darfur and Eastern Chad. I think this November 16th agreement is a step backwards with respect to getting a truly just political settlement for the Darfur conflict.
JERRY FOWLER: I guess in some ways, even though the violence is much worse today than it was two months ago or four months ago or six months ago, the terms of the discussion have not really changed. Basically, at the Security Council, Khartoum’s interests are being protected, particularly by China and by Russia. In the broader United Nations, they have gotten substantial support from the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. In fact, one indication that is a little stunning is the Human Rights Council—I do not know how many countries are on it, but several dozen, has not been able to agree on a resolution just condemning Sudan, much less any kind of deployment of force. If the countries of the Security Council are basically at loggerheads, would you advocate that the United States has to take the lead on acting outside of the United Nations?
ERIC REEVES: The United States should take the lead, on the other hand, we are so burdened by Iraq and the mass expenditure of diplomatic, political, capital, and military resources that we are not in a position, morally or otherwise, to lead. We certainly should provide—if there is a coalition that is willing to engage in non-consensual deployment to protect civilians and to protect humanitarians—the United States should do all that it can to provide transport, logistics, intelligence, medical services, but the boots on the ground should be primarily those of the African Union, Arab and Islamist countries, but within this mix their simply must be a very robust, brigade size force that is capable of forcing a military stand-down by any combatants that would continue to resist deployment of a force large enough to protect civilians in camps and in rural areas, as well as to protect humanitarians and humanitarian corridors.
JERRY FOWLER: In a couple of documents, both in an op-ed that was published in Arabic language press and then in papers that have been posted on the web site of Doctors Without Borders, officials from Doctors Without Borders have basically said—and this is paraphrasing—but this force that you have just described is not coming, is not going to happen, and it is counterproductive for human rights activists and Western governments or anybody to suggest that it is coming and people should just stop talking about it.
ERIC REEVES: I regard that as morally reprehensible to be quite honest. It would be as if we were to say at the height of the Rwandan genocide that we know Dallaire is right, those 5,000 troops are not coming so we should simply shut up and go about our business. What is required for the survival of some four and a half million people defined by the United Nations as conflict affected in the greater humanitarian theater, what is required for their survival is security for humanitarian organizations; Doctors Without Borders is finding itself increasingly constrained in its own ability to deliver medical relief precisely because of this lack of security. I think without pressure, and ongoing pressure, and it may indeed take time to provide security on the ground, what we will see inevitably is an ongoing attenuation of humanitarian access, resources and ability to provide care for desperately needy people, and there will be a wholesale collapse of operations resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. We cannot be silent in the face of genocide. Part of Doctors Without Borders’ argument is that perhaps it falls under the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, but we think it looks more like a colonial enterprise and violence. I think that is a preposterous characterization, and if it is used as a means for distinguishing between Rwanda where Doctors Without Borders did support military intervention and Darfur where they do not, I think it is a wholly specious argument, and if you look at MSF publications over the past two years on ethnic crimes, ethnic violence, issues of genocide in Darfur, I think it is really intellectually shabby, in fact scandalous.
JERRY FOWLER: Eric Reeves is a Sudan analyst whose work can be found on the internet at www.sudanreeves.org. Eric, thanks for taking the time to be with us.
ERIC REEVES: My pleasure to be with you again Jerry.
