Complicity with Evil by Adam LeBor

Author:Adam LeBor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2006-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

VIII

Genocide, or Maybe Not

I concluded that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility—and that genocide may still be occurring.

—Secretary of State Colin Powell, testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 9 September 2004

The United Nations has a multitude of days, weeks, years, and even decades devoted to special themes.1 The tenth of December is annual Human Rights Day, which doubtless inspired Annan in part to issue a statement on Darfur a day before its observation in 2003. The following year was designated the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and Its Abolition and the International Year of Rice; it was also part of the International Decade for Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World. None of which applied in Darfur, or indeed much of Africa, as the United Nations’ own reports detailed. Africa’s “big men”—the potentates and dictators who still ruled much of the continent—were more interested in plundering their own countries and staying in power than in pressuring Sudan to stop killing other Africans. They showed little regard for the lives of their own citizens, and hardly more for those of neighboring countries.

The United States and the Security Council were repeatedly criticized by the developing world for their failure to stop the genocide in Rwanda a decade earlier, and in Darfur now, but where were the African countries? These were, after all, African genocides. The lessons of Bosnia and Rwanda were clear: genocide is stopped by confronting and militarily engaging the perpetrators, by the robust use of airpower, and by deploying substantial numbers of armed peacekeepers on the ground. Even without military intervention many lives can be saved by a UN-backed humanitarian operation. But where were the brigades of Nigerian, Algerian, or South African UN peacekeepers protecting the refugee camps, ensuring that aid supplies got through, and securing safe routes through the conflict zone? For many African UN member states, solidarity against their former colonial masters—protecting the abusers rather than the victims—was always more important. Back in 1994, in his days at the DPKO, Annan had told the French newspaper Le Monde that there was a shortage of African troops for peacekeeping missions because African governments “probably need their armies to intimidate their own populations.”2

As secretary general he took a rather more emollient line. Despite Darfur, Annan proclaimed, overall Africa was on the right track. On 25 May 2004 he spoke at a United Nations ceremony commemorating Africa Day. Annan praised the establishment in 1963 of the Organisation of African Unity, which in 2002 had been succeeded by the African Union (AU). He praised the AU for its new Peace and Security Council, launched the same day in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. He noted “positive signs in the Sudanese peace process” and a “renewed commitment to human rights, good governance, social and economic reform, and development” in Africa. Annan also warned that the international community must not close its eyes to massive human rights violations and suffering in Darfur.

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