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TechnoratiDarfur Deception
An Open Letter to Human Rights Colleagues Concerned About Darfur…and Iraq
To my dear and well-meaning Human Rights colleagues,
The story of displacement and death in the Darfur region of Sudan is indeed horrific. And, since Sudan is one of the few countries in Africa which has been off-limits to US oil deals and capital penetration, the crimes of the Sudanese government have a special resonance in U.S policy-making circles. Although it is rare that the Darfur tragedy is put into context, please permit me to try.
Actually, over the past two years 1.1 million Somalis have been displaced by the Ethiopian army1 with the assistance of Rwandan army (both of which have been funded by our own government with the assistance of US military advisors and equipment)2and Somalia has displaced Sudan's Darfur, as the world's most dangerous region, awful as the Darfur crimes might be3. We must also note that the attacks on Muslim Somalis by "Christian" Ethiopians/Rwandans have not been characterized as a "genocide" by US leaders, despite its larger-than-Darfur scale, although others have.....4
The awful number of civilian deaths in Darfur -- some 400,000 we are told -- has been eclipsed by the 6.4 million deaths in the Eastern Congo as a result of the invasion of the Eastern Congo by US/UK-supported armies of Uganda and Rwanda beginning in 19965 which are continuing at the rate of 45,000 a month, today.
An October 2003 UN experts report describes how the economy and resources of the Congo have been stolen by Ugandan and Rwandan militaries, and their surrogates, during the ongoing, decades-long war in Central Africa6 with not so much as "peep" from western HR advocates. And the killing is continuing as I write and you read these words. But no regular reporting has appeared in the US press. There has been no condemnation of any kind from USG and no human rights "movement" has materialized to condemn the invasion or the killing in the Congo, much less Somalia.
And, European Union Reports from 2003 make clear that the recent electoral debacle in Zimbabwe in 2008 was merely a repeat of similar tactics, such as physical attacks, arrests and deportation of the political opposition that occurred in Rwanda, when President Kagame was "elected" with 95% of the vote in 2003.7 Interestingly, Zimbabwe has been almost completely cut-off from "western" economic aid -- with the predictable results in the African context.
By contrast, Uganda is Africa's largest recipient of UK military and economic aid, and Rwanda has a similar relationship with the U.S. Both countries have become centers for trading gold, diamonds and coltan (the rare mineral that makes cell phones possible). Although none of these resources exist in any quantities in either country, they DO exist in great plentitude in the Congo. US military aid to Rwanda has ballooned the Rwandan army from 7,000 (before Kagame's war 1990-1994 to seize power) to 70,000-100,000 to today.8 Rwandan troops are now being "farmed-out" to the U.N. and U.S. allies for cash, not unlike the mercenaries, called military "contractors," being used in Iraq and elsewhere.
And, when we begin considering who the criminals are in Africa, it is worth noting that Zimbabwe's Mugabe had the poor judgement to send troops to the Congo to oppose the completely illegal Ugandan/Rwandan invasions that began in 1996 and are continuing today.
This is not to say that Darfur does not deserve our concern and attention, but when the U.S. State Department starts throwing around the "genocide" label, you can be pretty sure that the targeted African leaders are NOT favorites of U.S policy-makers. On the other hand, no matter WHAT crimes are committed by local despots that great-powers outside Africa support, much, much greater crimes (such as wars of aggression for economic gain) never get even a mention.
Because I am Lead
Defense Counsel at the UN Tribunal for Rwanda,
I have had access to original UN and U.S. Government documents that
have been suppressed since mid-1994 but which are now in
the record at the ICTR, and many of which are posted on
the website of original source materials I have been creating
to permit researchers to draw their own conclusions rather
than accepting my or our Government's "spin"
on the politics of Africa. Please check out www.rwandadocumentsproject.net
Also, please note that the Pentagon established AFRICOM, the first military command structure for Africa, just last year, a clear signal that the struggle for the vast resources and undersupplied markets in Africa is just beginning. AFRICOM joins PACOM (war planning for Asia, including the Vietnam War); EUCOM (European war planning...the US segment of NATO); the Southern Command (military planning for interventions in Latin America) and CENTCOM (responsible for military strategy in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and...Iran).
The establishment of AFRICOM in 2007 is undisputable evidence that U.S. policy-makers see Africa as an area of military contention for the foreseeable future. Africa is the last continent, with almost unlimited nature riches, over which all major economies must seek influence to fuel their industrial production.
Before we swallow wholesale the accepted story of "good and evil" among African leaders, a careful study of the politics, history and big-power aims in Africa is probably warranted -- although it is very painful to face up to the machinations of our own military-industrial complex because to do so will require fundamental change within our own society, rather than to look elsewhere for "the problem."
However, as responsible citizens of the most dangerous Empire the world has ever seen...we must.
The future of humanity hangs in the balance, not because of violence committed by local despots, which is, of course, despicable, but because of the political, economic and military manipulations of the post-WWII American Empire which benefits from fueling local conflicts to ensure that its allies (and influence) prevail in every corner of the globe.
However, there has been one good recent development on the International Human Rights "front".
The President of Sudan was indicted for "genocide" and war-crimes by the International Criminal Court even though Sudan has not signed the treaty, which is exactly the same legal position in which the U.S. finds itself because of Bush's rejection of the Clinton's signature on the Treaty of Rome that set up the Court.
When Bush of other American leaders are similarly indicted by the ICC, too, we will be sure that "international justice" is being meted out evenly and the "Rule of the Powerful" will have been replaced by the Rule of Law.
But, as it is now, the powerful decide who among the less-powerful will feel the lash of retribution...or reap the rewards of co-operation
I realize that the above may be shocking -- and may call my sanity into question in some circles -- but facts are facts, and can re-order our perceptions, if we have the courage to examine them.
best regards to all,
Prof. Peter Erlinder
Wm. Mitchell College of Law
St. Paul, MN
Lead Defence Counsel-UN/ICTR,
Arusha, TZ
past-President, National Lawyers
Guild, NY,NY
1 CIA World Factbook, Updated September 4, 2008
2 USA Today, January 8, 2007: "A Christian-led nation...Ethiopia has received nearly $20 million in U.S. military aid since late 2002. That's more than any country in the region except Djibouti...the U.S. and Ethiopian militaries have "a close working relationship," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter said...[a]dvisers from the Guam national guard have been training Ethiopians in basic infantry skills at two camps in Ethiopia, said Maj. Kelley Thibodeau, a spokeswoman for U.S. forces in Djibouti...There are about 100 U.S. military personnel currently working in Ethiopia, Carpenter said."
3 "Humanitarian crisis in Somalia is worse than Darfur", International Herald Tribune, Nov. 20, 2007. Quoting UN sources.
4 Eritrea: President Accuses U.S. of Genocide in Somalia, http//allafrica.com/stories, Sept. 7,2008.
5 By 2003, the Congo wars had been going on for 7 years and had killed more than 3 million Congolese. See, UN Panel of Experts Report on the Illegal Exploitation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, October 20, 2003. Since 1998 to the present, alone, the total is 5.4 million.
6 See, UN Panel of Experts Report on the Illegal Exploitation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, October 20, 2003.
7 Rptr. Colette Flesch, Report of European Observer Mission, September 2003; See also, Waugh, Paul Kagame and Rwanda: Power, Genocide and the Rwandan Patriotic Front, pp. 185-206 (Mcfarland USA 2004); U.S. State Department 2003 Human Rights Report on Rwanda, Feb. 25, 2004.8 See, UNAMIR Reconnaisance Report, September 1993; http:Wikipedia.org/wik/list-of-countries-by-number-of-active-troops.
25 Comments so far
Show AllThe Darfur conflict may be fashionable to the Starbucks crowd, but it's just a cover for the US and the neocons to dismember a sovereign nation like Sudan and plunder her resources, namely oil.
A great article. Darfur is the fashionable "genocidal" conflict these days, and, without minimizing the seriousness of the conflict, it's important to try to understand why this is so when there are quite obviously worse conflicts in the region by any measure.
Also see what Columbia University Africa scholar Mahmood Mamdani had to say about the confict, the "genocide" label, and how the Save Darfur Foundation seems to be spending its money in this Democracy Now interview last year:
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/6/4/mahmood_mamdani_on_darfur_the_politics
Africa is/was a great prize for white explorers/imperialists. Great stuff:
Ivory - for the piano keys of Europe, and trinkets
Rubber - kept the metal off the road
Slaves - easy targets for guys with guns, and very valuable in the new world. It's not funny that the Europeans didn't have the guts to bring them to Europe.
Gold
Diamonds
Copper
Tin
Uranium
Coltan - just under my fingertips as I type
Wood - tropical forests, rapidly disappearing
Oil - Drill baby, drill...
Nothing has changed
The function of the ICC is to punish enemies of the West. I was excited when it
was first established. But no more. It's become a political/legal organization. If it's mission is to prosecute war crimes, TONY BLAIR would be indited by now.
zaz has made a very astute comment which echos one made by Harold PInter in his Nobel Prize acceptance lecture in 2005. Unlike the fascist US, Britain (through its membership in the EU)is under the authority of the ICC and as such Tony Blair is legally accountable to it for violations of human rights standards (as is Gordon Brown).
Poet
&YYY&
The great powers are nobodies friends,
they only seek to further their selfish ends.
From which great power are you taking your pay,
with what articles in journals to make truth say.
What public opinion is it to be today?
An astonishing poetic contribution - a statement that a Yemeni poet might make in a tribal dispute. hedology, thank you.
for more on this ancient settlement methodology: Yemen Chronicle: An Anthropology of War and Mediation, by Steven C. Caton
Our lives are worth more than their profits.
Excellent article. Despite all the concern about Darfur (which is often employed to distract from our own crimes), Americans do their best to ignore the rest of Africa (the Congo in particular) and our involvement in some of it's worst conflicts. It's fine to criticize Sudan or China for Darfur, but it's enormously hypocritical unless we Americans place more blame on our own government for the far worse wars we have assisted or created.
Certainly Erlinder's commentary is a much more balanced look at African affairs than the usual "Let's intervene' humanitarian imperialism one has grown accustomed to read on liberal sites.
Be prepared. Assuming Obama doesn't throw this election way by constantly adopting Republican positions that the populace is sick of (ie, like he's been doing for the last month or so), then you can expect the Obama administration to return to the Clinton formula.
This means just as many foreign wars and interventions as under Bush. But, the propaganda spin around them will return to the Clinton era one of 'humanitarian intervention'.
----------------------------
"To know, and not to do, is not to know"
www.samsonsworld.blogspot.com
Well!!!! Not one word of China in either the article or the responses thus far. Is a puzzlement, especially in view of the spate of anti-China publicity we've been subjected to for months re Dafur!
According to Mia farrow and her Hollywood gang (ie. the naif Spielberg) it is China that is either responsible and/or is continuing the so called 'genocide' in Dafur.
Is it possible that she's is way off base on this? Perhaps she was put up to it (Dafur Deception)? Or is she still stinging from "personal" Asian issues...
"may you live in interesting times"
Darfur and Zimbabwe and many conflicts in Africa are a struggle for controlling their resources (water and oil). We usually back the bad guys. No time for this now, but it's just another myth. I do not agree with Larouche on everything, but I agree with his views here. Just more lies like Iraq, Kosovo, Iran, Georgia, Vietnam, etc. Keep the UN troops the hell out of africa and kick them out of NY to boot.
Are you saying that the MDC and Tsvangiri are the "bad guys", and that Mugabe is a "good guy"?
You must be a first class racist if you do, because Mugabe has killed more black people in any given year than the Klan has in a century.
I am sorry, what color is Mugabe? The issue in Zimbabwe is that the ownership of the best land was concentrated by white people who profited from the years of British exploitation and colonialism. Mugabe had a deal worked out with the British to resolve the issue and Blair backed out of the deal when he took over. So Mugabe took matters into his own hands to recover the land, and the IMF refused to provide any additional credit, and sanctions we implemented then crippled the economy. The US and British then funded and armed an opposition group to effect regime change while waging an economic war that destabilizes the country.
Seems to me defending Mugabe is more racist than not.
In Sudan the issue is we want to control the water from the Nile which flows to Egypt and which they are dependent on for their water, plus there is that magic 3 letter word, OIL. So again, we have armed and funded opposition groups to create instability and regime change. Sound familiar?
Allegations of genocide against the Bashir government, promoted by the media, and former and current British, U.S., and European government officials, is part of our attempts at regime change. The claim that the Bashir government is commiting genoicide of the "Africans" in the Darfur region is meant for simpletons who are willing victims of group think propaganda, like yourself.
In Darfur, almost all the people doing the killing and being killed are Muslims, in a war that involves Chad, Libya, the Central African Republic, and other countries, all of whom we are backing. Inside Sudan the resistance group in the south (SPLA) also arms and trains the resistance groups in Darfur (SLA, JEM), and receive the arms and funding from these countries which in turn receives them from guess who.
A chapter froma recent Kissinger report headed "Minerals and Fuels," states: "Rapid population growth is not in itself a major factor in pressure in depletable resources (fossil fuels and other minerals), since demand for them depends more on levels of industrial output than on numbers of people. On the other hand, the world is increasingly dependent on mineral supplies from developing countries, and if rapid population growth frustrates their prospects for economic development and social progress, the resulting instability may undermine conditions for expanded output and sustained flows of such resources"
If you really want to understand why countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and South Africa are under attack, one need only refer to NSSM 200, written by Kissinger in 1974.
It is our racist policy to keep Africans from developing so we can exploit their resources, and yet you defend the racist policies and in your blind ignorance call me a racist.
If it was not so sad it would be laughable.
I find it odd that anyone would interpret this article as "not caring" about the Sudan. The article, it appears to me, is just pointing out the hypocrisy in how we pick and choose our "humanitarian" concerns.
Also, it exposes some of the Western actors behind the scenes. This article leaves me with the impression the author cares very much about the fate of the Sudan, all of Africa, and ulitimately, all of humanity. Isn't his appeal for everyone to consider this broader view?
Since we are not engaged in the Sudan or Darfur and accepting his concept that we shouldfn't, what does he propose to do about it?
Perhaps that is what was being referred to above. Shouldn't we stay completely out of it? What business is it of ours?
We are already quite involved in this region via proxies. We (our CIA-types) supply guns and money to keep our mining corprotistas in the coltan and other stuff. We, along with our allies are hurting humanity's poorest people (Africans) out of greed.
It is a moral obligation. Read up on Lumumba and Mobutu. The US has Congolese blood on its hands. 6 million human beings as if it didn't matter. Compare these deaths to the holocaust for a try. The difference is Hitler had his own people kill the Jews, while we pay African tribalists to kill other African tribalists.
Read "The Dogs of War". Great book.
I also read a book about David Livingstone where it was documented that South Africans and Belgians blackmailed (at gunpoint) tribes to capture eachother for the slave trade. With the blackout of media coverage in DR Congo, they might still be using these ghastly practices to fan the flames of civil wars. A few nasty and extremely well-armed mercenaries would be sufficient to keep the continent burning and the theivery of Africa's mineral wealth on full bore for a long time.
I was in the region before the mass civil wars began and I remember asking myself, ""What do the imperialists who are supplying the weapons want out of this region? What is that important?"
It didn't make sense to me because I had never even heard of coltan. Still, to this very day, documentaries on Dafur never even add 2+2. They don't even mention it. They focus on the symptoms but never identify the cause.
""What do the imperialists who are supplying the weapons want out of this region?
Simple...China wants the oil and some other minerals.
One thing I think he is suggesting is that our "Military Industrial Complex" should stop supporting juntas that help the US take the natural resources of Africa for ourselves. Our government should stop discouraging real democracy and actively destabilizing regions so that we can exploit them for Western interests.
When we are shown some "evil dictator" in an unstable part of the world, this is rarely put in context. Most of us don't know when our government has been instrumental in creating the situation, but it is often the case. I think he is encouraging us to learn about this exploitation and oppose it.
I would accept your analysis, but what does he propose to do about it? He doesn't say. That just makes him one more "aginner" and boy, we've got far too many of those.
We know China is actively engaged there and I doubt we'd be able to replace her if we wanted to in the region, so once again, he is warning against our involvement, but what does he suggest as a solution to what is already going on?
I hope thats clear, sometimes I trip over my own tongue.
I could suggest sending lots of UN troops there. And immediately putting strict international regulations on all mining operations in Africa. How long can the rape of a continent by foreigners be allowed to go on?
These African countries were "given" independence in 1960, but the mining concessions remained in rthe hands of colonial corps. To this day the plunder continues with disdain for humanity's poorest.
It's the Africain holocaust that is going on right now but doesn't make the news.
Why hasn't the UN sent troops there already? Why haven't they intervened in the Sudan and Darfur?
bligh4
Erlinger certainly knows how to show compassion for those afflicted in the Sudan.
He seems almost disappointed that he can't hang this one on the U.S., and therefor he doesn't care one iota what happens in that unfortunate country.
Yes, the conflict in the Congo dwarfs all the other conflicts in Africa (and makes the conflict in Palestine look like a day at Disneyland) but don't look for any comments by Erlinger while they were going on. (first and second Congo war.) I myself have pointed out for years the absurdity of ignoring the largest mass killings since World War II in favor of the various middle east conflicts. Nobody gave a rat's ass because it was not the U.S. or Israel fueling the killings.
The original spark for the conflict, by the way, was the mass movement of Hutus involved in the Rwanda Genocide fleeing to the Congo after the Tutsi army invaded Rwanda. They have since done everything in there power to destabilize the region.
Erlingers article is a case study of false concern for the fate of the Africans.
I was there and I believe there was bad-faith involvemnt by Western intelligence agencies. Knowing that the coltan bubble was forming, they would not have allowed anything to transpire without their consent.
This article is a case study into the human cost of globalization, which is doublespeak for a dying empire.
Hoa binh