the human province

(Via Neil/Ezra) I wonder if Mark Krikorian recognizes the irony of an Armenian-American arguing against offering asylum to a people that's being targeted in a genocide. Had all countries followed his lead a hundred years ago, his family probably would have died in the deserts of Syria at the hands of the Young Turks:

Zionism Is Not a Suicide Pact   [Mark Krikorian]

Good for Israel in announcing it will turn back all Darfur refugees sneaking across the border from Egypt — thousands of Muslims claiming asylum would present an existential threat to the Jewish state. But here’s what the government has to deal with: the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, what appears to be the country’s equivalent of the ACLU, said that it is "Israel's moral and legal obligation to accept any refugees or asylum seekers facing life-threatening danger or infringements on their freedom." That last bit is great – “infringements on their freedoms.” So, apparently anyone, anywhere who doesn’t enjoy complete political freedom and manages to sneak into Israel should be allowed to stay. This kind of post-nationalism is bad enough in Europe and the U.S., but we at least have some strategic depth, as it were – the very existence of such sentiments in a country as small and insecure as Israel doesn’t bode well for its long-term viability.

There's nothing like pulling the ladder up once you and yours have made it to safety.

Eric Reeves has taken down a recent op-ed piece by Time's Sam Dealey. The Reeves rebuttal is detailed and lengthy, so there aren't any really pithy quotes to add here. In other words, read the whole thing.

Most of the coverage about the arms deal between France and Libya has focused on the quid pro quo (officially denied) of offering arms for the release of the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor. One aspect of the piece that's been overlooked is the fact that offering arms to Tripoli might be at odds with the stated policy of France and the UK in Darfur. Libya has a long history of arming the "Arab" side of the region's racial war, which has involved Darfur and Chad, in hopes of creating a united pan-Arab state in the region.

So although its author doesn't seem terribly familiar the region's decades-long war, I was glad to see this article in the Guardian on the possibility of a conflict arising from the arms deal between their policy in Libya and their policies in Darfur and Chad.

This is an important question, and those who wish to read about the conflict in the Sahara and Sahel would do well to check out the new and updated edition of Burr's and Collins's book on the subject.

The UN Security Council has finally approved a Chapter 7 resolution for Darfur. I'm curious to see how long it actually takes to gather enough troops and get them out there. Apparently most of them are supposed to be African, so I'd like to know who all has agreed to send troops.

The resolution now calls for a peacekeeping mission to begin no later than October, and cites Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, under which the Security Council is permitted to authorize the use of force to carry out the mandate.

Most of the peacekeepers are supposed to be drawn from African nations, and would include a beleaguered force of some 7,000 soldiers already in Darfur from the African Union, placing it under a unified command and control with the United Nations force.

The resolution authorizes a maximum of 19,555 military personnel and 6,432 civilian police officers. It does not spell out what role would be played by major powers, including the United States.

 On a related note, I find it really curious that the number that keeps being brandied around (and has been cited for the last year or two) is 200,000 dead in Darfur. The numbers went, all of a sudden, from "tens of thousands" to 200,000, which I think is a lot closer to the reality, but which is still a conservative, and strangely static, estimation.

Eric Reeves, for example, argued back in the Spring of 2006 that the death count (included in this are those who have died of disease and malnutrition in addition to violence) was around 450,000. And the US State Department put out an estimate in early 2005 that the excess death toll was 98,000 and 181,000. Regardless of the estimate, though, it seems strange for the media to continue citing the same number over the course of a couple of years.

A Lexis Nexis search of Darfur coverage in the Times, for example, shows that the 200,000 figure was used as far back as November 7, 2005 ("Surge in Violence in Sudan Erodes Hope"). In that report, we are informed of "the deaths of at least 200,000 people in Darfur," whereas in today's report, we are told that "some 200,000 people have been killed in four years of conflict." Are we really to believe that the numbers have remained unchanged for nearly two years?

While death counts in remote conflict zones are by their nature difficult to discern and in cases like this one usually controversial, there is no excuse for major media outlets, once having made the decision to use a figure, to continue using it unchanged for nearly two years. The readership of the Times could be forgiven for thinking that there had been no new deaths in Darfur since November, 2005. This is obviously untrue, and they should either update their figures or if they insist on continuing to use 200,000, they should stress that this number is two years old.

A new friend of mine sent me a blog entry on a Washington Post piece attacking Americans and Europeans who want to "Save Africa," and especially those who want to "Save Darfur."

Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."

There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head -- because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.

Regardless of whether Africa is "in" or not -- whether it's the cause du jour -- if anyone's to be giving a finger rapping to well-meaning white kids from the ivy league, it certainly ought not to be Uzodinma Iweala, the American-born and -raised son of a cabinet member of the Nigerian thug extraordinaire, Obasanjo. The piece's author went to a D.C. prep school then to Harvard, and is now off to Columbia med school, so I imagine that his time in Africa hasn't been much better than that of those pasty-faced do-gooders who "fly in for internships." (Incidentally, does Iweala take the boat from Washington, I wonder?) Furthermore, I think it's telling that Granta named him in their "Best of Young American Novelists 2." 

Fairly or not, Iweala reminds me of my time in the UN system. The UN works on a quota system for permanent posts, presumably so that the secretariat be filled with people from all over the world. This might be a good thing if it weren't for the fact that the quota for countries like Nigeria are taken up by people like Iweala, not the Africans and Asians who have lived their entire lives in their native countries and had to fight against the odds to get an education while working at a human rights NGO in countries like Cameroon or Bangladesh. I once took coffee breaks with a brilliant European intern who wasn't getting paid and couldn't get a proper job in his section, despite the fact that he'd completed his PhD in a relevant field and was widely published in his field's academic journals. The person who was second-in-charge in his section was a European guy who only had the equivalent of a B.A. in his field, but whose dad happened to be a former diplomat (and UN functionary) from an African country. This guy had lived his whole life in a European capital , but he had a passport from Africa, and the intern's compatriots were over-represented at that UN organization. So that was that.

Another thing that bothers me about the remarks made by Iweala is that he doesn't mention, for example, the role that such a campaign led by Americans (mostly black and religious groups) played in negotiating an end to the civil war between the north and south of Sudan. And guys like him are the same ones who are quick to fault Europe or the US for not having done anything for Rwanda. (I'm also in that camp, but I'd like to think that I'm somewhat more consistent in my criticism.) Furthermore, what about the Congo? If Central Africa had been left to its own devices instead of given the world's largest UN peacekeeping force (from five different continents), I imagine that the death toll would be considerably worse than it already is.

So while there's something to be said about "African solutions for African problems," I'm afraid that entrusting Libya, a country that's responsible for many of the current problems in Darfur and Chad in the first place, isn't necessarily such a hot idea just because Gadaffi isn't white. Likewise, Uganda's and Rwanda's African solution to the Congo and Mbeki's African non-solution to Zimbabwe aren't exactly what I'd call steps in the right direction.

I still haven't read UNEP's report on Darfur (pdf), due to a lack of time (it's 358 pages) and a lot of other lengthy reading on my plate these days. I have, however, followed some of the press coverage, which makes it sound like the genocide in Darfur is the result of purely ecological factors, including desertification, water shortages and global warming. As it happens, I've worked with UNEP on a publication before, and I'm inclined to believe that their report is a lot more nuanced than the press coverage gives it credit for. But I'll have to save that final judgement for when I have the time to sit down and read it.

In any case, the fact that environmental concerns and competition for resources places a part in conflict is an obvious point, it's how much of an impact these concerns have that is at issue. Lydia Polgreen, whose coverage of Sudan in the Times has been very good, has a piece in this week's Week in Review that takes a quick look at the underground lake recently discovered in Darfur. She quotes Alex de Waal and John Prendergast, both of whom know a lot about Sudan, in order to illustrate her point that it's less the ecological strain that's to fault for conflict in Sudan and more how that problem is dealt with:

A scientific explanation for the problem (environmental degradation) along with a tidy technological solution (irrigation) gratifies the modern humanitarian impulse.

But the history of Sudan, a grim chronicle of civil war, famine, coups and despotism, gives ample reason to be skeptical.

“Like all resources water can be used for good or ill,” said Alex de Waal, a scholar who has studied the impact of climate variation in Sudan and who witnessed the 1984-85 famine that is often cited as the beginning of the ecological crisis gripping Darfur. “It can be a blessing or also a curse. If the government acts true to form and tries to create some sort of oasis in the desert and control who settles there, that would simply be an extension of the crisis, not a solution.”

The droughts that gripped Sudan in the 1980s, and the migrations and other social changes they forced, have doubtless played a role in the conflict by increasing competition for water and land between farmers, who tend to be non-Arab, and herders, many of whom are Arabs. But an environmental catastrophe cannot become a violent cataclysm without a powerful human hand to guide it in that direction.

“These wider environmental factors don’t have impact in and of themselves” in terms of fomenting conflict, Mr. de Waal said. “The question is how they are managed.”

[...]

“Climate change and the lack of rain are much less important than the land-use patterns promoted by the government of Sudan and the development policies of World Bank and I.M.F., which were focused on intensive agricultural expansion that really mined the soils and left a lot of land unusable,” said Mr. Prendergast, who has been studying Sudan for 20 years. “That was probably the principal impetus for a lot of intra-Darfur migration in the decades leading up to the conflict in Darfur.”

She then goes on to make a point that I've been harping on for a while now:

A report released last year by the Coalition for International Justice on the role that oil and mechanized farming have played in human rights abuses in Sudan concluded: “The predominant root of conflict in Sudan is the instability that results from the systemic abuse of the rural (and recently urbanized) poor at the hands of the economic and political elites of central Sudan.”

In this analysis, the heart of the Darfur conflict, as in all conflicts in Sudan, is the battle for control of resources and riches, but not between farmers and herders, northerners and southerners, Christians and Muslims, or Arabs and non-Arabs.

It is a conflict between those at the center of the country, the elites who have controlled Sudan and its wealth for the past century and a half, and the desperately poor people who beg for scraps from the periphery.

Until that equation changes, many analysts argue, nothing else will.

US allies in Addis Ababa have been facing some pretty serious charges lately, the latest coming from the Times. It seems that in an effort to combat the mainly ethnic-Somali rebel group in the east of the country, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the government has been starving the entire region:

The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large swaths of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say.

The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to relief officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian Parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government’s actions.

The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality.

Humanitarian officials say the ban on aid convoys and commercial traffic, intended to squeeze the rebels and dry up their bases of support, has sent food prices skyrocketing and disrupted trade routes, preventing the nomads who live there from selling their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people are now sealed off in a desiccated, unforgiving landscape that is difficult to survive in even in the best of times.

“Food cannot get in,” said Mohammed Diab, the director of the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia.

In this part of Africa, famine has often been used a blunt political tool by central governments to keep the periphery in line. Precedent has already been set in Addis Ababa and Khartoum. Possibly even more disconcerting, however, are allegations that the government is arming ethnic militias in order to attack the rebels:

The people of the Ogaden are mostly Somalis and ethnically distinct from the highland Ethiopians who have ruled the country for centuries, and the long battle over the region has been steadily escalating this year. The country director of one Western aid agency, who recently returned from a field visit there, said he saw two villages that had been burned to the ground and several schools that had been converted into military bases, with foxholes.

Humanitarian officials say the military is building up militias and setting the stage for clan-based bloodshed. The rank and file of the Ogaden National Liberation Front tend to be members of the Ogaden clan, and so the government has turned to other clans to form anti-rebel militias. In the past few weeks, thousands of men have been armed.

“Those Ethiopians are smart,” [former MP] Mr. Kalif, 32, said. “They know Somalis are more loyal to clans than anything else.” Tactics like these, he said, drove him to defect June 20 while attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was affiliated with the ruling party, and had been representing an area in the eastern Ogaden for the past seven years.

In both cases, the actions of the Ethiopian government are disconcertingly close to those of the Sudanese government. It looks like any ethnic-based collective punishment aimed at quelling a separatist movement in Ogaden is still in the formative stage. The US should use its clout to dissuade Addis Ababa from going down the same road that Sudan has taken, as some in the House of Representatives like Randy Forbes (R, VA) have started to do by stripping Ethiopia of American aid. In any case, this is a case that Americans should keep an eye on, because it's obviously better to prevent humanitarian disasters and ethnic violence before it happens rather than wringing our hands when it does. 

The London Review has a summary piece about China's new love affair with Africa. If you've been keeping up with Chinese affairs on the continent, there probably won't be much new information in this piece, but it's a nice summary, and it's helpful to have it all in one piece. It's a subscription only article, but the main gist is summed up here:

In all likelihood China will be neither a saviour nor a destroyer. Some African opinion leaders have realised that it does not really stand for a different model. ‘Non-interference’ is not a value so much as a thin shield for old-fashioned realpolitik. China, like any other major power, generally puts its own strategic interests first. If its clients prove too embarrassing, it will restrain them, just as the United States once dumped Mobutu Sese Seko, when his taste for champagne, diamonds and bloodshed proved too embarrassing. Yet if China’s interests are better served by protecting rogues, it will protect them. If Chinese companies can get away with destroying Africa’s environment and paying little attention to its workers, they probably will. If they cannot – because local activists or consumers call them on it, or because it affects their sales in Africa and the West – perhaps they won’t.

Like the Western powers, China seems set to traffic in whatever images of Africa suit it: before the 2006 China-Africa summit in Beijing, Chinese officials plastered the city with posters of tribal warriors and lions that might have been taken from the National Geographic fifty years ago. Like the colonial powers, China will buy Africa’s resources and sell it manufactured products, regardless of whether Africa manages to produce anything that China wants to buy or succeeds in using China’s largesse to upgrade its own industries. ‘The key must be mutual benefit,’ Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, told a group of Chinese officials. ‘Otherwise we might end up with a few holes in the ground where the resources have been extracted, and all the added value will be in China.’

Last summer, when the main opposition leader in Zambia, infuriated by the deaths in the explosives factory, made Chinese investment an issue in the presidential election, the Chinese Embassy threatened to break off relations with Zambia if he was elected. Hardly a model of non-interference.

Al JAzeera reports on this strange conference in Paris on Darfur. From the report, it's hard to see what the purpose of the conference is, particularly since Khartoum and the AU aren't attending. The US and China, however, are, as well as 15 other countries. Al Jazeera did, however, take advantage of the situation to print a funny picture of Mademoiselle Rice and Kouchner:

 

Khartoum has finally accepted an AU/UN hybrid peacekeeping force. Or so they say. Given Khartoum's track record, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some serious backpedaling in the next couple of days.

Otherwise, Der Spiegel has a piece on Darfur and John Prendergast that's been reprinted by Salon. And I haven't read it yet, but Prendergast's report on Darfur is available online (pdf) through the Enough, the project to abolish genocide and mass atrocities, that's been formed by the International Crisis Group and the Center for American Progress.

This time CIA is getting help from Khartoum by intelligence gathering done in Iraq by embedded Sudanese spies, all while Khartoum is "bombing their people out the wazoo" in Darfur, according to an official at State.

This explains why Washington's most recent round of sanctions against Sudan are but window dressing."

Lee Feinstein has a piece in TPM's America Abroad outlining the relationship between China and Sudan. To answer a charge from comments that my evidence (also in comments) that China is still supplying Sudan with weapons was "google-y and anecdotal," here is what Feinstein has to say about Chinese arms in Sudan. (Incidentally, I'm not sure I even understand how coming across an article in the Sudan Times and a report from Amnesty International by using google is supposed to make those sources any less valid. Furthermore, I'm not sure how a report by Amnesty International is "anecdotal.")

China maintains a defense relationship with Sudan, despite the UN arms embargo that has been in place for Darfur since 2005. The Security Council imposed an embargo on all nongovernmental forces operating in Darfur in July 2004, and expanded it to include government forces as well in 2005. Sales to Khartoum are still permitted, although a UN panel, which visited Sudan in August 2005 to investigate violations of the embargo, recommended in April 2006 that the Security Council expand the embargo to the entire country.

Information about recent Chinese arms sales to Sudan is difficult to discern both because of China's secrecy and because of the inherent difficulty of tracking the flow of small arms, which are below most international reporting thresholds. The UN Panel of Experts reported spotting Chinese-made military trucks in the Port of Sudan that appeared similar to those used on Sudanese Army bases in Darfur. Non-governmental organizations have reported that small arms used by rebels, janjaweed, and government forces in Darfur are of Chinese origin. There are also reports that Khartoum supplied Chinese-made automatic grenade launchers to the United Front for Democratic Change, a Chadian rebel group that also operates out of bases in Darfur. Russia and France are also suppliers of arms and military equipment to Sudan. In the last six years, Russia reported to the United Nations deliveries of 33 attack helicopters to Khartoum, eight combat aircraft, and 30 armored combat. (Between 2001 and 2004, France exported over $1 million of mostly small arms, spare parts, and ammunition.)

Beijing defends its sales to Khartoum as legal, and says that it requires all of its buyers not to transfer arms to other parties, including guerilla groups, a claim which is difficult to confirm independently. Zhai Jun, China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, said in March 2007, "With Sudan, we have cooperation in many aspects, including military cooperation. In this, we have nothing to hide."

In early April, China received Sudan's Joint Chief of Staff. The Chinese Minister of Defense told his Sudanese counterpart that China was "willing to further develop cooperation between the two militaries in every sphere."

Feinstein isn't offering up anything new or salacious in this short piece, but it's a decent outline of the economic, political and military relationship between Sudan and China.

For more on China and Sudan, see the tireless and laudable Eric Reeves.

Al Jazeera gives us a good example of how China may be doing more harm than good in Africa with its value-neutral investment in the continent:

China has agreed to give Zimbabwe $25m worth of farm equipment to help revive the country's ailing tobacco industry.

But Beijing wants something in return – large quantities of Zimbabwe's tobacco.

Jia Qinglin, a senior Chinese Communist party official, presented the equipment, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, to Robert Mugabe, the country's president, on Saturday in a deal to replace equipment damaged when Mugabe's government seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

But China wants all the tractors to go to tobacco farmers and expects Zimbabwe to deliver 30 million kilograms by the end of the year, Haru Mutasa, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said in Harare.

While the West is trying to pressure Mugabe into lessening his brutal crackdown on the government's opposition parties, China is offering aid. And the only strings attached are financial ones: the equipment given by China has to be used for cash crops. This in a country experiencing widespread hunger and poverty.

So at the end of the day, Beijing is showing Mugabe that even if he flagrantly violates human rights and the pitiful charade that passes for democracy in Zimbabwe, the Chinese will be there to offer assistance. So long as the price is right, of course.

So are we really surprised that Beijing is financially and diplomatically underwriting Khartoum's genocide in Darfur?

Via The Guardian, Google and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have come together to form the online mapping project, Crisis in Darfur:

Crisis in Darfur enables more than 200 million Google Earth users worldwide to visualize and better understand the genocide currently unfolding in Darfur, Sudan. The Museum has assembled content—photographs, data, and eyewitness testimony—from a number of sources that are brought together for the first time in Google Earth.

Crisis in Darfur is the first project of the Museum’s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative that will over time include information on potential genocides allowing citizens, governments, and institutions to access information on atrocities in their nascent stages and respond.

From the AP:

A federal judge on Wednesday found Sudan liable for the attack on the now-repaired Navy destroyer, but said he would need time to study all the evidence and documentation to determine the amount of damages the families deserve.

"There is substantial evidence in this case, presented by the expert testimony, that the government of Sudan induced the particular bombing of the Cole by virtue of prior actions of the government of Sudan," U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar said at the end of a 1-day trial in Norfolk, where the now-repaired Cole is based.

...Four experts on terrorism, including former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, testified in person or by deposition Tuesday to support the families' contention that al-Qaida needed the African nation's help to carry out the attack.

"It would not have been as easy -- it might have been possible -- but it would not have been as easy," Woolsey said, referring to Sudan's alleged assistance in providing economic support, places to train and false documents.

The experts testified that Sudan let terrorist training camps operate within its borders and gave al-Qaida members diplomatic passports and diplomatic pouches to ship explosives and weapons without being searched. They cited testimony from other trials, a declassified Canadian intelligence report, State Department reports and their own studies.

Al Jazeera reports on the murder of two AU peacekeepers in Darfur:

Two African Union peacekeepers have been killed and another critically wounded after being shot by gunmen in Darfur, the AU said Wednesday.

The peacekeeping mission said it was "deeply concerned" that the gunmen are believed to belong to the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), the rebel faction that signed the Darfur peace agreement last May.

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the AU has its headquarters, a Darfur force official said the dead soldiers were Nigerian.

"They were just shopping. They were unarmed and they were attacked by unidentified men," said Mahmoud Kane, the head of the Darfur Intergrated Task Force.

"This deplorable and condemnable act was perpetrated by gunmen believed to be elements belonging to Sudan Liberation Movement or Army [Minni Minnawi faction], which is in full control of [the town of] Graida," an AU statement said.

Minni Minnawi is the SLA leader who signed the peace agreement.

I never thought I'd be able to ask this question, but have you read Angelina Jolie's op-ed in The Washington Post today? The truth be told, it's not any better or any worse than most other pieces I've read in the mainstream press. And to her credit, she (unlike most people who have an opinion about Darfur, myself included) has actually been there.

Like most other proponents of intervention, she doesn't say exactly what she thinks that would entail, but she does come out as a strong supporter of the ICC accusations.

I think it was Bono who once said (more or less), "Celebrity is a currency, and I want to spend mine well." I have to say that I couldn't agree more, and if Angelina Jolie wants to spend hers on Darfur, then I say more power to her.

Yesterday afternoon, I watched live coverage of ICC Judge Luis Moreno-Ocampo's press conference in which he outlines Khartoum's complicity in the "atrocities" in Darfur, which the UN has not owned up to calling by their proper name: genocide.

The International Criminal Court's prosecutor in The Hague outlined what he called operational, logistical and command links between Sudan's government in Khartoum and horse-mounted nomadic militias it recruited and bankrolled to carry out mass killings in the Darfur region, and he named a member of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's inner circle as a suspect in the atrocities.

In a 94-page prosecution document filed with the court's judges, Luis Moreno-Ocampo singled out Ahmad Muhammad Harun, now a state minister for humanitarian affairs who was state minister of the interior, along with Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman (also known as Ali Kushayb), a leader of the Darfur militia known as the Janjaweed, in a total of 51 crimes against humanity and war crimes. The filing marked the first accusations against named individuals as a prelude to a trial.

The chief prosecutor's accusations -- which fall short of a formal indictment -- come after a 21-month investigation that led to 60 countries and focused on the worst crimes committed in 2003 and 2004. The prosecutor also said his office was expanding its probe to look at current crimes, and in a teleconference with foreign journalists, he warned that other Sudanese government officials could be held responsible.

"We will exonerate no one," he said. "I did it with Harun, and I will follow the evidence wherever it is going."

So far, the results of the investigation have been pretty meager, since Ali Kushayb is already in Sudanese custody and Harun is only a mid-level official. Hopefully, though, this report can start putting pressure on Khartoum by threatening to expand the accusations and start indicting some bigger, like Gosh, for example.

In cases like this, if there is no other way of squeezing Khartoum, I think it might be worth trading justice for an end to genocide. That is to say that I'd rather see a genocide stopped than see it finished and then maybe see its architects judged in the ICC after they've fallen from power. But at this point, that's probably a false choice, because, at the end of the day, the "international community" hasn't tried very hard to squeeze Khartoum.

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the contrast between center and periphery in Sudan as seen by the increasingly chic Khartoum and its slums and other regions. Khartoum's success has been funded by Sudan's newfound oil wealth, much of which comes from the south.

The article makes an important point about Sudanese politics and the country's regional wars -- the main underpinning of conflict in the south, the Nuba Mountains and in Darfur is the distinction between center and periphery in which Khartoum enjoys prosperity while the rest of the country suffers:

In Soba Aradi [a slum outside of Khartoum], people see little difference between the conflict in southern Sudan, the current conflict in Darfur and their own treatment in Khartoum.

Though the war in southern Sudan had a religious dimension in that it involved an attempt by the government to impose Islamic law on a population that is about 30 percent Christian, the primary grievances of the rebel movement there had more to do with access to resources and power. The conflict in Darfur also largely comes down to a struggle for resources.

"It's all the same because it's the same government," said Emmanuel Agrey Lado, a physician's assistant from southern Sudan whose home has been bulldozed twice in two years.

U.S. diplomats, however, have mostly treated southern Sudan and the conflict in Darfur separately.

After intense engagement by the Bush administration, the Sudanese government in 2005 signed a U.S.-backed peace agreement creating a semiautonomous region in southern Sudan, just as government troops were intensifying their onslaught in Darfur.

...Increasingly, leaders in the south say the fate of their region is very much intertwined with that of Darfur, a notion that hearkens back to the vision of John Garang, the widely popular and iconic leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) who died in a helicopter crash in 2005.

Under his leadership, the SPLM had strong ties to rebel groups not only in Darfur, but also in the north and the east, as Garang came to realize that the suffering extended beyond his own region and that the only way to achieve a more just order in Sudan was through a unified movement. After his death, those relationships languished.

In recent weeks, however, the current president of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has been reaching out to Darfur rebel leaders.

"We have similar grievances," said Deng Alor Kuol, a southerner who became a minister in the national government after the 2005 peace agreement. "Marginalization and neglect."

As Charles Kalisto, a resident of Soba Aradi, put it, "When I see all these tall buildings" in Khartoum, "I ask, 'Why am I staying under a plastic sheet?'"

This point is one that I cannot stress enough.

In an unexpected (by me) trip, New Mexico governor, Bill Richards, went to Khartoum to try to get Khartoum to allow UN peacekeepers in Darfur. He met separately with President Omar al-Bashir, former rebel leader Minni Minnowi and foreign minister Lam Akol:

Richardson told an Associated Press reporter traveling with him that he and al-Bashir discussed the U.N. peacekeeping force, a cease-fire, protection for humanitarian groups working in the region, increasing sexual violence against refugees and a potential conference with rebel leaders.

...He discussed the [Abuja accord] later with Minni Minnawi, the leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement that signed the agreement and subsequently became a presidential assistant. Minnawi expressed disappointment that the government has not yet disarmed the militias and told Richardson if the al-Bashir's government does not honor its commitments, there will be regime change.

...In Khartoum, Richardson also met with Sudanese foreign minister Lam Akol, bringing along humanitarian workers that included one representative of the Save Darfur Coalition. The coalition organized the trip and has been instrumental in bringing attention to the crisis and criticism on al-Bashir's government.

According to the AP, this trip was meant to draw attention to Richardson's "extensive foreign policy background, including his tenure as U.S. envoy to the United Nations" in preparation for his "likely White House bid."

Given how apathetic Americans are about the genocide in Darfur, I can't imagine that this sort of a trip could do much besides show voters that he's got enough clout to meet with a head of state (although it's a lot less controversial than a similar trip to Iraq, Iran or North Korea). In any case, if it's an attempt to garner future votes, it's certainly made me sympathetic to his platform.

Let's hope he has some success in Sudan.

(Via Neil/Ezra) I wonder if Mark Krikorian recognizes the irony of an Armenian-American arguing against offering asylum to a people that's being targeted in a genocide. Had all countries followed his lead a hundred years ago, his family probably would have died in the deserts of Syria at the hands of the Young Turks:

Zionism Is Not a Suicide Pact   [Mark Krikorian]

Good for Israel in announcing it will turn back all Darfur refugees sneaking across the border from Egypt — thousands of Muslims claiming asylum would present an existential threat to the Jewish state. But here’s what the government has to deal with: the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, what appears to be the country’s equivalent of the ACLU, said that it is "Israel's moral and legal obligation to accept any refugees or asylum seekers facing life-threatening danger or infringements on their freedom." That last bit is great – “infringements on their freedoms.” So, apparently anyone, anywhere who doesn’t enjoy complete political freedom and manages to sneak into Israel should be allowed to stay. This kind of post-nationalism is bad enough in Europe and the U.S., but we at least have some strategic depth, as it were – the very existence of such sentiments in a country as small and insecure as Israel doesn’t bode well for its long-term viability.

There's nothing like pulling the ladder up once you and yours have made it to safety.

Eric Reeves has taken down a recent op-ed piece by Time's Sam Dealey. The Reeves rebuttal is detailed and lengthy, so there aren't any really pithy quotes to add here. In other words, read the whole thing.

Most of the coverage about the arms deal between France and Libya has focused on the quid pro quo (officially denied) of offering arms for the release of the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor. One aspect of the piece that's been overlooked is the fact that offering arms to Tripoli might be at odds with the stated policy of France and the UK in Darfur. Libya has a long history of arming the "Arab" side of the region's racial war, which has involved Darfur and Chad, in hopes of creating a united pan-Arab state in the region.

So although its author doesn't seem terribly familiar the region's decades-long war, I was glad to see this article in the Guardian on the possibility of a conflict arising from the arms deal between their policy in Libya and their policies in Darfur and Chad.

This is an important question, and those who wish to read about the conflict in the Sahara and Sahel would do well to check out the new and updated edition of Burr's and Collins's book on the subject.

The UN Security Council has finally approved a Chapter 7 resolution for Darfur. I'm curious to see how long it actually takes to gather enough troops and get them out there. Apparently most of them are supposed to be African, so I'd like to know who all has agreed to send troops.

The resolution now calls for a peacekeeping mission to begin no later than October, and cites Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, under which the Security Council is permitted to authorize the use of force to carry out the mandate.

Most of the peacekeepers are supposed to be drawn from African nations, and would include a beleaguered force of some 7,000 soldiers already in Darfur from the African Union, placing it under a unified command and control with the United Nations force.

The resolution authorizes a maximum of 19,555 military personnel and 6,432 civilian police officers. It does not spell out what role would be played by major powers, including the United States.

 On a related note, I find it really curious that the number that keeps being brandied around (and has been cited for the last year or two) is 200,000 dead in Darfur. The numbers went, all of a sudden, from "tens of thousands" to 200,000, which I think is a lot closer to the reality, but which is still a conservative, and strangely static, estimation.

Eric Reeves, for example, argued back in the Spring of 2006 that the death count (included in this are those who have died of disease and malnutrition in addition to violence) was around 450,000. And the US State Department put out an estimate in early 2005 that the excess death toll was 98,000 and 181,000. Regardless of the estimate, though, it seems strange for the media to continue citing the same number over the course of a couple of years.

A Lexis Nexis search of Darfur coverage in the Times, for example, shows that the 200,000 figure was used as far back as November 7, 2005 ("Surge in Violence in Sudan Erodes Hope"). In that report, we are informed of "the deaths of at least 200,000 people in Darfur," whereas in today's report, we are told that "some 200,000 people have been killed in four years of conflict." Are we really to believe that the numbers have remained unchanged for nearly two years?

While death counts in remote conflict zones are by their nature difficult to discern and in cases like this one usually controversial, there is no excuse for major media outlets, once having made the decision to use a figure, to continue using it unchanged for nearly two years. The readership of the Times could be forgiven for thinking that there had been no new deaths in Darfur since November, 2005. This is obviously untrue, and they should either update their figures or if they insist on continuing to use 200,000, they should stress that this number is two years old.

A new friend of mine sent me a blog entry on a Washington Post piece attacking Americans and Europeans who want to "Save Africa," and especially those who want to "Save Darfur."

Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."

There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head -- because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.

Regardless of whether Africa is "in" or not -- whether it's the cause du jour -- if anyone's to be giving a finger rapping to well-meaning white kids from the ivy league, it certainly ought not to be Uzodinma Iweala, the American-born and -raised son of a cabinet member of the Nigerian thug extraordinaire, Obasanjo. The piece's author went to a D.C. prep school then to Harvard, and is now off to Columbia med school, so I imagine that his time in Africa hasn't been much better than that of those pasty-faced do-gooders who "fly in for internships." (Incidentally, does Iweala take the boat from Washington, I wonder?) Furthermore, I think it's telling that Granta named him in their "Best of Young American Novelists 2." 

Fairly or not, Iweala reminds me of my time in the UN system. The UN works on a quota system for permanent posts, presumably so that the secretariat be filled with people from all over the world. This might be a good thing if it weren't for the fact that the quota for countries like Nigeria are taken up by people like Iweala, not the Africans and Asians who have lived their entire lives in their native countries and had to fight against the odds to get an education while working at a human rights NGO in countries like Cameroon or Bangladesh. I once took coffee breaks with a brilliant European intern who wasn't getting paid and couldn't get a proper job in his section, despite the fact that he'd completed his PhD in a relevant field and was widely published in his field's academic journals. The person who was second-in-charge in his section was a European guy who only had the equivalent of a B.A. in his field, but whose dad happened to be a former diplomat (and UN functionary) from an African country. This guy had lived his whole life in a European capital , but he had a passport from Africa, and the intern's compatriots were over-represented at that UN organization. So that was that.

Another thing that bothers me about the remarks made by Iweala is that he doesn't mention, for example, the role that such a campaign led by Americans (mostly black and religious groups) played in negotiating an end to the civil war between the north and south of Sudan. And guys like him are the same ones who are quick to fault Europe or the US for not having done anything for Rwanda. (I'm also in that camp, but I'd like to think that I'm somewhat more consistent in my criticism.) Furthermore, what about the Congo? If Central Africa had been left to its own devices instead of given the world's largest UN peacekeeping force (from five different continents), I imagine that the death toll would be considerably worse than it already is.

So while there's something to be said about "African solutions for African problems," I'm afraid that entrusting Libya, a country that's responsible for many of the current problems in Darfur and Chad in the first place, isn't necessarily such a hot idea just because Gadaffi isn't white. Likewise, Uganda's and Rwanda's African solution to the Congo and Mbeki's African non-solution to Zimbabwe aren't exactly what I'd call steps in the right direction.

I still haven't read UNEP's report on Darfur (pdf), due to a lack of time (it's 358 pages) and a lot of other lengthy reading on my plate these days. I have, however, followed some of the press coverage, which makes it sound like the genocide in Darfur is the result of purely ecological factors, including desertification, water shortages and global warming. As it happens, I've worked with UNEP on a publication before, and I'm inclined to believe that their report is a lot more nuanced than the press coverage gives it credit for. But I'll have to save that final judgement for when I have the time to sit down and read it.

In any case, the fact that environmental concerns and competition for resources places a part in conflict is an obvious point, it's how much of an impact these concerns have that is at issue. Lydia Polgreen, whose coverage of Sudan in the Times has been very good, has a piece in this week's Week in Review that takes a quick look at the underground lake recently discovered in Darfur. She quotes Alex de Waal and John Prendergast, both of whom know a lot about Sudan, in order to illustrate her point that it's less the ecological strain that's to fault for conflict in Sudan and more how that problem is dealt with:

A scientific explanation for the problem (environmental degradation) along with a tidy technological solution (irrigation) gratifies the modern humanitarian impulse.

But the history of Sudan, a grim chronicle of civil war, famine, coups and despotism, gives ample reason to be skeptical.

“Like all resources water can be used for good or ill,” said Alex de Waal, a scholar who has studied the impact of climate variation in Sudan and who witnessed the 1984-85 famine that is often cited as the beginning of the ecological crisis gripping Darfur. “It can be a blessing or also a curse. If the government acts true to form and tries to create some sort of oasis in the desert and control who settles there, that would simply be an extension of the crisis, not a solution.”

The droughts that gripped Sudan in the 1980s, and the migrations and other social changes they forced, have doubtless played a role in the conflict by increasing competition for water and land between farmers, who tend to be non-Arab, and herders, many of whom are Arabs. But an environmental catastrophe cannot become a violent cataclysm without a powerful human hand to guide it in that direction.

“These wider environmental factors don’t have impact in and of themselves” in terms of fomenting conflict, Mr. de Waal said. “The question is how they are managed.”

[...]

“Climate change and the lack of rain are much less important than the land-use patterns promoted by the government of Sudan and the development policies of World Bank and I.M.F., which were focused on intensive agricultural expansion that really mined the soils and left a lot of land unusable,” said Mr. Prendergast, who has been studying Sudan for 20 years. “That was probably the principal impetus for a lot of intra-Darfur migration in the decades leading up to the conflict in Darfur.”

She then goes on to make a point that I've been harping on for a while now:

A report released last year by the Coalition for International Justice on the role that oil and mechanized farming have played in human rights abuses in Sudan concluded: “The predominant root of conflict in Sudan is the instability that results from the systemic abuse of the rural (and recently urbanized) poor at the hands of the economic and political elites of central Sudan.”

In this analysis, the heart of the Darfur conflict, as in all conflicts in Sudan, is the battle for control of resources and riches, but not between farmers and herders, northerners and southerners, Christians and Muslims, or Arabs and non-Arabs.

It is a conflict between those at the center of the country, the elites who have controlled Sudan and its wealth for the past century and a half, and the desperately poor people who beg for scraps from the periphery.

Until that equation changes, many analysts argue, nothing else will.

US allies in Addis Ababa have been facing some pretty serious charges lately, the latest coming from the Times. It seems that in an effort to combat the mainly ethnic-Somali rebel group in the east of the country, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the government has been starving the entire region:

The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large swaths of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say.

The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to relief officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian Parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government’s actions.

The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality.

Humanitarian officials say the ban on aid convoys and commercial traffic, intended to squeeze the rebels and dry up their bases of support, has sent food prices skyrocketing and disrupted trade routes, preventing the nomads who live there from selling their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people are now sealed off in a desiccated, unforgiving landscape that is difficult to survive in even in the best of times.

“Food cannot get in,” said Mohammed Diab, the director of the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia.

In this part of Africa, famine has often been used a blunt political tool by central governments to keep the periphery in line. Precedent has already been set in Addis Ababa and Khartoum. Possibly even more disconcerting, however, are allegations that the government is arming ethnic militias in order to attack the rebels:

The people of the Ogaden are mostly Somalis and ethnically distinct from the highland Ethiopians who have ruled the country for centuries, and the long battle over the region has been steadily escalating this year. The country director of one Western aid agency, who recently returned from a field visit there, said he saw two villages that had been burned to the ground and several schools that had been converted into military bases, with foxholes.

Humanitarian officials say the military is building up militias and setting the stage for clan-based bloodshed. The rank and file of the Ogaden National Liberation Front tend to be members of the Ogaden clan, and so the government has turned to other clans to form anti-rebel militias. In the past few weeks, thousands of men have been armed.

“Those Ethiopians are smart,” [former MP] Mr. Kalif, 32, said. “They know Somalis are more loyal to clans than anything else.” Tactics like these, he said, drove him to defect June 20 while attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was affiliated with the ruling party, and had been representing an area in the eastern Ogaden for the past seven years.

In both cases, the actions of the Ethiopian government are disconcertingly close to those of the Sudanese government. It looks like any ethnic-based collective punishment aimed at quelling a separatist movement in Ogaden is still in the formative stage. The US should use its clout to dissuade Addis Ababa from going down the same road that Sudan has taken, as some in the House of Representatives like Randy Forbes (R, VA) have started to do by stripping Ethiopia of American aid. In any case, this is a case that Americans should keep an eye on, because it's obviously better to prevent humanitarian disasters and ethnic violence before it happens rather than wringing our hands when it does. 

The London Review has a summary piece about China's new love affair with Africa. If you've been keeping up with Chinese affairs on the continent, there probably won't be much new information in this piece, but it's a nice summary, and it's helpful to have it all in one piece. It's a subscription only article, but the main gist is summed up here:

In all likelihood China will be neither a saviour nor a destroyer. Some African opinion leaders have realised that it does not really stand for a different model. ‘Non-interference’ is not a value so much as a thin shield for old-fashioned realpolitik. China, like any other major power, generally puts its own strategic interests first. If its clients prove too embarrassing, it will restrain them, just as the United States once dumped Mobutu Sese Seko, when his taste for champagne, diamonds and bloodshed proved too embarrassing. Yet if China’s interests are better served by protecting rogues, it will protect them. If Chinese companies can get away with destroying Africa’s environment and paying little attention to its workers, they probably will. If they cannot – because local activists or consumers call them on it, or because it affects their sales in Africa and the West – perhaps they won’t.

Like the Western powers, China seems set to traffic in whatever images of Africa suit it: before the 2006 China-Africa summit in Beijing, Chinese officials plastered the city with posters of tribal warriors and lions that might have been taken from the National Geographic fifty years ago. Like the colonial powers, China will buy Africa’s resources and sell it manufactured products, regardless of whether Africa manages to produce anything that China wants to buy or succeeds in using China’s largesse to upgrade its own industries. ‘The key must be mutual benefit,’ Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, told a group of Chinese officials. ‘Otherwise we might end up with a few holes in the ground where the resources have been extracted, and all the added value will be in China.’

Last summer, when the main opposition leader in Zambia, infuriated by the deaths in the explosives factory, made Chinese investment an issue in the presidential election, the Chinese Embassy threatened to break off relations with Zambia if he was elected. Hardly a model of non-interference.

Al JAzeera reports on this strange conference in Paris on Darfur. From the report, it's hard to see what the purpose of the conference is, particularly since Khartoum and the AU aren't attending. The US and China, however, are, as well as 15 other countries. Al Jazeera did, however, take advantage of the situation to print a funny picture of Mademoiselle Rice and Kouchner:

 

Khartoum has finally accepted an AU/UN hybrid peacekeeping force. Or so they say. Given Khartoum's track record, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some serious backpedaling in the next couple of days.

Otherwise, Der Spiegel has a piece on Darfur and John Prendergast that's been reprinted by Salon. And I haven't read it yet, but Prendergast's report on Darfur is available online (pdf) through the Enough, the project to abolish genocide and mass atrocities, that's been formed by the International Crisis Group and the Center for American Progress.

This time CIA is getting help from Khartoum by intelligence gathering done in Iraq by embedded Sudanese spies, all while Khartoum is "bombing their people out the wazoo" in Darfur, according to an official at State.

This explains why Washington's most recent round of sanctions against Sudan are but window dressing."

Lee Feinstein has a piece in TPM's America Abroad outlining the relationship between China and Sudan. To answer a charge from comments that my evidence (also in comments) that China is still supplying Sudan with weapons was "google-y and anecdotal," here is what Feinstein has to say about Chinese arms in Sudan. (Incidentally, I'm not sure I even understand how coming across an article in the Sudan Times and a report from Amnesty International by using google is supposed to make those sources any less valid. Furthermore, I'm not sure how a report by Amnesty International is "anecdotal.")

China maintains a defense relationship with Sudan, despite the UN arms embargo that has been in place for Darfur since 2005. The Security Council imposed an embargo on all nongovernmental forces operating in Darfur in July 2004, and expanded it to include government forces as well in 2005. Sales to Khartoum are still permitted, although a UN panel, which visited Sudan in August 2005 to investigate violations of the embargo, recommended in April 2006 that the Security Council expand the embargo to the entire country.

Information about recent Chinese arms sales to Sudan is difficult to discern both because of China's secrecy and because of the inherent difficulty of tracking the flow of small arms, which are below most international reporting thresholds. The UN Panel of Experts reported spotting Chinese-made military trucks in the Port of Sudan that appeared similar to those used on Sudanese Army bases in Darfur. Non-governmental organizations have reported that small arms used by rebels, janjaweed, and government forces in Darfur are of Chinese origin. There are also reports that Khartoum supplied Chinese-made automatic grenade launchers to the United Front for Democratic Change, a Chadian rebel group that also operates out of bases in Darfur. Russia and France are also suppliers of arms and military equipment to Sudan. In the last six years, Russia reported to the United Nations deliveries of 33 attack helicopters to Khartoum, eight combat aircraft, and 30 armored combat. (Between 2001 and 2004, France exported over $1 million of mostly small arms, spare parts, and ammunition.)

Beijing defends its sales to Khartoum as legal, and says that it requires all of its buyers not to transfer arms to other parties, including guerilla groups, a claim which is difficult to confirm independently. Zhai Jun, China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, said in March 2007, "With Sudan, we have cooperation in many aspects, including military cooperation. In this, we have nothing to hide."

In early April, China received Sudan's Joint Chief of Staff. The Chinese Minister of Defense told his Sudanese counterpart that China was "willing to further develop cooperation between the two militaries in every sphere."

Feinstein isn't offering up anything new or salacious in this short piece, but it's a decent outline of the economic, political and military relationship between Sudan and China.

For more on China and Sudan, see the tireless and laudable Eric Reeves.

Al Jazeera gives us a good example of how China may be doing more harm than good in Africa with its value-neutral investment in the continent:

China has agreed to give Zimbabwe $25m worth of farm equipment to help revive the country's ailing tobacco industry.

But Beijing wants something in return – large quantities of Zimbabwe's tobacco.

Jia Qinglin, a senior Chinese Communist party official, presented the equipment, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, to Robert Mugabe, the country's president, on Saturday in a deal to replace equipment damaged when Mugabe's government seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

But China wants all the tractors to go to tobacco farmers and expects Zimbabwe to deliver 30 million kilograms by the end of the year, Haru Mutasa, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said in Harare.

While the West is trying to pressure Mugabe into lessening his brutal crackdown on the government's opposition parties, China is offering aid. And the only strings attached are financial ones: the equipment given by China has to be used for cash crops. This in a country experiencing widespread hunger and poverty.

So at the end of the day, Beijing is showing Mugabe that even if he flagrantly violates human rights and the pitiful charade that passes for democracy in Zimbabwe, the Chinese will be there to offer assistance. So long as the price is right, of course.

So are we really surprised that Beijing is financially and diplomatically underwriting Khartoum's genocide in Darfur?

Via The Guardian, Google and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have come together to form the online mapping project, Crisis in Darfur:

Crisis in Darfur enables more than 200 million Google Earth users worldwide to visualize and better understand the genocide currently unfolding in Darfur, Sudan. The Museum has assembled content—photographs, data, and eyewitness testimony—from a number of sources that are brought together for the first time in Google Earth.

Crisis in Darfur is the first project of the Museum’s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative that will over time include information on potential genocides allowing citizens, governments, and institutions to access information on atrocities in their nascent stages and respond.

From the AP:

A federal judge on Wednesday found Sudan liable for the attack on the now-repaired Navy destroyer, but said he would need time to study all the evidence and documentation to determine the amount of damages the families deserve.

"There is substantial evidence in this case, presented by the expert testimony, that the government of Sudan induced the particular bombing of the Cole by virtue of prior actions of the government of Sudan," U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar said at the end of a 1-day trial in Norfolk, where the now-repaired Cole is based.

...Four experts on terrorism, including former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, testified in person or by deposition Tuesday to support the families' contention that al-Qaida needed the African nation's help to carry out the attack.

"It would not have been as easy -- it might have been possible -- but it would not have been as easy," Woolsey said, referring to Sudan's alleged assistance in providing economic support, places to train and false documents.

The experts testified that Sudan let terrorist training camps operate within its borders and gave al-Qaida members diplomatic passports and diplomatic pouches to ship explosives and weapons without being searched. They cited testimony from other trials, a declassified Canadian intelligence report, State Department reports and their own studies.

Al Jazeera reports on the murder of two AU peacekeepers in Darfur:

Two African Union peacekeepers have been killed and another critically wounded after being shot by gunmen in Darfur, the AU said Wednesday.

The peacekeeping mission said it was "deeply concerned" that the gunmen are believed to belong to the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), the rebel faction that signed the Darfur peace agreement last May.

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the AU has its headquarters, a Darfur force official said the dead soldiers were Nigerian.

"They were just shopping. They were unarmed and they were attacked by unidentified men," said Mahmoud Kane, the head of the Darfur Intergrated Task Force.

"This deplorable and condemnable act was perpetrated by gunmen believed to be elements belonging to Sudan Liberation Movement or Army [Minni Minnawi faction], which is in full control of [the town of] Graida," an AU statement said.

Minni Minnawi is the SLA leader who signed the peace agreement.

I never thought I'd be able to ask this question, but have you read Angelina Jolie's op-ed in The Washington Post today? The truth be told, it's not any better or any worse than most other pieces I've read in the mainstream press. And to her credit, she (unlike most people who have an opinion about Darfur, myself included) has actually been there.

Like most other proponents of intervention, she doesn't say exactly what she thinks that would entail, but she does come out as a strong supporter of the ICC accusations.

I think it was Bono who once said (more or less), "Celebrity is a currency, and I want to spend mine well." I have to say that I couldn't agree more, and if Angelina Jolie wants to spend hers on Darfur, then I say more power to her.

Yesterday afternoon, I watched live coverage of ICC Judge Luis Moreno-Ocampo's press conference in which he outlines Khartoum's complicity in the "atrocities" in Darfur, which the UN has not owned up to calling by their proper name: genocide.

The International Criminal Court's prosecutor in The Hague outlined what he called operational, logistical and command links between Sudan's government in Khartoum and horse-mounted nomadic militias it recruited and bankrolled to carry out mass killings in the Darfur region, and he named a member of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's inner circle as a suspect in the atrocities.

In a 94-page prosecution document filed with the court's judges, Luis Moreno-Ocampo singled out Ahmad Muhammad Harun, now a state minister for humanitarian affairs who was state minister of the interior, along with Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman (also known as Ali Kushayb), a leader of the Darfur militia known as the Janjaweed, in a total of 51 crimes against humanity and war crimes. The filing marked the first accusations against named individuals as a prelude to a trial.

The chief prosecutor's accusations -- which fall short of a formal indictment -- come after a 21-month investigation that led to 60 countries and focused on the worst crimes committed in 2003 and 2004. The prosecutor also said his office was expanding its probe to look at current crimes, and in a teleconference with foreign journalists, he warned that other Sudanese government officials could be held responsible.

"We will exonerate no one," he said. "I did it with Harun, and I will follow the evidence wherever it is going."

So far, the results of the investigation have been pretty meager, since Ali Kushayb is already in Sudanese custody and Harun is only a mid-level official. Hopefully, though, this report can start putting pressure on Khartoum by threatening to expand the accusations and start indicting some bigger, like Gosh, for example.

In cases like this, if there is no other way of squeezing Khartoum, I think it might be worth trading justice for an end to genocide. That is to say that I'd rather see a genocide stopped than see it finished and then maybe see its architects judged in the ICC after they've fallen from power. But at this point, that's probably a false choice, because, at the end of the day, the "international community" hasn't tried very hard to squeeze Khartoum.

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the contrast between center and periphery in Sudan as seen by the increasingly chic Khartoum and its slums and other regions. Khartoum's success has been funded by Sudan's newfound oil wealth, much of which comes from the south.

The article makes an important point about Sudanese politics and the country's regional wars -- the main underpinning of conflict in the south, the Nuba Mountains and in Darfur is the distinction between center and periphery in which Khartoum enjoys prosperity while the rest of the country suffers:

In Soba Aradi [a slum outside of Khartoum], people see little difference between the conflict in southern Sudan, the current conflict in Darfur and their own treatment in Khartoum.

Though the war in southern Sudan had a religious dimension in that it involved an attempt by the government to impose Islamic law on a population that is about 30 percent Christian, the primary grievances of the rebel movement there had more to do with access to resources and power. The conflict in Darfur also largely comes down to a struggle for resources.

"It's all the same because it's the same government," said Emmanuel Agrey Lado, a physician's assistant from southern Sudan whose home has been bulldozed twice in two years.

U.S. diplomats, however, have mostly treated southern Sudan and the conflict in Darfur separately.

After intense engagement by the Bush administration, the Sudanese government in 2005 signed a U.S.-backed peace agreement creating a semiautonomous region in southern Sudan, just as government troops were intensifying their onslaught in Darfur.

...Increasingly, leaders in the south say the fate of their region is very much intertwined with that of Darfur, a notion that hearkens back to the vision of John Garang, the widely popular and iconic leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) who died in a helicopter crash in 2005.

Under his leadership, the SPLM had strong ties to rebel groups not only in Darfur, but also in the north and the east, as Garang came to realize that the suffering extended beyond his own region and that the only way to achieve a more just order in Sudan was through a unified movement. After his death, those relationships languished.

In recent weeks, however, the current president of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has been reaching out to Darfur rebel leaders.

"We have similar grievances," said Deng Alor Kuol, a southerner who became a minister in the national government after the 2005 peace agreement. "Marginalization and neglect."

As Charles Kalisto, a resident of Soba Aradi, put it, "When I see all these tall buildings" in Khartoum, "I ask, 'Why am I staying under a plastic sheet?'"

This point is one that I cannot stress enough.

In an unexpected (by me) trip, New Mexico governor, Bill Richards, went to Khartoum to try to get Khartoum to allow UN peacekeepers in Darfur. He met separately with President Omar al-Bashir, former rebel leader Minni Minnowi and foreign minister Lam Akol:

Richardson told an Associated Press reporter traveling with him that he and al-Bashir discussed the U.N. peacekeeping force, a cease-fire, protection for humanitarian groups working in the region, increasing sexual violence against refugees and a potential conference with rebel leaders.

...He discussed the [Abuja accord] later with Minni Minnawi, the leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement that signed the agreement and subsequently became a presidential assistant. Minnawi expressed disappointment that the government has not yet disarmed the militias and told Richardson if the al-Bashir's government does not honor its commitments, there will be regime change.

...In Khartoum, Richardson also met with Sudanese foreign minister Lam Akol, bringing along humanitarian workers that included one representative of the Save Darfur Coalition. The coalition organized the trip and has been instrumental in bringing attention to the crisis and criticism on al-Bashir's government.

According to the AP, this trip was meant to draw attention to Richardson's "extensive foreign policy background, including his tenure as U.S. envoy to the United Nations" in preparation for his "likely White House bid."

Given how apathetic Americans are about the genocide in Darfur, I can't imagine that this sort of a trip could do much besides show voters that he's got enough clout to meet with a head of state (although it's a lot less controversial than a similar trip to Iraq, Iran or North Korea). In any case, if it's an attempt to garner future votes, it's certainly made me sympathetic to his platform.

Let's hope he has some success in Sudan.

(Via Neil/Ezra) I wonder if Mark Krikorian recognizes the irony of an Armenian-American arguing against offering asylum to a people that's being targeted in a genocide. Had all countries followed his lead a hundred years ago, his family probably would have died in the deserts of Syria at the hands of the Young Turks:

Zionism Is Not a Suicide Pact   [Mark Krikorian]

Good for Israel in announcing it will turn back all Darfur refugees sneaking across the border from Egypt — thousands of Muslims claiming asylum would present an existential threat to the Jewish state. But here’s what the government has to deal with: the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, what appears to be the country’s equivalent of the ACLU, said that it is "Israel's moral and legal obligation to accept any refugees or asylum seekers facing life-threatening danger or infringements on their freedom." That last bit is great – “infringements on their freedoms.” So, apparently anyone, anywhere who doesn’t enjoy complete political freedom and manages to sneak into Israel should be allowed to stay. This kind of post-nationalism is bad enough in Europe and the U.S., but we at least have some strategic depth, as it were – the very existence of such sentiments in a country as small and insecure as Israel doesn’t bode well for its long-term viability.

There's nothing like pulling the ladder up once you and yours have made it to safety.

Eric Reeves has taken down a recent op-ed piece by Time's Sam Dealey. The Reeves rebuttal is detailed and lengthy, so there aren't any really pithy quotes to add here. In other words, read the whole thing.

Most of the coverage about the arms deal between France and Libya has focused on the quid pro quo (officially denied) of offering arms for the release of the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor. One aspect of the piece that's been overlooked is the fact that offering arms to Tripoli might be at odds with the stated policy of France and the UK in Darfur. Libya has a long history of arming the "Arab" side of the region's racial war, which has involved Darfur and Chad, in hopes of creating a united pan-Arab state in the region.

So although its author doesn't seem terribly familiar the region's decades-long war, I was glad to see this article in the Guardian on the possibility of a conflict arising from the arms deal between their policy in Libya and their policies in Darfur and Chad.

This is an important question, and those who wish to read about the conflict in the Sahara and Sahel would do well to check out the new and updated edition of Burr's and Collins's book on the subject.

The UN Security Council has finally approved a Chapter 7 resolution for Darfur. I'm curious to see how long it actually takes to gather enough troops and get them out there. Apparently most of them are supposed to be African, so I'd like to know who all has agreed to send troops.

The resolution now calls for a peacekeeping mission to begin no later than October, and cites Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, under which the Security Council is permitted to authorize the use of force to carry out the mandate.

Most of the peacekeepers are supposed to be drawn from African nations, and would include a beleaguered force of some 7,000 soldiers already in Darfur from the African Union, placing it under a unified command and control with the United Nations force.

The resolution authorizes a maximum of 19,555 military personnel and 6,432 civilian police officers. It does not spell out what role would be played by major powers, including the United States.

 On a related note, I find it really curious that the number that keeps being brandied around (and has been cited for the last year or two) is 200,000 dead in Darfur. The numbers went, all of a sudden, from "tens of thousands" to 200,000, which I think is a lot closer to the reality, but which is still a conservative, and strangely static, estimation.

Eric Reeves, for example, argued back in the Spring of 2006 that the death count (included in this are those who have died of disease and malnutrition in addition to violence) was around 450,000. And the US State Department put out an estimate in early 2005 that the excess death toll was 98,000 and 181,000. Regardless of the estimate, though, it seems strange for the media to continue citing the same number over the course of a couple of years.

A Lexis Nexis search of Darfur coverage in the Times, for example, shows that the 200,000 figure was used as far back as November 7, 2005 ("Surge in Violence in Sudan Erodes Hope"). In that report, we are informed of "the deaths of at least 200,000 people in Darfur," whereas in today's report, we are told that "some 200,000 people have been killed in four years of conflict." Are we really to believe that the numbers have remained unchanged for nearly two years?

While death counts in remote conflict zones are by their nature difficult to discern and in cases like this one usually controversial, there is no excuse for major media outlets, once having made the decision to use a figure, to continue using it unchanged for nearly two years. The readership of the Times could be forgiven for thinking that there had been no new deaths in Darfur since November, 2005. This is obviously untrue, and they should either update their figures or if they insist on continuing to use 200,000, they should stress that this number is two years old.

A new friend of mine sent me a blog entry on a Washington Post piece attacking Americans and Europeans who want to "Save Africa," and especially those who want to "Save Darfur."

Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."

There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head -- because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.

Regardless of whether Africa is "in" or not -- whether it's the cause du jour -- if anyone's to be giving a finger rapping to well-meaning white kids from the ivy league, it certainly ought not to be Uzodinma Iweala, the American-born and -raised son of a cabinet member of the Nigerian thug extraordinaire, Obasanjo. The piece's author went to a D.C. prep school then to Harvard, and is now off to Columbia med school, so I imagine that his time in Africa hasn't been much better than that of those pasty-faced do-gooders who "fly in for internships." (Incidentally, does Iweala take the boat from Washington, I wonder?) Furthermore, I think it's telling that Granta named him in their "Best of Young American Novelists 2." 

Fairly or not, Iweala reminds me of my time in the UN system. The UN works on a quota system for permanent posts, presumably so that the secretariat be filled with people from all over the world. This might be a good thing if it weren't for the fact that the quota for countries like Nigeria are taken up by people like Iweala, not the Africans and Asians who have lived their entire lives in their native countries and had to fight against the odds to get an education while working at a human rights NGO in countries like Cameroon or Bangladesh. I once took coffee breaks with a brilliant European intern who wasn't getting paid and couldn't get a proper job in his section, despite the fact that he'd completed his PhD in a relevant field and was widely published in his field's academic journals. The person who was second-in-charge in his section was a European guy who only had the equivalent of a B.A. in his field, but whose dad happened to be a former diplomat (and UN functionary) from an African country. This guy had lived his whole life in a European capital , but he had a passport from Africa, and the intern's compatriots were over-represented at that UN organization. So that was that.

Another thing that bothers me about the remarks made by Iweala is that he doesn't mention, for example, the role that such a campaign led by Americans (mostly black and religious groups) played in negotiating an end to the civil war between the north and south of Sudan. And guys like him are the same ones who are quick to fault Europe or the US for not having done anything for Rwanda. (I'm also in that camp, but I'd like to think that I'm somewhat more consistent in my criticism.) Furthermore, what about the Congo? If Central Africa had been left to its own devices instead of given the world's largest UN peacekeeping force (from five different continents), I imagine that the death toll would be considerably worse than it already is.

So while there's something to be said about "African solutions for African problems," I'm afraid that entrusting Libya, a country that's responsible for many of the current problems in Darfur and Chad in the first place, isn't necessarily such a hot idea just because Gadaffi isn't white. Likewise, Uganda's and Rwanda's African solution to the Congo and Mbeki's African non-solution to Zimbabwe aren't exactly what I'd call steps in the right direction.

I still haven't read UNEP's report on Darfur (pdf), due to a lack of time (it's 358 pages) and a lot of other lengthy reading on my plate these days. I have, however, followed some of the press coverage, which makes it sound like the genocide in Darfur is the result of purely ecological factors, including desertification, water shortages and global warming. As it happens, I've worked with UNEP on a publication before, and I'm inclined to believe that their report is a lot more nuanced than the press coverage gives it credit for. But I'll have to save that final judgement for when I have the time to sit down and read it.

In any case, the fact that environmental concerns and competition for resources places a part in conflict is an obvious point, it's how much of an impact these concerns have that is at issue. Lydia Polgreen, whose coverage of Sudan in the Times has been very good, has a piece in this week's Week in Review that takes a quick look at the underground lake recently discovered in Darfur. She quotes Alex de Waal and John Prendergast, both of whom know a lot about Sudan, in order to illustrate her point that it's less the ecological strain that's to fault for conflict in Sudan and more how that problem is dealt with:

A scientific explanation for the problem (environmental degradation) along with a tidy technological solution (irrigation) gratifies the modern humanitarian impulse.

But the history of Sudan, a grim chronicle of civil war, famine, coups and despotism, gives ample reason to be skeptical.

“Like all resources water can be used for good or ill,” said Alex de Waal, a scholar who has studied the impact of climate variation in Sudan and who witnessed the 1984-85 famine that is often cited as the beginning of the ecological crisis gripping Darfur. “It can be a blessing or also a curse. If the government acts true to form and tries to create some sort of oasis in the desert and control who settles there, that would simply be an extension of the crisis, not a solution.”

The droughts that gripped Sudan in the 1980s, and the migrations and other social changes they forced, have doubtless played a role in the conflict by increasing competition for water and land between farmers, who tend to be non-Arab, and herders, many of whom are Arabs. But an environmental catastrophe cannot become a violent cataclysm without a powerful human hand to guide it in that direction.

“These wider environmental factors don’t have impact in and of themselves” in terms of fomenting conflict, Mr. de Waal said. “The question is how they are managed.”

[...]

“Climate change and the lack of rain are much less important than the land-use patterns promoted by the government of Sudan and the development policies of World Bank and I.M.F., which were focused on intensive agricultural expansion that really mined the soils and left a lot of land unusable,” said Mr. Prendergast, who has been studying Sudan for 20 years. “That was probably the principal impetus for a lot of intra-Darfur migration in the decades leading up to the conflict in Darfur.”

She then goes on to make a point that I've been harping on for a while now:

A report released last year by the Coalition for International Justice on the role that oil and mechanized farming have played in human rights abuses in Sudan concluded: “The predominant root of conflict in Sudan is the instability that results from the systemic abuse of the rural (and recently urbanized) poor at the hands of the economic and political elites of central Sudan.”

In this analysis, the heart of the Darfur conflict, as in all conflicts in Sudan, is the battle for control of resources and riches, but not between farmers and herders, northerners and southerners, Christians and Muslims, or Arabs and non-Arabs.

It is a conflict between those at the center of the country, the elites who have controlled Sudan and its wealth for the past century and a half, and the desperately poor people who beg for scraps from the periphery.

Until that equation changes, many analysts argue, nothing else will.

US allies in Addis Ababa have been facing some pretty serious charges lately, the latest coming from the Times. It seems that in an effort to combat the mainly ethnic-Somali rebel group in the east of the country, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the government has been starving the entire region:

The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large swaths of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say.

The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to relief officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian Parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government’s actions.

The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality.

Humanitarian officials say the ban on aid convoys and commercial traffic, intended to squeeze the rebels and dry up their bases of support, has sent food prices skyrocketing and disrupted trade routes, preventing the nomads who live there from selling their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people are now sealed off in a desiccated, unforgiving landscape that is difficult to survive in even in the best of times.

“Food cannot get in,” said Mohammed Diab, the director of the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia.

In this part of Africa, famine has often been used a blunt political tool by central governments to keep the periphery in line. Precedent has already been set in Addis Ababa and Khartoum. Possibly even more disconcerting, however, are allegations that the government is arming ethnic militias in order to attack the rebels:

The people of the Ogaden are mostly Somalis and ethnically distinct from the highland Ethiopians who have ruled the country for centuries, and the long battle over the region has been steadily escalating this year. The country director of one Western aid agency, who recently returned from a field visit there, said he saw two villages that had been burned to the ground and several schools that had been converted into military bases, with foxholes.

Humanitarian officials say the military is building up militias and setting the stage for clan-based bloodshed. The rank and file of the Ogaden National Liberation Front tend to be members of the Ogaden clan, and so the government has turned to other clans to form anti-rebel militias. In the past few weeks, thousands of men have been armed.

“Those Ethiopians are smart,” [former MP] Mr. Kalif, 32, said. “They know Somalis are more loyal to clans than anything else.” Tactics like these, he said, drove him to defect June 20 while attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was affiliated with the ruling party, and had been representing an area in the eastern Ogaden for the past seven years.

In both cases, the actions of the Ethiopian government are disconcertingly close to those of the Sudanese government. It looks like any ethnic-based collective punishment aimed at quelling a separatist movement in Ogaden is still in the formative stage. The US should use its clout to dissuade Addis Ababa from going down the same road that Sudan has taken, as some in the House of Representatives like Randy Forbes (R, VA) have started to do by stripping Ethiopia of American aid. In any case, this is a case that Americans should keep an eye on, because it's obviously better to prevent humanitarian disasters and ethnic violence before it happens rather than wringing our hands when it does. 

The London Review has a summary piece about China's new love affair with Africa. If you've been keeping up with Chinese affairs on the continent, there probably won't be much new information in this piece, but it's a nice summary, and it's helpful to have it all in one piece. It's a subscription only article, but the main gist is summed up here:

In all likelihood China will be neither a saviour nor a destroyer. Some African opinion leaders have realised that it does not really stand for a different model. ‘Non-interference’ is not a value so much as a thin shield for old-fashioned realpolitik. China, like any other major power, generally puts its own strategic interests first. If its clients prove too embarrassing, it will restrain them, just as the United States once dumped Mobutu Sese Seko, when his taste for champagne, diamonds and bloodshed proved too embarrassing. Yet if China’s interests are better served by protecting rogues, it will protect them. If Chinese companies can get away with destroying Africa’s environment and paying little attention to its workers, they probably will. If they cannot – because local activists or consumers call them on it, or because it affects their sales in Africa and the West – perhaps they won’t.

Like the Western powers, China seems set to traffic in whatever images of Africa suit it: before the 2006 China-Africa summit in Beijing, Chinese officials plastered the city with posters of tribal warriors and lions that might have been taken from the National Geographic fifty years ago. Like the colonial powers, China will buy Africa’s resources and sell it manufactured products, regardless of whether Africa manages to produce anything that China wants to buy or succeeds in using China’s largesse to upgrade its own industries. ‘The key must be mutual benefit,’ Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, told a group of Chinese officials. ‘Otherwise we might end up with a few holes in the ground where the resources have been extracted, and all the added value will be in China.’

Last summer, when the main opposition leader in Zambia, infuriated by the deaths in the explosives factory, made Chinese investment an issue in the presidential election, the Chinese Embassy threatened to break off relations with Zambia if he was elected. Hardly a model of non-interference.

Al JAzeera reports on this strange conference in Paris on Darfur. From the report, it's hard to see what the purpose of the conference is, particularly since Khartoum and the AU aren't attending. The US and China, however, are, as well as 15 other countries. Al Jazeera did, however, take advantage of the situation to print a funny picture of Mademoiselle Rice and Kouchner:

 

Khartoum has finally accepted an AU/UN hybrid peacekeeping force. Or so they say. Given Khartoum's track record, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some serious backpedaling in the next couple of days.

Otherwise, Der Spiegel has a piece on Darfur and John Prendergast that's been reprinted by Salon. And I haven't read it yet, but Prendergast's report on Darfur is available online (pdf) through the Enough, the project to abolish genocide and mass atrocities, that's been formed by the International Crisis Group and the Center for American Progress.

This time CIA is getting help from Khartoum by intelligence gathering done in Iraq by embedded Sudanese spies, all while Khartoum is "bombing their people out the wazoo" in Darfur, according to an official at State.

This explains why Washington's most recent round of sanctions against Sudan are but window dressing."

Lee Feinstein has a piece in TPM's America Abroad outlining the relationship between China and Sudan. To answer a charge from comments that my evidence (also in comments) that China is still supplying Sudan with weapons was "google-y and anecdotal," here is what Feinstein has to say about Chinese arms in Sudan. (Incidentally, I'm not sure I even understand how coming across an article in the Sudan Times and a report from Amnesty International by using google is supposed to make those sources any less valid. Furthermore, I'm not sure how a report by Amnesty International is "anecdotal.")

China maintains a defense relationship with Sudan, despite the UN arms embargo that has been in place for Darfur since 2005. The Security Council imposed an embargo on all nongovernmental forces operating in Darfur in July 2004, and expanded it to include government forces as well in 2005. Sales to Khartoum are still permitted, although a UN panel, which visited Sudan in August 2005 to investigate violations of the embargo, recommended in April 2006 that the Security Council expand the embargo to the entire country.

Information about recent Chinese arms sales to Sudan is difficult to discern both because of China's secrecy and because of the inherent difficulty of tracking the flow of small arms, which are below most international reporting thresholds. The UN Panel of Experts reported spotting Chinese-made military trucks in the Port of Sudan that appeared similar to those used on Sudanese Army bases in Darfur. Non-governmental organizations have reported that small arms used by rebels, janjaweed, and government forces in Darfur are of Chinese origin. There are also reports that Khartoum supplied Chinese-made automatic grenade launchers to the United Front for Democratic Change, a Chadian rebel group that also operates out of bases in Darfur. Russia and France are also suppliers of arms and military equipment to Sudan. In the last six years, Russia reported to the United Nations deliveries of 33 attack helicopters to Khartoum, eight combat aircraft, and 30 armored combat. (Between 2001 and 2004, France exported over $1 million of mostly small arms, spare parts, and ammunition.)

Beijing defends its sales to Khartoum as legal, and says that it requires all of its buyers not to transfer arms to other parties, including guerilla groups, a claim which is difficult to confirm independently. Zhai Jun, China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, said in March 2007, "With Sudan, we have cooperation in many aspects, including military cooperation. In this, we have nothing to hide."

In early April, China received Sudan's Joint Chief of Staff. The Chinese Minister of Defense told his Sudanese counterpart that China was "willing to further develop cooperation between the two militaries in every sphere."

Feinstein isn't offering up anything new or salacious in this short piece, but it's a decent outline of the economic, political and military relationship between Sudan and China.

For more on China and Sudan, see the tireless and laudable Eric Reeves.

Al Jazeera gives us a good example of how China may be doing more harm than good in Africa with its value-neutral investment in the continent:

China has agreed to give Zimbabwe $25m worth of farm equipment to help revive the country's ailing tobacco industry.

But Beijing wants something in return – large quantities of Zimbabwe's tobacco.

Jia Qinglin, a senior Chinese Communist party official, presented the equipment, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, to Robert Mugabe, the country's president, on Saturday in a deal to replace equipment damaged when Mugabe's government seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

But China wants all the tractors to go to tobacco farmers and expects Zimbabwe to deliver 30 million kilograms by the end of the year, Haru Mutasa, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said in Harare.

While the West is trying to pressure Mugabe into lessening his brutal crackdown on the government's opposition parties, China is offering aid. And the only strings attached are financial ones: the equipment given by China has to be used for cash crops. This in a country experiencing widespread hunger and poverty.

So at the end of the day, Beijing is showing Mugabe that even if he flagrantly violates human rights and the pitiful charade that passes for democracy in Zimbabwe, the Chinese will be there to offer assistance. So long as the price is right, of course.

So are we really surprised that Beijing is financially and diplomatically underwriting Khartoum's genocide in Darfur?

Via The Guardian, Google and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have come together to form the online mapping project, Crisis in Darfur:

Crisis in Darfur enables more than 200 million Google Earth users worldwide to visualize and better understand the genocide currently unfolding in Darfur, Sudan. The Museum has assembled content—photographs, data, and eyewitness testimony—from a number of sources that are brought together for the first time in Google Earth.

Crisis in Darfur is the first project of the Museum’s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative that will over time include information on potential genocides allowing citizens, governments, and institutions to access information on atrocities in their nascent stages and respond.

From the AP:

A federal judge on Wednesday found Sudan liable for the attack on the now-repaired Navy destroyer, but said he would need time to study all the evidence and documentation to determine the amount of damages the families deserve.

"There is substantial evidence in this case, presented by the expert testimony, that the government of Sudan induced the particular bombing of the Cole by virtue of prior actions of the government of Sudan," U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar said at the end of a 1-day trial in Norfolk, where the now-repaired Cole is based.

...Four experts on terrorism, including former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, testified in person or by deposition Tuesday to support the families' contention that al-Qaida needed the African nation's help to carry out the attack.

"It would not have been as easy -- it might have been possible -- but it would not have been as easy," Woolsey said, referring to Sudan's alleged assistance in providing economic support, places to train and false documents.

The experts testified that Sudan let terrorist training camps operate within its borders and gave al-Qaida members diplomatic passports and diplomatic pouches to ship explosives and weapons without being searched. They cited testimony from other trials, a declassified Canadian intelligence report, State Department reports and their own studies.

Al Jazeera reports on the murder of two AU peacekeepers in Darfur:

Two African Union peacekeepers have been killed and another critically wounded after being shot by gunmen in Darfur, the AU said Wednesday.

The peacekeeping mission said it was "deeply concerned" that the gunmen are believed to belong to the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), the rebel faction that signed the Darfur peace agreement last May.

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the AU has its headquarters, a Darfur force official said the dead soldiers were Nigerian.

"They were just shopping. They were unarmed and they were attacked by unidentified men," said Mahmoud Kane, the head of the Darfur Intergrated Task Force.

"This deplorable and condemnable act was perpetrated by gunmen believed to be elements belonging to Sudan Liberation Movement or Army [Minni Minnawi faction], which is in full control of [the town of] Graida," an AU statement said.

Minni Minnawi is the SLA leader who signed the peace agreement.

I never thought I'd be able to ask this question, but have you read Angelina Jolie's op-ed in The Washington Post today? The truth be told, it's not any better or any worse than most other pieces I've read in the mainstream press. And to her credit, she (unlike most people who have an opinion about Darfur, myself included) has actually been there.

Like most other proponents of intervention, she doesn't say exactly what she thinks that would entail, but she does come out as a strong supporter of the ICC accusations.

I think it was Bono who once said (more or less), "Celebrity is a currency, and I want to spend mine well." I have to say that I couldn't agree more, and if Angelina Jolie wants to spend hers on Darfur, then I say more power to her.

Yesterday afternoon, I watched live coverage of ICC Judge Luis Moreno-Ocampo's press conference in which he outlines Khartoum's complicity in the "atrocities" in Darfur, which the UN has not owned up to calling by their proper name: genocide.

The International Criminal Court's prosecutor in The Hague outlined what he called operational, logistical and command links between Sudan's government in Khartoum and horse-mounted nomadic militias it recruited and bankrolled to carry out mass killings in the Darfur region, and he named a member of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's inner circle as a suspect in the atrocities.

In a 94-page prosecution document filed with the court's judges, Luis Moreno-Ocampo singled out Ahmad Muhammad Harun, now a state minister for humanitarian affairs who was state minister of the interior, along with Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman (also known as Ali Kushayb), a leader of the Darfur militia known as the Janjaweed, in a total of 51 crimes against humanity and war crimes. The filing marked the first accusations against named individuals as a prelude to a trial.

The chief prosecutor's accusations -- which fall short of a formal indictment -- come after a 21-month investigation that led to 60 countries and focused on the worst crimes committed in 2003 and 2004. The prosecutor also said his office was expanding its probe to look at current crimes, and in a teleconference with foreign journalists, he warned that other Sudanese government officials could be held responsible.

"We will exonerate no one," he said. "I did it with Harun, and I will follow the evidence wherever it is going."

So far, the results of the investigation have been pretty meager, since Ali Kushayb is already in Sudanese custody and Harun is only a mid-level official. Hopefully, though, this report can start putting pressure on Khartoum by threatening to expand the accusations and start indicting some bigger, like Gosh, for example.

In cases like this, if there is no other way of squeezing Khartoum, I think it might be worth trading justice for an end to genocide. That is to say that I'd rather see a genocide stopped than see it finished and then maybe see its architects judged in the ICC after they've fallen from power. But at this point, that's probably a false choice, because, at the end of the day, the "international community" hasn't tried very hard to squeeze Khartoum.

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the contrast between center and periphery in Sudan as seen by the increasingly chic Khartoum and its slums and other regions. Khartoum's success has been funded by Sudan's newfound oil wealth, much of which comes from the south.

The article makes an important point about Sudanese politics and the country's regional wars -- the main underpinning of conflict in the south, the Nuba Mountains and in Darfur is the distinction between center and periphery in which Khartoum enjoys prosperity while the rest of the country suffers:

In Soba Aradi [a slum outside of Khartoum], people see little difference between the conflict in southern Sudan, the current conflict in Darfur and their own treatment in Khartoum.

Though the war in southern Sudan had a religious dimension in that it involved an attempt by the government to impose Islamic law on a population that is about 30 percent Christian, the primary grievances of the rebel movement there had more to do with access to resources and power. The conflict in Darfur also largely comes down to a struggle for resources.

"It's all the same because it's the same government," said Emmanuel Agrey Lado, a physician's assistant from southern Sudan whose home has been bulldozed twice in two years.

U.S. diplomats, however, have mostly treated southern Sudan and the conflict in Darfur separately.

After intense engagement by the Bush administration, the Sudanese government in 2005 signed a U.S.-backed peace agreement creating a semiautonomous region in southern Sudan, just as government troops were intensifying their onslaught in Darfur.

...Increasingly, leaders in the south say the fate of their region is very much intertwined with that of Darfur, a notion that hearkens back to the vision of John Garang, the widely popular and iconic leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) who died in a helicopter crash in 2005.

Under his leadership, the SPLM had strong ties to rebel groups not only in Darfur, but also in the north and the east, as Garang came to realize that the suffering extended beyond his own region and that the only way to achieve a more just order in Sudan was through a unified movement. After his death, those relationships languished.

In recent weeks, however, the current president of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has been reaching out to Darfur rebel leaders.

"We have similar grievances," said Deng Alor Kuol, a southerner who became a minister in the national government after the 2005 peace agreement. "Marginalization and neglect."

As Charles Kalisto, a resident of Soba Aradi, put it, "When I see all these tall buildings" in Khartoum, "I ask, 'Why am I staying under a plastic sheet?'"

This point is one that I cannot stress enough.

In an unexpected (by me) trip, New Mexico governor, Bill Richards, went to Khartoum to try to get Khartoum to allow UN peacekeepers in Darfur. He met separately with President Omar al-Bashir, former rebel leader Minni Minnowi and foreign minister Lam Akol:

Richardson told an Associated Press reporter traveling with him that he and al-Bashir discussed the U.N. peacekeeping force, a cease-fire, protection for humanitarian groups working in the region, increasing sexual violence against refugees and a potential conference with rebel leaders.

...He discussed the [Abuja accord] later with Minni Minnawi, the leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement that signed the agreement and subsequently became a presidential assistant. Minnawi expressed disappointment that the government has not yet disarmed the militias and told Richardson if the al-Bashir's government does not honor its commitments, there will be regime change.

...In Khartoum, Richardson also met with Sudanese foreign minister Lam Akol, bringing along humanitarian workers that included one representative of the Save Darfur Coalition. The coalition organized the trip and has been instrumental in bringing attention to the crisis and criticism on al-Bashir's government.

According to the AP, this trip was meant to draw attention to Richardson's "extensive foreign policy background, including his tenure as U.S. envoy to the United Nations" in preparation for his "likely White House bid."

Given how apathetic Americans are about the genocide in Darfur, I can't imagine that this sort of a trip could do much besides show voters that he's got enough clout to meet with a head of state (although it's a lot less controversial than a similar trip to Iraq, Iran or North Korea). In any case, if it's an attempt to garner future votes, it's certainly made me sympathetic to his platform.

Let's hope he has some success in Sudan.

(Via Neil/Ezra) I wonder if Mark Krikorian recognizes the irony of an Armenian-American arguing against offering asylum to a people that's being targeted in a genocide. Had all countries followed his lead a hundred years ago, his family probably would have died in the deserts of Syria at the hands of the Young Turks:

Zionism Is Not a Suicide Pact   [Mark Krikorian]

Good for Israel in announcing it will turn back all Darfur refugees sneaking across the border from Egypt — thousands of Muslims claiming asylum would present an existential threat to the Jewish state. But here’s what the government has to deal with: the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, what appears to be the country’s equivalent of the ACLU, said that it is "Israel's moral and legal obligation to accept any refugees or asylum seekers facing life-threatening danger or infringements on their freedom." That last bit is great – “infringements on their freedoms.” So, apparently anyone, anywhere who doesn’t enjoy complete political freedom and manages to sneak into Israel should be allowed to stay. This kind of post-nationalism is bad enough in Europe and the U.S., but we at least have some strategic depth, as it were – the very existence of such sentiments in a country as small and insecure as Israel doesn’t bode well for its long-term viability.

There's nothing like pulling the ladder up once you and yours have made it to safety.

Eric Reeves has taken down a recent op-ed piece by Time's Sam Dealey. The Reeves rebuttal is detailed and lengthy, so there aren't any really pithy quotes to add here. In other words, read the whole thing.

Most of the coverage about the arms deal between France and Libya has focused on the quid pro quo (officially denied) of offering arms for the release of the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor. One aspect of the piece that's been overlooked is the fact that offering arms to Tripoli might be at odds with the stated policy of France and the UK in Darfur. Libya has a long history of arming the "Arab" side of the region's racial war, which has involved Darfur and Chad, in hopes of creating a united pan-Arab state in the region.

So although its author doesn't seem terribly familiar the region's decades-long war, I was glad to see this article in the Guardian on the possibility of a conflict arising from the arms deal between their policy in Libya and their policies in Darfur and Chad.

This is an important question, and those who wish to read about the conflict in the Sahara and Sahel would do well to check out the new and updated edition of Burr's and Collins's book on the subject.

The UN Security Council has finally approved a Chapter 7 resolution for Darfur. I'm curious to see how long it actually takes to gather enough troops and get them out there. Apparently most of them are supposed to be African, so I'd like to know who all has agreed to send troops.

The resolution now calls for a peacekeeping mission to begin no later than October, and cites Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, under which the Security Council is permitted to authorize the use of force to carry out the mandate.

Most of the peacekeepers are supposed to be drawn from African nations, and would include a beleaguered force of some 7,000 soldiers already in Darfur from the African Union, placing it under a unified command and control with the United Nations force.

The resolution authorizes a maximum of 19,555 military personnel and 6,432 civilian police officers. It does not spell out what role would be played by major powers, including the United States.

 On a related note, I find it really curious that the number that keeps being brandied around (and has been cited for the last year or two) is 200,000 dead in Darfur. The numbers went, all of a sudden, from "tens of thousands" to 200,000, which I think is a lot closer to the reality, but which is still a conservative, and strangely static, estimation.

Eric Reeves, for example, argued back in the Spring of 2006 that the death count (included in this are those who have died of disease and malnutrition in addition to violence) was around 450,000. And the US State Department put out an estimate in early 2005 that the excess death toll was 98,000 and 181,000. Regardless of the estimate, though, it seems strange for the media to continue citing the same number over the course of a couple of years.

A Lexis Nexis search of Darfur coverage in the Times, for example, shows that the 200,000 figure was used as far back as November 7, 2005 ("Surge in Violence in Sudan Erodes Hope"). In that report, we are informed of "the deaths of at least 200,000 people in Darfur," whereas in today's report, we are told that "some 200,000 people have been killed in four years of conflict." Are we really to believe that the numbers have remained unchanged for nearly two years?

While death counts in remote conflict zones are by their nature difficult to discern and in cases like this one usually controversial, there is no excuse for major media outlets, once having made the decision to use a figure, to continue using it unchanged for nearly two years. The readership of the Times could be forgiven for thinking that there had been no new deaths in Darfur since November, 2005. This is obviously untrue, and they should either update their figures or if they insist on continuing to use 200,000, they should stress that this number is two years old.

A new friend of mine sent me a blog entry on a Washington Post piece attacking Americans and Europeans who want to "Save Africa," and especially those who want to "Save Darfur."

Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."

There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head -- because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.

Regardless of whether Africa is "in" or not -- whether it's the cause du jour -- if anyone's to be giving a finger rapping to well-meaning white kids from the ivy league, it certainly ought not to be Uzodinma Iweala, the American-born and -raised son of a cabinet member of the Nigerian thug extraordinaire, Obasanjo. The piece's author went to a D.C. prep school then to Harvard, and is now off to Columbia med school, so I imagine that his time in Africa hasn't been much better than that of those pasty-faced do-gooders who "fly in for internships." (Incidentally, does Iweala take the boat from Washington, I wonder?) Furthermore, I think it's telling that Granta named him in their "Best of Young American Novelists 2." 

Fairly or not, Iweala reminds me of my time in the UN system. The UN works on a quota system for permanent posts, presumably so that the secretariat be filled with people from all over the world. This might be a good thing if it weren't for the fact that the quota for countries like Nigeria are taken up by people like Iweala, not the Africans and Asians who have lived their entire lives in their native countries and had to fight against the odds to get an education while working at a human rights NGO in countries like Cameroon or Bangladesh. I once took coffee breaks with a brilliant European intern who wasn't getting paid and couldn't get a proper job in his section, despite the fact that he'd completed his PhD in a relevant field and was widely published in his field's academic journals. The person who was second-in-charge in his section was a European guy who only had the equivalent of a B.A. in his field, but whose dad happened to be a former diplomat (and UN functionary) from an African country. This guy had lived his whole life in a European capital , but he had a passport from Africa, and the intern's compatriots were over-represented at that UN organization. So that was that.

Another thing that bothers me about the remarks made by Iweala is that he doesn't mention, for example, the role that such a campaign led by Americans (mostly black and religious groups) played in negotiating an end to the civil war between the north and south of Sudan. And guys like him are the same ones who are quick to fault Europe or the US for not having done anything for Rwanda. (I'm also in that camp, but I'd like to think that I'm somewhat more consistent in my criticism.) Furthermore, what about the Congo? If Central Africa had been left to its own devices instead of given the world's largest UN peacekeeping force (from five different continents), I imagine that the death toll would be considerably worse than it already is.

So while there's something to be said about "African solutions for African problems," I'm afraid that entrusting Libya, a country that's responsible for many of the current problems in Darfur and Chad in the first place, isn't necessarily such a hot idea just because Gadaffi isn't white. Likewise, Uganda's and Rwanda's African solution to the Congo and Mbeki's African non-solution to Zimbabwe aren't exactly what I'd call steps in the right direction.

I still haven't read UNEP's report on Darfur (pdf), due to a lack of time (it's 358 pages) and a lot of other lengthy reading on my plate these days. I have, however, followed some of the press coverage, which makes it sound like the genocide in Darfur is the result of purely ecological factors, including desertification, water shortages and global warming. As it happens, I've worked with UNEP on a publication before, and I'm inclined to believe that their report is a lot more nuanced than the press coverage gives it credit for. But I'll have to save that final judgement for when I have the time to sit down and read it.

In any case, the fact that environmental concerns and competition for resources places a part in conflict is an obvious point, it's how much of an impact these concerns have that is at issue. Lydia Polgreen, whose coverage of Sudan in the Times has been very good, has a piece in this week's Week in Review that takes a quick look at the underground lake recently discovered in Darfur. She quotes Alex de Waal and John Prendergast, both of whom know a lot about Sudan, in order to illustrate her point that it's less the ecological strain that's to fault for conflict in Sudan and more how that problem is dealt with:

A scientific explanation for the problem (environmental degradation) along with a tidy technological solution (irrigation) gratifies the modern humanitarian impulse.

But the history of Sudan, a grim chronicle of civil war, famine, coups and despotism, gives ample reason to be skeptical.

“Like all resources water can be used for good or ill,” said Alex de Waal, a scholar who has studied the impact of climate variation in Sudan and who witnessed the 1984-85 famine that is often cited as the beginning of the ecological crisis gripping Darfur. “It can be a blessing or also a curse. If the government acts true to form and tries to create some sort of oasis in the desert and control who settles there, that would simply be an extension of the crisis, not a solution.”

The droughts that gripped Sudan in the 1980s, and the migrations and other social changes they forced, have doubtless played a role in the conflict by increasing competition for water and land between farmers, who tend to be non-Arab, and herders, many of whom are Arabs. But an environmental catastrophe cannot become a violent cataclysm without a powerful human hand to guide it in that direction.

“These wider environmental factors don’t have impact in and of themselves” in terms of fomenting conflict, Mr. de Waal said. “The question is how they are managed.”

[...]

“Climate change and the lack of rain are much less important than the land-use patterns promoted by the government of Sudan and the development policies of World Bank and I.M.F., which were focused on intensive agricultural expansion that really mined the soils and left a lot of land unusable,” said Mr. Prendergast, who has been studying Sudan for 20 years. “That was probably the principal impetus for a lot of intra-Darfur migration in the decades leading up to the conflict in Darfur.”

She then goes on to make a point that I've been harping on for a while now:

A report released last year by the Coalition for International Justice on the role that oil and mechanized farming have played in human rights abuses in Sudan concluded: “The predominant root of conflict in Sudan is the instability that results from the systemic abuse of the rural (and recently urbanized) poor at the hands of the economic and political elites of central Sudan.”

In this analysis, the heart of the Darfur conflict, as in all conflicts in Sudan, is the battle for control of resources and riches, but not between farmers and herders, northerners and southerners, Christians and Muslims, or Arabs and non-Arabs.

It is a conflict between those at the center of the country, the elites who have controlled Sudan and its wealth for the past century and a half, and the desperately poor people who beg for scraps from the periphery.

Until that equation changes, many analysts argue, nothing else will.

US allies in Addis Ababa have been facing some pretty serious charges lately, the latest coming from the Times. It seems that in an effort to combat the mainly ethnic-Somali rebel group in the east of the country, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the government has been starving the entire region:

The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large swaths of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say.

The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to relief officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian Parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government’s actions.

The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality.

Humanitarian officials say the ban on aid convoys and commercial traffic, intended to squeeze the rebels and dry up their bases of support, has sent food prices skyrocketing and disrupted trade routes, preventing the nomads who live there from selling their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people are now sealed off in a desiccated, unforgiving landscape that is difficult to survive in even in the best of times.

“Food cannot get in,” said Mohammed Diab, the director of the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia.

In this part of Africa, famine has often been used a blunt political tool by central governments to keep the periphery in line. Precedent has already been set in Addis Ababa and Khartoum. Possibly even more disconcerting, however, are allegations that the government is arming ethnic militias in order to attack the rebels:

The people of the Ogaden are mostly Somalis and ethnically distinct from the highland Ethiopians who have ruled the country for centuries, and the long battle over the region has been steadily escalating this year. The country director of one Western aid agency, who recently returned from a field visit there, said he saw two villages that had been burned to the ground and several schools that had been converted into military bases, with foxholes.

Humanitarian officials say the military is building up militias and setting the stage for clan-based bloodshed. The rank and file of the Ogaden National Liberation Front tend to be members of the Ogaden clan, and so the government has turned to other clans to form anti-rebel militias. In the past few weeks, thousands of men have been armed.

“Those Ethiopians are smart,” [former MP] Mr. Kalif, 32, said. “They know Somalis are more loyal to clans than anything else.” Tactics like these, he said, drove him to defect June 20 while attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was affiliated with the ruling party, and had been representing an area in the eastern Ogaden for the past seven years.

In both cases, the actions of the Ethiopian government are disconcertingly close to those of the Sudanese government. It looks like any ethnic-based collective punishment aimed at quelling a separatist movement in Ogaden is still in the formative stage. The US should use its clout to dissuade Addis Ababa from going down the same road that Sudan has taken, as some in the House of Representatives like Randy Forbes (R, VA) have started to do by stripping Ethiopia of American aid. In any case, this is a case that Americans should keep an eye on, because it's obviously better to prevent humanitarian disasters and ethnic violence before it happens rather than wringing our hands when it does. 

The London Review has a summary piece about China's new love affair with Africa. If you've been keeping up with Chinese affairs on the continent, there probably won't be much new information in this piece, but it's a nice summary, and it's helpful to have it all in one piece. It's a subscription only article, but the main gist is summed up here:

In all likelihood China will be neither a saviour nor a destroyer. Some African opinion leaders have realised that it does not really stand for a different model. ‘Non-interference’ is not a value so much as a thin shield for old-fashioned realpolitik. China, like any other major power, generally puts its own strategic interests first. If its clients prove too embarrassing, it will restrain them, just as the United States once dumped Mobutu Sese Seko, when his taste for champagne, diamonds and bloodshed proved too embarrassing. Yet if China’s interests are better served by protecting rogues, it will protect them. If Chinese companies can get away with destroying Africa’s environment and paying little attention to its workers, they probably will. If they cannot – because local activists or consumers call them on it, or because it affects their sales in Africa and the West – perhaps they won’t.

Like the Western powers, China seems set to traffic in whatever images of Africa suit it: before the 2006 China-Africa summit in Beijing, Chinese officials plastered the city with posters of tribal warriors and lions that might have been taken from the National Geographic fifty years ago. Like the colonial powers, China will buy Africa’s resources and sell it manufactured products, regardless of whether Africa manages to produce anything that China wants to buy or succeeds in using China’s largesse to upgrade its own industries. ‘The key must be mutual benefit,’ Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, told a group of Chinese officials. ‘Otherwise we might end up with a few holes in the ground where the resources have been extracted, and all the added value will be in China.’

Last summer, when the main opposition leader in Zambia, infuriated by the deaths in the explosives factory, made Chinese investment an issue in the presidential election, the Chinese Embassy threatened to break off relations with Zambia if he was elected. Hardly a model of non-interference.

Al JAzeera reports on this strange conference in Paris on Darfur. From the report, it's hard to see what the purpose of the conference is, particularly since Khartoum and the AU aren't attending. The US and China, however, are, as well as 15 other countries. Al Jazeera did, however, take advantage of the situation to print a funny picture of Mademoiselle Rice and Kouchner:

 

Khartoum has finally accepted an AU/UN hybrid peacekeeping force. Or so they say. Given Khartoum's track record, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some serious backpedaling in the next couple of days.

Otherwise, Der Spiegel has a piece on Darfur and John Prendergast that's been reprinted by Salon. And I haven't read it yet, but Prendergast's report on Darfur is available online (pdf) through the Enough, the project to abolish genocide and mass atrocities, that's been formed by the International Crisis Group and the Center for American Progress.

This time CIA is getting help from Khartoum by intelligence gathering done in Iraq by embedded Sudanese spies, all while Khartoum is "bombing their people out the wazoo" in Darfur, according to an official at State.

This explains why Washington's most recent round of sanctions against Sudan are but window dressing."

Lee Feinstein has a piece in TPM's America Abroad outlining the relationship between China and Sudan. To answer a charge from comments that my evidence (also in comments) that China is still supplying Sudan with weapons was "google-y and anecdotal," here is what Feinstein has to say about Chinese arms in Sudan. (Incidentally, I'm not sure I even understand how coming across an article in the Sudan Times and a report from Amnesty International by using google is supposed to make those sources any less valid. Furthermore, I'm not sure how a report by Amnesty International is "anecdotal.")

China maintains a defense relationship with Sudan, despite the UN arms embargo that has been in place for Darfur since 2005. The Security Council imposed an embargo on all nongovernmental forces operating in Darfur in July 2004, and expanded it to include government forces as well in 2005. Sales to Khartoum are still permitted, although a UN panel, which visited Sudan in August 2005 to investigate violations of the embargo, recommended in April 2006 that the Security Council expand the embargo to the entire country.

Information about recent Chinese arms sales to Sudan is difficult to discern both because of China's secrecy and because of the inherent difficulty of tracking the flow of small arms, which are below most international reporting thresholds. The UN Panel of Experts reported spotting Chinese-made military trucks in the Port of Sudan that appeared similar to those used on Sudanese Army bases in Darfur. Non-governmental organizations have reported that small arms used by rebels, janjaweed, and government forces in Darfur are of Chinese origin. There are also reports that Khartoum supplied Chinese-made automatic grenade launchers to the United Front for Democratic Change, a Chadian rebel group that also operates out of bases in Darfur. Russia and France are also suppliers of arms and military equipment to Sudan. In the last six years, Russia reported to the United Nations deliveries of 33 attack helicopters to Khartoum, eight combat aircraft, and 30 armored combat. (Between 2001 and 2004, France exported over $1 million of mostly small arms, spare parts, and ammunition.)

Beijing defends its sales to Khartoum as legal, and says that it requires all of its buyers not to transfer arms to other parties, including guerilla groups, a claim which is difficult to confirm independently. Zhai Jun, China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, said in March 2007, "With Sudan, we have cooperation in many aspects, including military cooperation. In this, we have nothing to hide."

In early April, China received Sudan's Joint Chief of Staff. The Chinese Minister of Defense told his Sudanese counterpart that China was "willing to further develop cooperation between the two militaries in every sphere."

Feinstein isn't offering up anything new or salacious in this short piece, but it's a decent outline of the economic, political and military relationship between Sudan and China.

For more on China and Sudan, see the tireless and laudable Eric Reeves.

Al Jazeera gives us a good example of how China may be doing more harm than good in Africa with its value-neutral investment in the continent:

China has agreed to give Zimbabwe $25m worth of farm equipment to help revive the country's ailing tobacco industry.

But Beijing wants something in return – large quantities of Zimbabwe's tobacco.

Jia Qinglin, a senior Chinese Communist party official, presented the equipment, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, to Robert Mugabe, the country's president, on Saturday in a deal to replace equipment damaged when Mugabe's government seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

But China wants all the tractors to go to tobacco farmers and expects Zimbabwe to deliver 30 million kilograms by the end of the year, Haru Mutasa, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said in Harare.

While the West is trying to pressure Mugabe into lessening his brutal crackdown on the government's opposition parties, China is offering aid. And the only strings attached are financial ones: the equipment given by China has to be used for cash crops. This in a country experiencing widespread hunger and poverty.

So at the end of the day, Beijing is showing Mugabe that even if he flagrantly violates human rights and the pitiful charade that passes for democracy in Zimbabwe, the Chinese will be there to offer assistance. So long as the price is right, of course.

So are we really surprised that Beijing is financially and diplomatically underwriting Khartoum's genocide in Darfur?

Via The Guardian, Google and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have come together to form the online mapping project, Crisis in Darfur:

Crisis in Darfur enables more than 200 million Google Earth users worldwide to visualize and better understand the genocide currently unfolding in Darfur, Sudan. The Museum has assembled content—photographs, data, and eyewitness testimony—from a number of sources that are brought together for the first time in Google Earth.

Crisis in Darfur is the first project of the Museum’s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative that will over time include information on potential genocides allowing citizens, governments, and institutions to access information on atrocities in their nascent stages and respond.

From the AP:

A federal judge on Wednesday found Sudan liable for the attack on the now-repaired Navy destroyer, but said he would need time to study all the evidence and documentation to determine the amount of damages the families deserve.

"There is substantial evidence in this case, presented by the expert testimony, that the government of Sudan induced the particular bombing of the Cole by virtue of prior actions of the government of Sudan," U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar said at the end of a 1-day trial in Norfolk, where the now-repaired Cole is based.

...Four experts on terrorism, including former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, testified in person or by deposition Tuesday to support the families' contention that al-Qaida needed the African nation's help to carry out the attack.

"It would not have been as easy -- it might have been possible -- but it would not have been as easy," Woolsey said, referring to Sudan's alleged assistance in providing economic support, places to train and false documents.

The experts testified that Sudan let terrorist training camps operate within its borders and gave al-Qaida members diplomatic passports and diplomatic pouches to ship explosives and weapons without being searched. They cited testimony from other trials, a declassified Canadian intelligence report, State Department reports and their own studies.

Al Jazeera reports on the murder of two AU peacekeepers in Darfur:

Two African Union peacekeepers have been killed and another critically wounded after being shot by gunmen in Darfur, the AU said Wednesday.

The peacekeeping mission said it was "deeply concerned" that the gunmen are believed to belong to the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), the rebel faction that signed the Darfur peace agreement last May.

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the AU has its headquarters, a Darfur force official said the dead soldiers were Nigerian.

"They were just shopping. They were unarmed and they were attacked by unidentified men," said Mahmoud Kane, the head of the Darfur Intergrated Task Force.

"This deplorable and condemnable act was perpetrated by gunmen believed to be elements belonging to Sudan Liberation Movement or Army [Minni Minnawi faction], which is in full control of [the town of] Graida," an AU statement said.

Minni Minnawi is the SLA leader who signed the peace agreement.

I never thought I'd be able to ask this question, but have you read Angelina Jolie's op-ed in The Washington Post today? The truth be told, it's not any better or any worse than most other pieces I've read in the mainstream press. And to her credit, she (unlike most people who have an opinion about Darfur, myself included) has actually been there.

Like most other proponents of intervention, she doesn't say exactly what she thinks that would entail, but she does come out as a strong supporter of the ICC accusations.

I think it was Bono who once said (more or less), "Celebrity is a currency, and I want to spend mine well." I have to say that I couldn't agree more, and if Angelina Jolie wants to spend hers on Darfur, then I say more power to her.

Yesterday afternoon, I watched live coverage of ICC Judge Luis Moreno-Ocampo's press conference in which he outlines Khartoum's complicity in the "atrocities" in Darfur, which the UN has not owned up to calling by their proper name: genocide.

The International Criminal Court's prosecutor in The Hague outlined what he called operational, logistical and command links between Sudan's government in Khartoum and horse-mounted nomadic militias it recruited and bankrolled to carry out mass killings in the Darfur region, and he named a member of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's inner circle as a suspect in the atrocities.

In a 94-page prosecution document filed with the court's judges, Luis Moreno-Ocampo singled out Ahmad Muhammad Harun, now a state minister for humanitarian affairs who was state minister of the interior, along with Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman (also known as Ali Kushayb), a leader of the Darfur militia known as the Janjaweed, in a total of 51 crimes against humanity and war crimes. The filing marked the first accusations against named individuals as a prelude to a trial.

The chief prosecutor's accusations -- which fall short of a formal indictment -- come after a 21-month investigation that led to 60 countries and focused on the worst crimes committed in 2003 and 2004. The prosecutor also said his office was expanding its probe to look at current crimes, and in a teleconference with foreign journalists, he warned that other Sudanese government officials could be held responsible.

"We will exonerate no one," he said. "I did it with Harun, and I will follow the evidence wherever it is going."

So far, the results of the investigation have been pretty meager, since Ali Kushayb is already in Sudanese custody and Harun is only a mid-level official. Hopefully, though, this report can start putting pressure on Khartoum by threatening to expand the accusations and start indicting some bigger, like Gosh, for example.

In cases like this, if there is no other way of squeezing Khartoum, I think it might be worth trading justice for an end to genocide. That is to say that I'd rather see a genocide stopped than see it finished and then maybe see its architects judged in the ICC after they've fallen from power. But at this point, that's probably a false choice, because, at the end of the day, the "international community" hasn't tried very hard to squeeze Khartoum.

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the contrast between center and periphery in Sudan as seen by the increasingly chic Khartoum and its slums and other regions. Khartoum's success has been funded by Sudan's newfound oil wealth, much of which comes from the south.

The article makes an important point about Sudanese politics and the country's regional wars -- the main underpinning of conflict in the south, the Nuba Mountains and in Darfur is the distinction between center and periphery in which Khartoum enjoys prosperity while the rest of the country suffers:

In Soba Aradi [a slum outside of Khartoum], people see little difference between the conflict in southern Sudan, the current conflict in Darfur and their own treatment in Khartoum.

Though the war in southern Sudan had a religious dimension in that it involved an attempt by the government to impose Islamic law on a population that is about 30 percent Christian, the primary grievances of the rebel movement there had more to do with access to resources and power. The conflict in Darfur also largely comes down to a struggle for resources.

"It's all the same because it's the same government," said Emmanuel Agrey Lado, a physician's assistant from southern Sudan whose home has been bulldozed twice in two years.

U.S. diplomats, however, have mostly treated southern Sudan and the conflict in Darfur separately.

After intense engagement by the Bush administration, the Sudanese government in 2005 signed a U.S.-backed peace agreement creating a semiautonomous region in southern Sudan, just as government troops were intensifying their onslaught in Darfur.

...Increasingly, leaders in the south say the fate of their region is very much intertwined with that of Darfur, a notion that hearkens back to the vision of John Garang, the widely popular and iconic leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) who died in a helicopter crash in 2005.

Under his leadership, the SPLM had strong ties to rebel groups not only in Darfur, but also in the north and the east, as Garang came to realize that the suffering extended beyond his own region and that the only way to achieve a more just order in Sudan was through a unified movement. After his death, those relationships languished.

In recent weeks, however, the current president of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has been reaching out to Darfur rebel leaders.

"We have similar grievances," said Deng Alor Kuol, a southerner who became a minister in the national government after the 2005 peace agreement. "Marginalization and neglect."

As Charles Kalisto, a resident of Soba Aradi, put it, "When I see all these tall buildings" in Khartoum, "I ask, 'Why am I staying under a plastic sheet?'"

This point is one that I cannot stress enough.

In an unexpected (by me) trip, New Mexico governor, Bill Richards, went to Khartoum to try to get Khartoum to allow UN peacekeepers in Darfur. He met separately with President Omar al-Bashir, former rebel leader Minni Minnowi and foreign minister Lam Akol:

Richardson told an Associated Press reporter traveling with him that he and al-Bashir discussed the U.N. peacekeeping force, a cease-fire, protection for humanitarian groups working in the region, increasing sexual violence against refugees and a potential conference with rebel leaders.

...He discussed the [Abuja accord] later with Minni Minnawi, the leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement that signed the agreement and subsequently became a presidential assistant. Minnawi expressed disappointment that the government has not yet disarmed the militias and told Richardson if the al-Bashir's government does not honor its commitments, there will be regime change.

...In Khartoum, Richardson also met with Sudanese foreign minister Lam Akol, bringing along humanitarian workers that included one representative of the Save Darfur Coalition. The coalition organized the trip and has been instrumental in bringing attention to the crisis and criticism on al-Bashir's government.

According to the AP, this trip was meant to draw attention to Richardson's "extensive foreign policy background, including his tenure as U.S. envoy to the United Nations" in preparation for his "likely White House bid."

Given how apathetic Americans are about the genocide in Darfur, I can't imagine that this sort of a trip could do much besides show voters that he's got enough clout to meet with a head of state (although it's a lot less controversial than a similar trip to Iraq, Iran or North Korea). In any case, if it's an attempt to garner future votes, it's certainly made me sympathetic to his platform.

Let's hope he has some success in Sudan.

(Via Neil/Ezra) I wonder if Mark Krikorian recognizes the irony of an Armenian-American arguing against offering asylum to a people that's being targeted in a genocide. Had all countries followed his lead a hundred years ago, his family probably would have died in the deserts of Syria at the hands of the Young Turks:

Zionism Is Not a Suicide Pact   [Mark Krikorian]

Good for Israel in announcing it will turn back all Darfur refugees sneaking across the border from Egypt — thousands of Muslims claiming asylum would present an existential threat to the Jewish state. But here’s what the government has to deal with: the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, what appears to be the country’s equivalent of the ACLU, said that it is "Israel's moral and legal obligation to accept any refugees or asylum seekers facing life-threatening danger or infringements on their freedom." That last bit is great – “infringements on their freedoms.” So, apparently anyone, anywhere who doesn’t enjoy complete political freedom and manages to sneak into Israel should be allowed to stay. This kind of post-nationalism is bad enough in Europe and the U.S., but we at least have some strategic depth, as it were – the very existence of such sentiments in a country as small and insecure as Israel doesn’t bode well for its long-term viability.

There's nothing like pulling the ladder up once you and yours have made it to safety.

Eric Reeves has taken down a recent op-ed piece by Time's Sam Dealey. The Reeves rebuttal is detailed and lengthy, so there aren't any really pithy quotes to add here. In other words, read the whole thing.

Most of the coverage about the arms deal between France and Libya has focused on the quid pro quo (officially denied) of offering arms for the release of the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor. One aspect of the piece that's been overlooked is the fact that offering arms to Tripoli might be at odds with the stated policy of France and the UK in Darfur. Libya has a long history of arming the "Arab" side of the region's racial war, which has involved Darfur and Chad, in hopes of creating a united pan-Arab state in the region.

So although its author doesn't seem terribly familiar the region's decades-long war, I was glad to see this article in the Guardian on the possibility of a conflict arising from the arms deal between their policy in Libya and their policies in Darfur and Chad.

This is an important question, and those who wish to read about the conflict in the Sahara and Sahel would do well to check out the new and updated edition of Burr's and Collins's book on the subject.

The UN Security Council has finally approved a Chapter 7 resolution for Darfur. I'm curious to see how long it actually takes to gather enough troops and get them out there. Apparently most of them are supposed to be African, so I'd like to know who all has agreed to send troops.

The resolution now calls for a peacekeeping mission to begin no later than October, and cites Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, under which the Security Council is permitted to authorize the use of force to carry out the mandate.

Most of the peacekeepers are supposed to be drawn from African nations, and would include a beleaguered force of some 7,000 soldiers already in Darfur from the African Union, placing it under a unified command and control with the United Nations force.

The resolution authorizes a maximum of 19,555 military personnel and 6,432 civilian police officers. It does not spell out what role would be played by major powers, including the United States.

 On a related note, I find it really curious that the number that keeps being brandied around (and has been cited for the last year or two) is 200,000 dead in Darfur. The numbers went, all of a sudden, from "tens of thousands" to 200,000, which I think is a lot closer to the reality, but which is still a conservative, and strangely static, estimation.

Eric Reeves, for example, argued back in the Spring of 2006 that the death count (included in this are those who have died of disease and malnutrition in addition to violence) was around 450,000. And the US State Department put out an estimate in early 2005 that the excess death toll was 98,000 and 181,000. Regardless of the estimate, though, it seems strange for the media to continue citing the same number over the course of a couple of years.

A Lexis Nexis search of Darfur coverage in the Times, for example, shows that the 200,000 figure was used as far back as November 7, 2005 ("Surge in Violence in Sudan Erodes Hope"). In that report, we are informed of "the deaths of at least 200,000 people in Darfur," whereas in today's report, we are told that "some 200,000 people have been killed in four years of conflict." Are we really to believe that the numbers have remained unchanged for nearly two years?

While death counts in remote conflict zones are by their nature difficult to discern and in cases like this one usually controversial, there is no excuse for major media outlets, once having made the decision to use a figure, to continue using it unchanged for nearly two years. The readership of the Times could be forgiven for thinking that there had been no new deaths in Darfur since November, 2005. This is obviously untrue, and they should either update their figures or if they insist on continuing to use 200,000, they should stress that this number is two years old.

A new friend of mine sent me a blog entry on a Washington Post piece attacking Americans and Europeans who want to "Save Africa," and especially those who want to "Save Darfur."

Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."

There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head -- because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.

Regardless of whether Africa is "in" or not -- whether it's the cause du jour -- if anyone's to be giving a finger rapping to well-meaning white kids from the ivy league, it certainly ought not to be Uzodinma Iweala, the American-born and -raised son of a cabinet member of the Nigerian thug extraordinaire, Obasanjo. The piece's author went to a D.C. prep school then to Harvard, and is now off to Columbia med school, so I imagine that his time in Africa hasn't been much better than that of those pasty-faced do-gooders who "fly in for internships." (Incidentally, does Iweala take the boat from Washington, I wonder?) Furthermore, I think it's telling that Granta named him in their "Best of Young American Novelists 2." 

Fairly or not, Iweala reminds me of my time in the UN system. The UN works on a quota system for permanent posts, presumably so that the secretariat be filled with people from all over the world. This might be a good thing if it weren't for the fact that the quota for countries like Nigeria are taken up by people like Iweala, not the Africans and Asians who have lived their entire lives in their native countries and had to fight against the odds to get an education while working at a human rights NGO in countries like Cameroon or Bangladesh. I once took coffee breaks with a brilliant European intern who wasn't getting paid and couldn't get a proper job in his section, despite the fact that he'd completed his PhD in a relevant field and was widely published in his field's academic journals. The person who was second-in-charge in his section was a European guy who only had the equivalent of a B.A. in his field, but whose dad happened to be a former diplomat (and UN functionary) from an African country. This guy had lived his whole life in a European capital , but he had a passport from Africa, and the intern's compatriots were over-represented at that UN organization. So that was that.

Another thing that bothers me about the remarks made by Iweala is that he doesn't mention, for example, the role that such a campaign led by Americans (mostly black and religious groups) played in negotiating an end to the civil war between the north and south of Sudan. And guys like him are the same ones who are quick to fault Europe or the US for not having done anything for Rwanda. (I'm also in that camp, but I'd like to think that I'm somewhat more consistent in my criticism.) Furthermore, what about the Congo? If Central Africa had been left to its own devices instead of given the world's largest UN peacekeeping force (from five different continents), I imagine that the death toll would be considerably worse than it already is.

So while there's something to be said about "African solutions for African problems," I'm afraid that entrusting Libya, a country that's responsible for many of the current problems in Darfur and Chad in the first place, isn't necessarily such a hot idea just because Gadaffi isn't white. Likewise, Uganda's and Rwanda's African solution to the Congo and Mbeki's African non-solution to Zimbabwe aren't exactly what I'd call steps in the right direction.

I still haven't read UNEP's report on Darfur (pdf), due to a lack of time (it's 358 pages) and a lot of other lengthy reading on my plate these days. I have, however, followed some of the press coverage, which makes it sound like the genocide in Darfur is the result of purely ecological factors, including desertification, water shortages and global warming. As it happens, I've worked with UNEP on a publication before, and I'm inclined to believe that their report is a lot more nuanced than the press coverage gives it credit for. But I'll have to save that final judgement for when I have the time to sit down and read it.

In any case, the fact that environmental concerns and competition for resources places a part in conflict is an obvious point, it's how much of an impact these concerns have that is at issue. Lydia Polgreen, whose coverage of Sudan in the Times has been very good, has a piece in this week's Week in Review that takes a quick look at the underground lake recently discovered in Darfur. She quotes Alex de Waal and John Prendergast, both of whom know a lot about Sudan, in order to illustrate her point that it's less the ecological strain that's to fault for conflict in Sudan and more how that problem is dealt with:

A scientific explanation for the problem (environmental degradation) along with a tidy technological solution (irrigation) gratifies the modern humanitarian impulse.

But the history of Sudan, a grim chronicle of civil war, famine, coups and despotism, gives ample reason to be skeptical.

“Like all resources water can be used for good or ill,” said Alex de Waal, a scholar who has studied the impact of climate variation in Sudan and who witnessed the 1984-85 famine that is often cited as the beginning of the ecological crisis gripping Darfur. “It can be a blessing or also a curse. If the government acts true to form and tries to create some sort of oasis in the desert and control who settles there, that would simply be an extension of the crisis, not a solution.”

The droughts that gripped Sudan in the 1980s, and the migrations and other social changes they forced, have doubtless played a role in the conflict by increasing competition for water and land between farmers, who tend to be non-Arab, and herders, many of whom are Arabs. But an environmental catastrophe cannot become a violent cataclysm without a powerful human hand to guide it in that direction.

“These wider environmental factors don’t have impact in and of themselves” in terms of fomenting conflict, Mr. de Waal said. “The question is how they are managed.”

[...]

“Climate change and the lack of rain are much less important than the land-use patterns promoted by the government of Sudan and the development policies of World Bank and I.M.F., which were focused on intensive agricultural expansion that really mined the soils and left a lot of land unusable,” said Mr. Prendergast, who has been studying Sudan for 20 years. “That was probably the principal impetus for a lot of intra-Darfur migration in the decades leading up to the conflict in Darfur.”

She then goes on to make a point that I've been harping on for a while now:

A report released last year by the Coalition for International Justice on the role that oil and mechanized farming have played in human rights abuses in Sudan concluded: “The predominant root of conflict in Sudan is the instability that results from the systemic abuse of the rural (and recently urbanized) poor at the hands of the economic and political elites of central Sudan.”

In this analysis, the heart of the Darfur conflict, as in all conflicts in Sudan, is the battle for control of resources and riches, but not between farmers and herders, northerners and southerners, Christians and Muslims, or Arabs and non-Arabs.

It is a conflict between those at the center of the country, the elites who have controlled Sudan and its wealth for the past century and a half, and the desperately poor people who beg for scraps from the periphery.

Until that equation changes, many analysts argue, nothing else will.

US allies in Addis Ababa have been facing some pretty serious charges lately, the latest coming from the Times. It seems that in an effort to combat the mainly ethnic-Somali rebel group in the east of the country, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the government has been starving the entire region:

The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large swaths of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say.

The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to relief officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian Parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government’s actions.

The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality.

Humanitarian officials say the ban on aid convoys and commercial traffic, intended to squeeze the rebels and dry up their bases of support, has sent food prices skyrocketing and disrupted trade routes, preventing the nomads who live there from selling their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people are now sealed off in a desiccated, unforgiving landscape that is difficult to survive in even in the best of times.

“Food cannot get in,” said Mohammed Diab, the director of the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia.

In this part of Africa, famine has often been used a blunt political tool by central governments to keep the periphery in line. Precedent has already been set in Addis Ababa and Khartoum. Possibly even more disconcerting, however, are allegations that the government is arming ethnic militias in order to attack the rebels:

The people of the Ogaden are mostly Somalis and ethnically distinct from the highland Ethiopians who have ruled the country for centuries, and the long battle over the region has been steadily escalating this year. The country director of one Western aid agency, who recently returned from a field visit there, said he saw two villages that had been burned to the ground and several schools that had been converted into military bases, with foxholes.

Humanitarian officials say the military is building up militias and setting the stage for clan-based bloodshed. The rank and file of the Ogaden National Liberation Front tend to be members of the Ogaden clan, and so the government has turned to other clans to form anti-rebel militias. In the past few weeks, thousands of men have been armed.

“Those Ethiopians are smart,” [former MP] Mr. Kalif, 32, said. “They know Somalis are more loyal to clans than anything else.” Tactics like these, he said, drove him to defect June 20 while attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was affiliated with the ruling party, and had been representing an area in the eastern Ogaden for the past seven years.

In both cases, the actions of the Ethiopian government are disconcertingly close to those of the Sudanese government. It looks like any ethnic-based collective punishment aimed at quelling a separatist movement in Ogaden is still in the formative stage. The US should use its clout to dissuade Addis Ababa from going down the same road that Sudan has taken, as some in the House of Representatives like Randy Forbes (R, VA) have started to do by stripping Ethiopia of American aid. In any case, this is a case that Americans should keep an eye on, because it's obviously better to prevent humanitarian disasters and ethnic violence before it happens rather than wringing our hands when it does. 

The London Review has a summary piece about China's new love affair with Africa. If you've been keeping up with Chinese affairs on the continent, there probably won't be much new information in this piece, but it's a nice summary, and it's helpful to have it all in one piece. It's a subscription only article, but the main gist is summed up here:

In all likelihood China will be neither a saviour nor a destroyer. Some African opinion leaders have realised that it does not really stand for a different model. ‘Non-interference’ is not a value so much as a thin shield for old-fashioned realpolitik. China, like any other major power, generally puts its own strategic interests first. If its clients prove too embarrassing, it will restrain them, just as the United States once dumped Mobutu Sese Seko, when his taste for champagne, diamonds and bloodshed proved too embarrassing. Yet if China’s interests are better served by protecting rogues, it will protect them. If Chinese companies can get away with destroying Africa’s environment and paying little attention to its workers, they probably will. If they cannot – because local activists or consumers call them on it, or because it affects their sales in Africa and the West – perhaps they won’t.

Like the Western powers, China seems set to traffic in whatever images of Africa suit it: before the 2006 China-Africa summit in Beijing, Chinese officials plastered the city with posters of tribal warriors and lions that might have been taken from the National Geographic fifty years ago. Like the colonial powers, China will buy Africa’s resources and sell it manufactured products, regardless of whether Africa manages to produce anything that China wants to buy or succeeds in using China’s largesse to upgrade its own industries. ‘The key must be mutual benefit,’ Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, told a group of Chinese officials. ‘Otherwise we might end up with a few holes in the ground where the resources have been extracted, and all the added value will be in China.’

Last summer, when the main opposition leader in Zambia, infuriated by the deaths in the explosives factory, made Chinese investment an issue in the presidential election, the Chinese Embassy threatened to break off relations with Zambia if he was elected. Hardly a model of non-interference.

Al JAzeera reports on this strange conference in Paris on Darfur. From the report, it's hard to see what the purpose of the conference is, particularly since Khartoum and the AU aren't attending. The US and China, however, are, as well as 15 other countries. Al Jazeera did, however, take advantage of the situation to print a funny picture of Mademoiselle Rice and Kouchner:

 

Khartoum has finally accepted an AU/UN hybrid peacekeeping force. Or so they say. Given Khartoum's track record, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some serious backpedaling in the next couple of days.

Otherwise, Der Spiegel has a piece on Darfur and John Prendergast that's been reprinted by Salon. And I haven't read it yet, but Prendergast's report on Darfur is available online (pdf) through the Enough, the project to abolish genocide and mass atrocities, that's been formed by the International Crisis Group and the Center for American Progress.

This time CIA is getting help from Khartoum by intelligence gathering done in Iraq by embedded Sudanese spies, all while Khartoum is "bombing their people out the wazoo" in Darfur, according to an official at State.

This explains why Washington's most recent round of sanctions against Sudan are but window dressing."

Lee Feinstein has a piece in TPM's America Abroad outlining the relationship between China and Sudan. To answer a charge from comments that my evidence (also in comments) that China is still supplying Sudan with weapons was "google-y and anecdotal," here is what Feinstein has to say about Chinese arms in Sudan. (Incidentally, I'm not sure I even understand how coming across an article in the Sudan Times and a report from Amnesty International by using google is supposed to make those sources any less valid. Furthermore, I'm not sure how a report by Amnesty International is "anecdotal.")

China maintains a defense relationship with Sudan, despite the UN arms embargo that has been in place for Darfur since 2005. The Security Council imposed an embargo on all nongovernmental forces operating in Darfur in July 2004, and expanded it to include government forces as well in 2005. Sales to Khartoum are still permitted, although a UN panel, which visited Sudan in August 2005 to investigate violations of the embargo, recommended in April 2006 that the Security Council expand the embargo to the entire country.

Information about recent Chinese arms sales to Sudan is difficult to discern both because of China's secrecy and because of the inherent difficulty of tracking the flow of small arms, which are below most international reporting thresholds. The UN Panel of Experts reported spotting Chinese-made military trucks in the Port of Sudan that appeared similar to those used on Sudanese Army bases in Darfur. Non-governmental organizations have reported that small arms used by rebels, janjaweed, and government forces in Darfur are of Chinese origin. There are also reports that Khartoum supplied Chinese-made automatic grenade launchers to the United Front for Democratic Change, a Chadian rebel group that also operates out of bases in Darfur. Russia and France are also suppliers of arms and military equipment to Sudan. In the last six years, Russia reported to the United Nations deliveries of 33 attack helicopters to Khartoum, eight combat aircraft, and 30 armored combat. (Between 2001 and 2004, France exported over $1 million of mostly small arms, spare parts, and ammunition.)

Beijing defends its sales to Khartoum as legal, and says that it requires all of its buyers not to transfer arms to other parties, including guerilla groups, a claim which is difficult to confirm independently. Zhai Jun, China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, said in March 2007, "With Sudan, we have cooperation in many aspects, including military cooperation. In this, we have nothing to hide."

In early April, China received Sudan's Joint Chief of Staff. The Chinese Minister of Defense told his Sudanese counterpart that China was "willing to further develop cooperation between the two militaries in every sphere."

Feinstein isn't offering up anything new or salacious in this short piece, but it's a decent outline of the economic, political and military relationship between Sudan and China.

For more on China and Sudan, see the tireless and laudable Eric Reeves.

Al Jazeera gives us a good example of how China may be doing more harm than good in Africa with its value-neutral investment in the continent:

China has agreed to give Zimbabwe $25m worth of farm equipment to help revive the country's ailing tobacco industry.

But Beijing wants something in return – large quantities of Zimbabwe's tobacco.

Jia Qinglin, a senior Chinese Communist party official, presented the equipment, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, to Robert Mugabe, the country's president, on Saturday in a deal to replace equipment damaged when Mugabe's government seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

But China wants all the tractors to go to tobacco farmers and expects Zimbabwe to deliver 30 million kilograms by the end of the year, Haru Mutasa, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said in Harare.

While the West is trying to pressure Mugabe into lessening his brutal crackdown on the government's opposition parties, China is offering aid. And the only strings attached are financial ones: the equipment given by China has to be used for cash crops. This in a country experiencing widespread hunger and poverty.

So at the end of the day, Beijing is showing Mugabe that even if he flagrantly violates human rights and the pitiful charade that passes for democracy in Zimbabwe, the Chinese will be there to offer assistance. So long as the price is right, of course.

So are we really surprised that Beijing is financially and diplomatically underwriting Khartoum's genocide in Darfur?

Via The Guardian, Google and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have come together to form the online mapping project, Crisis in Darfur:

Crisis in Darfur enables more than 200 million Google Earth users worldwide to visualize and better understand the genocide currently unfolding in Darfur, Sudan. The Museum has assembled content—photographs, data, and eyewitness testimony—from a number of sources that are brought together for the first time in Google Earth.

Crisis in Darfur is the first project of the Museum’s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative that will over time include information on potential genocides allowing citizens, governments, and institutions to access information on atrocities in their nascent stages and respond.

From the AP:

A federal judge on Wednesday found Sudan liable for the attack on the now-repaired Navy destroyer, but said he would need time to study all the evidence and documentation to determine the amount of damages the families deserve.

"There is substantial evidence in this case, presented by the expert testimony, that the government of Sudan induced the particular bombing of the Cole by virtue of prior actions of the government of Sudan," U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar said at the end of a 1-day trial in Norfolk, where the now-repaired Cole is based.

...Four experts on terrorism, including former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, testified in person or by deposition Tuesday to support the families' contention that al-Qaida needed the African nation's help to carry out the attack.

"It would not have been as easy -- it might have been possible -- but it would not have been as easy," Woolsey said, referring to Sudan's alleged assistance in providing economic support, places to train and false documents.

The experts testified that Sudan let terrorist training camps operate within its borders and gave al-Qaida members diplomatic passports and diplomatic pouches to ship explosives and weapons without being searched. They cited testimony from other trials, a declassified Canadian intelligence report, State Department reports and their own studies.

Al Jazeera reports on the murder of two AU peacekeepers in Darfur:

Two African Union peacekeepers have been killed and another critically wounded after being shot by gunmen in Darfur, the AU said Wednesday.

The peacekeeping mission said it was "deeply concerned" that the gunmen are believed to belong to the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), the rebel faction that signed the Darfur peace agreement last May.

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the AU has its headquarters, a Darfur force official said the dead soldiers were Nigerian.

"They were just shopping. They were unarmed and they were attacked by unidentified men," said Mahmoud Kane, the head of the Darfur Intergrated Task Force.

"This deplorable and condemnable act was perpetrated by gunmen believed to be elements belonging to Sudan Liberation Movement or Army [Minni Minnawi faction], which is in full control of [the town of] Graida," an AU statement said.

Minni Minnawi is the SLA leader who signed the peace agreement.

I never thought I'd be able to ask this question, but have you read Angelina Jolie's op-ed in The Washington Post today? The truth be told, it's not any better or any worse than most other pieces I've read in the mainstream press. And to her credit, she (unlike most people who have an opinion about Darfur, myself included) has actually been there.

Like most other proponents of intervention, she doesn't say exactly what she thinks that would entail, but she does come out as a strong supporter of the ICC accusations.

I think it was Bono who once said (more or less), "Celebrity is a currency, and I want to spend mine well." I have to say that I couldn't agree more, and if Angelina Jolie wants to spend hers on Darfur, then I say more power to her.

Yesterday afternoon, I watched live coverage of ICC Judge Luis Moreno-Ocampo's press conference in which he outlines Khartoum's complicity in the "atrocities" in Darfur, which the UN has not owned up to calling by their proper name: genocide.

The International Criminal Court's prosecutor in The Hague outlined what he called operational, logistical and command links between Sudan's government in Khartoum and horse-mounted nomadic militias it recruited and bankrolled to carry out mass killings in the Darfur region, and he named a member of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's inner circle as a suspect in the atrocities.

In a 94-page prosecution document filed with the court's judges, Luis Moreno-Ocampo singled out Ahmad Muhammad Harun, now a state minister for humanitarian affairs who was state minister of the interior, along with Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman (also known as Ali Kushayb), a leader of the Darfur militia known as the Janjaweed, in a total of 51 crimes against humanity and war crimes. The filing marked the first accusations against named individuals as a prelude to a trial.

The chief prosecutor's accusations -- which fall short of a formal indictment -- come after a 21-month investigation that led to 60 countries and focused on the worst crimes committed in 2003 and 2004. The prosecutor also said his office was expanding its probe to look at current crimes, and in a teleconference with foreign journalists, he warned that other Sudanese government officials could be held responsible.

"We will exonerate no one," he said. "I did it with Harun, and I will follow the evidence wherever it is going."

So far, the results of the investigation have been pretty meager, since Ali Kushayb is already in Sudanese custody and Harun is only a mid-level official. Hopefully, though, this report can start putting pressure on Khartoum by threatening to expand the accusations and start indicting some bigger, like Gosh, for example.

In cases like this, if there is no other way of squeezing Khartoum, I think it might be worth trading justice for an end to genocide. That is to say that I'd rather see a genocide stopped than see it finished and then maybe see its architects judged in the ICC after they've fallen from power. But at this point, that's probably a false choice, because, at the end of the day, the "international community" hasn't tried very hard to squeeze Khartoum.

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the contrast between center and periphery in Sudan as seen by the increasingly chic Khartoum and its slums and other regions. Khartoum's success has been funded by Sudan's newfound oil wealth, much of which comes from the south.

The article makes an important point about Sudanese politics and the country's regional wars -- the main underpinning of conflict in the south, the Nuba Mountains and in Darfur is the distinction between center and periphery in which Khartoum enjoys prosperity while the rest of the country suffers:

In Soba Aradi [a slum outside of Khartoum], people see little difference between the conflict in southern Sudan, the current conflict in Darfur and their own treatment in Khartoum.

Though the war in southern Sudan had a religious dimension in that it involved an attempt by the government to impose Islamic law on a population that is about 30 percent Christian, the primary grievances of the rebel movement there had more to do with access to resources and power. The conflict in Darfur also largely comes down to a struggle for resources.

"It's all the same because it's the same government," said Emmanuel Agrey Lado, a physician's assistant from southern Sudan whose home has been bulldozed twice in two years.

U.S. diplomats, however, have mostly treated southern Sudan and the conflict in Darfur separately.

After intense engagement by the Bush administration, the Sudanese government in 2005 signed a U.S.-backed peace agreement creating a semiautonomous region in southern Sudan, just as government troops were intensifying their onslaught in Darfur.

...Increasingly, leaders in the south say the fate of their region is very much intertwined with that of Darfur, a notion that hearkens back to the vision of John Garang, the widely popular and iconic leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) who died in a helicopter crash in 2005.

Under his leadership, the SPLM had strong ties to rebel groups not only in Darfur, but also in the north and the east, as Garang came to realize that the suffering extended beyond his own region and that the only way to achieve a more just order in Sudan was through a unified movement. After his death, those relationships languished.

In recent weeks, however, the current president of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has been reaching out to Darfur rebel leaders.

"We have similar grievances," said Deng Alor Kuol, a southerner who became a minister in the national government after the 2005 peace agreement. "Marginalization and neglect."

As Charles Kalisto, a resident of Soba Aradi, put it, "When I see all these tall buildings" in Khartoum, "I ask, 'Why am I staying under a plastic sheet?'"

This point is one that I cannot stress enough.

In an unexpected (by me) trip, New Mexico governor, Bill Richards, went to Khartoum to try to get Khartoum to allow UN peacekeepers in Darfur. He met separately with President Omar al-Bashir, former rebel leader Minni Minnowi and foreign minister Lam Akol:

Richardson told an Associated Press reporter traveling with him that he and al-Bashir discussed the U.N. peacekeeping force, a cease-fire, protection for humanitarian groups working in the region, increasing sexual violence against refugees and a potential conference with rebel leaders.

...He discussed the [Abuja accord] later with Minni Minnawi, the leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement that signed the agreement and subsequently became a presidential assistant. Minnawi expressed disappointment that the government has not yet disarmed the militias and told Richardson if the al-Bashir's government does not honor its commitments, there will be regime change.

...In Khartoum, Richardson also met with Sudanese foreign minister Lam Akol, bringing along humanitarian workers that included one representative of the Save Darfur Coalition. The coalition organized the trip and has been instrumental in bringing attention to the crisis and criticism on al-Bashir's government.

According to the AP, this trip was meant to draw attention to Richardson's "extensive foreign policy background, including his tenure as U.S. envoy to the United Nations" in preparation for his "likely White House bid."

Given how apathetic Americans are about the genocide in Darfur, I can't imagine that this sort of a trip could do much besides show voters that he's got enough clout to meet with a head of state (although it's a lot less controversial than a similar trip to Iraq, Iran or North Korea). In any case, if it's an attempt to garner future votes, it's certainly made me sympathetic to his platform.

Let's hope he has some success in Sudan.

(Via Neil/Ezra) I wonder if Mark Krikorian recognizes the irony of an Armenian-American arguing against offering asylum to a people that's being targeted in a genocide. Had all countries followed his lead a hundred years ago, his family probably would have died in the deserts of Syria at the hands of the Young Turks:

Zionism Is Not a Suicide Pact   [Mark Krikorian]

Good for Israel in announcing it will turn back all Darfur refugees sneaking across the border from Egypt — thousands of Muslims claiming asylum would present an existential threat to the Jewish state. But here’s what the government has to deal with: the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, what appears to be the country’s equivalent of the ACLU, said that it is "Israel's moral and legal obligation to accept any refugees or asylum seekers facing life-threatening danger or infringements on their freedom." That last bit is great – “infringements on their freedoms.” So, apparently anyone, anywhere who doesn’t enjoy complete political freedom and manages to sneak into Israel should be allowed to stay. This kind of post-nationalism is bad enough in Europe and the U.S., but we at least have some strategic depth, as it were – the very existence of such sentiments in a country as small and insecure as Israel doesn’t bode well for its long-term viability.

There's nothing like pulling the ladder up once you and yours have made it to safety.

Eric Reeves has taken down a recent op-ed piece by Time's Sam Dealey. The Reeves rebuttal is detailed and lengthy, so there aren't any really pithy quotes to add here. In other words, read the whole thing.

Most of the coverage about the arms deal between France and Libya has focused on the quid pro quo (officially denied) of offering arms for the release of the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor. One aspect of the piece that's been overlooked is the fact that offering arms to Tripoli might be at odds with the stated policy of France and the UK in Darfur. Libya has a long history of arming the "Arab" side of the region's racial war, which has involved Darfur and Chad, in hopes of creating a united pan-Arab state in the region.

So although its author doesn't seem terribly familiar the region's decades-long war, I was glad to see this article in the Guardian on the possibility of a conflict arising from the arms deal between their policy in Libya and their policies in Darfur and Chad.

This is an important question, and those who wish to read about the conflict in the Sahara and Sahel would do well to check out the new and updated edition of Burr's and Collins's book on the subject.

The UN Security Council has finally approved a Chapter 7 resolution for Darfur. I'm curious to see how long it actually takes to gather enough troops and get them out there. Apparently most of them are supposed to be African, so I'd like to know who all has agreed to send troops.

The resolution now calls for a peacekeeping mission to begin no later than October, and cites Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, under which the Security Council is permitted to authorize the use of force to carry out the mandate.

Most of the peacekeepers are supposed to be drawn from African nations, and would include a beleaguered force of some 7,000 soldiers already in Darfur from the African Union, placing it under a unified command and control with the United Nations force.

The resolution authorizes a maximum of 19,555 military personnel and 6,432 civilian police officers. It does not spell out what role would be played by major powers, including the United States.

 On a related note, I find it really curious that the number that keeps being brandied around (and has been cited for the last year or two) is 200,000 dead in Darfur. The numbers went, all of a sudden, from "tens of thousands" to 200,000, which I think is a lot closer to the reality, but which is still a conservative, and strangely static, estimation.

Eric Reeves, for example, argued back in the Spring of 2006 that the death count (included in this are those who have died of disease and malnutrition in addition to violence) was around 450,000. And the US State Department put out an estimate in early 2005 that the excess death toll was 98,000 and 181,000. Regardless of the estimate, though, it seems strange for the media to continue citing the same number over the course of a couple of years.

A Lexis Nexis search of Darfur coverage in the Times, for example, shows that the 200,000 figure was used as far back as November 7, 2005 ("Surge in Violence in Sudan Erodes Hope"). In that report, we are informed of "the deaths of at least 200,000 people in Darfur," whereas in today's report, we are told that "some 200,000 people have been killed in four years of conflict." Are we really to believe that the numbers have remained unchanged for nearly two years?

While death counts in remote conflict zones are by their nature difficult to discern and in cases like this one usually controversial, there is no excuse for major media outlets, once having made the decision to use a figure, to continue using it unchanged for nearly two years. The readership of the Times could be forgiven for thinking that there had been no new deaths in Darfur since November, 2005. This is obviously untrue, and they should either update their figures or if they insist on continuing to use 200,000, they should stress that this number is two years old.

A new friend of mine sent me a blog entry on a Washington Post piece attacking Americans and Europeans who want to "Save Africa," and especially those who want to "Save Darfur."

Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."

There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head -- because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.

Regardless of whether Africa is "in" or not -- whether it's the cause du jour -- if anyone's to be giving a finger rapping to well-meaning white kids from the ivy league, it certainly ought not to be Uzodinma Iweala, the American-born and -raised son of a cabinet member of the Nigerian thug extraordinaire, Obasanjo. The piece's author went to a D.C. prep school then to Harvard, and is now off to Columbia med school, so I imagine that his time in Africa hasn't been much better than that of those pasty-faced do-gooders who "fly in for internships." (Incidentally, does Iweala take the boat from Washington, I wonder?) Furthermore, I think it's telling that Granta named him in their "Best of Young American Novelists 2." 

Fairly or not, Iweala reminds me of my time in the UN system. The UN works on a quota system for permanent posts, presumably so that the secretariat be filled with people from all over the world. This might be a good thing if it weren't for the fact that the quota for countries like Nigeria are taken up by people like Iweala, not the Africans and Asians who have lived their entire lives in their native countries and had to fight against the odds to get an education while working at a human rights NGO in countries like Cameroon or Bangladesh. I once took coffee breaks with a brilliant European intern who wasn't getting paid and couldn't get a proper job in his section, despite the fact that he'd completed his PhD in a relevant field and was widely published in his field's academic journals. The person who was second-in-charge in his section was a European guy who only had the equivalent of a B.A. in his field, but whose dad happened to be a former diplomat (and UN functionary) from an African country. This guy had lived his whole life in a European capital , but he had a passport from Africa, and the intern's compatriots were over-represented at that UN organization. So that was that.

Another thing that bothers me about the remarks made by Iweala is that he doesn't mention, for example, the role that such a campaign led by Americans (mostly black and religious groups) played in negotiating an end to the civil war between the north and south of Sudan. And guys like him are the same ones who are quick to fault Europe or the US for not having done anything for Rwanda. (I'm also in that camp, but I'd like to think that I'm somewhat more consistent in my criticism.) Furthermore, what about the Congo? If Central Africa had been left to its own devices instead of given the world's largest UN peacekeeping force (from five different continents), I imagine that the death toll would be considerably worse than it already is.

So while there's something to be said about "African solutions for African problems," I'm afraid that entrusting Libya, a country that's responsible for many of the current problems in Darfur and Chad in the first place, isn't necessarily such a hot idea just because Gadaffi isn't white. Likewise, Uganda's and Rwanda's African solution to the Congo and Mbeki's African non-solution to Zimbabwe aren't exactly what I'd call steps in the right direction.

I still haven't read UNEP's report on Darfur (pdf), due to a lack of time (it's 358 pages) and a lot of other lengthy reading on my plate these days. I have, however, followed some of the press coverage, which makes it sound like the genocide in Darfur is the result of purely ecological factors, including desertification, water shortages and global warming. As it happens, I've worked with UNEP on a publication before, and I'm inclined to believe that their report is a lot more nuanced than the press coverage gives it credit for. But I'll have to save that final judgement for when I have the time to sit down and read it.

In any case, the fact that environmental concerns and competition for resources places a part in conflict is an obvious point, it's how much of an impact these concerns have that is at issue. Lydia Polgreen, whose coverage of Sudan in the Times has been very good, has a piece in this week's Week in Review that takes a quick look at the underground lake recently discovered in Darfur. She quotes Alex de Waal and John Prendergast, both of whom know a lot about Sudan, in order to illustrate her point that it's less the ecological strain that's to fault for conflict in Sudan and more how that problem is dealt with:

A scientific explanation for the problem (environmental degradation) along with a tidy technological solution (irrigation) gratifies the modern humanitarian impulse.

But the history of Sudan, a grim chronicle of civil war, famine, coups and despotism, gives ample reason to be skeptical.

“Like all resources water can be used for good or ill,” said Alex de Waal, a scholar who has studied the impact of climate variation in Sudan and who witnessed the 1984-85 famine that is often cited as the beginning of the ecological crisis gripping Darfur. “It can be a blessing or also a curse. If the government acts true to form and tries to create some sort of oasis in the desert and control who settles there, that would simply be an extension of the crisis, not a solution.”

The droughts that gripped Sudan in the 1980s, and the migrations and other social changes they forced, have doubtless played a role in the conflict by increasing competition for water and land between farmers, who tend to be non-Arab, and herders, many of whom are Arabs. But an environmental catastrophe cannot become a violent cataclysm without a powerful human hand to guide it in that direction.

“These wider environmental factors don’t have impact in and of themselves” in terms of fomenting conflict, Mr. de Waal said. “The question is how they are managed.”

[...]

“Climate change and the lack of rain are much less important than the land-use patterns promoted by the government of Sudan and the development policies of World Bank and I.M.F., which were focused on intensive agricultural expansion that really mined the soils and left a lot of land unusable,” said Mr. Prendergast, who has been studying Sudan for 20 years. “That was probably the principal impetus for a lot of intra-Darfur migration in the decades leading up to the conflict in Darfur.”

She then goes on to make a point that I've been harping on for a while now:

A report released last year by the Coalition for International Justice on the role that oil and mechanized farming have played in human rights abuses in Sudan concluded: “The predominant root of conflict in Sudan is the instability that results from the systemic abuse of the rural (and recently urbanized) poor at the hands of the economic and political elites of central Sudan.”

In this analysis, the heart of the Darfur conflict, as in all conflicts in Sudan, is the battle for control of resources and riches, but not between farmers and herders, northerners and southerners, Christians and Muslims, or Arabs and non-Arabs.

It is a conflict between those at the center of the country, the elites who have controlled Sudan and its wealth for the past century and a half, and the desperately poor people who beg for scraps from the periphery.

Until that equation changes, many analysts argue, nothing else will.

US allies in Addis Ababa have been facing some pretty serious charges lately, the latest coming from the Times. It seems that in an effort to combat the mainly ethnic-Somali rebel group in the east of the country, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the government has been starving the entire region:

The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large swaths of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say.

The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to relief officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian Parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government’s actions.

The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality.

Humanitarian officials say the ban on aid convoys and commercial traffic, intended to squeeze the rebels and dry up their bases of support, has sent food prices skyrocketing and disrupted trade routes, preventing the nomads who live there from selling their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people are now sealed off in a desiccated, unforgiving landscape that is difficult to survive in even in the best of times.

“Food cannot get in,” said Mohammed Diab, the director of the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia.

In this part of Africa, famine has often been used a blunt political tool by central governments to keep the periphery in line. Precedent has already been set in Addis Ababa and Khartoum. Possibly even more disconcerting, however, are allegations that the government is arming ethnic militias in order to attack the rebels:

The people of the Ogaden are mostly Somalis and ethnically distinct from the highland Ethiopians who have ruled the country for centuries, and the long battle over the region has been steadily escalating this year. The country director of one Western aid agency, who recently returned from a field visit there, said he saw two villages that had been burned to the ground and several schools that had been converted into military bases, with foxholes.

Humanitarian officials say the military is building up militias and setting the stage for clan-based bloodshed. The rank and file of the Ogaden National Liberation Front tend to be members of the Ogaden clan, and so the government has turned to other clans to form anti-rebel militias. In the past few weeks, thousands of men have been armed.

“Those Ethiopians are smart,” [former MP] Mr. Kalif, 32, said. “They know Somalis are more loyal to clans than anything else.” Tactics like these, he said, drove him to defect June 20 while attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was affiliated with the ruling party, and had been representing an area in the eastern Ogaden for the past seven years.

In both cases, the actions of the Ethiopian government are disconcertingly close to those of the Sudanese government. It looks like any ethnic-based collective punishment aimed at quelling a separatist movement in Ogaden is still in the formative stage. The US should use its clout to dissuade Addis Ababa from going down the same road that Sudan has taken, as some in the House of Representatives like Randy Forbes (R, VA) have started to do by stripping Ethiopia of American aid. In any case, this is a case that Americans should keep an eye on, because it's obviously better to prevent humanitarian disasters and ethnic violence before it happens rather than wringing our hands when it does. 

The London Review has a summary piece about China's new love affair with Africa. If you've been keeping up with Chinese affairs on the continent, there probably won't be much new information in this piece, but it's a nice summary, and it's helpful to have it all in one piece. It's a subscription only article, but the main gist is summed up here:

In all likelihood China will be neither a saviour nor a destroyer. Some African opinion leaders have realised that it does not really stand for a different model. ‘Non-interference’ is not a value so much as a thin shield for old-fashioned realpolitik. China, like any other major power, generally puts its own strategic interests first. If its clients prove too embarrassing, it will restrain them, just as the United States once dumped Mobutu Sese Seko, when his taste for champagne, diamonds and bloodshed proved too embarrassing. Yet if China’s interests are better served by protecting rogues, it will protect them. If Chinese companies can get away with destroying Africa’s environment and paying little attention to its workers, they probably will. If they cannot – because local activists or consumers call them on it, or because it affects their sales in Africa and the West – perhaps they won’t.

Like the Western powers, China seems set to traffic in whatever images of Africa suit it: before the 2006 China-Africa summit in Beijing, Chinese officials plastered the city with posters of tribal warriors and lions that might have been taken from the National Geographic fifty years ago. Like the colonial powers, China will buy Africa’s resources and sell it manufactured products, regardless of whether Africa manages to produce anything that China wants to buy or succeeds in using China’s largesse to upgrade its own industries. ‘The key must be mutual benefit,’ Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, told a group of Chinese officials. ‘Otherwise we might end up with a few holes in the ground where the resources have been extracted, and all the added value will be in China.’

Last summer, when the main opposition leader in Zambia, infuriated by the deaths in the explosives factory, made Chinese investment an issue in the presidential election, the Chinese Embassy threatened to break off relations with Zambia if he was elected. Hardly a model of non-interference.

Al JAzeera reports on this strange conference in Paris on Darfur. From the report, it's hard to see what the purpose of the conference is, particularly since Khartoum and the AU aren't attending. The US and China, however, are, as well as 15 other countries. Al Jazeera did, however, take advantage of the situation to print a funny picture of Mademoiselle Rice and Kouchner:

 

Khartoum has finally accepted an AU/UN hybrid peacekeeping force. Or so they say. Given Khartoum's track record, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some serious backpedaling in the next couple of days.

Otherwise, Der Spiegel has a piece on Darfur and John Prendergast that's been reprinted by Salon. And I haven't read it yet, but Prendergast's report on Darfur is available online (pdf) through the Enough, the project to abolish genocide and mass atrocities, that's been formed by the International Crisis Group and the Center for American Progress.

This time CIA is getting help from Khartoum by intelligence gathering done in Iraq by embedded Sudanese spies, all while Khartoum is "bombing their people out the wazoo" in Darfur, according to an official at State.

This explains why Washington's most recent round of sanctions against Sudan are but window dressing."

Lee Feinstein has a piece in TPM's America Abroad outlining the relationship between China and Sudan. To answer a charge from comments that my evidence (also in comments) that China is still supplying Sudan with weapons was "google-y and anecdotal," here is what Feinstein has to say about Chinese arms in Sudan. (Incidentally, I'm not sure I even understand how coming across an article in the Sudan Times and a report from Amnesty International by using google is supposed to make those sources any less valid. Furthermore, I'm not sure how a report by Amnesty International is "anecdotal.")

China maintains a defense relationship with Sudan, despite the UN arms embargo that has been in place for Darfur since 2005. The Security Council imposed an embargo on all nongovernmental forces operating in Darfur in July 2004, and expanded it to include government forces as well in 2005. Sales to Khartoum are still permitted, although a UN panel, which visited Sudan in August 2005 to investigate violations of the embargo, recommended in April 2006 that the Security Council expand the embargo to the entire country.

Information about recent Chinese arms sales to Sudan is difficult to discern both because of China's secrecy and because of the inherent difficulty of tracking the flow of small arms, which are below most international reporting thresholds. The UN Panel of Experts reported spotting Chinese-made military trucks in the Port of Sudan that appeared similar to those used on Sudanese Army bases in Darfur. Non-governmental organizations have reported that small arms used by rebels, janjaweed, and government forces in Darfur are of Chinese origin. There are also reports that Khartoum supplied Chinese-made automatic grenade launchers to the United Front for Democratic Change, a Chadian rebel group that also operates out of bases in Darfur. Russia and France are also suppliers of arms and military equipment to Sudan. In the last six years, Russia reported to the United Nations deliveries of 33 attack helicopters to Khartoum, eight combat aircraft, and 30 armored combat. (Between 2001 and 2004, France exported over $1 million of mostly small arms, spare parts, and ammunition.)

Beijing defends its sales to Khartoum as legal, and says that it requires all of its buyers not to transfer arms to other parties, including guerilla groups, a claim which is difficult to confirm independently. Zhai Jun, China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, said in March 2007, "With Sudan, we have cooperation in many aspects, including military cooperation. In this, we have nothing to hide."

In early April, China received Sudan's Joint Chief of Staff. The Chinese Minister of Defense told his Sudanese counterpart that China was "willing to further develop cooperation between the two militaries in every sphere."

Feinstein isn't offering up anything new or salacious in this short piece, but it's a decent outline of the economic, political and military relationship between Sudan and China.

For more on China and Sudan, see the tireless and laudable Eric Reeves.

Al Jazeera gives us a good example of how China may be doing more harm than good in Africa with its value-neutral investment in the continent:

China has agreed to give Zimbabwe $25m worth of farm equipment to help revive the country's ailing tobacco industry.

But Beijing wants something in return – large quantities of Zimbabwe's tobacco.

Jia Qinglin, a senior Chinese Communist party official, presented the equipment, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, to Robert Mugabe, the country's president, on Saturday in a deal to replace equipment damaged when Mugabe's government seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

But China wants all the tractors to go to tobacco farmers and expects Zimbabwe to deliver 30 million kilograms by the end of the year, Haru Mutasa, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said in Harare.

While the West is trying to pressure Mugabe into lessening his brutal crackdown on the government's opposition parties, China is offering aid. And the only strings attached are financial ones: the equipment given by China has to be used for cash crops. This in a country experiencing widespread hunger and poverty.

So at the end of the day, Beijing is showing Mugabe that even if he flagrantly violates human rights and the pitiful charade that passes for democracy in Zimbabwe, the Chinese will be there to offer assistance. So long as the price is right, of course.

So are we really surprised that Beijing is financially and diplomatically underwriting Khartoum's genocide in Darfur?

Via The Guardian, Google and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have come together to form the online mapping project, Crisis in Darfur:

Crisis in Darfur enables more than 200 million Google Earth users worldwide to visualize and better understand the genocide currently unfolding in Darfur, Sudan. The Museum has assembled content—photographs, data, and eyewitness testimony—from a number of sources that are brought together for the first time in Google Earth.

Crisis in Darfur is the first project of the Museum’s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative that will over time include information on potential genocides allowing citizens, governments, and institutions to access information on atrocities in their nascent stages and respond.

From the AP:

A federal judge on Wednesday found Sudan liable for the attack on the now-repaired Navy destroyer, but said he would need time to study all the evidence and documentation to determine the amount of damages the families deserve.

"There is substantial evidence in this case, presented by the expert testimony, that the government of Sudan induced the particular bombing of the Cole by virtue of prior actions of the government of Sudan," U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar said at the end of a 1-day trial in Norfolk, where the now-repaired Cole is based.

...Four experts on terrorism, including former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, testified in person or by deposition Tuesday to support the families' contention that al-Qaida needed the African nation's help to carry out the attack.

"It would not have been as easy -- it might have been possible -- but it would not have been as easy," Woolsey said, referring to Sudan's alleged assistance in providing economic support, places to train and false documents.

The experts testified that Sudan let terrorist training camps operate within its borders and gave al-Qaida members diplomatic passports and diplomatic pouches to ship explosives and weapons without being searched. They cited testimony from other trials, a declassified Canadian intelligence report, State Department reports and their own studies.

Al Jazeera reports on the murder of two AU peacekeepers in Darfur:

Two African Union peacekeepers have been killed and another critically wounded after being shot by gunmen in Darfur, the AU said Wednesday.

The peacekeeping mission said it was "deeply concerned" that the gunmen are believed to belong to the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), the rebel faction that signed the Darfur peace agreement last May.

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the AU has its headquarters, a Darfur force official said the dead soldiers were Nigerian.

"They were just shopping. They were unarmed and they were attacked by unidentified men," said Mahmoud Kane, the head of the Darfur Intergrated Task Force.

"This deplorable and condemnable act was perpetrated by gunmen believed to be elements belonging to Sudan Liberation Movement or Army [Minni Minnawi faction], which is in full control of [the town of] Graida," an AU statement said.

Minni Minnawi is the SLA leader who signed the peace agreement.

I never thought I'd be able to ask this question, but have you read Angelina Jolie's op-ed in The Washington Post today? The truth be told, it's not any better or any worse than most other pieces I've read in the mainstream press. And to her credit, she (unlike most people who have an opinion about Darfur, myself included) has actually been there.

Like most other proponents of intervention, she doesn't say exactly what she thinks that would entail, but she does come out as a strong supporter of the ICC accusations.

I think it was Bono who once said (more or less), "Celebrity is a currency, and I want to spend mine well." I have to say that I couldn't agree more, and if Angelina Jolie wants to spend hers on Darfur, then I say more power to her.

Yesterday afternoon, I watched live coverage of ICC Judge Luis Moreno-Ocampo's press conference in which he outlines Khartoum's complicity in the "atrocities" in Darfur, which the UN has not owned up to calling by their proper name: genocide.

The International Criminal Court's prosecutor in The Hague outlined what he called operational, logistical and command links between Sudan's government in Khartoum and horse-mounted nomadic militias it recruited and bankrolled to carry out mass killings in the Darfur region, and he named a member of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's inner circle as a suspect in the atrocities.

In a 94-page prosecution document filed with the court's judges, Luis Moreno-Ocampo singled out Ahmad Muhammad Harun, now a state minister for humanitarian affairs who was state minister of the interior, along with Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman (also known as Ali Kushayb), a leader of the Darfur militia known as the Janjaweed, in a total of 51 crimes against humanity and war crimes. The filing marked the first accusations against named individuals as a prelude to a trial.

The chief prosecutor's accusations -- which fall short of a formal indictment -- come after a 21-month investigation that led to 60 countries and focused on the worst crimes committed in 2003 and 2004. The prosecutor also said his office was expanding its probe to look at current crimes, and in a teleconference with foreign journalists, he warned that other Sudanese government officials could be held responsible.

"We will exonerate no one," he said. "I did it with Harun, and I will follow the evidence wherever it is going."

So far, the results of the investigation have been pretty meager, since Ali Kushayb is already in Sudanese custody and Harun is only a mid-level official. Hopefully, though, this report can start putting pressure on Khartoum by threatening to expand the accusations and start indicting some bigger, like Gosh, for example.

In cases like this, if there is no other way of squeezing Khartoum, I think it might be worth trading justice for an end to genocide. That is to say that I'd rather see a genocide stopped than see it finished and then maybe see its architects judged in the ICC after they've fallen from power. But at this point, that's probably a false choice, because, at the end of the day, the "international community" hasn't tried very hard to squeeze Khartoum.

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the contrast between center and periphery in Sudan as seen by the increasingly chic Khartoum and its slums and other regions. Khartoum's success has been funded by Sudan's newfound oil wealth, much of which comes from the south.

The article makes an important point about Sudanese politics and the country's regional wars -- the main underpinning of conflict in the south, the Nuba Mountains and in Darfur is the distinction between center and periphery in which Khartoum enjoys prosperity while the rest of the country suffers:

In Soba Aradi [a slum outside of Khartoum], people see little difference between the conflict in southern Sudan, the current conflict in Darfur and their own treatment in Khartoum.

Though the war in southern Sudan had a religious dimension in that it involved an attempt by the government to impose Islamic law on a population that is about 30 percent Christian, the primary grievances of the rebel movement there had more to do with access to resources and power. The conflict in Darfur also largely comes down to a struggle for resources.

"It's all the same because it's the same government," said Emmanuel Agrey Lado, a physician's assistant from southern Sudan whose home has been bulldozed twice in two years.

U.S. diplomats, however, have mostly treated southern Sudan and the conflict in Darfur separately.

After intense engagement by the Bush administration, the Sudanese government in 2005 signed a U.S.-backed peace agreement creating a semiautonomous region in southern Sudan, just as government troops were intensifying their onslaught in Darfur.

...Increasingly, leaders in the south say the fate of their region is very much intertwined with that of Darfur, a notion that hearkens back to the vision of John Garang, the widely popular and iconic leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) who died in a helicopter crash in 2005.

Under his leadership, the SPLM had strong ties to rebel groups not only in Darfur, but also in the north and the east, as Garang came to realize that the suffering extended beyond his own region and that the only way to achieve a more just order in Sudan was through a unified movement. After his death, those relationships languished.

In recent weeks, however, the current president of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has been reaching out to Darfur rebel leaders.

"We have similar grievances," said Deng Alor Kuol, a southerner who became a minister in the national government after the 2005 peace agreement. "Marginalization and neglect."

As Charles Kalisto, a resident of Soba Aradi, put it, "When I see all these tall buildings" in Khartoum, "I ask, 'Why am I staying under a plastic sheet?'"

This point is one that I cannot stress enough.

In an unexpected (by me) trip, New Mexico governor, Bill Richards, went to Khartoum to try to get Khartoum to allow UN peacekeepers in Darfur. He met separately with President Omar al-Bashir, former rebel leader Minni Minnowi and foreign minister Lam Akol:

Richardson told an Associated Press reporter traveling with him that he and al-Bashir discussed the U.N. peacekeeping force, a cease-fire, protection for humanitarian groups working in the region, increasing sexual violence against refugees and a potential conference with rebel leaders.

...He discussed the [Abuja accord] later with Minni Minnawi, the leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement that signed the agreement and subsequently became a presidential assistant. Minnawi expressed disappointment that the government has not yet disarmed the militias and told Richardson if the al-Bashir's government does not honor its commitments, there will be regime change.

...In Khartoum, Richardson also met with Sudanese foreign minister Lam Akol, bringing along humanitarian workers that included one representative of the Save Darfur Coalition. The coalition organized the trip and has been instrumental in bringing attention to the crisis and criticism on al-Bashir's government.

According to the AP, this trip was meant to draw attention to Richardson's "extensive foreign policy background, including his tenure as U.S. envoy to the United Nations" in preparation for his "likely White House bid."

Given how apathetic Americans are about the genocide in Darfur, I can't imagine that this sort of a trip could do much besides show voters that he's got enough clout to meet with a head of state (although it's a lot less controversial than a similar trip to Iraq, Iran or North Korea). In any case, if it's an attempt to garner future votes, it's certainly made me sympathetic to his platform.

Let's hope he has some success in Sudan.