Defunding The Genocide:
Sudan Rakes in Billions Selling Oil To The World, and Spends It On Hardware to Trash Darfuri Villages
I am sitting at the edge of a holocaust, sipping sweet tea with one of the stunned survivors. Osman Ibrahim is my age - 28 - and today, he is running for his life with his wife and four children. In halting Arabic, he explains what has happened to him and two million Darfuris like him.
One morning last month, Osman was tending his crops in his village 30 miles away, over the border in Darfur, when he heard the sound every black Darfuri dreads. It was the whirr of the Sudanese military’s helicopters, followed - as thunder follows lightning - by the approaching horses and machine-gun fire of the Janjaweed. This militia are known as “devils on horseback”, unleashed by the Arab supremacist government in Khartoum to cleanse the region of its “Zurga” (”niggers”).
“The helicopters bombed my house,” Osman says plainly, “and the Janjaweed started to kill everyone in the village.” He scrambled to gather his kids - the eldest is nine, the youngest is just nine months - and he saw that “the Janjaweed were killing everyone in the village, massacring everyone.” As the family fled across the border on foot, the Sudanese military and their Janjaweed proxies followed them. They bombed fleeing families right up until they crossed over into the Central African Republic (CAR), and he fears they will follow them here. Now Osman’s baby is sick, because they could barely feed him as they ran. He has diarrhoea and stomach problems. Osman doesn’t say it, but we both know that babies routinely die of diarrhoea and stomach problems out here.
In the refugee camps now swelling on the Darfur-CAR border, this is a standard story. There are mothers who had their babies snatched from their arms and tossed onto bonfires. There are women who were raped, and told by their rapists they were being implanted with “Arab seed” to “destroy the nigger race”. Osman says quietly, “The Sudanese forces are determined to exterminate all the black people in Darfur.”
After all the headlines and all the summits and all the protests, the Darfur genocide is continuing unimpeded. There is currently a feeble smattering of 7000 African Union peace-keeping troops on the ground, covering an area the size of France. These soldiers are barely being paid. They are disillusioned and defecting and, Osman says, “they have done nothing to protect us at all.” A combined UN-African Union peace-keeping force is due to arrive - next year, at the earliest, and it will only go in if the Sudanese government genocidaires agree friendly terms. This is the sum total of the international response.
What can we do now to support Osman, before he joins tens of thousands of his countrymen in permanant exile or a mass grave? He and everyone in the refugee camps desperately want disciplined soldiers with guns to stand in between them and the militias determined to hunt them down. But with the American and British governments responsible for unleashing an equally horrific slaughter in Iraq, it will take a long time before they can be trusted to embark on a humanitarian intervention.
Osman doesn’t have a long time. He may not have a year. There are three things we as ordinary citizens need to do now, today, to protect him.
The choppers (and head-choppers) that raided Osman’s village were bank-rolled by global petrol sales. The Sudanese government rakes in billions from selling oil to the world, and spends it on top-of-the-range hardware to trash Darfuri villages. They recently put in a petrol-soaked order for ten Russian Mig-29s, one of the most advanced military aircraft on the market. We have it in our power to choke off that money. Hamish Falconer, the executive director of Sudan Divestment UK, explains how: “Mining oil is a capital-intensive activity. The Sudanese government simply doesn’t have the capacity to do it on its own. It is only possible with the support of outside companies - some of which are based in the UK. If people do not want to be funding genocide, they need to get their pension funds, their investment portfolios, their universities and their local councils to defund these companies.”
Dozens of companies trading on the London Stock Exchange are not based in Sudan, but nonetheless buy and sell their genocide-scented petrol. For a full list, and a guide to how to get involved, go to www.sudandivestment.co.uk.
But divestment here is only a first step. As it currently stands, where Western companies withdraw, Chinese corporations swiftly step into the breach. Sudan sells 60 per cent of its oil and 40 per cent of its exports to China, and the proportion is growing. In turn, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is - as the human-rights campaigner Nat Hentoff puts it - “the chief protector, investor and arms supplier” to the Sudanese genocidaires, lavishing cash and vetoing any meaningful UN Security Council action. The Sudanese finance minister, Elzubair Ahmed Elhassan, brags, “We are getting support without conditions from China.”
Only China can halt the genocide now. Yet, ordinarily, the Chinese dictators are impervious to international human rights condemnation. Look, for example, at how they continue to brutalise Tibet, the Uighurs, the Falun Gong and trade unionists in their own country. But the Beijing Olympics next year provide us with a crucial pressure point, where we can inflict real pain on the CCP. They are desperate for their post-Tianenmen coming-out party to go without a hitch. But unless China stops the flow of petrodollars to the Sudanese genocidaires, Save Dafur campaigners are determined to brand the games the Genocide Olympics.
Already, Steven Spielberg is having to make uncomfortable noises about shooting the CCP’s Olympic propaganda films, and pressure is building on the corporate Olympics sponsors, including Johnson and Johnson, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s. The US boycotted the Moscow Olympic Games after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; isn’t a genocide even worse? Shouldn’t we all be refusing to turn up unless China changes its support for race-slaughter?
So those of us who take the incantations of “Never Again” seriously can, and must, disrupt the work of the genocidaires. But sitting here in the dusk in the shadow of Darfur, Osman says that - though this will help - only armed intervention will ultimately guarantee his safety, especially since the Darfuri rebel groups are now themselves collapsing into anarchic banditry and violence. He wants us to force our governments to pay for the African states to provide troops to enter Darfur, with or without the consent of the Sudanese tyranny - and now, not next year.
“Only United Nations troops will stop the killings,” Osman says slowly, looking back towards the country he cannot return to. “Otherwise, soon we will all be dead.”
© 2007 The Independent
So much for the Chinese lecturing us on human rights. Send in the peacekeepers. The arab north will not stop trying to kill the black people in Dafur without outside interference. Thanks for the article. Why are our leaders, who showed up so admirably to protest South Africa apartheid, MIA on this far bloodier issue?
And of course Wal Mart will stop buying from Chinese slave labor sweatshops in the interests of stopping the genocide in Darfur.
Genocide, labor sweatshops, trade union activists assassinated, children die by the thousands from preventable diseases like malaria and measles, are all feathers of the same bird:
Individualism+Greed+Profits = Capitalism
Unless we restrain or better yet kill the bird nothing will change. Only democratic Socialism will make ours a better World.
How long ago was it that Colin Powell went on TV to access the situation and called it Genocide? Many, many months ago. And, it goes on and on. Hell on Earth and where are all of the compassionate conservatives on this issue? What issue? We are so much better at killing than providing humanitarian aid. War is so much more profitable than Peace.
Johann Hari would do better if he spoke about the Genocide conducted in Iraq by both the US/UK before he spoke about Darfur.
He talks about the Chinese and boycotts - hypocrite. What about boycotting British and American goods, etc.? Chinese brutalising Tibet, blah, blah, blah….What are Britain and the US doing? People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. One really needs to think of whose interests this writer is trying to promote… All this ‘concern’ for Darfur by certain people is not with the genuine interest for the people of Darfur and their suffering - it is for the resources which lie under Sudanese ground.
And by the way….the ‘Arab supremacist government in Khartoum’ together with Osman are all BLACK. They are all African, and the ‘Arab’ in this statement is extremely misleading.
Natalia, you’re right on the mark.I’d also suspect that this individual is other at all reliable. Two million he says. Maybe he’s with Pentagon black ops. Hey, they put out this kind of damn BS and lies to scare people enough in order that folks will go along with another military intervention somewhat like that already actually going on in Somalia with big time US military involvement while we’re thinking about how to stop W’s wars of terror on Afghanistan and Iraq.
We need impeachment and removal and war crimes trials for the top two fascist war criminals in the US Government.
Hari is on the ground in Sudan. To say that he is exagerating to set up a western oil seizure is absurd. Especially since he is saying the same thing that Amnesty International and Doctors without borders are saying. Should the Chinese be immune to critisism ?
I agree with Natalia and AD. There is something quite strange about this article. Perhaps it’s the title. It’s misleading (deliberately?) This doesn’t seem to be an article about Darfur as much as it is an attack on China to make sure the Olympics fail.
The Chinese are johnny-come-lately to Darfur and suddenly they’re the ones now responsible for ‘halting the genocide’. Oh, really?
Note carefully the structure of Hari’s original sentence; it’s as if China started it! Perhaps that’s what Hari wants the reader to interpret?
On these same pages on June 22nd another article on Darfur appeared, and the writers mentioned China only once, and only in passing.
(Saving Darfur or Salvation Delusion?
by Steve Fake & Kevin Funk)
The UN says there has only been 200,000 fatalities in the Darfur conflict. Only around 50,000 of those came from fighting, the rest were from disease, starvation, etc. In addition, the most fierce fighting occurred a couple years ago!
In Iraq, on the other hand, as of last year we found out that there had been at least 655,000 Iraqis killed as a result of the illegal US/UK invasion of their country. Undoubtedly that total is now much higher, some have estimated nearly one million. This does not even include the 500,000 to 1.5 million Iraqis killed by the US imposed economic sanctions on Iraq that lasted from 1991-2003. Or the 100,000 Iraqis killed in the first Gulf War.
So where is the Save Iraq campaign? There have clearly been far more Iraqis killed as a result of the criminal attack and occupation by the US and Britain on their country.
The real reason is that many of the same groups who brought us the Iraq War are PART OF the “Save Darfur” campaign. These groups include the National Association of Evangelicals (formerly led by Ted Haggerd) and the neo-con “Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.” That is why “Save Darfur” is silent on Iraq, but supports US intervention in Sudan! They don’t like the fact that Sudan has a close relationship with China. They’d prefer Sudan to be a puppet regime of the Anglo-Saxon countries, like most of the other oil producing countries are.
friend, natalia, ad, right on the $$. one must be careful about the use of the word “genocide.” under international law, genocide automatically invokes a UN response, w/a military component. thus you’ll notice when US public figures talk about sudan, they almost always say genocide. they want the UN to call it genocide officially, thereby justifying “humanitarian intervention” (a la the pseudo-genocide in the bosnian wars, quite unlike the real genocide in rwanda.)
there are a lot of factors involved in sudan (china, oil, etc.) but rest assured doing anything to help people in darfur is way, way, down on the list.
Could those of you bashing the author and wondering just who he is be bothered to do just a little research? This link is the search result when searching by his name on the Archives page:
Look at his articles and still try to denounce him as a neocon or Bush apologist. Good grief, it’s not like either Iraq is mass murder or Darfur is, but not both. They can simultaneously be worth doing something about.
The overall number of dead in a crisis area has nothing to do with whether the world will notice or not. Witness the Congo, with more dead in the past 6 years than Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Timor, Dafur and Bosnia combined. 5 million and counting. The Left and the Right only notice when there is political hay to make. No hay, no protests or help.
Where are the ‘Save Darfur’ crowd when it comes to working to stop AFRICOM and the US proxy attack, invasion, and occupation of Somalia by Ethiopia? Where are they when it comes to the on again, off again genocide in Congo? Why do they never call for getting the US government and its European allies out of Africa? Why don’t they call for getting Blackwater out of Sudan? Why don’t they talk about the Iraqi and Palestinian genocides made in the US and Britain?
I am stunned people are parsing words when the fact remains, once again, when focus is brought to a “killing fields” situation, people will argue over whether we (US/UN) with the abilities to intervene, “should” or not. Please explain to me when mass killing is ever a good thing?
I also agree with many other postings here. I find it unlikely the US will intervene given current killing enterprises elsewhere. Reducing killing in Congo or Dafur doesn’t seem to fit in with D.C.’s “other priorities”
One of the saddest events took place in Kashmir, where Indian atrocities went unnoticed:
http://hellinparadise.150m.com/examples.htm
Indian Atrocities in Kashmir
“As the conflict in Kashmir enters its fourth year, central and state authorities have done little to stop the widespread practice of rape by Indian security forces in Kashmir. Indeed, when confronted with the evidence of rape, time and again the authorities have attempted to impugn the integrity of the witnesses, discredit the testimony of physicians or simply deny the charges everything except order a full inquiry and prosecute those responsible for rape”.
(Asia Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, May 09, 1993)
“Since January 1990, rape by Indian occupation forces has become more frequent. Rape most often occurs during crackdowns, cordon and search operations during which men are held for identification in parks or schoolyards while security forces search their homes. In raping them, the security forces are attempting to punish and humiliate the entire community.”
(’Pain in Kashmir: A Crime of War’ issued jointly by Asia Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, May 09, 1993)
“By banning TV cameras and prohibiting the presence in Kashmir of the International Red Cross and of human rights organization, the Indian authorities have tried to keep Kashmir out of the news.”
(`Kashmiri crisis at the flash point’, The Washington Times, by columnist Cord Meyer, April 23, 1993)
“(On February 23, 1991), at least 23 women were reportedly raped in their homes at gunpoint (at Kunan Poshpora in Kashmir). Some are said to have been gang-raped, others to have been raped in front of their children … The youngest victim was a girl of 13 named Misra, the oldest victim, name Jana, was aged 80″.
(Amnesty International, March 1992)
“The most common torture methods are severe beatings, sometimes while the victim is hung upside down, and electric shocks. People have also been crushed with heavy rollers, burned, stabbed with sharp instruments, and had objects such as chilies or thick sticks forced into their rectums. Sexual mutilation has been reported”.
(Amnesty International, March 1992)
“The worst outrages by the CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) have been frequent gang rapes of all women in Muslim villages, followed by the execution of the men”.
(Eric Margolis, The Ottawa Citizen, December 8, 1991)
“While army troops dragged men from their homes for questioning in the border town of Kunan Pushpura, scores of women say they were raped by soldiers….a pregnant Kashmiri woman, who was raped and kicked, gave birth to a son with a broken arm.”
(Melinda Liuin, Newsweek, June 24, 1991)
[Anthony Wood and Ron MaCullagh of the Sundav Observer (June 02, 1992) estimated that over 500 Indian army men were involved in this orgy of rape and plunder in Kunan Pushpura.]
“The security forces have entered hospitals, beaten patients, hit doctors, entered operating theaters, smashed instruments. Ambulances have been attacked, curfew passes are confiscated.”
(Asia Watch, May 1991)
“Subjugated, humiliated, tortured and killed by the 650,000-strong Indian army, the people of Kashmir have been living through sheer hell for more than a year, the result of an increasingly brutal campaign of state repression. India hides behind its carefully-crafted image of “non-violence” and presents itself in international forums as a model of democracy and Pluralism. Yet, it is unable to stand up the scrutiny of even its admirers. All journalists, especially television crews, were expelled from the Valley. With no intrusive cameras to record the brutalities of the Indian forces, the world has been kept largely in the dark.” (The Toronto Star, January 25, 1991)
“Young girls were now being raped systematically by entire (Indian) army units rather than by a single soldier as before. Girls are taken to soldier’s camps and held naked in their tents for days on end. Many never return home….Women are strung up naked from trees and their breast lacerated with knives, as the (Indian) soldiers tell them that their breast will never give milk again to a newborn militant. Women are raped in front of their husbands and children, or paraded naked through villages and beaten on the breasts.”
(The Independent, September 18, 1990)
This author along with Nicholas Kristof of NYT are spreading propaganda on the Darfur conflict. Hari should know, since he is literally reporting on the field, that it is an armed conflict between nomadic and farming blacks. That is unless he only hangs out in the refugee camps and knows the story of the other side from the refugees, but never met them.
Lets not forget that the African Union had sent in troops a few years ago into Darfur and they held the peace for some time. But the UN stopped funding them just so that it could take over control of the issue and stir it up in other ways.
And doesn’t the author realize by now that the Afghanistan invasion was expected when the CIA build up the Islamic mujahideen from the grounds up as a trap for the Soviets to fall into? So if there were any global boycott of any olympics, it should have been the 1984 one in the US for its role in stirring up global unrest.
The sheer poverty and hunger in Darfur could so easily be alleviated through pure humanitarian work, with the attempt to empower the people towards self-sufficiency at the same time. The country is rich in natural resources and this could be developed through fair trade, and which could be of benefit to the people. BUT this is not on the agenda of the powers that be. What they really want to do is similar to what’s been done in Iraq, by deceiving the people that a ‘genocide’ is going on in Darfur. It’s amazing how many well-known personalities have joined the band-wagon. A comment above was right: the AU was doing fine until the funds were discontinued, deliberately, of course, to make way for the UN. And what happens after that? Before we know it, there will be invading armies, destroying the lives of some of the poorest on this planet.
It’s no wonder that the Sudanese Government is reluctant to give its blessing to all this because it knows that nobody truly cares about the plight of the people of Darfur, only in its rich resources.