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Today's
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June 19 / 20, 2004
Brian Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
June 18,
2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player &
Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
June
14, 2004
John
Stanton / Wayne Madsen
Torture, Inc: Oliver North Joins
the Party
Kathy
Kelly
Requiems: What Happens When Compassion Dies?
Bruce
Jackson
Bush Gets Testy About Torture
Lee
Sustar
Strikers Defy Visteon's Company Thugs
Kurt
Nimmo
The Desperate Censors: the Republican Plot to Kill Farhenheit
9/11
Jim
Davis
Hard Right Nativism
Eliot
Katz
Death and War
Uri
Avnery
The Nightmare Comes True
Website
of the Day
Instruments of Statecraft
June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto
and Runnymede
Team
CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary
Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe
Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt
Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg
Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st
Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
| June
19 / 20, 2004
The Crisis
in Sudan
When Ethnic
Cleansing Becomes Respectable
By
Col. DAN SMITH (US
Army, Ret.)
“They
are not carpenters or drivers. All they know is how to use a gun”
That
knowledge, according to Ahmed Angabo Ahmed, Sudanese commissioner of
Kas in southern Darfur, qualified known criminals as “soldiers”
and “police” to fight anti-Khartoum rebels of the Sudan
Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem).
BACKGROUND
Opposition
to the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum is neither new nor confined
to Darfur, a large region that forms much of Sudan’s western border
with Chad and the Central African Republic. Peace talks in Nairobi,
Kenya are down to the final fine points whose resolution will end a
21-year rebellion that pitted the largely ethnic African Christian and
animist Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) against Khartoum’s
Arab Muslim rulers at the cost of at least 2 million lives.
Conflict
in Darfur in the past has centered over land ownership, grazing rights
for the predominantly Arab herders, and above all, water sources. Some
observers characterize the current fighting, which began in early 2003,
as an ill-advised attempt by the SLA and Jem to obtain concessions similar
to those made by Khartoum in the Nairobi talks B sharing oil revenues
and even political power with the SPLA. Others point to Khartoum’s
general neglect of the non-Arab population in the impoverished region
as the driving force behind the rebellion.
Whatever
the cause, an estimated 30,000 people, primarily from the Fur, Masalit,
and Zaghawa tribes, have died and another million uprooted from their
homes and livelihoods. A conservative estimate is that 100,000 Sudanese
have fled into Chad where they struggle to survive in camps near the
border. Hundreds of thousands of others are believed to be living “in
the rough” in Sudan. Both groups remain vulnerable to continued
aerial bombing by Khartoum’s air force and assaults by government
backed “soldiers.” These marauding bands, collectively called
the Janjaweed, also often interdict humanitarian aid, forcing relief
agencies to resort to airlift to get supplies into the region. The approaching
heavy seasonal rains threaten to intensify the refugee’s isolation
and increase the toll dramatically.
ETHNIC
WARFARE OR GENOCIDE
Although
Khartoum signed a ceasefire with the SLA and Jem on April 8, fighting
did not stop. Experts believe that as many as 2.2 million people have
been affected by the combat and what officials in many organizations
gingerly refer to as “ethnic cleansing” or “ethnic
displacement” of the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa peoples.
For
example, in his latest report to the UN Security Council on the Nairobi
talks, Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated that it would be “politically
unsustainable” for the UN to conduct a peacekeeping operation
in one part of Sudan while fighting raged in another section. The Security
Council, in its Resolution 1547(2004) of June 11, acknowledged the situation,
demanded adherence to the ceasefire, and called for international engagement
in Sudan.
The
UN Action came a day after the G-8 countries, in a communique issued
at their Sea Island, Georgia summit, stated their “grave concern
over the humanitarian, human rights, and political crisis in Darfur”
and called on all sides to “fully respect the ceasefire, allow
immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access to all those in need.”
However, the world’s eight most wealthy industrialized nations
“deferred” to UN leadership to avert a disaster.
The
closest the G8 came to labeling the Darfur conflict ethnic cleansing
was to note that the “gross violations of human rights”
in the region had “an ethnic dimension.” For his part, President
Bush made no reference to Darfur of Sudan during his post-meeting press
conference. Nor did Sudan come up on June 13, when Secretary of State
Colin Powell appeared on NBC and ABC Sunday morning talk shows.
Defining
ethnic cleansing seems just as hard as getting officials to discuss
it. The actual term is traced by some sources to the former Yugoslavia
(Serbo-Croat) although a similar phrase (judenrein or “Jew free”)
was used by the Nazis.
In
“A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing” (Foreign Affairs,
Vol. 72, No. 3 (Summer) 1993, 110), Andrew Bell-Fialkoff says that ethnic
cleansing “can be understood as the expulsion of an 'undesirable’
population from a given territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination,
political, strategic or ideological considerations, or a combination
of these.” Reporting to the UN Security Council in February 1993
on widespread violations of humanitarian law in the former Yugoslavia,
a committee of experts defined ethnic cleansing as “rendering
an area ethnically homogenous by using force or intimidation to remove
persons of given groups from the area.”
(Interestingly,
in light of the Abu Ghraib prison abuses and the frequent “targeted
assassinations” of Palestinian militants by Israel, the committee
then listed a number of practices as ethnic cleansing that went far
beyond “expulsion”: murder, torture, extrajudicial killings,
rape or sexual assault, and deliberate attacks (or threats thereof)
on civilians as methods of ethnic cleansing First Interim Report, February
10, 1993, UN Doc. S/25274).
While
the term may stem from the 20th century, the practice of ethnic cleansing
is ancient. Both “secular” and “religious” texts
recounting martial deeds are replete with references to the wholesale
slaughter of inhabitants of cities or regions. Less extreme were instances
of forced resettlement or expulsion to pacify an area, make room for
colonists, or simply grab valuable land.
Ethnic
cleansing could be construed as either a “war crime” (committed
during armed conflict) or a “crime against humanity,” as
these terms are defined in the Rome Statute (UN Doc. A/CONF.183/9*)
establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC). In fact, a comparison
of examples enumerated yields a number of instances of similar though
not exact language. Regardless, a prosecution for ethnic cleansing will
probably not succeed under either circumstance without evidence of a
de facto policy or pattern of actions directed against a distinctive
segment of a population. Thus, “random” killings or expulsions
would be treated as individual crimes, not as ethnic cleansing. Conversely,
anyone in an official position who encouraged, knew of but refused to
intervene, or otherwise failed to dispel the belief among personnel
under his control that ethnic cleansing was acceptable could be held
accountable for this offense.
In
light of World War II and the former Yugoslavia in particular, is there
a point at which ethnic cleansing “becomes” genocide as
first defined in the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide” (UN General Assembly Resolution 260
(III) A, December 9, 1948) and repeated in the ICC statute? Does it
really matter, especially to the victims?
For
nation states and for the UN, the assertion that genocide is occurring
creates a presumption that the international community will act as prescribed
in Article 8 of the Convention. This provides that “Any Contracting
Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take
such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider
appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or
any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3.”
Accepting
the charge inevitably would trigger calls to dispatch a UN or UN-sanctioned
military contingent, which in turn would require UN member states to
provide combat and logistics units and create additional monetary obligations.
Whether
the intervention force would operate as a Chapter 6 (peacekeeping) or
a Chapter 7 (peace enforcement) contingent would depend on the specific
conditions expected. Of note, contracting parties to the Convention
can invoke Article 8 not only to suppress genocide but to prevent it.
This point is reinforced in the listing of acts punishable as genocide
in Article 3 B conspiracy to commit genocide, public incitement to commit
genocide, and attempted genocide.
WHAT
IS BEING DONE
No
country, it seems, wants to be the one to take the first step: labeling
what is occurring in Darfur with the terrible “g” word.
The U.S., tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq, could spare a few Tomahawk
missiles to destroy a “chemical weapons plant” in Sudan
in 1998 but cannot spare forces to lead an intervention to stop the
unbridled assaults against the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa peoples.
Despite this reluctance, in early June, the African Union optimistically
dispatched the first of 90 to 100 ceasefire monitors to Sudan. But with
an area approximately the size of France to cover, the monitors will
be hard pressed to oversee the implementation of the April “ceasefire.”
So will the six human rights monitors the UN is sending (Reliefweb,
June 4, 2004). A 6,500-strong UN peacekeeping force the Security Council
authorized on June 11 is headed to Sudan, but its mandate applies to
the Khartoum/SPLA peace agreement, not the continuing atrocities in
Darfur.
Simultaneously,
on June 3, Andrew Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International
Development, presided over a donor’s conference to raise $236
million for Darfur for the balance of 2004. Natsios warned potential
donors that even should aid begin to flow immediately, 300,000 people
might die while the toll might eventually climb to a million without
help (BBC News, June 9, 2004). Even so, the conference, attended by
representatives of 36 countries, international organizations, and aid
agencies, produced pledges of only $126 million.
Meanwhile,
a number of nongovernmental organizations are doing what they can to
help relieve conditions on the ground and to convince world leaders
of the need to apply more “carrots and sticks” to secure
better cooperation from Khartoum. And on June 15, the UN issued an emergency
appeal for an additional $55 million to care for an additional 110,000
people expected to flood UN refugee camps in Chad before the end of
June. (The camps already are home to 93,000 refugees (BBC News, June
15, 2004).
WHAT
ELSE SHOULD BE DONE?
In
the short term, the U.S. should pressure the Sudanese government to
reign in the militia carrying out atrocities, stop any support to the
militias, and allow immediate, unhindered access for humanitarian workers
and human rights monitors. The Sudanese government has been responsive
to U.S. and international pressures in the past: it expelled Osama bin
Laden, halted a resurgent slave trade, ended aerial bombing in southern
Sudan, and launched peace talks with southern-based rebels. With further
pressure, the Sudanese government could take action to save hundred
of thousands of lives.
In
the long term, the U.S., European Union, and other G-8 countries will
have to convince Khartoum to re-allocate monetary and other resources
to develop Darfur and give all its people a stake in working for Sudan’s
political and economic success. The North-South accommodation could
serve as a starting point, but it will have to be an early and committed
start by all parties.
CONCLUSION
Resource
commitments, reluctance to create a new “precedent” about
limitations on national sovereignty, and increased accountability of
constitutional heads of state and other public officials to international
standards militate against declarations of genocide. But until countries
and international organizations can summon enough willpower to intervene
where ethnic cleansing is happening or about to happen, victims and
their nongovernmental advocates will have to develop and rely on “early
warning” signals of impending conflict to provide enough evidence
to warrant a charge of genocide-in-the-offing.
It
promises to be a long, hard struggle. But until it is won, ethnic cleansing
will continue to be the “respectable” face of genocide.
Col.
Daniel Smith, a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran, is
Senior Fellow on Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National
Legislation, a Quaker lobby in the public interest. He can be reached
at: dan@fcnl.org
Weekend
Edition June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede
Team CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
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