Showing posts with label Eric Reeves. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eric Reeves. Show all posts

Saturday, April 27, 2024

UN Security Council expressed "deep concern" over imminent attack on al-Fashir in Sudan's North Darfur

THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL on Saturday (27 Apr) expressed its "deep concern" over an imminent attack on al-Fashir in Sudan's North Darfur region by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and their allied militias against the city of al-Fashir.

“They called on the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces to end the build-up of military forces and to take steps to de-escalate the situation," the statement said.


Top UN officials warned the Security Council last week that some 800,000 people in al-Fashir were in "extreme and immediate danger" as worsening violence advances and threatens to "unleash bloody intercommunal strife throughout Darfur."


Source: Report from Reuters by Michelle Nichols; Writing by Eric Beech; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Chris Reese, dated 27 April 2024. 

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/un-security-council-concerned-over-imminent-attack-sudans-north-darfur-2024-04-27/

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Related


Gulf News - Saturday, 27 April 2024

Sudan unrest: UAE expresses deep concern over heightened tensions in North Darfur, urges talks

Abu Dhabi: The United Arab Emirates expresses deep concern over the heightened tensions in the El Fasher region in North Darfur and the threat this poses to Sudanese civilians. …


The UAE urges the UN Security Council to ensure an end to the conflict and to ensure safe and unhindered humanitarian access throughout Sudan. ...

https://gulfnews.com/uae/government/sudan-unrest-uae-expresses-deep-concern-over-heightened-tensions-in-north-darfur-urges-talks-1.1714227618888

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Post at X by Eric Reeves @sudanreeves Friday, 26 April 2024

END

Monday, March 11, 2024

Sudan: 22 children have died of malnutrition in Mornei, 83km south of West Darfur capital Geneina

SHAME on any of you who were able to help these children and did not. Hat tip and thanks to Eric Reeves @sudanreeves

END

Friday, November 26, 2021

TEXT: Summary point by point analysis of Sudan's Burhan-Hamdok agreement signed 22 Nov 2021

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: Thanks to Sudan researcher Dr Eric Reeves [ @sudanreeves https://twitter.com/sudanreeves ] in the US for finding and re-tweeting the following summary of the political agreement signed in Khartoum by Sudanese Prime Minister Hamdok and military coup leader Gen. Burhan, televised live on Sunday, 22 November 2021.

Thursday, February 27, 2020

Sudan: Military has far too much power (Eric Reeves)

  • The RSF is still effectively under the command of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemeti”). And the further from Khartoum one travels, the more fully the RSF seems a force unto itself—nowhere more so than in Darfur, where since the formation of the RSF under Hemeti’s command in 2013, many hundreds of thousands of people—overwhelmingly from the non-Arab/African tribal groups of the region—have been killed or displaced. And the killing and displacement continue. 
  • What about control of the Jebel Amir gold mining region? Does anyone really think that Hemeti will willingly give up control of a hugely lucrative area he wrested from former janjaweed leader Musa Hilal several years ago? 
  • If history is any guide, the most likely outcome of recent negotiations will be a slow but eventually wholesale reneging on the agreement as soon as international attention turns away from Sudan—and that will not be a long wait.
  • Will Hemeti disclose fully his stake in the large industrial conglomerate Al Junaid Industrial Group, based in the United Arab Emirates? And the role of his brother in the company? And the investments of National Intelligence and Security officials who have been reported as having invested in Al Junaid?
  • Will all arrests be made only by policemen?
  • One of the intentions of the military could be met tomorrow if a signal were sent to the international community that it should begin to prepare to bring assistance to all parts of South Kordofan and Blue Nile—and that restrictions on aid delivery in Darfur will also be ended.  Read full story:
Analysis from Radio Dabanga.org
By Dr Eric Reeves - NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS, USA
Published Wednesday 07 August 2019
The Constitutional Charter and the future of Sudan
FCC leader Ahmed Rabee and Hemeti with copies of the Constitutional Declaration during the signing ceremony in Khartoum on August 4 (Picture SUNA).

The “Constitutional Charter” (CC) signed on August 4 is an inspiring read, if stripped from the grim context in which it has been brought into being—if we forget the many hundreds who have been killed, wounded, raped, and tortured in the course of the uprising that has brought at least the hope of civilian governance into sight. The insistence on human rights, the rule of law, individual liberties, press freedoms, tolerance, and indeed the priority of peace—all of this provides at least the ghostly outline of a what a free and just Sudan—truly at peace with itself—might look like.

But what has been stipulated in the CC and what seems likely in the near future seem to me two very different things, and I am far from alone in my misgivings. Canvassing Sudanese social media over the past three days—and for months prior to this—I find two major concerns, fundamental issues that many feel have not been addressed by the CC.

The first, and most frequent, is that far too much power has been left in the hands of the military, now a hybrid military, with both the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) nominally under the command of the “Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces” (CC §34).* Moreover, many have observed that the RSF is left fully intact, a force unto itself, and still effectively under the command of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemeti”). And the further from Khartoum one travels, the more fully the RSF seems a force unto itself—nowhere more so than in Darfur, where since the formation of the RSF under Hemeti’s command in 2013, many hundreds of thousands of people—overwhelmingly from the non-Arab/African tribal groups of the region—have been killed or displaced. And the killing and displacement continue.

In Khartoum itself, all evidence points to a concerted plan by the RSF to undertake what has come to be known as the “June 3 Massacre,” in which more than 150 people were killed (perhaps many more), dozens of women and girls raped, and widespread violence of a sort not seen even during the uprising of September 2013. It is impossible to believe that the orders for the deadly clearance of protesters in front of army headquarters did not come from the Transitional Military Council, and indeed “Lt. General” Hemeti (he has no formal military training, a fact reflected in the lack of discipline throughout the RSF). Unsurprisingly, the RSF was again responsible for the deadly violence in El Obeid on July 29.

The second criticism, voiced in various forms, is that the fundamental economic issues in Sudan—a nation struggling under the burden of an economy that has largely collapsed—are nowhere addressed with any specificity. This is perhaps to be expected of an interim constitutional document, but the greatest hindrance to economic rehabilitation in Sudan has long been the inordinate amount of the national budget devoted to the military and security services. All independent Sudanese economists I’ve encountered estimate that the percentage is between 50% and 70% of all national expenditures.

Will the military men who play such a large role in what was to have been a movement to bring about civilian governance in Sudan willingly give up this previously compulsory largesse, provided by the ordinary people of Sudan? Senior officers have enjoyed what is by Sudanese standards a lavish salary and lifestyle: will they give this up in the interest of the nation? And what about control of the Jebel Amir gold mining region, about which so much has been made in recent years? Does anyone really think that Hemeti will willingly give up control of a hugely lucrative area he wrested from former janjaweed leader Musa Hilal several years ago?

The point many Sudanese seem to be making is that the greatest obstacle—both to peace in the country and to economic rehabilitation—is the continuing central role of the armed forces in Sudan’s governance over the next 39 months. It may be that the members of the soon-to-be-dissolve Transitional Military Council (TMC) will no longer be able to move with the same ease of executive fiat as was the case during the al-Bashir years. But there are all too many “work-arounds” evident in the constitutional text, as well as the massive inherent power of the “deep state” that so many Sudanese worry about. 30 years of tyranny, corruption, war, and kleptocracy cannot be whisked away with any document, no matter how eloquent or impressively democratic. And Hemeti has proved himself at once hugely ambitious and unreservedly deceitful and expedient.

Here it is important to remember that the al-Bashir regime abided by not one of the agreements it signed during its long tenure: not the terms of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (annexation of Abyei is only the most egregious violation of the various Protocols of the CPA, signed in January 2005); the Nuba Mountain ceasefire (January, 2002); the Darfur Peace Agreement (Abuja, 2006); the peace agreement with the Eastern Front (October 2006); the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (July 2011); and the list goes on and on. If history is any guide, the most likely outcome of recent negotiations will be a slow but eventually wholesale reneging on the agreement as soon as international attention turns away from Sudan—and that will not be a long wait.

But such an outcome has one terrible downside for the military, if it indeed seizes national power: the economy will continue its collapse, and we may be sure that protests will resume, with anger even greater, political frustration even more intense. It’s hard to say what the economic consequences of eight months of sustained demonstrations, protests, and strikes has been—but it has been enormous, and the people of Sudan have seen just how powerful they are. Without a massive shift in economic priorities, which will entail cooperation from Sudan’s work force, agriculture will continue to decline; the ability to finance critical imports—including food, medicine, and refined petroleum products—will further diminish; and inflation that has brought so many Sudanese families to the very edge of survival continues to roar ahead, even as the Sudanese Pound continues its precipitous collapse.

More Challenges
Even now, of course, we must note Sudanese concern about what is not in the CC, and that is the July agreement between the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) and the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF). The armed opposition has universally rejected the CC of August 4, and several political parties in Khartoum have now insisted that any real path forward requires much more participation from those in the armed movements, and especially civil society elements from the regions where the movements have been most active: Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile. Pessimism is in no short supply.

How will we know if this broadly shared pessimism is warranted? Usefully, the text of the CC provides for some early tests of the military’s willingness to embrace the ideals set forth:

[1] “All people, bodies, and associations, whether official or unofficial, are subject to the rule of law” (§ 5.i). Will we see any change in Darfur, where the rule of law has been only a vague rumour for two decades and more? Where rape, murder, abduction, and pillaging are virtually daily events?

[2] “Upon assuming their positions, members of the Sovereignty Council, Cabinet, governors or ministers of provinces or heads of regions and members of the Transitional Legislative Council submit a financial disclosure including their properties and obligations, including those of their spouses and children, in accordance with the law”(§18.i). Does this apply to RSF commander Hemeti? Will he disclose fully his stake in the large industrial conglomerate Al Junaid Industrial Group, based in the United Arab Emirates? And the role of his brother in the company? And the investments of National Intelligence and Security officials who have been reported as having invested in Al Junaid?

[3] “The General Intelligence Service is a uniformed agency that is competent in national security. Its duties are limited to gathering and analysing information and providing it to the competent bodies. The law defines its obligations and duties, and it is subject to the sovereign and executive authorities by law” (§36). Can we expect to see an end to the arrests and torture for which the “former” National Intelligence and Security Services are notorious? Will all arrests be made only by policemen? These questions are also raised by §45: “Every person has the right to freedom and security. No one shall be subjected to arrest or detention, or deprived of freedom or restricted therefrom except for cause in accordance with procedures defined by law.”

[4] §56 speaks of “the right to access the internet, without prejudice to public order, safety, and morals…” Will we see this? And who decides what is a threat to “to public order, safety, and morals”? Is the conditionality of this language a way to justify future internet shutdowns?

[5] §64 speaks of the State undertaking “to provide primary health care and emergency services free of charge for all citizens, develop public health, and establish, develop and qualify basic treatment and diagnostic institutions.” Does this mean that the ghastly humanitarian embargo imposed by the al-Bashir regime will at long last be lifted from large areas of South Kordofan, after eight years of suffering, hunger, and denial of assistance?

This last test of the intentions of the military could be met tomorrow if a signal were sent to the international community that it should begin to prepare to bring assistance to all parts of South Kordofan and Blue Nile—and that restrictions on aid delivery in Darfur will also be ended.

In short, we could know very soon whether the Transitional Military Council, prior to its dissolution, means to send a signal of good faith. I’m not holding my breath.

* All citations are from a translation of the version of the Constitutional Charter that was signed on 4 August 2019, prepared by International IDEA (www.idea.int).

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the contributing author or media and do not necessarily reflect the position of Radio Dabanga.

Eric Reeves is a regular contributor and commentator to Radio Dabanga. He is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, who has spent the past 20+ years as a Sudan researcher and analyst, publishing extensively both in the USA and internationally **.
His book about Darfur (A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide) was published in May 2007. He has recently published Compromising with Evil: An archival history of greater Sudan, 2007 — 2012 (available at no cost as an eBook)

Friday, February 21, 2020

Sudan: RARE VIDEO of Darfur & Kalma refugee camp

THE BBC's Mohanad Hashim has gained rare access to Kalma refugee camp in western Sudan, home to nearly 200,000 Darfuris.

He is one of the first journalists to travel freely in the region in a decade.

To view the amazing BBC video report, published on 12 February 2020, click here.

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Sudan: Civilians in S. Kordofan and Blue Nile continue to suffer attacks from Sudan Armed Forces (SAF)

HERE is a copy of a tweet by Sudan expert Prof Eric Reeves @sudanreeves dated 5 August 2019: #SudanUprising: This report on continuing violence in South Kordofan provides important context for the Sudan Revolutionary Front’s (#RSF) strenuous criticism of the final agreement signed yesterday, and the changes made at the behest of the #TMC junta: | http://sudanconsortium.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/HR-Update-April-June-FINAL.pdf …
To visit the above tweet click here: https://twitter.com/sudanreeves/status/1158368461904633856

Saturday, August 17, 2019

Corruption among staff of the UNHCR and the Sudanese government’s Commission for Refugees

THIS is sickening. Corruption among staff of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the Sudanese government’s Commission for Refugees which it partners with, is one of the reasons refugees prefer to head to neighbouring Libya, before trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. A graft probe led to the suspension of resettlement for refugees in Sudan, it hasn’t restarted. Let's hope that UNAMID stays in Darfur.
To visit the above tweet click here: https://twitter.com/newhumanitarian/status/1162113485892980736

Hat tip and thanks to Eric Reeves @sudanreeves for retweeting the following by @LaurenPinDC 16 Aug 2019:Corruption among staff of the UNHCR and the Sudanese government’s Commission for Refugees, which it partners with, is one of the reasons refugees told TNH they preferred to head to neighbouring Libya, before trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.”
To visit the above tweet click here:
Note, in reply to the above tweet @umasalam commented saying:
“There are structural issues involved - the rarity of resettlement places makes them a very valuable commodity. The involvement of corrupt security and humanitarian staff is almost inevitable, sadly”

Sunday, August 11, 2019

Analysis: Sudan's Constitutional Charter (Eric Reeves)

HERE is a copy of a tweet by Sudan researcher Prof Eric Reeves @sudanreeves entitled "The Constitutional Charter and the Future of Sudan” (a preliminary assessment of what has and has not been achieved, and the challenges ahead) dated Wednesday 07 August 2019. The analysis was published in full on the same date by Radio Dabanga online at https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/op-ed-the-constitutional-charter-and-the-future-of-sudan 
To visit the above tweet click here: https://twitter.com/sudanreeves/status/1159206392940650501

Eid in Sudan: 9 killed, several injured after RSF launched assault on Shangal Toubaya, North Darfur

HERE is a copy of a tweet by Samir R. Osman @samir_r_osman timestamped 4:11am and 12:11 11 Aug 2019 saying Nine killed and several injured, on the first day of Eid-al-adha, after Janjaweed (RSF) launched an assault on ٍShangal Toubaya Village in the state of North Darfur, Western Sudan.”
To visit the above tweet click here: https://twitter.com/samir_r_osman/status/1160509039996014598

SUDAN WATCH UPDATE 1 - Sun 11 Aug 2019 14:42 GMT UK
9 killed (some say 12-unconfirmed) & many injured in what some say is an RSF attack, and what others say is conflict between some shepherds and the citizens in Nevasha camp in Shangel Tobai-West Darfur. The camp is now under siege by an armed force.  

SUDAN WATCH UPDATE 2 - Sun 11 Aug 2019 15:44 GMT UK
Reports coming out of the region are saying "janjaweed" launched the attack.  A name historically given to armed militias, including the rebranded RSF. Sources unable to confirm if the attackers are RSF or armed herders. 

SUDAN WATCH UPDATE 3 - Sun 11 Aug 2019 19:26 PM GMT UK
The news below was tweeted in Arabic by باهي سطيح @IsSudanNewDubai at 10:34 am on 11 Aug 2019. So, I used Google translator for an English version. The translation gives a picture of what happened. To view the Arabic tweet click here: https://twitter.com/IsSudanNewDubai/status/1160605352846614528 

Facts in the details of this incident:
An armed group of shepherds killed three farmers and wounded another displaced people west of Shangel Toby, North Darfur, 60 km southeast of Al-Fashir.
The shepherds entered their livestock farms in Shangel Tubai, and human rights activist Haitham Silva told Page News, a resident of the area, that the shepherds had been killed.
Three farmers injured, another injured during skirmishes to remove livestock from farms
The rescue tracked down the perpetrators until their logic reached their point and the two sides gathered to fight, but the mayor of the area committed to bringing the perpetrators to justice. The relatives of the dead refused to bury the bodies until the state government and the regular forces were present and separated the two sides. [Ends]

SUDAN WATCH UPDATE 4 - Mon 12 Aug 2019 12:55 GMT UK
Article by Radio Dabanga.org online
Dated Monday 12 August 12 2019 - SHANGIL TOBAYA
Herders shoot three farmers dead in North Darfur
Rizeigat camel herders in North Darfur (Albert González Farran/Unamid)

Three farmers were killed and another was wounded in a revenge attack by herdsmen in El Salam locality in North Darfur on Saturday. The farmers had removed the herders’ livestock from their farms.

“When a group of camels trespassed on farms in the neighbourhood of Dolma, 20km north of Shangil Tobaya, on Saturday morning, the farmers took the animals and handed them to the police of Shangil Tobaya,” a relative of one of the victims told Radio Dabanga.

“That evening, about 20 armed herdsmen on camels and four others on motorcycles arrived at the area, and immediately started shooting at the farmers present. Abdelrahman Saleh, Ahmed El Nur, and Ali Yahya died instantly. Adam Abdelshakour was wounded.”

The Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) in North Darfur condemned the killing in a statement on Sunday.

The FFC members called on the acting state governor “to fully play your role in protecting unarmed civilians and agricultural land”. They proposed the establishment of a joint team of regular forces tasked with protecting farmers and people living in the area from such attacks. The herders should graze their livestock at pastures defined in the state maps.

The North Darfur activists also proposed the establishment of an independent committee to investigate the crimes committed by militant herders and other gunmen in the state in the past years.
The area of Shangil Tobaya (OCHA map of North Darfur)


SUDAN WATCH UPDATE 5 - Mon 12 Aug 2019 13:26 GMT UK
Here is a copy of a tweet by Prof Eric Reeves @sudanreeves dated 14:06 11 Aug 2019: “This map indicates where violence in North #Darfur has been most concentrated over much of the past two years (Jan 2017 - March 2019). There has been especially intense violence just north of Shangil Tobaya, but much of North and Central Darfur have seen seen genocidal violence”
To visit the tweet click here: https://twitter.com/sudanreeves/status/1160538001598046209

SUDAN WATCH UPDATE 6 - Mon 12 Aug 2019 13:50 GMT UK
Article from The National.ae
Written by Agence France-Presse (AFP)
Dated Monday 12 August 2019 11:06 AM
Clashes kill 3 civilians in Sudan's Darfur
Violence over grazing land, one of the causes of the war that erupted in 2003, had been rare in Darfur recently
Photo: Sudanese villagers walk in the war-torn town of Golo in the thickly forested mountainous area of Jebel Marra in central Darfur on June 19, 2017. AFP PHOTO/ASHRAF SHAZLY

Clashes over pasture between farmers and herders in Sudan's western region of Darfur killed three civilians on Sunday, a doctors' committee linked to the country's protest movement said.

"Three citizens were killed this morning in Shengel Tobay, in North Darfur state, and another was wounded," the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors said.

Violence over grazing land, which was one of the root causes of a deadly war that erupted in 2003, has been relatively rare in Darfur recently.

The latest incident marred the first day of the Eid Al Adha and was Sudan's first since months of protests brought down longtime ruler Omar Al Bashir and created an opportunity for civilian rule.

Ethnic African rebels took up arms against Mr Al Bashir's regime, which they accused of marginalising the remote region, in the war that broke out more than 15 years ago.

Khartoum armed Arab pastoralists to quash the rebellion, leading to massacres that resulted in genocide charges against Mr Al Bashir and others in international courts.

While the fighting has subsided in Darfur, tension over pasture remains and those responsible for the war's darkest hours have not been brought to justice.

"The former regime fuelled the conflict and contributed to deepening the crisis by not helping to provide sustainable solutions, and not holding perpetrators accountable," the doctors committee said.

Mr Al Bashir was removed in April after 29 years in power and a temporary power-sharing agreement was reached a week ago by the country's generals and civilian protest leaders.

But the document that will serve as Sudan's de facto interim constitution does not mention the fate of Mr Al Bashir and others wanted by the International Criminal Court.


SUDAN WATCH UPDATE 7 - Mon 12 Aug 2019 14:07 GMT UK
Here is a copy of a tweet by Prof Eric Reeves @sudanreeves Shangil Tobaya has been one of the most ravaged areas of North Darfur over the past several years (see monograph at https://wp.me/p45rOG-2qm ). It is clear that #Hemeti, the #RSF, and the #TMC have no desire or will to rein in ethnically-targeted murder, rape, and destruction: https://twitter.com/samir_r_osman/status/1160509039996014598 
To visit the above tweet click here: https://twitter.com/sudanreeves/status/1160534886501031936

SUDAN WATCH UPDATE 8 - Tue 13 Aug 2019 11:39 GMT UK
Here is a copy of a tweet posted by Tariq Haleeb on his Twitter page @TariqHaleeb date stamped 3:10 am 12 Aug 2019:
1. Janjaweed were armed herders & still continue familial ties.
2. A simple armed shepard has enough ammunition for defence only.
3. To launch and sustain an attack needs a lot of ammunition which a simple shepard cannot buy.
To visit the above tweet click here: https://twitter.com/TariqHaleeb/status/1160856157491257344

SUDAN WATCH UPDATE 9 - Fri 16 Aug 2019 14:02 GMT UK
Here is a copy of a 15 August 2019 tweet by Eric Reeves @sudanreeves
- with a great map (explanation here: http://sudanreeves.org/2019/06/28/unamid-withdrawal-and-international-abandonment-violence-in-darfur-2017-2019-a-statistical-analysis/) - showing violence in North Darfur, January 1, 2017 - March 2019 - saying, The new TMC-appointed governor of North #Darfur lies just as shamelessly as his political predecessor. There has been no meaningful effort to bring marauding Arab militia forces or #Hemeti’s Rapid Support Forces under control; their ethnically-targeted violence is unrelenting:”
To visit the above tweet click here: https://twitter.com/sudanreeves/status/1162040001460350977 

Further Reading
Film: MEET THE JANJAWEED - Hemedti is positioning himself as paramilitary ruler of Darfur (Alex de Waal)
Sudan Watch - Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Saturday, August 10, 2019

BBC has evidence suggesting attack on protesters in Khartoum Sudan June 3 was ordered from the top

THE BBC has uncovered evidence that suggests the attack on protesters in Sudan on 03 June 2019 was ordered from the top and planned in advance.  The internet is now back on in the country so even more footage has emerged online.  BBC Africa Eye has analysed over 300 mobile phone videos shot in Khartoum that morning, piecing them together into a detailed account of a massacre in which dozens of people were killed. 

Here is the schedule for a 30-minute BBC film broadcast from the UK starting today:
Sat 10 Aug 2019  18:30 Local time 
Sat 10 Aug 2019  23:30 Local time 
Sun 11 Aug 2019 05:30 Local time 
Sun 11 Aug 2019 11:30 Local time 
Thu 15 Aug 2019 10:30 Local time 

Evidence points to TMC's Hemeti and RSF responsible for June 3 attack on protestors in Khartoum Sudan

ALL evidence points to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) being responsible for the 03 June attack on protestors in Khartoum, Sudan and the deputy chair of the Transitional Military Council (TMC) and de facto ruler of Sudan, General Mohamed 'Hemeti' Dagalo giving the order for the attack. Here is a copy of another important tweet by Sudan expert Prof Eric Reeves @sudanreeves dated Wednesday 07 August 2019:

Absent an independent, int’l investigation of the "June 3 Massacre," we are left with the fact that all evidence points to #RSF responsibility, with #Hemeti giving the order for the assault. Despite his conspicuous responsibility, Hemeti continues to lie shamelessly, viciously:
To visit the above tweet click here: https://twitter.com/sudanreeves/status/1159143025957888000

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Sudan activists - "Rethinking Darfur" by Marc Gustafson

  • As an awareness campaign, the SDC was very effective, but it failed to portray the story of Darfur accurately.
  • During 2007 a number of American political figures proposed that the United States should attempt to fix things by attacking Sudan.
  • The violent death rate in Darfur declined significantly after a ceasefire was signed in April 2004, while the number of those who were dying of disease and malnutrition remained high.
  • Despite the decline in violent deaths, activists, journalists, and academics continued to sensationalize the problems in Darfur.
  • The very existence of peace talks was rarely mentioned in American media. Activist groups and individuals dismissed the process as irrelevant.
  • The increase of international troops in Darfur did not reduce the problem of banditry or improve access to the affected population.
  • Stories of race-based rampage and warfare—like the one activists promoted in Darfur—attract more attention than do more mundane but materially more devastating events.
  • Ignoring the changes in the scale and nature of the Darfur conflict has hindered understanding of and response to the conflict.
Source: Cato Institute - Foreign Policy Briefing No. 89
June 1, 2010
Rethinking Darfur
By Marc Gustafson

Here is a copy, in full:

Executive Summary

The war in Darfur has been devastating to the Darfuri people, and its aftermath has been a tragic story of suffering, displacement and sorrow. At the same time, the war has become one of the most misunderstood conflicts in recent history. Analysts and activists have oversimplified the causes of the war, slighting its historical and systemic causes. For years, public commentators ignored important changes in the scale and nature of the violence in Darfur, causing important misperceptions among the public and in the policy community.

Analysts misrepresented the scale of the conflict by selecting high-end estimates from local casualty surveys and then extrapolating them over the entire region. They also largely ignored the fact that the majority of the deaths from violence occurred before the end of 2004. Similarly, many commentators failed to mention that disease and malnutrition (as a consequence of war) caused over 80 percent of the casualties in Darfur, far more than violence itself. The total number of people who have died from violence in Darfur is approximately 60,000, which is considerably smaller than the 400,000 casualties often cited by activists.

This policy briefing draws on historical analysis, explores mortality surveys, and dissects six years of American budgetary allocations in Sudan to demonstrate that the conflict in Darfur has been misunderstood by both policymakers and the general public, leading to problems in crafting policy toward that troubled land.

Marc Gustafson is a Marshall Scholar and doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford. He is currently writing his dissertation on political trends in Sudan.

Introduction

In the summer of 2004, one of the largest American activist movements in recent history emerged in response to the plight of a population located in Darfur, one of the most remote regions of the world. In this mostly desert province along Sudan’s western border with Chad, a civil war between the government of Sudan and two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army, or SLA, and the Justice and Equality Movement, or JEM, had killed thousands of civilians and displaced millions from their homes. The Khartoum government perpetrated war crimes against civilians in Darfur, and the rebel groups showed a similar disregard for the most basic human rights of the civilian population in the region.

The causes of the civil war in Darfur include a troubled history of sub-state political and economic disputes, land rights, geopolitical interference and the rapid diminution of water resources and arable land due to desertification.[1] This decades-long story of Darfur’s development, however, is a complicated one to convey to a large public audience. Instead, by the summer of 2004, stories of unidirectional murder, rape, and genocide started to appear in American newspapers. In the absence of historical context, these stories came to define the public’s perception of Darfur and ultimately moved millions of Americans to join a campaign intended to stop the violence.

By 2005, the Darfur activist movement had ballooned into a multimillion-dollar, highly commercialized awareness campaign. In its first year, the Save Darfur Coalition, which acted as an umbrella organization for most of the activist campaigns, raised more than $15 million.[2] By 2006, the organization had more than tripled its income, raising almost $50 million in donations and spending 95.1 percent of its funds on advertising and mobilization.[3] Mostly through direct advertising and public events, the campaign shaped the public discussion on Darfur and ultimately influenced American foreign policy. Since the same mischaracterizations that fueled interest in the conflict came to influence American policy, it is worth examining the nature of the war and how activists portrayed it over the last six years.

How Activists Mischaracterized the Darfur Conflict

As an awareness campaign, the SDC was very effective, but it failed to portray the story of Darfur accurately. Activists began by inflating casualty rates, often claiming that hundreds of thousands of Darfuris had been “killed,” when in reality, the majority of the casualties to which they refer occurred as a result of disease and malnutrition (as a consequence of war).[4] Differentiating between those who “died” and those who were “killed” may seem callous in the shadow of the horrific acts of war crimes and injustice in Darfur, but ignoring these distinctions has been central to how the activist movement has gone astray. Since many activists assume that hundreds of thousands of Darfuris have been “killed,” they have pressured the U.S. government to fund violence prevention plans and international peace-keeping troops, as opposed to different, potentially more effective, policy changes.

In 2006 the SDC hired lobbyists in Washington to draft legislation and pressure politicians to focus their efforts and funds toward violence prevention and United Nations troop deployment. After hiring lobbyists, the SDC launched a public pressure campaign with the central purpose of “urging the immediate deployment of international peacekeepers to protect the people of Darfur.”[5]

At more than 150 nationwide events, activists learned how to pressure government officials by mail and telephone. By the end of 2006, according to the Save Darfur website, supporters had sent a million postcards and 764,570 e-mails to President Bush and Congress and called the White House 12,545 times.[6] The central message of the calls and mailings was that “time is running out” and that the violence must be stopped.[7] The SDC held rallies in New York City and Washington, D.C., where advocates such as George Clooney spoke about how the situation in Darfur was “quickly worsening.” After the rallies, Clooney, who had recently returned from a trip to Darfur where he was advised and escorted by the SDC, addressed the United Nations Security Council on September 14, 2006. He stated in his address that the situation in Darfur was “getting much, much worse,” and that “in the time that we’re here today, more women and children will die violently in the Darfur region than in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel, or Lebanon.”[8]

Before the lobbyists, public pressure campaigns, and activists emphasized the need for troop deployment in 2006, the United States Congress had approved more than $1 billion in assistance funds to Sudan. Less than 1 percent of those funds were allocated to support the peacekeeping efforts of the African Union, which began deploying troops in 2004.[9] These numbers indicate that the U.S. government was initially more focused on providing humanitarian aid and development support than it was on funding peacekeeping activities.

Figure 1
U.S. Contributions to Peacekeeping in Darfur

[ See chart at http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb89.pdf ]
Note: The yearly totals are taken from two sources: (1) the actual and supplemental allocations listed in the congressional budget justification under the categories of “Contributions for International Peacekeeping Activities” (CIPA), and “Peacekeeping Operations,” (PKO); and (2) the funding for private contractors as documented in U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Darfur Crisis: Progress in Aid and Peace Monitoring Threatened by Ongoing Violence and Operational Challenges,” GAO-07-9, November 2006, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d079.pdf. For a more detailed description of the CIPA and PKO allocations for 2007, 2008, and 2009, see the Stimson Center’s Future of Peace Operations Program Reports. The reports for CIPA allocations are available at http://www.stimson.org/fopo/?SN=FP200808071796, and the PKO reports are available at http://www.stimson.org/fopo/?SN=FP200808071797.

From 2006 until 2008, when the SDC and many other groups began to directly pressure the U.S. government, the allocation of U.S. funds to peacekeeping activities increased dramatically (see Figure 1) to approximately 50 percent of the total budget allocated to Sudan.[10] Overall emphasis on deploying military forces increased dramatically. By 2007, the United Nations announced that it would begin deploying the world’s largest peacekeeping mission in Darfur and the United States promised to fund one quarter of the UN peacekeeping effort.[11]

Meanwhile, during 2007 a number of American political figures proposed that the United States should attempt to fix things by attacking Sudan. In February then-senator Hillary Clinton suggested to Defense Secretary Robert Gates during congressional testimony that the United States should consider “directing punitive strikes against Sudanese planes known to have taken part in illegal bombing missions in Darfur.”[12]

Figure 2
Violent Deaths in Darfur (per year) 2004–2009

[ See chart at http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb89.pdf ]
Note: The yearly totals listed above are taken from a variety of sources. Year 2004 was taken from the 2005 Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters report. Year 2005-2009 are estimates based on the following: 1. The CRED report’s partial reporting of 2005. 2. United Nations African Union in Darfur monthly violence reports. 3. The United Nations Mortality Survey for Darfur 2005. 4. Data-set from Armed Conflict Location and Event Data. 5. African Union Mission in SudanMonthly News Bulletin. 6. United Nations Mission in SudanMonthly News Bulletin. 7. Unpublished UN mortality reports posted on the Social Science Research blog entitled, “Making Sense of Sudan.” All the reports indicate that the average annual violent death rate in Darfur between 2005 and 2009 was somewhere between 1000 and 3500.

In October, Susan E. Rice, who would later become President Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, proposed that Congress should immediately “authorize the use of force in order to end the genocide.”[13] Most boldly, Sen. Joe Biden, during his campaign for the presidency, stated flatly that “I would use American force now,” asserting a “moral imperative” to “to put force on the table and use it.”[14]

In retrospect, the emphasis on military means and peacekeeping seems misguided because, as many casualty surveys now show, the violent death rate (those who were “killed”) in Darfur declined significantly after a ceasefire was signed in April 2004, while the rate of those who were dying of disease and malnutrition remained high. According to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in Brussels, which has produced three of the most comprehensive casualty studies to date, the number of violent deaths dropped to approximately 150 per month by the end of 2004.[15] In an interview conducted in 2005, UN official Jan Pronk also confirmed that “about 100 persons” were being killed per month by violence and that most of the violence in Darfur consisted of “banditry, looting and crime.”[16]

In 2005 the United Nations conducted another, more comprehensive survey, which concluded that the decline in violent deaths since its previous report in 2004 has been “substantial.”[17] By the middle of 2005, the CRED conducted another casualty survey in Darfur; the U.S. Government Accountability Office called it the most reliable study of casualties in Darfur to date.[18] In addition to criticizing other mortality reports for improperly extrapolating the limited surveys conducted to the entire Darfur region, the 2005 CRED report examined more than 20 surveys conducted throughout the region and concluded that the total number of violent deaths from 2003–2005 was approximately 30,000. A later report from CRED published in the Lancet in 2010 estimated the total number of violent deaths in the conflict from 2003 to 2010 at 62,305.[19] Figure 2 outlines estimated deaths from violence from 2004 to 2009.

Despite the decline in violent deaths, activists, journalists, and academics continued to sensationalize the problems in Darfur. In fall 2006, the SDC, ignoring the recent CRED report and UN statements about the rapid diminution of violence, began to run ads in the United States and the United Kingdom reading “SLAUGHTER IS HAPPENING IN DARFUR. YOU CAN HELP END IT. In 2003 Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir moved to crush opposition by unleashing vicious armed militias to slaughter entire villages of his own citizens. After three years, 400,000 innocent men, women and children have been killed.”

Shortly after the ads were released, the British Advertising Standards Authority found that Save Darfur’s ad campaign violated codes of objectivity, and it ordered the group to amend its ads to present the high death toll as opinion, not fact.[20] But by that point, the Save Darfur Coalition had already convinced millions of Americans that the situation in Darfur deserved immediate military intervention.

Activists have also mischaracterized the nature of the violence in Darfur, highlighting almost exclusively the crimes of the government of Sudan and rogue Arab tribes. Save Darfur advertisements, newsletters, and websites continue to use the term “ongoing genocide” to describe the conflict, even though the nature and scale of the violence has changed significantly since the height of the conflict in 2003–2004. The repeated use of the word “genocide” distorted the balance of culpability and innocence. Using the term “genocide” implies that there is a unidirectional crime taking place, one in which there are victims (i.e., the people of Darfur) and a culprit (i.e., the government of Sudan).

In reality, however, there are victims and villains on both sides of the civil war in Darfur. The government of Sudan has killed many people and is responsible for war crimes in Darfur, but the rebel insurgents are also guilty. When the United Nations conducted its International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, it found that in addition to Khartoum’s “crimes against humanity,” many of the rebel groups had also engaged in “serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law.”[21]

The international community has largely misunderstood the role of the rebel groups, believing that they emerged to protect the people of Darfur from the government’s genocidal onslaught. In reality, however, the rebel groups initiated the war by launching an insurgency in 2003, winning the first 32 out of 34 battles against the government.[22] Unable to control the insurgency, the government armed ad hoc militia groups in Darfur to suppress the rebel movement. These militiamen, often alongside Sudanese government soldiers, killed, raped and tortured tens of thousands of innocent Darfuris. After 2005 and the introduction of international observers, government-led attacks declined rapidly and the rebel groups began to fissure. Rebel infighting became the primary cause of violent deaths and other atrocities in Darfur by 2006. The government and its ad hoc militia groups were likely responsible for the majority of casualties from violence before 2005, and the majority of casualties from violence overall, but by 2006, fractured rebel groups and individual defectors were wreaking havoc in Darfur, becoming the chief perpetrators of violence against civilians and attacks on peacekeepers and humanitarian workers.[23]

The Activist Impact in Darfur

Most of the rebels’ actions have gone unnoticed in the international community because of how the conflict has been framed by activists and American government officials. Use of the term “genocide” has allowed rebel groups in Darfur to slip under the radar and commit crimes without the rest of the world taking notice. Had “genocide” not been the focus, activist campaigns might have also challenged the rebel groups. For example, Eritrea, Chad, and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, or SPLM, were the principal funders of the rebel groups in Darfur. They were (and some still are) also allies and aid recipients of the U.S. government, which means they could have easily been pressured to cut their lifelines to the rebel groups.[24]

Additionally, a disproportionate emphasis on “genocide” and military violence has hindered the peace process. The primary peace process, which led to the Darfur Peace Agreement, lasted almost two years, but was hastily concluded in May of 2006 after seven rounds of negotiations. UN official Jan Pronk stated a month earlier that the peace talks were being given a one-month deadline. One of the reasons for the deadline, according to the chief African Union mediator, Salim Ahmed Salim, was that the process was “severely underfunded.”[25] The other reason for the deadline, according to Alex de Waal, a Darfur expert and program director at the Social Science Research Council, was that the international community, particularly the United States, was putting pressure on the AU mediation team to expedite the agreement.

If U.S. political leaders and activists had been more focused on peacemaking, perhaps more funding and time could have been allocated to the talks. Instead, the U.S. government spent over $1 billion on peacekeeping and rushed the peacemaking process to an end. “With more time,” argues Alex de Waal, “the AU team and [British international development secretary Hilary] Benn could probably have found a formula to satisfy” all parties.[26]

The abrupt end of the peace talks caused a number of problems. First, one of the most important provisions of the Darfur Peace Agreement was the incorporation of the rebel groups into both the armed forces and the local police force. This police force could have addressed the issues of banditry and the safety of the aid workers, which would later become significant problems in Darfur. It also could have provided jobs for many of the rebels who eventually turned to banditry in desperation after their rebel groups broke apart. The creation of the police force was one of the provisions that was being negotiated in the final days of the peace talks and was cut short before all parties came to an agreement.[27] Second, more time may have prevented the rebel groups from splitting into different factions. After the peace agreement ended, fighting between rebel groups became one of the most significant causes of violent deaths in the region. Alex de Waal argues that the peace agreement’s abrupt end is one of the reasons why the rebel groups split into so many different factions.[28]

Before the peace talks had come to an end, activists had already decided that the deployment of international troops was the best solution to the problems of Darfur. The very existence of peace talks was rarely mentioned in American media. A survey of Save Darfur newsletters since 2004 shows that the peace process was scarcely mentioned to the SDC community. Other activist groups and individuals dismissed the process as irrelevant. For example, only one week after the peace agreement was signed, Eric Reeves, one of the most prominent Darfur activists and chroniclers of Darfur events, declared that the agreement was “a meaningless piece of paper signed under genocidal duress” and that more effort should be focused on stopping the violence.[29]

In defense of SDC’s strategy to focus primarily on violence prevention and claims of genocide, rather than on the peace agreement or development, Alex Meixner, SDC’s policy director, argues that violence in Darfur was preventing humanitarian aid from reaching those who needed it. Peacekeeping was therefore “necessary to complement humanitarian assistance.”[30]

An analysis of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s monthly reports partially supports Meixner’s point. In 2005 and 2006 USAID reports document attacks on aid workers and note that some locations were too dangerous for aid workers to provide assistance. The humanitarian groups, however, still had access to approximately 90 percent of the affected population in 2005, which is remarkable given the landscape and size of Darfur and the short time they were given to reach such a dispersed population.[31] Insecurity was part of the reason why the humanitarian groups could not reach the remaining 10 percent, but according to the newest CRED report, released in January 2010, the primary problem by 2006 was that the humanitarian aid budget had been significantly cut.[32] The World Food Programme, the primary supplier of food to Darfur, experienced a 50 percent budget cut, while UNICEF was only able to raise 11 percent of its yearly budget. The number of aid workers was reduced by 18 percent, meaning that the number of affected populations without assistance increased.[33] At the same time that the humanitarian budget was cut, the budget for peacekeeping soared into the billions, meaning that donors were more interested in funding the peacekeeping mission than providing humanitarian assistance.[34]

Insecurity, however, was still a problem and was preventing access to some regions of Darfur, particularly in West Darfur. USAID reports indicate that the primary causes of insecurity in the inaccessible camps came from bandits and car thieves, two problems that peacekeepers are not traditionally deployed to address. These issues require a local police force, a developed penal code and further civic development, all important elements of the failed peace agreement. As the rate of violent deaths in Darfur dipped below emergency levels, attacks against peacekeepers and humanitarian aid workers began to rise.

Figure 3
Humanitarian Access to Affected Populations in Darfur

[ See chart at http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb89.pdf ]
Source: United Nations Darfur Humanitarian Profile no. 33, http://www.unsudanig.org/docs/DHP33_narrative_1% 20October%202008.pdf.

Richard Gowan, an expert on peacekeeping at the Center on International Cooperation, says that this trend is indicative of the current “crisis in peacekeeping” worldwide. Part of the problem, says Gowan, is that the traditional role of peacekeepers has changed significantly since the Cold War, when peacekeepers were meant to perform military tasks and monitor the implementation of peace agreements.[35] Today, the mission of peacekeepers is often unclear, as “there is no strategic formula for determining when peacekeepers should be deployed, or more importantly, when they should leave.”[36]

In Darfur, peacekeepers were originally sent in to monitor the April 8, 2004, ceasefire and to act as a deterrent to warring Sudanese parties. Over time, civic infrastructure broke down in the absence of a viable peace agreement, and the peacekeepers were suddenly responsible for local development and civic duties for which they were not trained.[37] Therefore, the SDC and the international community’s demand for more peacekeeping troops not only precipitated a harmful reallocation of funds away from humanitarian aid in 2006, but it was also ill-conceived, signaling a belief that peacekeepers, instead of the local citizenry (via the peace process), could repair Darfur’s infrastructure and perform the necessary law enforcement duties.

Not surprisingly, then, the increase of international troops in Darfur did not reduce the problem of banditry or improve access to the affected population. In fact, humanitarian access to affected areas worsened after the United Nations began to deploy troops (see Figure 3). In 2008 the United Nations published a report indicating that during the months following the April 2004 ceasefire, the accessibility to affected populations was relatively high, averaging roughly 90 percent. However, once the international peacekeepers began to be deployed in 2006, the accessibility decreased. (It is important to note that only one third of the authorized peacekeepers had been deployed by summer 2008.[38])

Had the Abuja peace talks been properly funded and the two sides given adequate time to come to an agreement, a more robust local police force could have been established to control the banditry that impeded humanitarian assistance. Also, rebel groups may not have fractured into as many splinter groups, causing rebel defectors and rebel infighting to become a significant threat to aid workers.

Darfur and Activists Today

Today the situation in Darfur continues to be mischaracterized. Most of the ongoing violence can be attributed to banditry, lawlessness, and fighting between rebel groups, with one notable exception being the recent government attacks in Jebel Marra.[39] According to UNAMID reports, the average monthly casualty rate for the last five months of 2009 was 51.[40] Very few of these are linked to the conflict between Sudanese government forces and the rebel groups. Since last year, the conflict in Darfur has not met the 1,000 casualties per year threshold that many political scientists consider necessary for a conflict to be categorized as a “civil war.”[41] In January Lt. Gen. Patrick Nyamvumba, the commander of the peacekeeping force in Darfur, described the situation as “calm, very calm at the moment, but it remains unpredictable.”[42] Additionally, Sudan’s elections in April - which were expected to reignite violence in many areas of Darfur - were surprisingly peaceful.

Despite these changes, there still seems to be no consensus over what to call the situation in Darfur. On the one hand, many government officials and activists have not changed the way they talk about the conflict. President Obama used the word “genocide” in the present tense when addressing the issues of Darfur in speeches in Germany and Ghana in 2009.[43] U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice also continues to use the term “genocide.”[44] Activist groups such as the SDC and the Genocide Intervention Network still frequently use the terms “ongoing genocide” and “war in Darfur” in their literature and advertisements.

On the other hand, U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration argues that the genocide in Darfur had ended.[45] The Obama administration’s Sudan policy, released last October, referred to the genocide in Darfur as if it were still happening, but substantively centered on a more conciliatory approach to Khartoum, offering both incentives and pressure.[46] Additionally, former top commander of UNAMID, General Martin Agwai, has stated that the war in Darfur has come to an end. Most of the remaining violence, he says, is due to “low-level disputes and banditry.”[47] Even Eric Reeves, a promoter of erroneous casualty figures early in the conflict, concedes that “there is no doubt that violence has diminished significantly in the past two or three years - and many, including myself, have been slow to recognize how significant this reduction has been.”[48]

SDC has learned many lessons from its mistakes and has made efforts to improve the way it provides information. It has decreased the Darfur casualty rate on its website, from 400,000 to 300,000, and provided a section explaining the “myths” of the Darfur conflict. It has shifted its central focus away from violence and toward the upcoming referendum in the south, the peace process in Doha, Qatar, and pressuring the U.S. Government to not recognize the results of Sudan’s recent elections. Other groups, such as the Genocide Intervention Network have also adjusted the casualty rates, and have made efforts to encourage support for the peacemaking process. Additionally, Special Envoy Gration has shifted the U.S. government’s primary focus to the peace process in Doha, and to the peace agreement between the north and the south.

Regardless of these changes, however, members of the current administration do not agree with Gration’s response to the Darfur conflict and many activist groups regularly criticize Gration’s efforts to support peace over punishment and engage diplomatically with the current government of Sudan. There is still disproportionate emphasis on the government of Sudan’s role in the conflict and undue attention paid to the issue of genocide over the root causes of the conflict.

While activists have contributed to these conditions, it must be said that the current landscape of Darfur activism is vastly mixed, with different groups pursuing different policy objectives.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that American activists were able to bring attention to the conflict in Darfur. In fact, their efforts may be the reason why Darfur is host to the largest humanitarian assistance effort in the world. Even so, their efforts have had negative consequences. One likely unintended consequence was the diversion of public attention from other wars of greater scale and longevity. For example, in the nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo, the annual casualty rate since 2003 has been approximately four times higher than it was in Darfur. A decade-long civil war in that country has led to the deaths of almost one million people, many more deaths than in Darfur.[49] But there is no American activist movement for the Congolese and the level of international humanitarian aid and peacekeeping assistance is still smaller than what it is in Darfur.

One possible explanation for why the public came to pay attention to Darfur and not to the DRC is rooted in the nature of the Darfur activists’ campaign. Stories of race-based rampage and warfare - like the one activists promoted in Darfur - attract more attention than do more mundane but materially more devastating events involving complicated political processes, famine, or other causes of death. Some activists are aware of this phenomenon.[50] Accordingly, one could see how the stories of genocide and rapine in Darfur not only mischaracterized the conflict, but turned attention from other, more devastating environments like the one in the DRC.

It is easy to understand why activists do not want the U.S. government or the international community to shift their focus away from the difficulties that many Darfuris still face, especially since violent conflict could easily return in the absence of an effective peace agreement. However, ignoring the changes in the scale and nature of the Darfur conflict has already hindered understanding of and response to the conflict. Today, Darfur’s peacekeeping and humanitarian missions continue to grow, yet the level of violence has remained below emergency levels since the end of 2004. Banditry, intra-tribal fighting, and, most importantly, the absence of a peace agreement still pose serious problems, but these are problems that demand the development of local infrastructure and participation, not the type of intervention advocated by activists and even some political leaders.

In the case of Darfur, activists created a number of negative consequences. They promoted an inaccurate perception among the public and policy elites about the nature and extent of violence in the region; they helped shift U.S. diplomatic emphasis away from the peacemaking process and from atrocities committed by rebel groups; and they diverted attention from more devastating problems elsewhere. Despite activists’ good intentions, these costs are real, and should be added to the ledger we use when measuring the impact of political activism on the Darfur issue.

Notes

1. On economic disputes and land rights, see Alex de Waal, ed., War in Darfur and the Search for Peace (Cambridge, MA: Global Equity Initiative, 2007). On geopolitical interference, see Julie Flint and Alex de Waal, Darfur: A Short History of a Long War (London: Zed Books, 2006), p. 51. The diminution of annual rainfall over the last century is documented in Alex de Waal, Famine that Kills: Darfur, Sudan, 1984–1985, 1st ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 85.
2. Internal Revenue Service, Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax—Save Darfur Coalition, Vol. Form 990, 2005–2006.
3. Ibid., 2006–2007.
4. Olivier Degomme and Debarati Guha-Sepir, “Patterns of Mortality Rates in Darfur Conflict,” The Lancet 375, no. 9711 (January 2010): 294–300, http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/P IIS0140-6736(09)61967-X/fulltext. The CRED report is the most comprehensive assessment of casualties to date. It draws its data from more than 63 different casualty surveys conducted in almost every region of Darfur. For the claims of the Darfur activists, see www.savedarfur.com, www.enoughproject.org, and www.standnow.org. Also, see news archives by activist Eric Reeves and journalist Nicholas Kristof, where one can see cited casualty rates between 450,000 and 700,000. Nicholas D. Kristof, “Will We Say ‘Never Again’ Yet Again?” New York Times, March 27, 2004; and Eric Reeves, “Darfur Mortality: Shoddy Journalism at the New York Times,” SudanReeves.org, August 14, 2007, http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article180.html.
5. On the pressure campaign, see Save Darfur, “Global Days for Darfur,” SaveDarfur.org, April 3, 2007, http://www.savedarfur.org/page/community/post/lisaravenscraft/BWf. Other efforts of the campaigns are available on the www.savedarfur.org website. As for the lobbyists, this is public information available on opensecrets.org and by looking at the publicly available yearly IRS reports on Guidestar.org.
6. Save Darfur Website, http://www.savedarfur.org/pages/darfur_by_the_numbers.
7. Save Darfur Website Archive at www.archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20060918213342/www.savedarfur.org/content?splash=no
8. A transcript of Clooney’s speech is available at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/georgeclooneyunitednations.htm.
9. United States Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations, 2004, 2005, http://www.state.gov/s/d/rm/rls/cbj/.
10. The total annual budget includes contributions to the United Nations through the Contributions for International Peacekeeping Assistance (CIPA) account.
11. Lauren Landis, “En Route to Darfur,” Dipnote: U.S. Department of State Official Blog, September 28, 2007, http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/entries/ index/en_route_darfur.
12. Comment during hearings on Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2008, February 6, 2007.
13. Susan E. Rice, “The Genocide in Darfur: America Must Do More to Fulfill the Responsibility to Protect,” Brookings Opportunity 08 Position Paper, October 24, 2007, http://www.brookings. edu/papers/2007/1024darfur_rice_Opp08.aspx.
14. “Biden Calls for Military Force in Darfur,” Associated Press, April 11, 2007.
15. Debarati Guha-Sepir, Olivier Degomme, and Mark Phelan, “Darfur: Counting the Deaths. Mortality Estimates from Multiple Survey Data,” 10 Ignoring the changes in the scale and nature of the Darfur conflict has hindered understanding of and response to the conflict. Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters Report, May 2005, http://www.cedat.be/ sites/default/files/ID%20211%20-%20Counting %20the%20Deaths.pdf.
16. Quoted in IRINNews.org, “Interview with Jan Pronk,” August 4, 2005, transcript at http://www.janpronk.nl/interviews/english-french-and- german/interview-concerning-sudan.html.
17. “Mortality Survey among Internally Displaced Persons and Other Affected Populations in Greater Darfur, Sudan,” Report of the World Health Organization and the Federal Ministry of Health in Sudan, September 2005, p.2, http://www.emro.who.int/sudan/pdf/CMS%20Darfur%202005%20final%20report_11%2010%2005.pdf.
18. U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Darfur Crisis: Death Estimates Demonstrate Severity of Crisis, but Their Accuracy and Credibility Could Be Enhanced,” GAO-07-24, November 2006, p. 19,
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0724.pdf.
19. Degomme and Guha-Sepir, p. 298.
20. British Advertising Standards Authority Adjudication on Save Darfur Coalition, August 8, 2007, http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/TF_ADJ_42993.htm.
21. United Nations, “Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the United Nations Secretary General,” January 25, 2005, p.158, http://www.un.org/News/dh/sudan/com_inq_darfur.pdf.
22. Flint and de Waal, p. 99.
23. See Reports of the Secretary-General on the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) for 2004–2009, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/unamid/reports.shtml.
24. For evidence of these countries funding rebel groups, see ibid. Washington no longer sends aid to Eritrea.
25. African Union, “Briefing by Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim, AU Special Envoy and Chief Mediator for the Darfur Conflict to the UN Security Council,” January 13, 2006.
26. Alex de Waal, “I Will Not Sign,” London Review of Books 28, no. 23 (November 30, 2006), http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n23/alex-de-waal/i-will-not-sign.
27. In the final days of the peace agreement, the United States Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick insisted that the bulk of rebels incorporated into the Army and local police forces come from one of the rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army/MM (Minni Minnawi). This bred discontent among the rebel groups and was one of the reasons why the other rebel groups refused to sign.
28. Alex de Waal, “I Will Not Sign.”
29. Eric Reeves, “Why Abuja Won’t Save Darfur,” New Republic (online), May 10, 2006, http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=15581.
30. Alex Meixner, “Misinterpreting the Genocide in Darfur,” BlogforDarfur.org, August 25, 2009, http://blogfordarfur.org/archives/1281.
31. United Nations Darfur Humanitarian Profile, no. 33, http://www.unsudanig.org/docs/DHP33_narrative_1%20October%202008.pdf. See also Chart 2, “Percentage of Affected Population Accessible to UN Humanitarian Aid,” in this article.
32. Degomme and Guha-Sepir.
33. Ibid.
34. The 2010 Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters report shows that after these budget cuts, there was a rise in child mortality rates and diarrhea-related deaths, even though the violent death rate continued to decline.
35. Richard Gowan, “The Strategic Context: Peacekeeping in Crisis: 2006–2008,” International Peacekeeping 15, no. 4 (August 2008): 453–69.
36. Personal interview with Richard Gowan, January 15, 2009.
37. Both the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) and United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNMID) peacekeeping forces have included small police forces, but their capabilities have been very limited, given their size and the extensive training necessary for familiarizing police officers with the cultural and legal norms of Darfur. The failure to control banditry in Darfur, and many other states with peacekeeping activities, has precipitated a systemic reallocation of resources at the United Nations from military- centric peacekeeping to police-centric peacekeeping. This change is addressed in B. K. Greener, “UNPOL: UN Police as Peacekeepers,” Policing and Society 19, no. 2 (June 2009): 106–18.
38. “Darfur Force Only at ‘Half Strength’ by End of the Year,” Telegraph, September 18, 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/sudan/2983392/Darfur-force-only- at-half-strength-by-end-of-the-year.html.
39. Recent government attacks in Jebel Marra in early March are of particular concern because they have caused significant civilian casualties, possibly as many as 200. For details see Agence France- Press, “U.S. ‘Extremely Concerned’ by Reported
Darfur Offensive,” March 2, 2010, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gX MqekdY9K_-t_nyuoSy5N8f3pRQ.
40. Monthly casualty reports from the United Nations African Union in Darfur have been posted on the Social Science Research Council blog, Making Sense of Darfur, http://blogs.ssrc.org/darfur/category/darfur/numbers/. Reports for January and February have yet to be made public.
41. For the casualty reports of the last year, see http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unamid/reports.html. On political scientists’ 1,000 person per year casualty threshold, see Melvin Small and J. David Singer, Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars, 1816–1980, 2nd ed. (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1991) or Harvard’s Correlates of War website, http://www.correlatesofwar.org/.
42. Quoted in Jeffrey Gettleman, “Fragile Calm Holds in Darfur after Years of Death,” New York Times, January 2, 2010.
43. Transcript of Obama’s Germany Speech, http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/berlinvideo/; Transcript of Obama’s Ghana Speech, http://www.scribd.com/doc/17283880/President-Barack-Obamas-Speech-in-Ghana-Africa-July-11-2009-VideoTranscript.
44. Mark Leon Goldberg, “Amb. Susan Rice: Darfur Is an ‘Ongoing Genocide,’” UN Dispatch, January 26, 2009, http://www.undispatch.com/ node/7599.
45. Colum Lynch, “Sudan’s ‘Coordinated’ Genocide in Darfur Is Over, U.S. Envoy Says,” Washington Post, June 18, 2009.
46. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Susan E. Rice, and Scott Gration, “Remarks on the Sudan Strategy,” October 19, 2009, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/10/130686.htm.
47. Quoted in “War in Sudan’s Darfur ‘Is Over,’” BBC, August 17, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8224424.stm.
48. Quoted in Gettleman.
49. Human Security Report, “The Shrinking Costs of War,” January 20, 2010, p. 42, http://www.humansecurityreport.info/2009Report/2009Report_Pt2_3_DeathTollInTheDemocraticRepublicOfThe
Congo.pdf.
50. Two analysts at the International Rescue Committee noted that number of deaths seems not to be the primary determinant of attention, and stressed the importance of raising salience. Despite their appalling estimate of deaths in the Congolese conflict—4 million people—they noted that since 98 percent of the deaths were not from violence, people viewed the devastation as “unheroic, seemingly apolitical and therefore untelevisable.” Richard Brennan and Anna Husarska, “Inside Congo, An Unspeakable Toll,” Washington Post, July 16, 2006.

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