US urged to push Darfur resolution at UN

Human rights, Africa activists and others are pressing for the Bush administration to use Washington's presidency of the UN Security Council this month to gain approval of a resolution authorizing the urgent deployment of a large UN peacekeeping force to Sudan's Darfur region to protect civilians against further violence by government-backed Arab militias, the Janjaweed. They warn that a simple Presidential Statement (PRST) issued on behalf of the Council, a draft of which is currently being circulated by the US and Britain, calling on UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to prepare contingency plans for such an operation is not sufficient given the gravity of the crisis in Darfur, which Bush himself has referred to as "genocide." "We've had a lot of statements already," declared Salih Booker, head of Africa Action, at a rally across from the White House on Feb. 2. "Anything less than a new resolution will represent an evasion by this administration of this unique opportunity to stop the ongoing genocide in Darfur." That view was echoed, if more diplomatically, by Donald Steinberg, vice president of the International Crisis Group in New York City. "While we welcome the attention of the Security Council to the crisis in Darfur," he said, speaking of the draft PRST, "this has to be just the first step." "We'd be very disappointed if this was the only step taken during the US presidency of the Council this month," added Steinberg, whose group released a joint letter to Bush with Human Rights Watch earlier this week urging him to use the Council presidency to seek authority for a 20,000-troop force with a "strong and clear mandate" to protect civilians by force if necessary and disarm the Janjaweed. The appeals come amid growing concerns that the security situation in Darfur has deteriorated seriously in recent months and that a 7,000-troop African Union force (AMIS), which has been deployed to monitor a ceasefire over the past year, has been unable to contain the violence and may run out of funding by the end of next month. The violence in Darfur began in early 2003 when rebel groups attacked a government army garrison. Khartoum responded by launching a "scorched earth" counter-insurgency campaign aimed at uprooting the non-Arab, mainly African population throughout the region, both by carrying out its own ground and air attacks against the civilian population and by arming and deploying–sometimes in joint operations–Janjaweed militias. An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 people are believed to have died, and more than two million people have been displaced from their homes. In an indication of the deteriorating security, some 30,000 more people were displaced in just the past month, according to the UN, while cross-border attacks by the government-backed Janjaweed into Chad, which is sheltering more than 200,000 refugees, have raised tensions between the two countries. Meanwhile, African Union (AU)-sponsored peace talks between rebel groups and the government in Abuja, Nigeria, have been stalled for months, while Khartoum has failed to comply with previous UN resolutions to disarm and disband the Janjaweed. Pressure from rights groups, Africa activists, and Christian and Jewish congregations on the Bush administration to take a more aggressive stance has mounted steadily, particularly since Congress declared the crisis to be "genocide" in the summer of 2004 and Bush himself used the term at the end of that year. Having defined the crisis in such a dramatic way, however, Washington has failed to treat it with the urgency and gravity it deserves, according to activists who have been calling for months for the administration to put Darfur at the top of its UN agenda and, in particular, to push through a resolution that would incorporate the AMIS into a significantly larger UN force and give it a much stronger mandate to protect itself and civilians against attack. A number of reasons have been cited for Washington's reticence, including its desire not to alienate Khartoum, whose cooperation in the "war on terror" has been much appreciated by US intelligence agencies. In addition, Washington, which played a major role in negotiating an end to a 23-year civil war between the government and the mainly African peoples of southern Sudan, is worried that a more confrontational posture could put the seven-month-old peace agreement at risk. US officials have also said that a strong resolution will run into resistance–and possible vetoes–from Russia, a major arms supplier for Khartoum, and China, which has invested heavily in Sudan's burgeoning oil industry. Washington needs the support of both powers on a range of issues, such as the growing crisis over Iran's nuclear program, which could come before the Council as early as next month. That kind of calculation is a major concern of the activists who do not want to see Darfur sacrificed to realpolitik. "The question is how the US wants to use its political capital–if it's more interested in getting Iran before the Security Council than in getting a strong resolution on Sudan," Booker told IPS. "I think ending genocide is not the administration's top priority, and it should be." The draft PRST calls for Secretary-General Annan to initiate "contingency planning without delay" with the AU for a "range of options for a possible transition from AMIS to a UN operation." The statement suggests that the much larger UN peacekeeping force deployed to oversee last year's peace accord between Khartoum and the south could take over Darfur operations, as well. But activists warn that simply "rehatting" the AMIS force by incorporating it into a UN mission would be meaningless without a significant increase in the number of troops deployed to Darfur (which is the size of France) and a strengthening of their mandate. In this, they are strongly supported by Annan himself. "Any new mission will need a strong and clear mandate, allowing it to protect those under threat, by force if necessary, as well as the means to do so," he wrote in the Washington Post last week, adding that such a force must be "larger, more mobile and much better equipped than the current African Union mission." There have been consultations regarding the deployment by NATO forces to act as a "bridging force" between AMIS and a larger UN peacekeeping mission. "We believe there is a role for NATO and the European Union in that regard," said the International Crisis Group's Steinberg. To highlight the Council's concern about Darfur, Kenneth Bacon, the president of Washington-based Refugees International, called for US Ambassador John Bolton to convene the Council in Darfur during his presidency, much as his predecessor, John Danforth, convened the Council in Kenya, to pressure Khartoum and southern insurgents to conclude a peace during his presidency in 2004.