Saturday, August 12, 2006

Eric Reeves says DPA is serving as cover for escalating internecine fighting, especially in northern Darfur

Eric Reeves' opinion piece appears in today's "Comments is Free" section of the Guardian's website (via POTP).

Here below is an excerpt that shows how Reeves continues to pull down the AU troops in Darfur and portray the Darfur conflict as Arabs vs Africans/Arabs seeking to kill and eliminate Africans/Arabs committing genocide.

Note too how he highlights the Germans, making no mention of any other European government other than that of Britain. France, Norway and The Netherlands, to name a few, have been most vigorous in their efforts to help the people of Darfur, not just the Germans and British.

The only reason I can think of why Eric Reeves would denigrate the AU and feel the need to highlight the German involvement in Darfur is that he aims to manipulate and influence his readers. It seems to me he is onside with the Sudanese rebels (but not SLA-Minnawi) and wants what the rebels want, namely (for a start) UN troops in Darfur. Here is the excerpt from the piece entitled "Darfur's downward spiral: Violence continues to escalate in Sudan. Can we avert a catastrophe?"
" ... But the hopelessly ineffective AU is unable to enter the vast majority of camps for fear of attack, and has mounted many fewer patrols in recent months. The AU mission is currently slated to end at the end of September, but the UN has still not authorized a successor force.

Although UN secretary general Kofi Annan recently presented plans for an ambitious UN peace support operation in Darfur, the Khartoum government has for months adamantly refused to accept any UN force. This refusal has been consistent, and was recently reiterated by senior members of the National Islamic Front (which has renamed itself, innocuously, the National Congress Party).

The NIF - which stands accused of genocide by not only the US government but by senior officials of the German and British governments, as well as the parliament of the European Union - has no interest in seeing the Darfur crisis resolved. Indeed, current "genocide by attrition" completes the ambitions more violently in evidence in 2003-2004, when the regime's regular military forces coordinated with the notorious Arab Janjaweed militia to destroy over 80% of all non-Arab villages (primarily those of the Fur, the Massalit, and the Zaghawa).

Even so, the international community continues to reassure Khartoum that the UN will enter Darfur only with the regime's consent.

Perversely, the one rebel faction to sign onto the DPA with Khartoum was that of Minni Minawai - a Zaghawa whose forces have been consistently implicated in wide-ranging atrocities, especially against other African ethnic groups. Minawi recently became "Assistant to the President," fourth-ranking position in the merely notional "Government of National Unity" in Khartoum, a fig-leaf for continued NIF control of Sudanese national wealth and power.

Recent reports from the ground make clear that Minawi's rebel faction is actively coordinating with Khartoum's regular military forces in attacks on civilians and other rebel forces that have not signed the DPA. In effect, the DPA is serving as cover for escalating internecine fighting, especially in northern Darfur.

Absent robust and urgent international humanitarian intervention, there is every reason to believe that we have entered the most destructive phase of genocidal destruction in Darfur. More than half a million people have already died; as many more could die in the coming months.

The world's choice is to look at Darfur through the lens of Iraq - or Rwanda. The expedient consensus is clearly to do the former; but Darfur's realities are shamefully closer to those of the latter.
Related stories

Aug 12 2006 AP via Turkish News - MtvU's Darfur campaign earns TV academy honor: MTV's college network, mtvU, will receive the television academy's 2006 Governors Award for its campaign to inform students about the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region and engage them in solutions. [MTV's campaign seems news to me. I don't recall seeing much about it]

Snapshot of some "news" reports circulating in today's Google newsreel

Darfur Escalation NOW!
Columbus Free Press, OH - Aug 10, 2006
As security continues to dissolve and the humanitarian crisis deepens in Darfur, Africa Action invites you to participate in our escalation campaign to stop ...

Editorial: Plea for Darfur
Waco Tribune Herald, TX - Aug 10, 2006
In Sudan, Janjaweed militias sponsored by the government have killed 400,000 people in that country's northern region of Darfur. ...

Activists ask Bush to do more to end Darfur crisis
ABC News - Aug 9, 2006
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration voiced concern on Wednesday over increasing violence in Sudan's Darfur region and sought to counter criticism at ...

Amnesty urges UN to deploy peacekeepers in Darfur
Sudan Tribune, Sudan - 15 hours ago
Dear Ambassador, Amnesty International welcomes the report of the UN Secretary-General on Darfur as an important step towards ensuring the protection of the ...

For more links to activists' "news" reports circulating in mainstream media, see GIF's News from Darfur Aug 11 2006 [hat tip CFD]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

God Reeves is annoying. I don't recall him ever having had a bad word to say about Minawi until he signed a peace agreement. And this is really quite disingenuous:

Recent reports from the ground make clear that Minawi's rebel faction is actively coordinating with Khartoum's regular military forces in attacks on civilians and other rebel forces that have not signed the DPA.

Well, if you are enforcing a peace agreement, what do you do to people who break it? Any peacekeeping force (including the UN/NATO Khartoum decapitation operation of Reeves' dreams) would have to attack "other rebel forces" because people like SLA/Wahid are part of the problem. I am not aware of any more hard evidence for the accusation that the Khartoum military are attacking civilians than there was for the Chad invasion story that I see he is no longer pushing.