PROPOSED ISG RESOLUTION ON DARFUR 11/11/05

INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF GENOCIDE EXECUTIVE BOARD

RESOLUTION ON DARFUR , NOVEMBER 11, 2005

��The Sudan ��tsunami is manmade��it can be stopped��*

The ongoing genocide in Darfur which began in Spring of 2003�� labeled by some as ��ethnic cleansing,�� crimes against humanity�� and ��war crimes��has not been stopped by ineffectual U.N. Security Council resolutions. It is the Government of Sudan [GOS] which manipulated ethnic rivalry in the area, expanded the conflict--see DARFUR: GENOCIDE BEFORE OUR EYES ed. Joyce Apsel [ISG, 2005] for the roots of the conflict. The GOS armed the Arab militias, known as janjaweed, which act as agents of and proxies for the government. Many, including the insurgent militias, are at fault for gross violations of human rights. However, it is primarily the strategy and violations of the GOS and of the janjaweed which now make it impossible for two million members of African tribes from Darfur �� refugees who have seen family members murdered, been raped or witnessed rapes��to come home again from the camps they are in now inside and outside Sudan..

The equivalent of a protracted tsunami has gone on in Darfur, day afer day, year after year since 2003, with at least 400,000 dead or dying in a genocide by attrition. As a Nigerian political scientist put it recently, ��moral revolt is not enough. A strong military action is now needed to protect Black Africans in western Sudan, given the failure of diplomacy��The international community��s reaction to the tsunami disaster in Asia has shown that it has the capacity to respond with great compassion and urgency to sufferings in any part of the world. Unlike the Asian tsunami, which was an act of God, the Sudan ��tsunami�� is manmade; it could have been prevented; it can be stopped��.��*

Many states are implicated in failing to recognize, publicly acknowledge and intervene; these include western and Arab states , Islamic states and major African states to even condemn the GOS, headed by the National Islamic Front..To its credit, the United States has acknowledged the genocide. However, it is the failure and complicity of the United States to pursue a consistent policy to stop the genocide in Darfur which has been especially demoralizing to opponents of the genocide in the international community.

It was the United States which first recognized genocide in Sudan in September 2004 in a statement by then Secretary of State Colin Powell, on the basis of investigations described in Apsel (2005).. Recently, the US has pursued a new line, an appeasement line, as Eric Reeves puts it.** The US. Central Intelligence Agency in April 2005 flew Major General Saleh Gosh to Washington, DC for intelligence on international terrorism. Gosh heads the GOS��s ��ruthlessly efficient security service�� and has been referred by the UN Commission of Inquiry to the International Criminal Court to be investigated for crimes against humanity. In July, the US State Department gave an exemption from sanctions (put in place in 1997) to allow the GOS to hire a lobbyist for $530,000 in Washington, DC. Since then, the State Department has upgraded the status of Sudan in its annual report on human traffic-trafficking, providing a false impression that the GOS is improving its human rights record despite the lack of evidence.**

We call upon the United States to change its policy and for the Congress to pass the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act (HR 3127 in the House of Representatives and S. 1462 in the Senate which will give the President authority to provide assistance to reinforce the deployment and operations of an expanded African Union [AU] mission; urge NATO reinforcement of such mission; denies entry at US ports to cargo ships and oil tankers engaged in the oil industry in Sudan (among other provisions) and calls for the suspension of Sudan��s membership from the United Nations General Assembly (permissible under Article 5 of the UN charter); for the Administration to use its influence in international lending institutions to cut off all loans to the GOS until it disarms the janjaweed , stops targeting and starts protecting people in Darfur; for both the Administration and Congress to advance legislation to directly fund the African Union to enable it to expand its presence in Darfur, logistics and communication, by bringing in NATO troops as needed. (We recall that Gen. Dallaire, UNAMIR force commander in Rwanda in 1994, who unsuccessfully sought troops to intervene preemptively there, has estimated that 40,000 troops are needed in Darfur. There are less than 7,000 AU troops there now). The WASHINGTON POST (October 8, 2005), advocating supplementing AU troops with NATO troops, noted that ��NATO was born��indeed, the idea of

��the West�� was born��out of the ashes of Hitler��s genocide. If it refuses to fight the modern echoes of that barbarism, what does the West stand for?��

We also call upon other powers with the capacity to do so to impose a naval

blockade to block oil exports from Sudan . ��Petroleum exports, worth about $1 billion a year to Khartoum, provide the national lifeline. They are the military government��s only means of support. Cutting off exports, easily done at Port Sudan on the Red Sea by one or two American, British or French frigates, authorized by the UN, would concentrate the minds of the rulers of the Sudan and presumably compel them to restrain the janjaweed and negotiate sensibly in Abuja��.the UN General Assembly is now on record in favor of ��protecting�� innocent civilians within sovereign countries and within war zones.��** *

As winter comes, the threat to life is increasing and aggravated by how the GOS increasingly restricts humanitarian organizations from operating. Oxfam (November 9) warned of an impending catastrophe as has Eric Reeves repeatedly (in Apsel 2005) pointed out��more tens of thousands will die of malnutrition, cold, and disease as a consequence. ��Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part�� is among the ��acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such�� which are defined as genocide in the UN Convention on The Prevention and Punishment of The Crime of Genocide (Article 2).

We call on our government and all others to dedicate themselves today to stop the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

REFERENCES

*Nsongurua J. Udombana, ��When Neutrality is a Sin: The Darfur Crisis and the Crisis of Humanitarian Intervention in Sudan,�� HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY (Vol. 27, No. 4), November 2005; 1149-1199.

** Eric Reeves, ��All Quiet: America��s Sudan strategy changes for the worse,�� October 27, 2005 (from THE NEW REPUBLIC [on-line, October 27, 2005], www.sudanreeves.org

***Robert Rotberg, ��Why Wait on Darfur?�� THE BOSTON GLOBE, October 24, 2005..