L I BE RAL I NTE RVE NTI ONAL I S M

What’s Left to do for Darfur

Stephen Twigg

SEVEN years ago, it was all so different. A new Labour Prime Minister, along with Democrats in the White House, lead the call for humanitarian intervention in Kosovo. Casting aside vetoed resolutions at the United Nations, NATO embarked on a sustained air assault on the Serbian military machine to end ethnic cleansing in the region. At the time, the decision to embark on a military campaign was hugely controversial, but history quickly judged that it was the correct course of action. Much of the international community, including the Western media, had little appetite to witness Slobodan Milosovic tear apart the fabric of another ethnically mixed society, particularly after the genocide in Srebrenica. Leaders from the transatlantic centre-left also argued persuasively that they could no longer tolerate the extreme exclusionary ideology of Serbia’s ruling nationalist elite; and that the time for diplomacy was over. During the intervening seven years, the principle of humanitarian intervention has put down shallow roots in soil made barren by the experience in Iraq. In 2002, the International Criminal Court in the Hague was established, sounding a warning to despots around the world that justice is now more likely than ever to catch up with them. Advocacy NGOs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Aegis Trust and International Crisis Group are larger and stronger now, and crucially able to utilise new technology, such as satellite surveillance, to turn the world’s attention onto large-scale human rights violations. And at the 2005 UN World Summit, governments across the globe unanimously endorsed the adoption of the ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine. Tony Blair heralded the agreement by stating that “we, in the name of humanity, have a common duty to protect people where their own government will not”. With this in mind, one would expect that the spectre of ethnic cleansing would be filed away in our children’s history books. Yet at the UN, and in the Arab League and European Union, political leaders continue to procrastinate on what

action to take against Sudan to halt its campaign of genocide by proxy in Darfur. The figures are truly overwhelming, and often cited. Between 200,000 and 400,000 deaths; 2.5 million people driven from their homes; over 4 million dependent on humanitarian aid; and, in much of the region, tens of thousands of civilians unreachable to humanitarian aid agencies. The regime in Khartoum – rather than abiding by UN Security Council resolutions compelling it to disarm the Janjaweed , end offensive flights and allow in UN peacekeepers – has chosen instead to continue to train, supply and direct the murderous militias, painting its aircraft white and adorning them with UN markings before they take part in bombing raids on civilians. There has never been a legal imperative to take action in Darfur –a manifest failure of international law. China has lucrative oil contracts with the Sudanese Government which it will preserve even at great diplomatic cost, while economic sanctions remain piecemeal and poorly targeted. The force currently in situ – 7,000 African Union peacekeepers – is woefully underresourced, confined to barracks at night and lacking the mandate to protect civilians. The outcome of this diplomatic manoeuvring is a humanitarian catastrophe that grows steadily worse. More recently, doubts have been cast over an apparent breakthrough. Negotiations among the African Union, United Nations and Khartoum appear to have agreed a combined AUUN peacekeeping force of between 17,000 and 26,000. Whilst the publicity surrounding this announcement cited ‘no conditionality’ on the peacekeepers from Khartoum, a number of crucial questions remain unanswered. There is no timetable for the deployment of the troops; and given the Sudanese Government’s track record of reneging on negotiated agreements, this is a glaring omission which paves the way for further prevarication and delay. A concomitant factor is the lack of a programme of escalating sanctions, should Khartoum stall the troop deployment.

12 | The Liberal | Autumn 2007