AFRICA, CONTINENT OF ORGANISED PILLAGE PAGE 8

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MARCH 2007

ETHNIC CLEANSING AND A STRUGGLE OVER OIL

Sudan: genocide in Darfur

JUAN MARTINEZ: ‘Untitled’ (2006)

Secrets and lies WHAT is the most apt epithet for European governments caught

tured. The Italian secret services are accused of helping CIA agents in Milan to kidnap

in the act of colluding with a foreign agency in abducting

Imam Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, who was transported to Egypt and

suspects who were then transported to secret prisons and tortured? It is hard to imagine

a more flagrant violation of human rights, a violation committed by states that are forever

prating about their respect for the law. Two recent events bear witness to the pre

vailing schizophrenia. On 7 February representatives of most European governments

incarcerated in Tora prison, south of Cairo, where he was allegedly raped and tortured (3).

This wholesale violation of human rights could not have taken place without the know

ledge of the staff of the EU High Representative for the common foreign and security

policy, Javier Solana, and his colleague, the EU counter-terrorism coordinator, Gijs de

assembled in Paris and solemnly signed a United Nations convention against enforced

disappearances that prohibits secret detention (1). On 14 February the European parlia

ment in Strasbourg adopted a report accusing the same governments of colluding with the

United States Central Intelligence Agency in secret abduction operations.

According to that report (2) at least 1,245 fl ights operated by the CIA stopped over at

European airports between the end of 2001 and the end of 2005, many of them transport

ing victims of extraordinary rendition to the illegal detention centre at Guantánamo or to

prisons in countries such as Egypt or Morocco where torture is common practice. It is now

clear that European governments were well aware of the criminal nature of these secret

fl ights. Some did not just turn a blind eye: Poland and Romania are suspected of having

set up mini-Guantánamos on their territory, where people abducted in Pakistan, Afghani

stan or elsewhere were held pending transfer to their fi nal destination.

The British government is suspected of participating in the abduction and abuse of

suspects, as are the Swedish and Austrian governments. The German authorities are

accused of knowing about the abduction of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese

origin who was taken to Afghanistan and tor

Vries. In an eloquent gesture, De Vries chose to resign, warning that the democratic states

must conduct the fi ght against terrorism with regard for the law, and that the massive abuses

at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, combined with the CIA abductions, have destroyed the

credibility of the US and of Europe (4). All those who participated in these abduc

tions, those who gave the orders as well as those who carried them out, must fear the

the law and refl ect on the fate of Maria Estela Martinez Peron (Isabelita), former president

of Argentina, where the authorities engaged in political abduction on a massive scale in

the name of counter-terrorism. Peron has just been arrested in Madrid and charged with the

enforced disappearance of a student, Hector Faguetti, 31 years ago, in February 1976.

Justice may be slow but it is inexorable. IGNACIO RAMONET

TRANSLATED BY BARBARA WILSON

(1) UN Convention for the protection of all persons from

enforced disappearance; 60 countries (including Chile,

Argentina and Uruguay, but not the US) have signed the

convention, which must be ratifi ed by at least 20 states in

order to enter into force.

(2) www.europarl.europa.eu

(3) Legal proceedings opened on 16 February, before a court

in Milan, against 26 CIA agents and six members of the

Italian secret services, accused of organising the enforced

disappearance of Imam Abu Omar in February 2003.

(4) Reported in El Pais , Madrid, 17 February 2007.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Kosovo: the future’s still dangerous despite UN decision page 2

Spain: right wing capitalises on the unresolved past page 4

Palestine: one state, two nations — possibilities for accord page 5

US: can Congress block Bush’s Middle Eastern plans? page 6

Mozambique: life near the bottom of the development list page 9

Energy: oil nations gain power

and the majors lose it page 12

Debate: the return of God is not an inevitability page 14

Middle East: defi ning dictatorship and democracy page 16

The Darfur confl ict, which has already left 400,000 dead, has destabilised Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic. At a summit in Cannes last month, all three countries agreed to respect each other’s territorial integrity, but the diplomatic activity conceals an international political deadlock over potential oil wealth.

BY GÉRARD PRUNIER

TWO million people have fled Darfur

in northwest Sudan since 2003, 250,000 of them since last August (1),

and the resources of neighbouring Chad are suffering from the strain of 250,000

refugees. The conflict has left 400,000 dead in four years. Aid workers from the United

Nations and NGOs have had to move camps 31 times to escape attacks, although this did not

prevent the arrest of several aid workers on 19 January in Nyala; they were beaten with

rifle butts by the Sudanese police. Twelve aid workers were killed during massacres and

five others have disappeared. The Islamic government in Khartoum

justifi es frequent air raids by claiming their victims are rebels who refused to sign the

Abuja “peace” treaty in Nigeria on 5 May 2006 (2). In reality, the Sudanese government is

trying to prevent the fi ghters from holding a congress that would unify their movement

and enable them to start negotiations with the support of the international community (3).

The UN and the African Union (AU) have been powerless in the face of this disaster,

producing only symbolic measures and stalling tactics. For the past two years the African

Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), an inter African military force of 7,500 men, has been

deployed in Darfur. A dozen African countries contribute contingents but most come from

Rwanda and Nigeria. The force is totally ineffectual. At least 30,000 men would be needed

for an area the size of Darfur, 500,000 sq km. AMIS is under-equipped and has a

ludicrously restrictive mandate: soldiers may not carry out off ensive patrols and may only

negotiate. They are there to count the dead. The international force requires political

determination to end the massacres that both the AU and the UN refuse to qualify as geno

cide. The powerless African soldiers admit in private: “We’re no use here at all”.

AMIS is almost entirely fi nanced by the European Union; the US makes a nominal

contribution. On 31 August 2006 the UN conceded a lack of results and adopted resolution

1706 to deploy a UN intervention force. But the resolution has not been implemented because

the Sudanese government has yet to approve the deployment. Diplomats have fl own to

Khartoum to persuade President Bashir to change his mind.

His objections are astonishing. He accuses

the UN of wanting to re-colonise the Sudan,

and claims that the force is merely a cover for the West to enable it to get hold of Sudanese

oil (4). He also says the international forces have “peddled Aids” (5) and he has threatened

to use special Iraq-type suicide units against the peace troops.

These justifi cations are fanciful. Jan Pronk, the former UN special representative in

Sudan who was expelled from the country last November for having criticised the Sudanese

army, explains in his blog: “On more than one occasion high political offi cials in Sudan

have told me that they had weighed the risk of non-compliance with Security Council reso

lutions against the risk of compliance. Noncompliance might bring them in confl ict with

the council and its members: sanctions and threats against the regime.

“Compliance would entail a diff erent risk: domestic opposition and eff orts to change the

regime from within. They had compared and weighed those risks meticulously, they told

me, and they had come to a rational conclusion: the risk of compliance would be much

greater than the risk of non-compliance. They have been proven right.”

The Sudanese government fears that the UN forces may act as the secular arm of the

International Criminal Court, which for the past two years has held a UN-compiled list of

war criminals. The list has never been made public but it is likely that several important

members of the Sudanese government are on it, possibly even Bashir. It would be a great

boost to the opposition if these were to be prosecuted: the ghost of Slobodan Milosevic

hovers over the Islamists in Khartoum. Although the Sudanese government will

not permit the deployment of UN troops, it encourages the international community to

continue fi nancing AMIS, precisely because it serves no purpose. This arrangement is hypoc

risy. The Europeans and the Americans turn a blind eye to the ineffi ciency of the African

forces because it makes them appear to be doing something. On 23 January the British

government said it would provide another $28.8m to AMIS, although British diplomats

have confi rmed in private that they do not believe these forces will be able to protect

civilians in Darfur from the Janjaweed.

Continued on page 10