The Forgotten Genocide
By Peter Flynn
Monday 2nd November 2009
Monday 2nd November 2009
Sudan has been in the conscience of the international community for generations. Since gaining independence from the United Kingdom in 1956, the country has been wracked almost constantly with civil war, caused for the most part by political and ethnic tensions. In March 2003, fighting broke out in the Darfur region between Government forces and rebels from the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. Since the conflict was described as “genocide” by the United States in 2005, this destruction has taken on an even graver undertone.
The news agenda, however, has seemingly shifted away from the heavy focus the situation received only a matter of years ago. Global economic troubles, continued conflict and controversy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, closer to home, the scandal of MPs’ expenses have since grabbed media attention. However, the situation in Darfur remains unresolved, and in many cases has worsened, since being deprived of the focus of international media attention.
The statistics alone ought to provide serious pause for thought. The United Nations caused controversy by failing to echo the US’s description of the conflict as genocide, but its own figures are alarming and stand testament to the trouble that the region has experienced. In 2008 it reported some 300,000 killed as a result of ‘violence and disease’, and 2 million displaced because of the unrest. That’s to say nothing of more general widespread reports of rape and wholesale destruction of villages. The latter has been catalogued and made clear not only by Human Rights Watch, but evidence of burned out villages has been plotted for all to see on Google Earth, bringing indisputable evidence of humanitarian crisis into homes and offices around the world.
The crisis has serious political implications as well. In 2007 an Amnesty International report accused Russia and China of flouting UN regulations in order to supply millions of dollars’ worth of weapons and aircraft to the Sudanese government, which, it was in turn suggested, had used this military hardware to bomb the villages of Darfur. Both deny the claims. That both Russia and China are members of the UN Security Council is worth remembering, and this report may perhaps shed some light on reasons why the international community has had such difficulty in organising a unified strategy to end the bloodshed.
The United Nations ordered an arms embargo to the Darfur region in 2004, which it extended to the whole of Sudan in 2005; that this may have been breached by some of the very members of the Security council that ratified the embargo is clearly – if true – at least as troubling as the raw statistics on death and displacement.
Aside from this, the issue of numbers of “hidden” mass graves – the “smoking gun” of any genocide – still requires thorough looking into, although the present lack of a sense of immediacy and importance surrounding developments between 2005 and 2007 seems to make any major movement in this area unlikely any time soon. In July 2008 the International Criminal Court took out an arrest warrant on the Sudanese premier, Omar al-Bashir (who came to power via military coup in 1989 and made himself President in 1993), accusing him of having “masterminded and implemented” the slaughter in the region. That this warrant has been out for practically sixteen months, and to no effect, is disappointing in terms of justice and as evidence of the ineffectiveness of international action taken. However, as the USA, the state most likely to have the ability to arrest al-Bashir, still refuses to recognise the ICC, the warrant does not look like being served any time soon.
Major problems clearly still exist in the Darfur region, despite the recent lack of media attention. Given this, it is perhaps now more important than ever to keep in mind the scale of the crisis, and to continue carefully to watch over developments in this troubled part of the world.
The news agenda, however, has seemingly shifted away from the heavy focus the situation received only a matter of years ago. Global economic troubles, continued conflict and controversy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, closer to home, the scandal of MPs’ expenses have since grabbed media attention. However, the situation in Darfur remains unresolved, and in many cases has worsened, since being deprived of the focus of international media attention.
The statistics alone ought to provide serious pause for thought. The United Nations caused controversy by failing to echo the US’s description of the conflict as genocide, but its own figures are alarming and stand testament to the trouble that the region has experienced. In 2008 it reported some 300,000 killed as a result of ‘violence and disease’, and 2 million displaced because of the unrest. That’s to say nothing of more general widespread reports of rape and wholesale destruction of villages. The latter has been catalogued and made clear not only by Human Rights Watch, but evidence of burned out villages has been plotted for all to see on Google Earth, bringing indisputable evidence of humanitarian crisis into homes and offices around the world.
The crisis has serious political implications as well. In 2007 an Amnesty International report accused Russia and China of flouting UN regulations in order to supply millions of dollars’ worth of weapons and aircraft to the Sudanese government, which, it was in turn suggested, had used this military hardware to bomb the villages of Darfur. Both deny the claims. That both Russia and China are members of the UN Security Council is worth remembering, and this report may perhaps shed some light on reasons why the international community has had such difficulty in organising a unified strategy to end the bloodshed.
The United Nations ordered an arms embargo to the Darfur region in 2004, which it extended to the whole of Sudan in 2005; that this may have been breached by some of the very members of the Security council that ratified the embargo is clearly – if true – at least as troubling as the raw statistics on death and displacement.
Aside from this, the issue of numbers of “hidden” mass graves – the “smoking gun” of any genocide – still requires thorough looking into, although the present lack of a sense of immediacy and importance surrounding developments between 2005 and 2007 seems to make any major movement in this area unlikely any time soon. In July 2008 the International Criminal Court took out an arrest warrant on the Sudanese premier, Omar al-Bashir (who came to power via military coup in 1989 and made himself President in 1993), accusing him of having “masterminded and implemented” the slaughter in the region. That this warrant has been out for practically sixteen months, and to no effect, is disappointing in terms of justice and as evidence of the ineffectiveness of international action taken. However, as the USA, the state most likely to have the ability to arrest al-Bashir, still refuses to recognise the ICC, the warrant does not look like being served any time soon.
Major problems clearly still exist in the Darfur region, despite the recent lack of media attention. Given this, it is perhaps now more important than ever to keep in mind the scale of the crisis, and to continue carefully to watch over developments in this troubled part of the world.