the human province

The Times has an interesting and interactive map (I'm a sucker for these) showing the results of a poll taken on attitudes in several sub-Saharan countries: Senegal, Mali, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.

Some of the results are obvious, and others are not. The poll covers national issues, the economy and personal well-being, as well as international views. The most pressing national concerns seem to be "HIV/AIDS and other diseases," "corrupt political leaders," "crime" and "illegal drugs." Ethnic/religious conflict was seen as a problem by more than half of those polled in Kenya, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, with the latter polling particularly high.

Despite this, those polled seemed fairly optimistic, and those polled in every country overwhelmingly thought things would be better for their children than they have been for them.

Opinions vary pretty widely on the UN, US and AU, depending on the country, with Ethiopia unsurprisingly showing the most support for the AU, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa and the EU scoring particularly low overall for Africans' confidence that it can "help solve Africa's problems." 

In would have been interesting to have added more countries with one foot in "Arab Africa" and the other foot in "black Africa," particularly Sudan, Chad and Mauritania. Out of all the countries polled, the only two where the majority don't think that "Arabs and blacks in North Africa can live peacefully together" were Uganda and Tanzania.

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.

Alvaro de Soto, the UN special envoy to the Middle East, recently penned a confidential and very frank end of mission report, which was then leaked to the Guardian. Here is the Guardian's very short summary.

Joshua Landis, for his part, has compiled the parts that deal directly with engaging Syria. Here are some extracts that I found particularly interesting:

4. ...Notwithstanding my strenuous efforts, of which there is plenty of evidence in the DPA cables file, I was never authorized to go to Syria. None of my arguments in favour of going were ever refuted, nor was I given any precise reason for denial of the authorization requested. ...

99. There is an old saying that in the Middle East you can’t make war without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria. The first half is no longer valid, but I sense that the second remains true. For the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, keeping Syria at arm’s length is particularly galling. Those who advocate it seem to believe that it is possible to pursue an Israeli-Palestinian track while isolating Damascus....

100. ... I don’t believe they can seriously believe that it is possible to neatly compartmentalize the various fronts and deal with them sequentially, bestowing the favour of attention on well-behaving parties first.

101. In much the same way, does anyone seriously believe that a genuine process between Israel and the Palestinians can progress without Syria being either on board or, at the very least, not opposing it, and without opening some channel for addressing Syria’s grievances? If this should be attempted, we can be sure that a reminder of the Syrian capacity to spoil it wouldn’t be long in arriving.

102. The conventional wisdom is that Israel can’t handle more than one negotiation at a time. As recently as 27 April, in a piece in Haaretz titled “Why Syria must wait”, an Israeli ambassador wrote: “Few would dispute the assertion that the Israeli bridge is incapable of supporting two peace processes, a Syrian and a Palestinian one, at the same time.” I understand the political difficulties involved. But I believe it’s just not possible to completely disaggregate the two, or calmly wait for their turn with the occupier (take a number and have a seat in the waiting room until you are called, please), and that is why the Madrid conference was conceived as it was. This can’t be anything but one more layer of excuses not to negotiate.

These points seem obvious to me. There are those who think that engaging Syria is a waste of time, but one thing they fail to explain is why Damascus should make concessions before negotiating. After all, that's the whole point of negotiating, isn't it? From a purely strategic point of view, why would Syria give up its bargaining chips (meddling in Lebanon and supporting Hezbollah and Hamas) before negotiations have even begun? Would anyone ever ask Israel to give up their occupation of the Golan as a measure of good faith before negotiating with Damascus? Of course not. That's Israel's bargaining chip, and they'd be silly to give it up before making a deal.

This is not to say that I support Syrian meddling in Lebanon; as someone who lives in Beirut and has to put up with it, quite the opposite is true. But I do understand Lebanon's strategic importance to Syria, just as I understand its strategic importance to Palestine, Israel, Iran and the US.

So let's be honest here for a bit. Egypt and Jordan were flukes backed up by US aid money. A real, and just, solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict cannot be piecemeal. There must be a comprehensive peace that includes Palestine, Israel, Syria and Lebanon with the backing of the rest of the Arab states. I've already argued before that it's too late for a two-state solution, so I won't go into that right now, but maybe a two-state solution could be a stopgap for a long-term solution in the form of a single, democratic, secular binational state. But until the time comes when all sides stop stalling and get ready to deal, things are going to be pretty rough in this neck of the woods...

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.

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.

Here's another genocide-related event in the international community, which gives me the impression that something's rotten in, well, the Hague:

Serbia, the heir to Yugoslavia, obtained the tribunal's permission to keep parts of the archives out of the public eye. Citing national security, its lawyers blacked out many sensitive -- those who have seen them say incriminating -- pages. Judges and lawyers at the war crimes tribunal could see the censored material, but it was barred from the tribunal’s public records.

Now, lawyers and others who were involved in Serbia's bid for secrecy say that, at the time, Belgrade made its true objective clear: to keep the full military archives from the International Court of Justice, where Bosnia was suing Serbia for genocide. And they say Belgrade’s goal was achieved in February, when the international court, which is also in The Hague, declared Serbia not guilty of genocide, and absolved it from paying potentially enormous damages.

Lawyers interviewed in The Hague and Belgrade said that the outcome might well have been different had the International Court of Justice pressed for access to the full archives, and legal scholars and human rights groups said it was deeply troubling that the judges did not subpoena the documents directly from Serbia. At one point, the court rebuffed a Bosnian request that it demand the full documents, saying that ample evidence was available in tribunal records.

"It's a question that nags loudly," Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at American University in Washington, said recently in The Hague. "Why didn’t the court request the full documents? The fact that they were blacked out clearly implies these passages would have made a difference."

The ruling -- which was binding and final -- was in many ways meticulous, and acknowledged that the 15 judges had not seen the censored archives. But it did not say why the court did not order Serbia to provide the full documents.

The first-hand experience I've had at the UN and what I know of the tribunals in the Hague and Arusha have convinced me that it would be naïve to think that there are no deals being made in the smoke-filled hotel rooms.

This probably has something to do with Serbia's wishes to join the EU and the fact that a guilty verdict would probably ruin the country financially. But still, this seems unacceptable to me.

I've seen first hand how politics (office and international) can override common sense or even doing the right thing in a large bureaucracy. I shouldn't be surprised by stories like this anymore, and I guess I'm not.

But still. Shame on Ankara, and shame on the UN for kowtowing:

The United Nations dismantled an exhibit on the Rwandan genocide and postponed its scheduled opening by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday after the Turkish mission objected to references to the Armenian genocide in Turkey at the time of World War I.

The panels of graphics, photos and statements had been installed in the visitors lobby on Thursday by the British-based Aegis Trust. The trust campaigns for the prevention of genocide and runs a center in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, memorializing the 500,000 victims of the massacres there 13 years ago.

Hours after the show was assembled, however, a Turkish diplomat spotted offending words in a section entitled "What is genocide?" and raised objections.

The passage said that "following World War I, during which one million Armenians were murdered in Turkey," Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer credited with coining the word genocide, "urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes."

James Smith, the chief executive of Aegis, said he was told by the United Nations on Saturday night that the sentence would have to be eliminated or the exhibition would be struck.

...Mr. Smith said he was "very disappointed because this was supposed to talk about the lessons drawn from Rwanda and point up that what is happening in Darfur is the cost of inaction."

Via Weiss, a "portrait of Khalilzad as a grad student in the late 70s, from Anne Norton's book, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire":

He is a protege of Wolfowitz, who worked with him on the war with Iraq and the occupation... When I knew him, he was an Afghani graduate student and a radical. He boasted of the demonstrations he had organized in Beirut, of the fedayin he knew and had worked with, and of his friends who regularly visited Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi. He went to pro-Palestinian meetings. His room had a poster of Nasser in tears. He and I had taken [proto-neocon Albert] Wohlstetter's course on nuclear war together. He didn't seem, at the time, particularly interested in the course. He was, however, enthralled by Wohlstetter's party [for grad students]. In the elevator, in the apartment, he kept saying how much it all cost, how expensive it was, how much money Wohlstetter must have. Later, he borrowed my copy of Kojeve's Lectures on Hegel. When he returned it, one sentence was underlined. 'The bourgeois intellectual neither fights nor works.' The next summer, Wohlstetter got Khalilzad a job at Rand. I don't know what happened to the poster of Nasser.

Here's a story that's making the rounds at at least one UN organization, from a UN director who was refused entry to the US upon arrival in Washington for an official UN visit.

The Times has an interesting and interactive map (I'm a sucker for these) showing the results of a poll taken on attitudes in several sub-Saharan countries: Senegal, Mali, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.

Some of the results are obvious, and others are not. The poll covers national issues, the economy and personal well-being, as well as international views. The most pressing national concerns seem to be "HIV/AIDS and other diseases," "corrupt political leaders," "crime" and "illegal drugs." Ethnic/religious conflict was seen as a problem by more than half of those polled in Kenya, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, with the latter polling particularly high.

Despite this, those polled seemed fairly optimistic, and those polled in every country overwhelmingly thought things would be better for their children than they have been for them.

Opinions vary pretty widely on the UN, US and AU, depending on the country, with Ethiopia unsurprisingly showing the most support for the AU, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa and the EU scoring particularly low overall for Africans' confidence that it can "help solve Africa's problems." 

In would have been interesting to have added more countries with one foot in "Arab Africa" and the other foot in "black Africa," particularly Sudan, Chad and Mauritania. Out of all the countries polled, the only two where the majority don't think that "Arabs and blacks in North Africa can live peacefully together" were Uganda and Tanzania.

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.

Alvaro de Soto, the UN special envoy to the Middle East, recently penned a confidential and very frank end of mission report, which was then leaked to the Guardian. Here is the Guardian's very short summary.

Joshua Landis, for his part, has compiled the parts that deal directly with engaging Syria. Here are some extracts that I found particularly interesting:

4. ...Notwithstanding my strenuous efforts, of which there is plenty of evidence in the DPA cables file, I was never authorized to go to Syria. None of my arguments in favour of going were ever refuted, nor was I given any precise reason for denial of the authorization requested. ...

99. There is an old saying that in the Middle East you can’t make war without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria. The first half is no longer valid, but I sense that the second remains true. For the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, keeping Syria at arm’s length is particularly galling. Those who advocate it seem to believe that it is possible to pursue an Israeli-Palestinian track while isolating Damascus....

100. ... I don’t believe they can seriously believe that it is possible to neatly compartmentalize the various fronts and deal with them sequentially, bestowing the favour of attention on well-behaving parties first.

101. In much the same way, does anyone seriously believe that a genuine process between Israel and the Palestinians can progress without Syria being either on board or, at the very least, not opposing it, and without opening some channel for addressing Syria’s grievances? If this should be attempted, we can be sure that a reminder of the Syrian capacity to spoil it wouldn’t be long in arriving.

102. The conventional wisdom is that Israel can’t handle more than one negotiation at a time. As recently as 27 April, in a piece in Haaretz titled “Why Syria must wait”, an Israeli ambassador wrote: “Few would dispute the assertion that the Israeli bridge is incapable of supporting two peace processes, a Syrian and a Palestinian one, at the same time.” I understand the political difficulties involved. But I believe it’s just not possible to completely disaggregate the two, or calmly wait for their turn with the occupier (take a number and have a seat in the waiting room until you are called, please), and that is why the Madrid conference was conceived as it was. This can’t be anything but one more layer of excuses not to negotiate.

These points seem obvious to me. There are those who think that engaging Syria is a waste of time, but one thing they fail to explain is why Damascus should make concessions before negotiating. After all, that's the whole point of negotiating, isn't it? From a purely strategic point of view, why would Syria give up its bargaining chips (meddling in Lebanon and supporting Hezbollah and Hamas) before negotiations have even begun? Would anyone ever ask Israel to give up their occupation of the Golan as a measure of good faith before negotiating with Damascus? Of course not. That's Israel's bargaining chip, and they'd be silly to give it up before making a deal.

This is not to say that I support Syrian meddling in Lebanon; as someone who lives in Beirut and has to put up with it, quite the opposite is true. But I do understand Lebanon's strategic importance to Syria, just as I understand its strategic importance to Palestine, Israel, Iran and the US.

So let's be honest here for a bit. Egypt and Jordan were flukes backed up by US aid money. A real, and just, solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict cannot be piecemeal. There must be a comprehensive peace that includes Palestine, Israel, Syria and Lebanon with the backing of the rest of the Arab states. I've already argued before that it's too late for a two-state solution, so I won't go into that right now, but maybe a two-state solution could be a stopgap for a long-term solution in the form of a single, democratic, secular binational state. But until the time comes when all sides stop stalling and get ready to deal, things are going to be pretty rough in this neck of the woods...

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.

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.

Here's another genocide-related event in the international community, which gives me the impression that something's rotten in, well, the Hague:

Serbia, the heir to Yugoslavia, obtained the tribunal's permission to keep parts of the archives out of the public eye. Citing national security, its lawyers blacked out many sensitive -- those who have seen them say incriminating -- pages. Judges and lawyers at the war crimes tribunal could see the censored material, but it was barred from the tribunal’s public records.

Now, lawyers and others who were involved in Serbia's bid for secrecy say that, at the time, Belgrade made its true objective clear: to keep the full military archives from the International Court of Justice, where Bosnia was suing Serbia for genocide. And they say Belgrade’s goal was achieved in February, when the international court, which is also in The Hague, declared Serbia not guilty of genocide, and absolved it from paying potentially enormous damages.

Lawyers interviewed in The Hague and Belgrade said that the outcome might well have been different had the International Court of Justice pressed for access to the full archives, and legal scholars and human rights groups said it was deeply troubling that the judges did not subpoena the documents directly from Serbia. At one point, the court rebuffed a Bosnian request that it demand the full documents, saying that ample evidence was available in tribunal records.

"It's a question that nags loudly," Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at American University in Washington, said recently in The Hague. "Why didn’t the court request the full documents? The fact that they were blacked out clearly implies these passages would have made a difference."

The ruling -- which was binding and final -- was in many ways meticulous, and acknowledged that the 15 judges had not seen the censored archives. But it did not say why the court did not order Serbia to provide the full documents.

The first-hand experience I've had at the UN and what I know of the tribunals in the Hague and Arusha have convinced me that it would be naïve to think that there are no deals being made in the smoke-filled hotel rooms.

This probably has something to do with Serbia's wishes to join the EU and the fact that a guilty verdict would probably ruin the country financially. But still, this seems unacceptable to me.

I've seen first hand how politics (office and international) can override common sense or even doing the right thing in a large bureaucracy. I shouldn't be surprised by stories like this anymore, and I guess I'm not.

But still. Shame on Ankara, and shame on the UN for kowtowing:

The United Nations dismantled an exhibit on the Rwandan genocide and postponed its scheduled opening by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday after the Turkish mission objected to references to the Armenian genocide in Turkey at the time of World War I.

The panels of graphics, photos and statements had been installed in the visitors lobby on Thursday by the British-based Aegis Trust. The trust campaigns for the prevention of genocide and runs a center in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, memorializing the 500,000 victims of the massacres there 13 years ago.

Hours after the show was assembled, however, a Turkish diplomat spotted offending words in a section entitled "What is genocide?" and raised objections.

The passage said that "following World War I, during which one million Armenians were murdered in Turkey," Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer credited with coining the word genocide, "urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes."

James Smith, the chief executive of Aegis, said he was told by the United Nations on Saturday night that the sentence would have to be eliminated or the exhibition would be struck.

...Mr. Smith said he was "very disappointed because this was supposed to talk about the lessons drawn from Rwanda and point up that what is happening in Darfur is the cost of inaction."

Via Weiss, a "portrait of Khalilzad as a grad student in the late 70s, from Anne Norton's book, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire":

He is a protege of Wolfowitz, who worked with him on the war with Iraq and the occupation... When I knew him, he was an Afghani graduate student and a radical. He boasted of the demonstrations he had organized in Beirut, of the fedayin he knew and had worked with, and of his friends who regularly visited Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi. He went to pro-Palestinian meetings. His room had a poster of Nasser in tears. He and I had taken [proto-neocon Albert] Wohlstetter's course on nuclear war together. He didn't seem, at the time, particularly interested in the course. He was, however, enthralled by Wohlstetter's party [for grad students]. In the elevator, in the apartment, he kept saying how much it all cost, how expensive it was, how much money Wohlstetter must have. Later, he borrowed my copy of Kojeve's Lectures on Hegel. When he returned it, one sentence was underlined. 'The bourgeois intellectual neither fights nor works.' The next summer, Wohlstetter got Khalilzad a job at Rand. I don't know what happened to the poster of Nasser.

Here's a story that's making the rounds at at least one UN organization, from a UN director who was refused entry to the US upon arrival in Washington for an official UN visit.

The Times has an interesting and interactive map (I'm a sucker for these) showing the results of a poll taken on attitudes in several sub-Saharan countries: Senegal, Mali, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.

Some of the results are obvious, and others are not. The poll covers national issues, the economy and personal well-being, as well as international views. The most pressing national concerns seem to be "HIV/AIDS and other diseases," "corrupt political leaders," "crime" and "illegal drugs." Ethnic/religious conflict was seen as a problem by more than half of those polled in Kenya, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, with the latter polling particularly high.

Despite this, those polled seemed fairly optimistic, and those polled in every country overwhelmingly thought things would be better for their children than they have been for them.

Opinions vary pretty widely on the UN, US and AU, depending on the country, with Ethiopia unsurprisingly showing the most support for the AU, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa and the EU scoring particularly low overall for Africans' confidence that it can "help solve Africa's problems." 

In would have been interesting to have added more countries with one foot in "Arab Africa" and the other foot in "black Africa," particularly Sudan, Chad and Mauritania. Out of all the countries polled, the only two where the majority don't think that "Arabs and blacks in North Africa can live peacefully together" were Uganda and Tanzania.

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.

Alvaro de Soto, the UN special envoy to the Middle East, recently penned a confidential and very frank end of mission report, which was then leaked to the Guardian. Here is the Guardian's very short summary.

Joshua Landis, for his part, has compiled the parts that deal directly with engaging Syria. Here are some extracts that I found particularly interesting:

4. ...Notwithstanding my strenuous efforts, of which there is plenty of evidence in the DPA cables file, I was never authorized to go to Syria. None of my arguments in favour of going were ever refuted, nor was I given any precise reason for denial of the authorization requested. ...

99. There is an old saying that in the Middle East you can’t make war without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria. The first half is no longer valid, but I sense that the second remains true. For the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, keeping Syria at arm’s length is particularly galling. Those who advocate it seem to believe that it is possible to pursue an Israeli-Palestinian track while isolating Damascus....

100. ... I don’t believe they can seriously believe that it is possible to neatly compartmentalize the various fronts and deal with them sequentially, bestowing the favour of attention on well-behaving parties first.

101. In much the same way, does anyone seriously believe that a genuine process between Israel and the Palestinians can progress without Syria being either on board or, at the very least, not opposing it, and without opening some channel for addressing Syria’s grievances? If this should be attempted, we can be sure that a reminder of the Syrian capacity to spoil it wouldn’t be long in arriving.

102. The conventional wisdom is that Israel can’t handle more than one negotiation at a time. As recently as 27 April, in a piece in Haaretz titled “Why Syria must wait”, an Israeli ambassador wrote: “Few would dispute the assertion that the Israeli bridge is incapable of supporting two peace processes, a Syrian and a Palestinian one, at the same time.” I understand the political difficulties involved. But I believe it’s just not possible to completely disaggregate the two, or calmly wait for their turn with the occupier (take a number and have a seat in the waiting room until you are called, please), and that is why the Madrid conference was conceived as it was. This can’t be anything but one more layer of excuses not to negotiate.

These points seem obvious to me. There are those who think that engaging Syria is a waste of time, but one thing they fail to explain is why Damascus should make concessions before negotiating. After all, that's the whole point of negotiating, isn't it? From a purely strategic point of view, why would Syria give up its bargaining chips (meddling in Lebanon and supporting Hezbollah and Hamas) before negotiations have even begun? Would anyone ever ask Israel to give up their occupation of the Golan as a measure of good faith before negotiating with Damascus? Of course not. That's Israel's bargaining chip, and they'd be silly to give it up before making a deal.

This is not to say that I support Syrian meddling in Lebanon; as someone who lives in Beirut and has to put up with it, quite the opposite is true. But I do understand Lebanon's strategic importance to Syria, just as I understand its strategic importance to Palestine, Israel, Iran and the US.

So let's be honest here for a bit. Egypt and Jordan were flukes backed up by US aid money. A real, and just, solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict cannot be piecemeal. There must be a comprehensive peace that includes Palestine, Israel, Syria and Lebanon with the backing of the rest of the Arab states. I've already argued before that it's too late for a two-state solution, so I won't go into that right now, but maybe a two-state solution could be a stopgap for a long-term solution in the form of a single, democratic, secular binational state. But until the time comes when all sides stop stalling and get ready to deal, things are going to be pretty rough in this neck of the woods...

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.

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.

Here's another genocide-related event in the international community, which gives me the impression that something's rotten in, well, the Hague:

Serbia, the heir to Yugoslavia, obtained the tribunal's permission to keep parts of the archives out of the public eye. Citing national security, its lawyers blacked out many sensitive -- those who have seen them say incriminating -- pages. Judges and lawyers at the war crimes tribunal could see the censored material, but it was barred from the tribunal’s public records.

Now, lawyers and others who were involved in Serbia's bid for secrecy say that, at the time, Belgrade made its true objective clear: to keep the full military archives from the International Court of Justice, where Bosnia was suing Serbia for genocide. And they say Belgrade’s goal was achieved in February, when the international court, which is also in The Hague, declared Serbia not guilty of genocide, and absolved it from paying potentially enormous damages.

Lawyers interviewed in The Hague and Belgrade said that the outcome might well have been different had the International Court of Justice pressed for access to the full archives, and legal scholars and human rights groups said it was deeply troubling that the judges did not subpoena the documents directly from Serbia. At one point, the court rebuffed a Bosnian request that it demand the full documents, saying that ample evidence was available in tribunal records.

"It's a question that nags loudly," Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at American University in Washington, said recently in The Hague. "Why didn’t the court request the full documents? The fact that they were blacked out clearly implies these passages would have made a difference."

The ruling -- which was binding and final -- was in many ways meticulous, and acknowledged that the 15 judges had not seen the censored archives. But it did not say why the court did not order Serbia to provide the full documents.

The first-hand experience I've had at the UN and what I know of the tribunals in the Hague and Arusha have convinced me that it would be naïve to think that there are no deals being made in the smoke-filled hotel rooms.

This probably has something to do with Serbia's wishes to join the EU and the fact that a guilty verdict would probably ruin the country financially. But still, this seems unacceptable to me.

I've seen first hand how politics (office and international) can override common sense or even doing the right thing in a large bureaucracy. I shouldn't be surprised by stories like this anymore, and I guess I'm not.

But still. Shame on Ankara, and shame on the UN for kowtowing:

The United Nations dismantled an exhibit on the Rwandan genocide and postponed its scheduled opening by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday after the Turkish mission objected to references to the Armenian genocide in Turkey at the time of World War I.

The panels of graphics, photos and statements had been installed in the visitors lobby on Thursday by the British-based Aegis Trust. The trust campaigns for the prevention of genocide and runs a center in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, memorializing the 500,000 victims of the massacres there 13 years ago.

Hours after the show was assembled, however, a Turkish diplomat spotted offending words in a section entitled "What is genocide?" and raised objections.

The passage said that "following World War I, during which one million Armenians were murdered in Turkey," Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer credited with coining the word genocide, "urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes."

James Smith, the chief executive of Aegis, said he was told by the United Nations on Saturday night that the sentence would have to be eliminated or the exhibition would be struck.

...Mr. Smith said he was "very disappointed because this was supposed to talk about the lessons drawn from Rwanda and point up that what is happening in Darfur is the cost of inaction."

Via Weiss, a "portrait of Khalilzad as a grad student in the late 70s, from Anne Norton's book, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire":

He is a protege of Wolfowitz, who worked with him on the war with Iraq and the occupation... When I knew him, he was an Afghani graduate student and a radical. He boasted of the demonstrations he had organized in Beirut, of the fedayin he knew and had worked with, and of his friends who regularly visited Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi. He went to pro-Palestinian meetings. His room had a poster of Nasser in tears. He and I had taken [proto-neocon Albert] Wohlstetter's course on nuclear war together. He didn't seem, at the time, particularly interested in the course. He was, however, enthralled by Wohlstetter's party [for grad students]. In the elevator, in the apartment, he kept saying how much it all cost, how expensive it was, how much money Wohlstetter must have. Later, he borrowed my copy of Kojeve's Lectures on Hegel. When he returned it, one sentence was underlined. 'The bourgeois intellectual neither fights nor works.' The next summer, Wohlstetter got Khalilzad a job at Rand. I don't know what happened to the poster of Nasser.

Here's a story that's making the rounds at at least one UN organization, from a UN director who was refused entry to the US upon arrival in Washington for an official UN visit.

The Times has an interesting and interactive map (I'm a sucker for these) showing the results of a poll taken on attitudes in several sub-Saharan countries: Senegal, Mali, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.

Some of the results are obvious, and others are not. The poll covers national issues, the economy and personal well-being, as well as international views. The most pressing national concerns seem to be "HIV/AIDS and other diseases," "corrupt political leaders," "crime" and "illegal drugs." Ethnic/religious conflict was seen as a problem by more than half of those polled in Kenya, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, with the latter polling particularly high.

Despite this, those polled seemed fairly optimistic, and those polled in every country overwhelmingly thought things would be better for their children than they have been for them.

Opinions vary pretty widely on the UN, US and AU, depending on the country, with Ethiopia unsurprisingly showing the most support for the AU, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa and the EU scoring particularly low overall for Africans' confidence that it can "help solve Africa's problems." 

In would have been interesting to have added more countries with one foot in "Arab Africa" and the other foot in "black Africa," particularly Sudan, Chad and Mauritania. Out of all the countries polled, the only two where the majority don't think that "Arabs and blacks in North Africa can live peacefully together" were Uganda and Tanzania.

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.

Alvaro de Soto, the UN special envoy to the Middle East, recently penned a confidential and very frank end of mission report, which was then leaked to the Guardian. Here is the Guardian's very short summary.

Joshua Landis, for his part, has compiled the parts that deal directly with engaging Syria. Here are some extracts that I found particularly interesting:

4. ...Notwithstanding my strenuous efforts, of which there is plenty of evidence in the DPA cables file, I was never authorized to go to Syria. None of my arguments in favour of going were ever refuted, nor was I given any precise reason for denial of the authorization requested. ...

99. There is an old saying that in the Middle East you can’t make war without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria. The first half is no longer valid, but I sense that the second remains true. For the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, keeping Syria at arm’s length is particularly galling. Those who advocate it seem to believe that it is possible to pursue an Israeli-Palestinian track while isolating Damascus....

100. ... I don’t believe they can seriously believe that it is possible to neatly compartmentalize the various fronts and deal with them sequentially, bestowing the favour of attention on well-behaving parties first.

101. In much the same way, does anyone seriously believe that a genuine process between Israel and the Palestinians can progress without Syria being either on board or, at the very least, not opposing it, and without opening some channel for addressing Syria’s grievances? If this should be attempted, we can be sure that a reminder of the Syrian capacity to spoil it wouldn’t be long in arriving.

102. The conventional wisdom is that Israel can’t handle more than one negotiation at a time. As recently as 27 April, in a piece in Haaretz titled “Why Syria must wait”, an Israeli ambassador wrote: “Few would dispute the assertion that the Israeli bridge is incapable of supporting two peace processes, a Syrian and a Palestinian one, at the same time.” I understand the political difficulties involved. But I believe it’s just not possible to completely disaggregate the two, or calmly wait for their turn with the occupier (take a number and have a seat in the waiting room until you are called, please), and that is why the Madrid conference was conceived as it was. This can’t be anything but one more layer of excuses not to negotiate.

These points seem obvious to me. There are those who think that engaging Syria is a waste of time, but one thing they fail to explain is why Damascus should make concessions before negotiating. After all, that's the whole point of negotiating, isn't it? From a purely strategic point of view, why would Syria give up its bargaining chips (meddling in Lebanon and supporting Hezbollah and Hamas) before negotiations have even begun? Would anyone ever ask Israel to give up their occupation of the Golan as a measure of good faith before negotiating with Damascus? Of course not. That's Israel's bargaining chip, and they'd be silly to give it up before making a deal.

This is not to say that I support Syrian meddling in Lebanon; as someone who lives in Beirut and has to put up with it, quite the opposite is true. But I do understand Lebanon's strategic importance to Syria, just as I understand its strategic importance to Palestine, Israel, Iran and the US.

So let's be honest here for a bit. Egypt and Jordan were flukes backed up by US aid money. A real, and just, solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict cannot be piecemeal. There must be a comprehensive peace that includes Palestine, Israel, Syria and Lebanon with the backing of the rest of the Arab states. I've already argued before that it's too late for a two-state solution, so I won't go into that right now, but maybe a two-state solution could be a stopgap for a long-term solution in the form of a single, democratic, secular binational state. But until the time comes when all sides stop stalling and get ready to deal, things are going to be pretty rough in this neck of the woods...

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.

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.

Here's another genocide-related event in the international community, which gives me the impression that something's rotten in, well, the Hague:

Serbia, the heir to Yugoslavia, obtained the tribunal's permission to keep parts of the archives out of the public eye. Citing national security, its lawyers blacked out many sensitive -- those who have seen them say incriminating -- pages. Judges and lawyers at the war crimes tribunal could see the censored material, but it was barred from the tribunal’s public records.

Now, lawyers and others who were involved in Serbia's bid for secrecy say that, at the time, Belgrade made its true objective clear: to keep the full military archives from the International Court of Justice, where Bosnia was suing Serbia for genocide. And they say Belgrade’s goal was achieved in February, when the international court, which is also in The Hague, declared Serbia not guilty of genocide, and absolved it from paying potentially enormous damages.

Lawyers interviewed in The Hague and Belgrade said that the outcome might well have been different had the International Court of Justice pressed for access to the full archives, and legal scholars and human rights groups said it was deeply troubling that the judges did not subpoena the documents directly from Serbia. At one point, the court rebuffed a Bosnian request that it demand the full documents, saying that ample evidence was available in tribunal records.

"It's a question that nags loudly," Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at American University in Washington, said recently in The Hague. "Why didn’t the court request the full documents? The fact that they were blacked out clearly implies these passages would have made a difference."

The ruling -- which was binding and final -- was in many ways meticulous, and acknowledged that the 15 judges had not seen the censored archives. But it did not say why the court did not order Serbia to provide the full documents.

The first-hand experience I've had at the UN and what I know of the tribunals in the Hague and Arusha have convinced me that it would be naïve to think that there are no deals being made in the smoke-filled hotel rooms.

This probably has something to do with Serbia's wishes to join the EU and the fact that a guilty verdict would probably ruin the country financially. But still, this seems unacceptable to me.

I've seen first hand how politics (office and international) can override common sense or even doing the right thing in a large bureaucracy. I shouldn't be surprised by stories like this anymore, and I guess I'm not.

But still. Shame on Ankara, and shame on the UN for kowtowing:

The United Nations dismantled an exhibit on the Rwandan genocide and postponed its scheduled opening by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday after the Turkish mission objected to references to the Armenian genocide in Turkey at the time of World War I.

The panels of graphics, photos and statements had been installed in the visitors lobby on Thursday by the British-based Aegis Trust. The trust campaigns for the prevention of genocide and runs a center in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, memorializing the 500,000 victims of the massacres there 13 years ago.

Hours after the show was assembled, however, a Turkish diplomat spotted offending words in a section entitled "What is genocide?" and raised objections.

The passage said that "following World War I, during which one million Armenians were murdered in Turkey," Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer credited with coining the word genocide, "urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes."

James Smith, the chief executive of Aegis, said he was told by the United Nations on Saturday night that the sentence would have to be eliminated or the exhibition would be struck.

...Mr. Smith said he was "very disappointed because this was supposed to talk about the lessons drawn from Rwanda and point up that what is happening in Darfur is the cost of inaction."

Via Weiss, a "portrait of Khalilzad as a grad student in the late 70s, from Anne Norton's book, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire":

He is a protege of Wolfowitz, who worked with him on the war with Iraq and the occupation... When I knew him, he was an Afghani graduate student and a radical. He boasted of the demonstrations he had organized in Beirut, of the fedayin he knew and had worked with, and of his friends who regularly visited Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi. He went to pro-Palestinian meetings. His room had a poster of Nasser in tears. He and I had taken [proto-neocon Albert] Wohlstetter's course on nuclear war together. He didn't seem, at the time, particularly interested in the course. He was, however, enthralled by Wohlstetter's party [for grad students]. In the elevator, in the apartment, he kept saying how much it all cost, how expensive it was, how much money Wohlstetter must have. Later, he borrowed my copy of Kojeve's Lectures on Hegel. When he returned it, one sentence was underlined. 'The bourgeois intellectual neither fights nor works.' The next summer, Wohlstetter got Khalilzad a job at Rand. I don't know what happened to the poster of Nasser.

Here's a story that's making the rounds at at least one UN organization, from a UN director who was refused entry to the US upon arrival in Washington for an official UN visit.

The Times has an interesting and interactive map (I'm a sucker for these) showing the results of a poll taken on attitudes in several sub-Saharan countries: Senegal, Mali, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.

Some of the results are obvious, and others are not. The poll covers national issues, the economy and personal well-being, as well as international views. The most pressing national concerns seem to be "HIV/AIDS and other diseases," "corrupt political leaders," "crime" and "illegal drugs." Ethnic/religious conflict was seen as a problem by more than half of those polled in Kenya, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, with the latter polling particularly high.

Despite this, those polled seemed fairly optimistic, and those polled in every country overwhelmingly thought things would be better for their children than they have been for them.

Opinions vary pretty widely on the UN, US and AU, depending on the country, with Ethiopia unsurprisingly showing the most support for the AU, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa and the EU scoring particularly low overall for Africans' confidence that it can "help solve Africa's problems." 

In would have been interesting to have added more countries with one foot in "Arab Africa" and the other foot in "black Africa," particularly Sudan, Chad and Mauritania. Out of all the countries polled, the only two where the majority don't think that "Arabs and blacks in North Africa can live peacefully together" were Uganda and Tanzania.

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.

Alvaro de Soto, the UN special envoy to the Middle East, recently penned a confidential and very frank end of mission report, which was then leaked to the Guardian. Here is the Guardian's very short summary.

Joshua Landis, for his part, has compiled the parts that deal directly with engaging Syria. Here are some extracts that I found particularly interesting:

4. ...Notwithstanding my strenuous efforts, of which there is plenty of evidence in the DPA cables file, I was never authorized to go to Syria. None of my arguments in favour of going were ever refuted, nor was I given any precise reason for denial of the authorization requested. ...

99. There is an old saying that in the Middle East you can’t make war without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria. The first half is no longer valid, but I sense that the second remains true. For the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, keeping Syria at arm’s length is particularly galling. Those who advocate it seem to believe that it is possible to pursue an Israeli-Palestinian track while isolating Damascus....

100. ... I don’t believe they can seriously believe that it is possible to neatly compartmentalize the various fronts and deal with them sequentially, bestowing the favour of attention on well-behaving parties first.

101. In much the same way, does anyone seriously believe that a genuine process between Israel and the Palestinians can progress without Syria being either on board or, at the very least, not opposing it, and without opening some channel for addressing Syria’s grievances? If this should be attempted, we can be sure that a reminder of the Syrian capacity to spoil it wouldn’t be long in arriving.

102. The conventional wisdom is that Israel can’t handle more than one negotiation at a time. As recently as 27 April, in a piece in Haaretz titled “Why Syria must wait”, an Israeli ambassador wrote: “Few would dispute the assertion that the Israeli bridge is incapable of supporting two peace processes, a Syrian and a Palestinian one, at the same time.” I understand the political difficulties involved. But I believe it’s just not possible to completely disaggregate the two, or calmly wait for their turn with the occupier (take a number and have a seat in the waiting room until you are called, please), and that is why the Madrid conference was conceived as it was. This can’t be anything but one more layer of excuses not to negotiate.

These points seem obvious to me. There are those who think that engaging Syria is a waste of time, but one thing they fail to explain is why Damascus should make concessions before negotiating. After all, that's the whole point of negotiating, isn't it? From a purely strategic point of view, why would Syria give up its bargaining chips (meddling in Lebanon and supporting Hezbollah and Hamas) before negotiations have even begun? Would anyone ever ask Israel to give up their occupation of the Golan as a measure of good faith before negotiating with Damascus? Of course not. That's Israel's bargaining chip, and they'd be silly to give it up before making a deal.

This is not to say that I support Syrian meddling in Lebanon; as someone who lives in Beirut and has to put up with it, quite the opposite is true. But I do understand Lebanon's strategic importance to Syria, just as I understand its strategic importance to Palestine, Israel, Iran and the US.

So let's be honest here for a bit. Egypt and Jordan were flukes backed up by US aid money. A real, and just, solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict cannot be piecemeal. There must be a comprehensive peace that includes Palestine, Israel, Syria and Lebanon with the backing of the rest of the Arab states. I've already argued before that it's too late for a two-state solution, so I won't go into that right now, but maybe a two-state solution could be a stopgap for a long-term solution in the form of a single, democratic, secular binational state. But until the time comes when all sides stop stalling and get ready to deal, things are going to be pretty rough in this neck of the woods...

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.

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.

Here's another genocide-related event in the international community, which gives me the impression that something's rotten in, well, the Hague:

Serbia, the heir to Yugoslavia, obtained the tribunal's permission to keep parts of the archives out of the public eye. Citing national security, its lawyers blacked out many sensitive -- those who have seen them say incriminating -- pages. Judges and lawyers at the war crimes tribunal could see the censored material, but it was barred from the tribunal’s public records.

Now, lawyers and others who were involved in Serbia's bid for secrecy say that, at the time, Belgrade made its true objective clear: to keep the full military archives from the International Court of Justice, where Bosnia was suing Serbia for genocide. And they say Belgrade’s goal was achieved in February, when the international court, which is also in The Hague, declared Serbia not guilty of genocide, and absolved it from paying potentially enormous damages.

Lawyers interviewed in The Hague and Belgrade said that the outcome might well have been different had the International Court of Justice pressed for access to the full archives, and legal scholars and human rights groups said it was deeply troubling that the judges did not subpoena the documents directly from Serbia. At one point, the court rebuffed a Bosnian request that it demand the full documents, saying that ample evidence was available in tribunal records.

"It's a question that nags loudly," Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at American University in Washington, said recently in The Hague. "Why didn’t the court request the full documents? The fact that they were blacked out clearly implies these passages would have made a difference."

The ruling -- which was binding and final -- was in many ways meticulous, and acknowledged that the 15 judges had not seen the censored archives. But it did not say why the court did not order Serbia to provide the full documents.

The first-hand experience I've had at the UN and what I know of the tribunals in the Hague and Arusha have convinced me that it would be naïve to think that there are no deals being made in the smoke-filled hotel rooms.

This probably has something to do with Serbia's wishes to join the EU and the fact that a guilty verdict would probably ruin the country financially. But still, this seems unacceptable to me.

I've seen first hand how politics (office and international) can override common sense or even doing the right thing in a large bureaucracy. I shouldn't be surprised by stories like this anymore, and I guess I'm not.

But still. Shame on Ankara, and shame on the UN for kowtowing:

The United Nations dismantled an exhibit on the Rwandan genocide and postponed its scheduled opening by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday after the Turkish mission objected to references to the Armenian genocide in Turkey at the time of World War I.

The panels of graphics, photos and statements had been installed in the visitors lobby on Thursday by the British-based Aegis Trust. The trust campaigns for the prevention of genocide and runs a center in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, memorializing the 500,000 victims of the massacres there 13 years ago.

Hours after the show was assembled, however, a Turkish diplomat spotted offending words in a section entitled "What is genocide?" and raised objections.

The passage said that "following World War I, during which one million Armenians were murdered in Turkey," Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer credited with coining the word genocide, "urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes."

James Smith, the chief executive of Aegis, said he was told by the United Nations on Saturday night that the sentence would have to be eliminated or the exhibition would be struck.

...Mr. Smith said he was "very disappointed because this was supposed to talk about the lessons drawn from Rwanda and point up that what is happening in Darfur is the cost of inaction."

Via Weiss, a "portrait of Khalilzad as a grad student in the late 70s, from Anne Norton's book, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire":

He is a protege of Wolfowitz, who worked with him on the war with Iraq and the occupation... When I knew him, he was an Afghani graduate student and a radical. He boasted of the demonstrations he had organized in Beirut, of the fedayin he knew and had worked with, and of his friends who regularly visited Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi. He went to pro-Palestinian meetings. His room had a poster of Nasser in tears. He and I had taken [proto-neocon Albert] Wohlstetter's course on nuclear war together. He didn't seem, at the time, particularly interested in the course. He was, however, enthralled by Wohlstetter's party [for grad students]. In the elevator, in the apartment, he kept saying how much it all cost, how expensive it was, how much money Wohlstetter must have. Later, he borrowed my copy of Kojeve's Lectures on Hegel. When he returned it, one sentence was underlined. 'The bourgeois intellectual neither fights nor works.' The next summer, Wohlstetter got Khalilzad a job at Rand. I don't know what happened to the poster of Nasser.

Here's a story that's making the rounds at at least one UN organization, from a UN director who was refused entry to the US upon arrival in Washington for an official UN visit.

The Times has an interesting and interactive map (I'm a sucker for these) showing the results of a poll taken on attitudes in several sub-Saharan countries: Senegal, Mali, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.

Some of the results are obvious, and others are not. The poll covers national issues, the economy and personal well-being, as well as international views. The most pressing national concerns seem to be "HIV/AIDS and other diseases," "corrupt political leaders," "crime" and "illegal drugs." Ethnic/religious conflict was seen as a problem by more than half of those polled in Kenya, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, with the latter polling particularly high.

Despite this, those polled seemed fairly optimistic, and those polled in every country overwhelmingly thought things would be better for their children than they have been for them.

Opinions vary pretty widely on the UN, US and AU, depending on the country, with Ethiopia unsurprisingly showing the most support for the AU, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa and the EU scoring particularly low overall for Africans' confidence that it can "help solve Africa's problems." 

In would have been interesting to have added more countries with one foot in "Arab Africa" and the other foot in "black Africa," particularly Sudan, Chad and Mauritania. Out of all the countries polled, the only two where the majority don't think that "Arabs and blacks in North Africa can live peacefully together" were Uganda and Tanzania.

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.

Alvaro de Soto, the UN special envoy to the Middle East, recently penned a confidential and very frank end of mission report, which was then leaked to the Guardian. Here is the Guardian's very short summary.

Joshua Landis, for his part, has compiled the parts that deal directly with engaging Syria. Here are some extracts that I found particularly interesting:

4. ...Notwithstanding my strenuous efforts, of which there is plenty of evidence in the DPA cables file, I was never authorized to go to Syria. None of my arguments in favour of going were ever refuted, nor was I given any precise reason for denial of the authorization requested. ...

99. There is an old saying that in the Middle East you can’t make war without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria. The first half is no longer valid, but I sense that the second remains true. For the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, keeping Syria at arm’s length is particularly galling. Those who advocate it seem to believe that it is possible to pursue an Israeli-Palestinian track while isolating Damascus....

100. ... I don’t believe they can seriously believe that it is possible to neatly compartmentalize the various fronts and deal with them sequentially, bestowing the favour of attention on well-behaving parties first.

101. In much the same way, does anyone seriously believe that a genuine process between Israel and the Palestinians can progress without Syria being either on board or, at the very least, not opposing it, and without opening some channel for addressing Syria’s grievances? If this should be attempted, we can be sure that a reminder of the Syrian capacity to spoil it wouldn’t be long in arriving.

102. The conventional wisdom is that Israel can’t handle more than one negotiation at a time. As recently as 27 April, in a piece in Haaretz titled “Why Syria must wait”, an Israeli ambassador wrote: “Few would dispute the assertion that the Israeli bridge is incapable of supporting two peace processes, a Syrian and a Palestinian one, at the same time.” I understand the political difficulties involved. But I believe it’s just not possible to completely disaggregate the two, or calmly wait for their turn with the occupier (take a number and have a seat in the waiting room until you are called, please), and that is why the Madrid conference was conceived as it was. This can’t be anything but one more layer of excuses not to negotiate.

These points seem obvious to me. There are those who think that engaging Syria is a waste of time, but one thing they fail to explain is why Damascus should make concessions before negotiating. After all, that's the whole point of negotiating, isn't it? From a purely strategic point of view, why would Syria give up its bargaining chips (meddling in Lebanon and supporting Hezbollah and Hamas) before negotiations have even begun? Would anyone ever ask Israel to give up their occupation of the Golan as a measure of good faith before negotiating with Damascus? Of course not. That's Israel's bargaining chip, and they'd be silly to give it up before making a deal.

This is not to say that I support Syrian meddling in Lebanon; as someone who lives in Beirut and has to put up with it, quite the opposite is true. But I do understand Lebanon's strategic importance to Syria, just as I understand its strategic importance to Palestine, Israel, Iran and the US.

So let's be honest here for a bit. Egypt and Jordan were flukes backed up by US aid money. A real, and just, solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict cannot be piecemeal. There must be a comprehensive peace that includes Palestine, Israel, Syria and Lebanon with the backing of the rest of the Arab states. I've already argued before that it's too late for a two-state solution, so I won't go into that right now, but maybe a two-state solution could be a stopgap for a long-term solution in the form of a single, democratic, secular binational state. But until the time comes when all sides stop stalling and get ready to deal, things are going to be pretty rough in this neck of the woods...

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.

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.

Here's another genocide-related event in the international community, which gives me the impression that something's rotten in, well, the Hague:

Serbia, the heir to Yugoslavia, obtained the tribunal's permission to keep parts of the archives out of the public eye. Citing national security, its lawyers blacked out many sensitive -- those who have seen them say incriminating -- pages. Judges and lawyers at the war crimes tribunal could see the censored material, but it was barred from the tribunal’s public records.

Now, lawyers and others who were involved in Serbia's bid for secrecy say that, at the time, Belgrade made its true objective clear: to keep the full military archives from the International Court of Justice, where Bosnia was suing Serbia for genocide. And they say Belgrade’s goal was achieved in February, when the international court, which is also in The Hague, declared Serbia not guilty of genocide, and absolved it from paying potentially enormous damages.

Lawyers interviewed in The Hague and Belgrade said that the outcome might well have been different had the International Court of Justice pressed for access to the full archives, and legal scholars and human rights groups said it was deeply troubling that the judges did not subpoena the documents directly from Serbia. At one point, the court rebuffed a Bosnian request that it demand the full documents, saying that ample evidence was available in tribunal records.

"It's a question that nags loudly," Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at American University in Washington, said recently in The Hague. "Why didn’t the court request the full documents? The fact that they were blacked out clearly implies these passages would have made a difference."

The ruling -- which was binding and final -- was in many ways meticulous, and acknowledged that the 15 judges had not seen the censored archives. But it did not say why the court did not order Serbia to provide the full documents.

The first-hand experience I've had at the UN and what I know of the tribunals in the Hague and Arusha have convinced me that it would be naïve to think that there are no deals being made in the smoke-filled hotel rooms.

This probably has something to do with Serbia's wishes to join the EU and the fact that a guilty verdict would probably ruin the country financially. But still, this seems unacceptable to me.

I've seen first hand how politics (office and international) can override common sense or even doing the right thing in a large bureaucracy. I shouldn't be surprised by stories like this anymore, and I guess I'm not.

But still. Shame on Ankara, and shame on the UN for kowtowing:

The United Nations dismantled an exhibit on the Rwandan genocide and postponed its scheduled opening by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday after the Turkish mission objected to references to the Armenian genocide in Turkey at the time of World War I.

The panels of graphics, photos and statements had been installed in the visitors lobby on Thursday by the British-based Aegis Trust. The trust campaigns for the prevention of genocide and runs a center in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, memorializing the 500,000 victims of the massacres there 13 years ago.

Hours after the show was assembled, however, a Turkish diplomat spotted offending words in a section entitled "What is genocide?" and raised objections.

The passage said that "following World War I, during which one million Armenians were murdered in Turkey," Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer credited with coining the word genocide, "urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes."

James Smith, the chief executive of Aegis, said he was told by the United Nations on Saturday night that the sentence would have to be eliminated or the exhibition would be struck.

...Mr. Smith said he was "very disappointed because this was supposed to talk about the lessons drawn from Rwanda and point up that what is happening in Darfur is the cost of inaction."

Via Weiss, a "portrait of Khalilzad as a grad student in the late 70s, from Anne Norton's book, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire":

He is a protege of Wolfowitz, who worked with him on the war with Iraq and the occupation... When I knew him, he was an Afghani graduate student and a radical. He boasted of the demonstrations he had organized in Beirut, of the fedayin he knew and had worked with, and of his friends who regularly visited Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi. He went to pro-Palestinian meetings. His room had a poster of Nasser in tears. He and I had taken [proto-neocon Albert] Wohlstetter's course on nuclear war together. He didn't seem, at the time, particularly interested in the course. He was, however, enthralled by Wohlstetter's party [for grad students]. In the elevator, in the apartment, he kept saying how much it all cost, how expensive it was, how much money Wohlstetter must have. Later, he borrowed my copy of Kojeve's Lectures on Hegel. When he returned it, one sentence was underlined. 'The bourgeois intellectual neither fights nor works.' The next summer, Wohlstetter got Khalilzad a job at Rand. I don't know what happened to the poster of Nasser.

Here's a story that's making the rounds at at least one UN organization, from a UN director who was refused entry to the US upon arrival in Washington for an official UN visit.