While we mourn the victims of the Jakarta bombing, terror is still continuing in Darfur. Today, for the first time, Colin Powell described the campaign by the Janjaweed militia, backed by the Sudanese government, as genocide. Passion of the Present has his full speech and more.
Inevitably, whatever the world does in response to the Darfur genocide will be influenced by the war in Iraq and its aftermath, and I’m going to look at the question in that light.
One of the consequences I feared from the tragic outcomes of the Iraq invasion is that it would undermine the case for humanitarian intervention more generally, pushing people back to the view that national sovereignty is sacred, or the “realist’ view that crimes committed far away are not our concern. This doesn’t seem to have happened, which is welcome. Both France and the African Union, generally seen as more sympathetic to national sovereignty ideas, have already sent troops, though with a limited mandate at present (the French are protecting refugees just across the border and the AU is protecting monitors for a ceasefire).
On the other hand, I hope that the Iraq experience has taught us not to believe in simple-minded military solutions to complex problems. The idea of sending an armoured division to wipe out the Janjaweed may sound appealing, but it’s not going to work - these killers are not an army with bases and so forth but an outfit like the Ku Klux Klan, who appear as ordinary citizens when they are not riding out to terrorise their neighbours. And deplorable though the Sudanese government is, we are not in a position to overthrow it and install a better one. We have to accept a more limited objective of stopping the current genocide and keeping aid flowing until a solution can be negotiated. Of course, even this objective will require a military commitment and rules of engagement that permit a full-scale response to armed attackers.
We also need to look at costs and benefits. The Iraq war has cost $200 billion. Even those who think that the Iraqi people are better off as a result can scarcely claim that the same money could not have done far more good elsewhere in the world, for example if it was spent on improving health care. The case for intervention in Darfur is much stronger, but we need to make sure that military aid is subject to the same benefit-cost calculus as civilian aid. At the most simplistic level, armed guards and food aid both cost money, and both are needed. But if we can save more lives by expanding food aid than by supplying more troops, that is what we should do.
A final point relates to the role of the UN. China, and Russia to a lesser extent, are holding up UN action on this issue. Here, I think it is unfortunate that Blair did not stick to his original stated position on Iraq which was that he would not participate in an invasion without the support of the UN Security Council, but would not be dissuaded by an unreasonable use of the veto power by one or two dissenters. There’s no doubt that Bush and Blair gravely damaged the UN process over Iraq, and that the people of Darfur are paying for this now. Still, it’s possible to hope that this atrocity will not go on unchecked.
Although in general agreement I wonder about the “gravely damaged the UN process” bit. When was the UN process not damaged? It has failed to act on numerous occasions and the tensions between the permanent members of the Security Council have existed long before both Bush and Blair.
Even though I rarely agree with your conclusions, I am an avid reader of your blog. I enjoy your well thought out posts and the different perspective. But on this post, I would have thought France’s trade interests with the Sudan would have been pertinent. For instance, the reasonings behind France’s veto of the US sanctions against the Sudan would have seemed an avenue worth exploring.
For instance, the reasonings behind France’s veto of the US sanctions against the Sudan would have seemed an avenue worth exploring.
Since France did not veto the last proposal for sanctions (because it did not go to a vote), and since France (along with the UK) is the co-sponsor of the current US proposal, I respectfully disagree.
Is your assertion regarding the damaged UN process that China and Russia are irritated at the US for ignoring them on Iraq, and so are ignoring Darfur to get back at the US? If so, that behavior seems… reprehensible?
I rarely think that the Crooked Timber folks are far off base, but this post really bothered me.
No doubt the Iraq controversy damaged a lot of things at the UN, but I’m mystified as to how the people of Darfur are paying for it now. Is the argument that China, Russia and virtually all of the Arab countries would have been happy to sanction intervention without the bad experience of Iraq?
China and Russia have consistently opposed interventions within sovereign nations for humanitarian reasons, which is why we had to bypass the UN for Kosovo. I know of no credible evidence that Iraq, rather than positions of far longer standing, is dictating their decisions now.
rd, my point is that before Iraq, it seemed reasonable to suggest that we could take near-unanimous UNSC support as a basis for international action, and effectively disregard isolated vetoes.
By invading Iraq, purportedly in the name of the UN, but with a clear majority of the UNSC opposed, Blair and Bush have made it harder for other countries to go along with this kind of thing.
rd & jake, I’m not saying that Chinese obstructionism is a response to Iraq
My viewpoint is that the veto power at the UNSC is an anachronism, and that the appropriate basis for international action in cases of this kind is some sort of supermajority. But Blair, who was a spokesman for this view, betrayed it by joining the invasion even though a majority of the UNSC was opposed (rightly, as it turned out, at least as regards the purported case). This pushes the rest of the world back towards a view that we should not tinker with established procedure, including respecting vetoes.
So it sounds like you’re saying that the role of the UN has been strengthened, because it’s been shown that end runs around it are a bad thing, but that the UN is dysfunctional so this strengthening of the UN thereby prevents anything from getting done.
‘At the most simplistic level, armed guards and food aid both cost money, and both are needed. But if we can save more lives by expanding food aid than by supplying more troops, that is what we should do.’
‘Simplistic’ is the right word. The above analysis is, I’m sorry to say, rubbish. Food aid saves lives if and only if the persons dying from starvation are allowed to eat the food supplied. If a deliberate genocide is underway carried out by armed men, then guess what? The starving persons are not all that likely to be allowed to eat it. Given that deprivation of food is a long-standing tactic in Sudan’s various wars, and given that several reports I have seen on the Darfur speak of the deliberate destruction of crops and livestock and the poisoning of wells by Government and militia forces, I would say that there is indeed a chance that food aid will not be permitted to reach the starving.
John, you seem to be advocating a return to the UNPROFOR policy in Bosnia (at least in the ‘92-94 period), under which UN troops could not use force to prevent the murder of civilians in front of their eyes, but were allowed to use force to prevent attacks on food aid convoys. It was a moral and strategic disgrace.
Dan, perhaps you missed the sentence:
“Of course, even this objective will require a military commitment and rules of engagement that permit a full-scale response to armed attackers.”
I am certainly not advocating a return to UNPROFOR policies.
I didn’t miss it, and nor did I miss the preceding sentence:
‘The idea of sending an armoured division to wipe out the Janjaweed may sound appealing, but it’s not going to work… We have to accept a more limited objective of stopping the current genocide and keeping aid flowing until a solution can be negotiated.’
‘Armoured division’ is a strawman argument: nobody is recommending sending such a division, because the terrain and enemy would be entirely wrong. Wiping out, or rather militarily defeating, murderous African militias, is indeed within the realms of practical possibility, cf Sierra Leone.
I am worried that if we set goals of ‘stopping the current genocide and keeping aid flowing until a solution can be negotiated’, then the Sudanese government will be reasonably cooperative on the aid question, as long as its supporters take a large cut (in line with its long-run practice in the South of the country), less cooperative on stopping the genocide, and will use the threat of walking out of negotiations as a trump card: again, precisely what the Bosnian Serb and Belgrade leadership did for most of the Bosnian war.
But fair enough: you did not advocate a policy restricted to protecting aid convoys, and I should not have accused you of doing so, although I am worried that that policy is what we will end up with if your constraints are adopted.
Dan, I share the concerns you raise, but the lesson I’ve learned from recent failures is that we should set achievable goals and stick to them. This includes making it clear to the Sudanese government that responses of the kind you describe would shift the cost-benefit calculus in favor of their removal.
As we’ve seen in their dealings with the South, the government is evil but not irrational. Given sufficient pressure they can be made to compromise
It seems to me that your criticisms of the position I’m advocating would also apply to the settlement negotiated in southern Sudan. Do you favor reopening this issue?
‘This includes making it clear to the Sudanese government that responses of the kind you describe would shift the cost-benefit calculus in favor of their removal.’
Yes, any policy which included a credible threat of that would be fine by me- and it would probably obviate any necessity to reopen the Southern Sudan peace deal.
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