New Article on the Candidates and Darfur

We've published a new piece entitled "Candidates on Darfur" in Foreign Policy In Focus.

Also look for an interview with Kevin on the same topic in the forthcoming edition of the monthly program of the Darfur Radio Project.

Whither UNAMID?

Original caption: An AU soldier in El Fasher, securing the Joint AU/UN compound. UNMIS Photo/Fred Noy

It has been evident for quite some time that the West’s sanctimony regarding Darfur is purely posturing, as revealed with utmost clarity by the behavior of the loudest and most powerful nations. While Washington and its junior partners decried Khartoum's stonewalling of a UN deployment, they crippled the African Union deployment, AMIS. Though flawed, the African team was surely capable of greater effectiveness if better supported financially and logistically. Underfunding the AU mission, the only available force already on the ground, consigned Darfurians to a grim fate, amply fulfilled in the last several years of death and misery.

Khartoum's obstructionism was also the favored storyline of the commercial press. However, with the long sought deployment of UN forces finally a partial reality, a new public relations challenge has arisen. Thus far, it has been met with aplomb, made possible by an impressively disciplined media and a largely acquiescent activist movement. The inconvenient truth in this case is that the UNAMID deployment is being hamstrung by a lack of resources – precisely the difficulty that deep-sixed AMIS. The stinginess is naturally most glaring in the case of the wealthiest and best-equipped nations.

At present, only 2,000 peacekeepers have been added to the existing AMIS team, raising the total to 9,000 and leaving the force 17,000 personnel shy of the projected size. Much of the blame for the unimpressive launch of UNAMID has been placed on Khartoum which has hampered full implementation of UN force deployment through a myriad of devices designed to buy time - but its responsibility for the slow roll out appears to be matched by the absence of action from the nations capable of supplying basic military equipment.

For several months UNAMID has been waiting but thus far no UN member state has agreed to provide the much needed but very minimal transport needs (most notably two dozen helicopters) to the new UNAMID force. Ban Ki Moon has repeatedly called for capable member nations to supply the pittance.

To be more accurate, in early February two countries did step forward at long last: the fabulously wealthy nations of Bangladesh and Ethiopia. What has become of their offer is not yet clear; as recently as Feb. 20th U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon referenced "more helicopters, which peacekeepers urgently need in Darfur." There have been no indications of embarrassment in Western capitals at being upstaged in generosity by the 54th and 87th wealthiest countries, respectively, as ranked by GDP.

Nor has changing the name and official sponsor of the peacekeeping force resolved the desperate financial situation of the mission, which cannot obtain spare tires for its Armored Personnel Carriers and is still struggling with "unpaid soldiers and a lack of equipment."

The sight of Washington, the leader of the pack of nations braying about the horrors of Darfur, failing to provide a few helicopters that it could doubtless spare without even occasioning a blip in a Defense Department budget that routinely misplaces billions or trillions of dollars through shoddy accounting, casts into sharp relief the true value of Darfurian lives for the leaders of democracy and freedom.

Where's Darfur at the Democratic debates?

For all their prior rhetoric on "saving" Darfur, the frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination have made surprisingly little noise about the conflict in recent months.

This much is clear from the most recent party "debates" - more accurately, heavily managed public relations exercises replete with obfuscation and evasiveness - as Darfur has merited no substantive mention from the participants in the latest outings:

• The September 26 debate in New Hampshire included no reference to Darfur (aside from a brief mention by New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson concerning his diplomatic experience), though Tim Russert did find time to ask the candidates for their "favorite Bible verse."


• On October 30 in Philadelphia, Darfur again received no mention, perhaps preempted by Brian William's question to Barack Obama about how he would be dressing up for Halloween.


• In the most recent debate - November 15 in Las Vegas - Darfur again went unmentioned by the candidates.

The omission would not be glaring, if not for two issues.

First, it would be understandable if Darfur were receiving less attention if the candidates were instead focused on other foreign policy issues of concern - such as the almost universally ignored crisis in the Congo, or concrete ways to end the war in Iraq and attempt to atone for the massive destruction the U.S. continues to wreak in the country (clearly, not forthcoming).

Second, Darfur has been a lightning rod issue for liberal activists and Democratic voters - in fact, claimed to be the "largest such activism" since the war on Vietnam - and the conflict is widely reported in the West as the "world's worst humanitarian disaster."

So what gives?

One can imagine several possible explanations - for example, that the frontrunner candidates take the votes of Darfur activists for granted, or that since they largely agree on how to address the crisis (implementing a no-fly zone, pushing for a UN deployment, and pressuring China), they have little to discuss. Both theories have some merit.

But it is important to not lose sight of another key piece of the equation.

For all their heated rhetoric, mainstream Democrats are highly unlikely to make any substantive changes to Washington's fruitful intelligence-sharing relationship with key elements of the Khartoum government as part of the "War on Terror."

New piece published

Foreign Policy in Focus just published our response piece as part of our "strategic dialogue" about divestment from Sudan.

The original piece is available here, along with the original and response by Daniel Millenson, of the Sudan Divestment Task Force.

Commentary: The U.S.-Equatorial Guinea Alliance

Life is good if you're Teodoro Obiang.

Condi Rice considers you a "good friend."

ExxonMobil threw a party in your honor in Washington.

The Dutch mega-airline KLM at one point even named an airplane after you.

And you're "in permanent contact with the Almighty," according to the radio station you control, which also noted that you are "like God in heaven" with "all power over men and things." Accordingly, as the broadcast went on to note, "He can decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell." (Sound familiar?)

Yet all is not well in Equatorial Guinea, the small, oil-soaked African nation that Obiang rules with an iron fist.

Human rights groups report that members of opposition groups are "flogged." One man recounted how the president's forces "cut his ears off with scissors." In addition to recurring accusations that the Obiang regime has targeted citizens in exile for assassination, the State Department notes the following characteristics of Equatorial Guinea's sparkling human rights record:

...abridgement of citizens' right to change their government; torture, beating, and other physical abuse of prisoners and detainees by security forces; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; impunity; arbitrary arrest, detention, and incommunicado detention; harassment and deportation of foreign residents; judicial corruption and lack of due process; restrictions on the right to privacy; severe restrictions on freedom of speech and of the press; restrictions on the right of assembly, association, and movement; government corruption; violence and discrimination against women; trafficking in persons; discrimination against ethnic minorities; restrictions on labor rights and child labor; and forced child labor.

Taking advantage of the favorable climate for efficient exploitation, U.S. energy interests have established a firm foothold in the country. ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Halliburton, and Marathon Oil are all feeding from the trough, as two-thirds of Equatorial Guinea's substantial oil production goes into U.S. hands. Accordingly, the U.S. embassy (shut down in 1995, after the atypically outspoken then-U.S. envoy received death threats for daring to criticize Obiang and before the oil boom was in full swing) was reopened by the Bush administration to manage this burgeoning partnership.

Thanks to Western benevolence, the macroeconomy is booming, one of the world's fastest-growing, though mysteriously, as Peter Maass writes: "Per capita, it is one of the richest countries on the continent; rated by how much money ends up in the pockets of people not related to the president, it remains one of the poorest."

Not unfairly, China has taken quite a beating in Western media for its unsavory alliances in Africa, which are uniformly understood to be about securing access to natural resources and markets with little to no regard for human rights.

Yet the same elementary point about the United States somehow escapes the penetrating eyes of the Western intelligentsia, who display a marked tendency to simply ignore human rights violations in U.S.-allied states with expansive energy reserves (tellingly, the press posed two questions to Rice when she appeared with Obiang in Washington before their meeting - both of which were about Iran) - a fact perceived rather easily by others.

Says Gabriel Nguema Lima, one of Obiang's sons, who is "in effective control of the ministry of mines and energy," overseeing the country's oil industry: “The United States, like China, is careful not to get into internal issues.”

Nothing different should be expected from a world power without an enlivened citizenry that demands otherwise.

Poor Cuba: So Far from God, So Close to the United States

While studying abroad at the University of Havana in 2003, I had a conversation with a Cuban student who expressed to me some mocking trepidation that the U.S. embargo (or "blockade," in Cuban parlance) would soon be lifted.

"Then we're in real trouble," he related. "All the computer software we have down here is pirated, and if the U.S. finds out, they'll take it away from us."

Four years later, he clearly still has nothing to worry about.

Stumbling into its 46th year, the beleaguered U.S. policy of "stand[ing] with the Cuban people as they stand up for their liberty" shows no signs of fading away any time soon - indeed, in spite of opposition from virtually the entire world (minus the usual dependencies of Israel, Palau, and the Marshall Islands, per a 2006 UN vote), agricultural interests in the U.S. who want to increase trade with the island, and many members of Congress, U.S. policy towards Cuba has taken an even more draconian turn in recent years.

In 2004, Washington implemented changes preventing Cuban Americans from visiting anyone but immediate family members on the island, and limiting how often they can do so (curiously, sans protest from Focus on the Family or other "family values" crusaders). Study abroad programs for U.S. university students were mostly banned.

In 2006, the U.S. announced "more vigorous investigations and more aggressive prosecutions" of embargo-violators, real scum of the earth who dare to visit the island to deliver humanitarian aid, or, say, because they don't think that the government has the right to tell them where not to travel. Tellingly, a 2004 investigation by the Associated Press found that "The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money."

Though critiques of U.S. policy towards Cuba are obvious, and accepted by basically every nation in the world - Cuba isn't quite a "tropical gulag," and it's wrong in principle to force food and medical scarcities on a population for geopolitical gain - it is especially significant in this case the extent to which U.S. policy contradicts U.S. policy goals.

While its deleterious effects are very real, the U.S. embargo/blockade functions, in essence, as Cuba's "War on Terror": a blanket excuse Havana can use for any related or unrelated problem in the country (dissidents? food shortages?), and an automatic justification for whatever repressive measures the government proposes.

One could argue that Washington simply doesn't get the point - that its policies are propping up the Cuban government - though the political establishment in the U.S. clearly understands the idea of fear mongering to beat its own population into submission.

In reality, the embargo/blockade's endurance is better explained by the fact that there is a potential outcome for U.S. imperial interests that is far more dangerous than strengthening the hand of the Cuban government - it's admitting that the embargo/blockade against Cuba hasn't worked, and in the process giving other poor nations the idea that they too can outlast or overcome superpower assault.

Though the embargo/blockade clearly strengthens the Cuban government in the ways mentioned above, it will thus stick around as long as the price for getting rid of it is the empire's aura of invincibility.

Outhawking the Republicans - Democrats and Darfur

While the Bush administration has taken very little action on Darfur (unless "action" can be defined by empty rhetorical flourishes, coddling members of Sudan's intelligence apparatus, and castrating aid organizations and the African Union deployment), the major Democratic presidential contenders have staked out highly bellicose ground in their "solutions" to the conflict, seeking to play to Save Darfur activists who are rearing for confrontation with Khartoum and prove their own meddle in managing the ever-invoked "War on Terror."

Far from consideration for the candidates is how this militant posturing, if actually carried out, would affect the masses of suffering Darfurians.

Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama (amongst others), all support a no-fly zone for Darfur - a potentially catastrophic idea (see our previous post on the topic) with little possible upside for suffering Darfurians, as the majority of attacks against civilians are carried out not from the air, but on the ground. Instead, the imposition of a no-fly zone is likely to provoke Khartoum into unleashing its wrath on Darfurian civilians and the AU deployment, and worsen the already dire circumstances in which aid organizations operate in the region.

Others of the candidates' stances plunge further into the depths of dangerousness and irrationality.

Clinton, for one, has floated the idea of blockading the Port of Sudan, a measure that is at least tantamount to an act of war.

Like Clinton, who pledged to "work with NATO to take military action” in Sudan if Khartoum does not allow a UN-AU deployment into the country, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE), evidently seeking to make an already calamitous situation even worse, proposes unilaterally sending US troops into Sudan, a "humanitarian intervention" that conjures (at best) the disastrous US-led deployment in the early 1990s to Somalia.

The direct involvement of NATO or even US troops in a potential "peacekeeping" force in Sudan, as suggested by some, would in all probability lead to Sudanese groups "start[ing] a jihad against it," in the words of Jan Pronk, former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Sudan.

While the Democratic frontrunners toy with Darfurian lives for the sake of pandering and bolstering their jingoist credentials, less sexy but more helpful measures remain on the table for actually attempting to mitigate the crisis, the same ones that have been around all along and have been consistently ignored by politicians and many Darfur activists alike: funding aid organizations, pushing an expansion in the size of (and a broadened mandate for) the AU deployment, and seeking a political settlement through promoting a common rebel negotiating front for talks with Khartoum.

Though less conducive to projecting US military might, these are the demands that activists should be pushing for from the potential heirs to the throne of "leader of the free world."

Unfortunately, should their saber-rattling come to fruition, the powers that be of the future instead seem intent on destroying Darfur in order to "save" it.