Not on Our Watch (11 page)

4.
We don’t support the ICC.

The US has consistently said that there must be justice for the crimes committed during genocide. The International Criminal Court has opened an investigation, prepared a list of suspects, and appointed a judge for the situation in Darfur. But by not supporting the ICC (which alone has the mandate to investigate and prosecute the crime of genocide) with information and declassified intelligence, the United States has undercut its own stated position of seeking some measure of accountability.

5. The rebels are also to blame.

The United States has often said that the rebels in Darfur were as big a problem as the government, so as to reduce the pressure for responding more urgently to the genocidal actions of the regime. During the same 2004 Senate testimony in which he first used the word ‘genocide,’ Secretary Powell said, ‘At the same time, however, the rebels have not fully respected the cease-fire. And we are disturbed at reports of rebel kidnapping of relief workers.’
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Kidnapping is, of course, deplorable, but the continued government-sponsored Janjaweed attacks that razed entire villages, killed tens of thousands, and left thousands of women violated made the equivalency argument incomprehensible.

6. The African Union is taking care of the problem.

US officials relied for too long on the African Union troops to try to stabilise the situation, rather than moving more urgently for a UN force that could protect civilians from rape and killing. The AU forces, numbering about 7,200, are spread over an area nearly the size of Texas, are low on funds, and lack appropriate fire-power. Where the AU forces are concentrated, they have been able to provide some security, assist humanitarian agencies with deliveries, and negotiate the release of abducted aid workers, but the region is just too large and the forces too under-funded to be an effective response to the Janjaweed and government forces.

7. We’re giving lots of food aid.

The United States has consistently cited how much humanitarian aid it is providing to the victims of the genocide, remaining quiet about how to stop the abuses that made the assistance necessary. During the foreign policy debate in the fall of 2004 between presidential contenders George Bush and John Kerry, both were asked what should be done about the genocide in Darfur. After obligatory expressions of outrage at the horrors, both basically said that they would increase humanitarian aid, leaving the causes unaddressed.

8. China and Russia will prevent real action.

The Bush administration has argued that it is often blocked from doing more because China and Russia will veto more potent international action on Darfur in the UN Security Council. But the United States rarely tests this threat. When the Americans plays chicken with Russia and China, the two usually drive off the road and abstain. For example, in March 2005, the Chinese and the Russians were confronted twice with juicy veto opportunities but backed down when other members of the UN Security Council pushed them. In a rare display of courageous action at that time, an almost inexplicable temporary stiffening of the spine, the Security Council authorised targeted sanctions and referred the case of Darfur to the ICC.

9. Incentives are better than pressures.

The United States has argued that it must pursue a soft policy of constructive engagement with the Khartoum regime, rather than a punitive or isolationist approach. However, a policy of pressure has a proven track record with the Sudanese government, as we explained in Chapter 3 and will again show in Chapter 6. For instance, in the 1990s, the UN Security Council punished the Sudanese government with a series of multilateral UN sanctions for its support of terrorism, and the regime quickly changed its behaviour, evicting Osama bin Laden from the country, dismantling the al-Qaeda commercial infrastructure, and cutting its ties with other terrorist organisations.

10. The situation will get better. Trust us.

Most insidiously, at many points during the three years after the genocide had begun, the United States argued that circumstances in Darfur were getting better, and that its policy—if given time—would result in peace and stability in the region. Each time officials made this contention, new horrors would come to light or new statistics would be released that would demonstrate the fallacy of this assertion.

Given the excuses used over the past three and a half years, the truth appears to be that combating genocide and other mass atrocities is simply not considered a national security issue by most elected officials. The United States government doesn’t want to burn its leverage on confronting genocide. It would rather save it for issues like Iraq or Iran, as well as keep a friendly relationship with its counterterrorism pals in Khartoum. The only antidote to this searing truth—the only way the United States will take the kind of leadership necessary to end the horrors—is for there to be a political cost for inaction, at the voting booth. We need to make the temperature a little hotter, a little more uncomfortable for those politicians who would look away. This holds true for every Western nation, every democracy.

Just a few more degrees. Just a few thousand more letters. It is, frankly, that simple.

Further Obstacles to Meaningful Action

As stated previously, the predictable responses and pathetic excuses outlined above usually unfold in a policy environment of indifference, apathy, ignorance, and inertia (the Four Horsemen Enabling the Apocalypse). This is certainly the case in Congo, northern Uganda, and post–Black Hawk Down Somalia. But the Sudanese case is special. There have been additional strategic factors, not in the top ten excuses, that have constrained the US response there.

First is the ‘Law of the Tool.’ This is discussed in John’s book
Frontline Diplomacy: Humanitarian Aid and Conflict in Africa
(Lynne Rienner, 1996). Because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of our resources devoted to international military operations are being diverted to these conflicts. Consequently, there is little spare change left over for anything else. The Law of the Tool dictates that your response is driven by what tools you have, rather than what is really needed for the unique circumstances of a given crisis. Before the US-led invasion into Iraq, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld argued that the United States had the capacity ‘to provide for homeland defence, to undertake a major regional conflict and win decisively ... and simultaneously swiftly defeat another aggressor in another theatre.’
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That was hubristic, to say the least. Now the military is stretched thin of personnel as the wars continue much longer than anticipated, further lessening the opportunity for the United States to engage in a meaningful support role for Darfur—a crisis that one could argue is far more real and pertinent than the reasons for going to Iraq. So the Bush administration has tried to sell Congress and the interested public on a policy that it could afford in Darfur, rather than on a policy that would end the genocide. President Bush’s team hoped they’d get lucky and that the genocide would end, just as it appears they hoped good fortune would bless their Iraqi adventure. But in both places the president and his people were unlucky, and wrong.

The second strategic factor is what we view as the ‘New Cold War.’ Understandably, counterterrorism has replaced the Cold War as America’s overriding foreign policy framework. Sudan flipped from being a sponsor and supporter of international terrorism in the 1990s to becoming a partner in counterterrorism activities after the terrorist attacks on the US on 11 September 2001. Many of the senior Sudanese officials who now offer information to the CIA are also the principal orchestrators of genocidal crimes. We published an opinion piece in the
Los Angeles Times
that discussed the collaboration between the United States and Sudan’s intelligence services despite the genocide in Darfur (‘Our Friend, an Architect of the Genocide in Darfur,’
Los Angeles Times
, 14 February 2006), and again for the
Washington Post
(‘So How Come We Haven’t Stopped It?’
Washington Post,
19 November 2006). The CIA even flew one of those officials, Intelligence Chief Salah Abdallah Gosh, on a private jet to the United States for a week of meetings. Gosh is widely believed to be directly responsible for the government’s policy to create and support the Janjaweed in Darfur, and he is at the top of a list of persons identified by the United Nations as responsible for atrocities. As important as information on al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups is, US officials should not be able to justify this moral sacrifice on national security grounds. It should be in the US national interest to oppose a regime accused of committing genocide, particularly when it has a history of supporting groups that have targeted the United States.

The third strategic factor is what we call the ‘Samantha Power Principle.’ As Samantha wrote in
A Problem from Hell,
if there is no political cost for inaction in the face of mass atrocities, we will get inaction. There will be no structural change in how we respond to these horrors until enough citizens are willing to say, ‘We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to vote for you anymore!’ Media coverage, or lack thereof, is certainly a factor in the lack of attention crises like Darfur receive from the public and policy makers. The media can help drive policy debates when the pictures and stories create an urgency to respond such as with the famine in Ethiopia and Eritrea in the 1980s.

Citizen Action in Action

So what can you do?

What can we do to change the ‘Samantha Power Principle’? By now, we have seen how indifference and ignorance can kill. A little knowledge and concern that produces some action can actually save hundreds of thousands—even millions—of lives. That was obvious in the context of Rwanda, when just a small deployment of force could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. It could have started, as Senator Paul Simon devastatingly said, with one letter. In 1994, Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder received letters during the Rwandan genocide, but she echoed Senator Simon’s lament over a lack of concern for the human victims. ‘There are some groups terribly concerned about the gorillas. But—it sounds terrible—people just don’t know what can be done about the people.’
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For years, both of us were a bit incredulous that citizen action could realistically move governments into action. Then, as the student groups and others really started responding and mobilising and we started to see the stirrings of a response from policy makers, we began to believe again in the power of ordinary people to make a difference. The efforts of one individual—no matter how flawed, how scarred, or how seemingly small—can save huge numbers of lives. And when many individuals express the same desire for change, for action, for compassion, our elected leaders actually listen.

JOHN:

In late 2003, I went to Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress. My message was focused on the ‘Never Again’ theme and how it is being desecrated. A number of congresspeople told me that they cared about what was happening in Sudan and wanted to help, but Iraq was dominating the foreign policy debates and the president needed to save his leverage for Iraqi policy imperatives. It was quite clear: an African issue—even when genocide was involved—just didn’t rise to the level of national security importance in most people’s books. I asked them what it would take to change this reality. One of them replied honestly, ‘We have to hear it from our constituents. Make as much noise as you can, scream bloody murder, force us to care!’

This has been my experience for some time now, ever since I worked for a couple congressmen in the 1980s. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. If we can make enough noise and demonstrate that there will be a cost for those politicians who just ignore us, then we can change things. I’ve seen it happen again and again. This is the foundation of our democratic system. Either use it, or we lose it on the issues we care about the most.

If the voices of those working on behalf of Darfurians were initially too soft to be heard, they are now coming together and becoming too loud to be ignored. In the summer of 2004, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and American Jewish World Service organised a Darfur Emergency Summit. John, Gerry Martone of IRC, and Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize–winning author and Holocaust survivor, spoke to the assembled. Elie Wiesel’s passionate speech about the importance of being heard was a potent wake-up call. ‘How can I hope to move people from indifference if I remain indifferent to the plight of others? I cannot stand idly by or all my endeavours will be unworthy.’
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He told the group to stop using the phrase ‘Never Again’ if they were not going to respond to Darfur. Because it
was
happening again. His words had a profound effect: for many, Darfur moved from being just another crisis to being a genocide. The cause suddenly had a different feel; people’s sense of responsibility was triggered, and the Save Darfur Coalition was born.
The time had come to start forcing people to care, and to act.

By 2006, in response to increased citizen advocacy, President Bush began feeling the heat. After sitting on the sidelines for three years as his senior officials searched for quick fixes within the narrow confines of the policy constraints outlined above, Bush began weighing in publicly. Obviously fed up with the status quo, he took many people by surprise, including his own top advisors, when he called for NATO to help protect civilians and stabilise the security situation in Darfur. ‘We need more troops,’ Bush said in February 2006. ‘And so I’m in the process now of working with a variety of folks to encourage there to be more troops, probably under the United Nations. But it’s going to require, I think, a NATO stewardship, planning, facilitating, organising—probably double the number of peacekeepers that are there now.’
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These unscripted public pleas Bush made were a direct result of citizen advocates making their voices heard right up to the president. After that declaration, the debate intensified.