|
|
|
Reaction Time: Why the delay? Knowing Acquiescence in Genocide Notes for Talk by Hon. David Kilgour, M.P. Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont International Conference on Darfur Conron Hall, University of Western Ontario London, ON. October 29, 2005 Ladies and Gentlemen,
Why are African and other governments, including Canada’s, finding it so difficult to demonstrate effective leadership on the continuing catastrophe in Darfur? The essentially tokenistic gestures to date have failed to end the horrific violence. As public concern across this country and much of the world continues, it’s dismaying to see so many leaders watching another Rwanda or Bosnia take place while they stand aside, wringing their hands and averting their eyes.
The Smith College academic Eric Reeves, although now ill with leukemia, has put the latest developments probably more eloquently than anyone with his Shakespearian command of language. A few days ago, he wrote:
“A series of extraordinarily dire warnings have recently been issued by various UN officials, a last desperate attempt to force the international community to take urgent cognizance of Darfur’s deepening crisis. Full-scale catastrophe and a massive increase in genocidal destruction are imminent, and there is as yet no evidence that the world is listening seriously. The US in particular seems intent on taking an expediently blinkered view of the crisis (see forthcoming analysis by this writer at The New Republic [on-line], www.tnr.com). But European countries and other international actors with power to speak the truth are little better; the absence of an effective voice emerging from the Blair government is especially dismaying…”.
“Even so, there is no possible escape from the most basic truth in Darfur: Khartoum’s National Islamic Front, ever more dominant in the new “Government of National Unity,” is deliberately escalating the level of violence and insecurity as a form of “counter-insurgency” warfare, with the clear goal of accelerating human destruction among the African tribal populations of the region.
“In failing to respond to this conspicuous and now fully articulated truth, the world is yet again knowingly acquiescing in genocide. But as the shadows of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bosnia, Cambodia and Rwanda fall more heavily over Darfur, we cannot evade this most shameful truth: we know---as events steadily, remorselessly unfold---more about the realities of ethnically-targeted human destruction in Darfur than on any other previous such occasion in history. So much the greater is our moral disgrace.”
My preference would be to carry on reading the searing prose of my friend Eric’s email of October 24th, especially since his illness prevents him from attending this conference, but permit me at least to paraphrase some of his key points relating to the greater international community’s long sleep over Darfur.
By coincidence, I was visited earlier this week by a delegation from Bosnia. With sadness in their voices, they reminded me that approximately 150,000 Bosnians perished in the mid-1990s before the international community, led by President Clinton & NATO, finally stepped in robustly as required to stop the killing and raping which had dragged on for more than three long years. A few years later, when a similar catastrophe erupted in Kosovo, a wiser international community acted very quickly so that the casualties there were a far smaller – but appalling – total of about 5000 people.
The really vexing question for all of us here today is why the lessons of Bosnia & Kosovo have now vanished into the mists? How could 30 national governments, including Canada’s, together send approximately 60,000 peacemakers into Bosnia and none to Darfur? Canada’s share in Bosnia was approximately 1400 soldiers.
Constructive Engagement
When many abroad (I’m told repeatedly) expected Canada to take a catalytic role in stopping the carnage in Darfur, the Martin government’s continuing pursuit of “constructive engagement” with Sudan’s military rulers is increasingly difficult to defend. Such engagement has, to the best of my knowledge, never produced results when dealing with genocidal regimes, from the Third Reich at least until today.
I understand that Foreign Affairs Canada now insists that it has abandoned its long-practised policy of “constructive engagement” with Khartoum in favour of one of “incentives and disincentives”. The substantive difference in the two is difficult to detect, although the current lack of trade assistance offered to Sudan is evidently cited by some of our diplomats as a disincentive. They are, of course, essentially identical policies. My fellow Albertan Mel Middleton recently observed that it was a good thing that Canada and other governments did not apply the same policy to Slobodan Milosivic in Kosovo in 1999.
This is not the forum to explore the roles of two Canadian oil companies, Arakis and Talisman, in the recovering of oil in South Sudan, which provided Khartoum with the funds to purchase helicopters and other weapons to pursue ethnic cleansing and worse in the South and Darfur. I must, however, again protest the now revealed attempt by the Martin government to enlist Bush administration assistance to seek to have the US courts dismiss the tort action brought by the Presbyterian church of Sudan and others against Talisman and the Government of Sudan.
It is true that Paul Martin announced up to $260 million for the peace process, peace-building, humanitarian aid and assistance for the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), as well as the creation of a Special Advisory Team. Supporting the peace process and dialogue today is simply not enough. It will not stop mass killings, gang rapes and starvation.
Mr. Martin also promised last May that Canadian Forces (CF) will provide up to one hundred personnel to support the AU and the UN. At present, I understand there are only two in Darfur, an area the size of France, and another two in Khartoum for the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU). Comparatively, since October 2001, Canada has deployed more than 13,500 soldiers, sailors and air personnel in the war on terror.
We must never cease to remind ourselves and others that the situation in Darfur is not getting any better. In fact, it’s getting worse. This is not something that will simply go away if we ignore it long enough. We have to constantly remind ourselves of the horrors that Darfuris face daily.
Comprehensive Peace
World leaders continue to huddle under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) umbrella as justification for inaction. We cannot afford to remain idle because of fears that strong action will lead to the CPA falling apart. The reality is precisely the opposite: without a solution to the current crisis, the CPA will never work. As Susan Rice wrote in a Washington Post article this past summer, genocide is not simply a regional or domestic issue. “Genocide makes a claim on the entire world and it should be a call to action.”
Most of the survivors are now languishing in camps, which the Government of Sudan continues to control and terrorize, primarily through its Janjaweed, who carry out a similar role to that of the Interhamwe in Rwanda during the April-June1994 period. The UN’s former Human Rights Coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, who observed what occurred in both Rwanda and Darfur, noted in March, 2004, that “the only difference between Rwanda and Darfur is the numbers involved.”
Responsibility to Protect
What of the sixth round of AU-sponsored peace talks in Abuja? The NIF majority in the new government in Khartoum knows only too well that as long as they feign good faith about the CPA they can continue to do as they like in Darfur. A just-published book, Darfur-The Ambiguous Genocide, by Gérard Prunier of the University of Paris, sets all this out in detail, (A review of his excellent book is now available on my website next week – www.david-kilgour.com -) Too many governments, including some in the EU, Canada and the US, continue essentially to ignore Darfur, hoping that the regime will not return to do in the South what it continues to wreak in the West. What about our responsibility to protect Darfuris now and for the past many months?
Canadians acknowledge warmly the humanitarian contributions of the EU and its member nations to the Darfur situation thus far, particularly those of the UK (US $100 million), ECHO (European Commission) (approx $75 m), Netherlands (approx $50 m), European Commission (approx $40 m) and Germany (approx $20 m). According to the UN, Canada has committed to date about $20 million for humanitarian purposes. However, the escalating and targeted violence against aid workers has made these life lines even more tenuous.
The urgent need is for all of us finally to accept that Darfur is more than another humanitarian crisis. The ongoing government-created devastation there-regardless of what one wishes to term it-is so appalling that it shrieks to the entire world as a summons to action immediately.
As you know, the International Crisis Group (ICG) this past summer was already saying that NATO must provide additional bridging help to the African Union. In their most recent report (25 Oct), they repeat that this would be the “most practical way of achieving this deployment, but unfortunately neither NATO nor the AU appear prepared to consider such a radical measure. Another option, now being widely discussed, is folding (the AU Mission in Sudan-AMIS) into the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) operation…” The report goes on to make recommendations as to how the AU and the EU can work more effectively within the existing organizational arrangements.
Yet with the recently escalating government of Sudan-Janjaweed violence and the indication, albeit only a hint, that the AU would like a larger NATO role in Darfur, is it not time for Canadians everywhere to pressure Ottawa to act?
Delay
Many of you might be saying, “Why not a Chapter VII mandate from the UN Security Council since the AU’s regional peacekeeping mechanism is not working?” This unfortunately is impossible because at least two permanent members of the Security Council, China and Russia, would from all indications veto any such proposal. The first now obtains about seven percent of its oil needs from Sudan. The second is engaged in the sale of various arms to Khartoum and will, I gather, block any such initiative.
What is keeping the NATO Council from authorizing its military committee to send in a peacemaking force, as with Bosnia and Kosovo? To the best of my knowledge, there is still not the political will in some necessary NATO capitals to achieve this. The Chirac government in France earlier took the position that NATO is not “the gendarme to the world”, much preferring the EU to work with the AU. Unfortunately, that partnership is not succeeding.
Walking the Walk
NATO must become involved in a more integrated and result-oriented way. Insisting that such an initiative would need the approval of both the AU and the Sudanese government, of course misses the point.
To believe that the Sudanese government would ever condone NATO involvement in any capacity more than transporting AU troops is simply naive. Indeed, I’m told that virtually all of the “Grizzly” personnel carriers Canada sent remain in Senegal because Khartoum will not let them enter Sudan. The survivors in camps in Darfur cannot wait. Whatever the international or regional political nuances, or organizational mechanics, or any other number of unpersuasive excuses, no one can deny that we all have a responsibility to protect. Isn’t Responsibility to Protect (R2P) supposed to be Canada’s doctrine? If everything concerned governments, such as our own, do accomplishes nothing, we are simply silent partners in genocide.
There is a severe disproportionality in our will for action during humanitarian crises and during genocides such as Darfur’s. Undeniably the survivors of the tsunami in Southeast Asia and the more recent Pakistan earthquake working so hard to rebuild their country need and deserve aid. But we must ask why it is that when faced with genocide and a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions in Africa, there doesn’t seem to be any meaningful response? To my knowledge, the Canadian government has never even officially criticized the Khartoum regime!
I think the answer clearly lies in a lack of political will, rooted in a number of areas. Among them: our ignorance of the complexities and sophisticated nature of African dictatorships; our fear of sending troops to ethnic conflicts in Africa; and, as Romeo Dallaire has pointed out many times, the blatant racism of the West and Canada.
There is also a reliance on the UN to ‘fix’ all of the major crises in the developing world. In a report earlier this year, UN Undersecretary, Jan Egeland stated, “The basic lesson of earlier crises like Bosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda is that too often the world sends us the band aid, […] and then they don't have to take a political and security action. This is wrong and that's why we are really tired of being that kind of a substitute for political and security action.”
In effect, the international emphasis on the CPA to bring peace, the recognition of the conflict in Sudan as simply a ‘humanitarian problem,’ and Ottawa’s continued reliance on constructive engagement strangles Canada’s duty to intervene in a humanitarian intervention by NATO (hopefully led by an AU commander and with AU participation). When Canada ratified the 1948 Genocide Convention, binding ourselves to prevent genocide, it seemed clear at the time that active intervention would be required to stop the atrocities.
Though many speak highly of the R2P, what a lot of Canadians don’t know is that our R2P doctrine is essentially useless without a Security Council resolution authorizing action. If the UN is neither willing nor able to do anything besides offer humanitarian aid, where does that leave R2P? Where does it leave 2 ½ million Darfuris?
Conclusions
The inaction of the international community has not been for lack of options. There have been a number of excellent reports and articles published which offer solutions.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) has made a number of recommendations recently on the necessary role of the international community. More courageous thinking is needed by the African Union, NATO, the EU, the UN, the US, and Canada. ICG said this summer that it wants NATO and others to offer additional help to the AU in “force preparation, deployment, sustainment, intelligence, command and control, communications and tactical mobility, including the deployment of their own assets and personnel to meet capability gaps as needed.”
Senegal’s courageous Foreign Minister, Cheikh Tidiane Gaido, disagrees that Africa alone can end the suffering in Darfur. Gaido said recently: “those militias, they’re still very active… killing people, burning villages, raping women”. Declaring the situation in Darfur “totally unacceptable” the minister believes “the UN Security Council, the European Union, the African Union, the United States – we should all come together in a new way of dealing with the suffering of the people of Darfur… We have to do something”. The Government of Canada must begin by admitting that the situation in Darfur is far from over, and will not be solved by the CPA alone. Thank you. -30- |
|
