[Peace-discuss] Re: Darfur Colonized by Peacekeepers?

Fri Aug 3 15:23:47 CDT 2007

I appreciate your sending this, Scott. It corroborates what I've heard from others, and allows me to hope there is interest in resolving the Darfur crisis/genocide that doesn't have US (and others) for humanitarian rather than ulterior motives. 

  Would you please comment on the situation in the Congo, especially the apparent lack of interest world-wide, when reportedly there are far greater atricities happening there?

  Thanks,
  Jenifer  

Scott Edwards <scottisimo at hotmail.com> wrote:
      P  {  margin:0px;  padding:0px  }  body  {  FONT-SIZE: 10pt;  FONT-FAMILY:Tahoma  }    Interesting article, Carl. Thanks for passing it along. A couple factual corrections: 

1769 does not authorize a force "in addition" to AMIS. Rather, it will be a joint UN-AU force, as demanded by Khartoum. Second, while Ch 7 of the charter does grant an inherent mandate above self-preservation (in this instance, the UN/AU police and military personnel may act to protect civilians and aid workers), it is not a blank check, and the UN/AU opereations will be restricted in a number of deterimental ways. The biggest one is that, despite the need, the force will be unable to confiscate illegal arms, either from the pro-government death sqauds, nor the armed opposition groups who've been targeting aid providers of late.

Third, the resolution grants a mandate to protect civilians "without prejudice of the GoS's responsibility to do so." How should that be read? It should be "even though there is this PKO, the GoS still has an inherent responsibility to protect civilians." How will it be read in Khartoum? "Even though there is this force, we can countinue our counter-insurgency operations, even if they target civilians." So don't fret, all, the resolution doesn't restrict the Government in any meaningful way. In fact, the GoS (suprise) resisted the resolution until provisions for sanctions were removed. So its all good--even if the GoS continues to target civilians, the international community won't impose multilateral sanctions (eg, freezing of private oversees assets, travel bans on those responsible, etc). 

Fourthly, it is simply not the case that the international community has portrayed this as a simple "Arab on Black" conflict. Maybe some small zealous, and poorly informed, individuals have, but most haven't. The largest human rights organizations, such as Amnesty and HRW, have never called it a genocide, nor portrayed the conflict as anything but complicated. 

Fifth, the force is not intended to "quell the strife" in Darfur. The purpose of the force, even if it doesn't jive with trendy notions of neo-colonialism under the guise of humanitarian intervention, is to guarantee the security of 3 million people who've been forced from the homes by opposition groups and the government alike, and/or who are on the brink of starvation and rely on food and medical aid. Thats right...it's not about US access to oil. (gasp!) For one, the US has no command and control authority in the force, nor will it send a single troop, and secondly, this was a unanimous vote. China and Russia, not fans of US imperialism, were critical in getting the resolution passed.

Will the force, which will reamain primarily African, "fix" Darfur? No. And no one with any credibility has ever claimed that, in contradiction to the straw-man the article whisps over. What is and always has been needed is a political solution. And it is creeping along slowly. Will the force change the peace process? Probably. If neither side is able to gain advantage by emptying large swaths of land of its inhabitants, forcibly recruting children, or providing their troops with spoils of war (eg, rape and livestock), they have little reason to carry on in the hopes they can better the bargaining position. But that is all an aside to the purpose force. Political developments aside, without security for aid provision, tens or possibly hundreds of thosands more would die. And if that isn't a good enough reason to suspend opposition to multilateral intervention in this case, then there is no meeting ground for us to exchange ideas.

best,
scott

> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:28:36 -0500
> From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Darfur colonized by peacekeepers?
> To: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Message-ID: <46B33B94.1010907 at uiuc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
> 
> Thursday 2 August 2007
> Darfur: colonised by ‘peacekeepers’
> 
> The new 26,000-strong UN force being sent to the war-torn western 
> province of Sudan is likely to stir up further tensions rather than 
> deliver peace.
> 
> Philip Cunliffe
> 
> The United Nations (UN) Security Council yesterday passed resolution 
> 1769. It establishes another peacekeeping mission in Sudan, UNAMID, for 
> Sudan’s war-torn western province of Darfur. With a total authorised 
> strength of 26,000, UNAMID is expected to be the largest UN peacekeeping 
> operation in the world by next year. What’s more, UNAMID peacekeepers 
> will deploy under the terms of ‘Chapter VII’ of the UN Charter, which 
> legally entitles them to use force beyond self-defence. In other words, 
> this will not be a neutral, monitoring contingent, but a militarised 
> force and de facto protagonist in Darfur’s conflict.
> 
> The creation of UNAMID comes on top of the two other peacekeeping 
> missions already in Sudan: the 7,000-strong African Union force deployed 
> in Darfur, and the 10,000-strong UN peacekeeping force policing a 
> ceasefire in south Sudan since 2005 (UNMIS). In June this year, the 
> European Union also began planning its own 3,000-strong peacekeeping 
> operation to police the border between Sudan, Chad and the Central 
> African Republic. Further south, Africa is already host to the world’s 
> largest UN peacekeeping operation, the 18,000-strong MONUC operation in 
> the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are some further 36,000-odd UN 
> peacekeepers scattered across the continent (see the table below). In 
> light of all these multinational forces descending on Sudan and already 
> stationed across Africa, it is unsurprising that some analysts have 
> pointedly asked whether Africa is in the process of being ‘re-colonised’ 
> by the UN (1). The reality is more complex, however, though no less 
> disturbing.
> 
> The UN’s latest peacekeeping plan for Darfur is designed to quell the 
> strife that erupted in the province in 2003, when local rebels took up 
> arms against the central government in Khartoum. The conflict is 
> complex, with a variety of interlocking factions and ethnic groups whose 
> political antagonisms and struggle with the central government gird 
> longstanding rivalries over the region’s depleted resources (2). But it 
> is not only regional politics and economics that represent a barrier to 
> peace – the international community’s involvement in the conflict has 
> served to prolong and escalate the bloodshed.
> 
> Evading the bloody involution of the American crusade to liberate Iraq, 
> a swathe of Western politicians, human rights groups and liberal 
> intellectuals have tried collectively to regroup around Darfur (3). 
> Dictated by a desire to cohere the agenda of international 
> interventionism, these groups have systematically portrayed the conflict 
> in Darfur as a genocide launched by racist, fanatical ‘Arabs’ against 
> victimised ‘Africans’ (4). For the incoming governments of Gordon Brown 
> and Nicolas Sarkozy in Britain and France, a joint focus on Darfur – 
> complete with a promise to visit the refugee camps – has helped to 
> dissociate them from the disaster of Iraq, while simultaneously 
> affirming their moral authority to dictate affairs around the globe (5).
> 
> This skewed presentation of the conflict has warped its dynamics, by 
> offering Darfuri rebels the tantalising prospect that they could 
> opportunistically convert international sympathy into military 
> intervention in their favour. According to a State Department official a 
> few years back, the rebels ‘let the village burnings go on, let the 
> killing go on, because the more international pressure that’s brought to 
> bear on Khartoum, the stronger their position grows’ (6). Transfixed by 
> the moral gaze of the international community, the Sudan Liberation 
> Movement splintered, with various factions jostling for advantage and 
> demanding international guarantees and troops, thereby wrecking last 
> year’s peace negotiations (7). One African analyst described the 
> background to the earlier 2005 peace negotiations: ‘Unlike many 
> liberation movements in Africa, which had to depend on the people to 
> build and plan with them, these rebels have too many willing regional 
> and international actors indulging their delusions of grandeur.’ (8) If 
> this were not enough, the intense international pressure on Khartoum 
> also encouraged other rebels – this time in eastern Sudan – to renew 
> their war against Khartoum, further destabilising Africa’s largest 
> country (9).
> 
> Peace negotiations are supposed to restart before the deployment of the 
> new UN force. But given that the insertion of this new force into Darfur 
> is the logical extension of the previous internationalisation of the 
> conflict, there is no reason to think that the UN presence will not 
> further upset the local balance of forces, as each belligerent 
> reorganises their strategy around the new military presence on the 
> ground, with rebel factions potentially goading the UN into military 
> action on their behalf.
> 
> The more that African governments – or indeed would-be revolutionary 
> movements – cede their own authority to a shimmering and remote 
> international community, the more that ordinary Africans’ lives are 
> beholden to more distant and unaccountable powers in place of their own 
> governments. Under the auspices of the UN, wars are no longer treated as 
> political affairs, with peace founded on Africans’ own efforts, but as 
> ‘conflict management’ activities to be administered by bureaucrats and 
> jet-setting international diplomats.
> 
> Although the substance of political independence in Africa is 
> undoubtedly being eroded by the relentless expansion of peacekeeping, 
> the UN is much too ramshackle to represent anything like a real empire. 
> The growing intrusiveness of the international community represents not 
> colonialism but a new form of international hegemony – albeit one that 
> is no less alarming and in many ways more insidious. Under colonialism, 
> by annexing and conquering territories, imperialist powers assumed 
> direct political responsibility for their colonies – a system that at 
> least had the benefit of making clear who was oppressing whom. Today, 
> the international community preaches human rights instead of racial 
> supremacy, and it compromises a variety of actors: states, 
> state-sponsored mega-NGOs, the UN and other international and regional 
> organisations.
> 
> Not only are there no clear lines of institutional accountability in 
> this decentralised network – there is also no single agent that is 
> willing to be held responsible for particular outcomes. This moralised 
> multilateralism lends itself to passing the buck: states blame the UN, 
> the UN blames states, and both blame Africans for their corruption and 
> backwardness
 In these circumstances, the scrambling of political 
> responsibilities is usually resolved by greater coercion: sanctions, 
> Security Council resolutions and punitive international laws. And, of 
> course, by the deployment of more and more peacekeepers, more heavily 
> armed. This new international system can only bode badly for Sudan and 
> Africa as a whole.
> 
> [peacekeeping statistics]
> 
> Philip Cunliffe is co-editor of Politics Without Sovereignty: A Critique 
> of Contemporary International Relations (UCL Press, 2007).
> _____________________________
> 
> (1) Martin Plaut, The UN’s all-pervasive role in Africa, BBC News 18 
> July 2007
> 
> (2) Mahmood Mamdani, The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, 
> Insurgency, London Review of Books, 8 March 2007
> 
> (3) On the wide variety of political groupings supporting intervention 
> in Darfur, see Mahmood Mamdani, The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil 
> War, Insurgency, London Review of Books, 8 March 2007
> 
> (4) Mahmood Mamdani, The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, 
> Insurgency, London Review of Books, 8 March 2007
> 
> (5) BBC News, Brown and Sarkozy vow Darfur trip, 20 July 2007
> 
> (6) Cited in Roberto Belloni, ‘The trouble with humanitarianism’, Review 
> of International Studies, 33:3, July 2007, p461
> 
> (7) Alex de Waal, I will not sign, London Review of Books, 30 November 2006
> 
> (8) Alex de Waal, I will not sign, London Review of Books, 30 November 2006
> 
> (9) Mark Doyle, Sudan’s interlocking wars, BBC News, 10 May 2006
> 
> reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3697/
> 
> ###
> 

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