The endless war in Darfur

The recent announcement of ceasefire by the Sudanese government has failed to bring about peace in the ravaged region

On November 12 this year, Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir offered a ceasefire and promised to disarm militias, in a move to end the nearly 6-year-old Darfur conflict. He announced his “agreement to an immediate, unconditional ceasefire between the armed forces and the warring factions, provided that an effective monitoring mechanism be put into action and be observed by all involved parties.”

This came in the wake of charges filed by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, seeking Al-Bashir’s arrest. Ocampo filed 10 charges – three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder and accused Al-Bashir of masterminding a campaign to get rid of the African tribes in Darfur. Thus, the conciliatory move by Al-Bashir was aimed evading a seemingly imminent arrest warrant, to be issued by the ICC. The ICC has already issued arrest warrants against Ahmed Harun, minister of humanitarian affairs, and janjaweed commander Ali Kushayb, for crimes in Darfur.

The Darfur conflict started in February 2003 and has rapidly developed into one of the most violent military confrontations on the African continent. In the last five years, 300,000 people have been killed, more than 2 million displaced and about 120,000 have fled into neighbouring Chad. The conflict is basically between African insurgents and the government-backed Arab militias.

There are two major rebel forces fighting against the government in Khartoum. One is the politically moderate Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), based mostly on the Fur and Masaleet tribes. The other is the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), based mostly on the Zaghawa tribe and with radical Islamist connections. It is linked with the radical Popular Patriotic Congress led by the veteran Islamist Hassan al-Turabi, who was formerly aligned with the NIF, which came to power in 1989.

The two rebel forces, who claim to be collaborating militarily, have been fighting the Sudanese army forces and the government-backed militia, the Janjaweed. The Janjaweed has conducted an ethnic cleansing campaign in rebel villages throughout the region, destroying nearly 2,700 villages. Sheik Suleiman, a civil community representative, told the Guardian in an interview on 24 November 2008, “I saw the killing with my own eyes. I saw the Janjaweed chain men up, make them kneel on the ground and then shoot them – 150 of them.”

Mass rape is another tactic employed by the Janjaweed to assert its domination within a region. Business Daily Africa quoted a victim saying, “They rape women in front of their mothers and fathers. Maybe around 20 men rape one woman. These things are normal for us in Darfur.” The first step in any lasting solution for peace lies in the disarming and dissolution of the Janjaweed militia, which has been an unwavering demand of the rebel groups. President Omar al-Bashir said the recent ceasefire will include steps to disarm the Janjaweed.

The United States has imposed economic sanctions and asked for support for an international arms embargo to end what President George W Bush called “genocide” in Darfur. Washington has regularly denounced Khartoum for its role in the conflict and lent verbal support to human rights campaigners.

Yet, little has been done by way of direct action. Since September 11, Sudan began increasing its sharing of ‘counterterror’ intelligence with the U.S. The U.S. State Department praised Khartoum for taking “significant steps to cooperate in the war on terrorism.” In 2001, the Bush administration rejected the Sudan Peace Act, which would have financed support for anti-Khartoum forces. Instead, it signed a toothless, watered-down version the next year.

In 2007, a U.S. administration spokesperson said, “The United States will maintain its strong support for countries on the front lines in the war on terrorism, especially Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sudan.” In 2008, the U.S. publicly announced its offer to normalize relations with Khartoum, fuelled by a desire to gain a foothold in Sudan’s booming oil industry.

Oil is the reason why China has sprung to the defence of the Sudan President Omar al-Bashir, expressing “grave concern” at the ICC’s moves to arrest him. 70 per cent of Sudan’s oil is exported to China, which gets one-third of its oil imports from Africa. In a reaction to these policies, five Chinese workers, employees of the China National Petroleum Corporation, were kidnapped and killed, suspected to be the handiwork of Darfur rebel groups. China has financed close to $1.3 billion of infrastructure projects in Sudan, it remains the biggest supplier of weapons to the Sudanese government.

China looks at Africa strategically as a continent that has resources that it needs to drive its economy forward. Trade between China and Africa will grow to $100 billion this year. China broke ground on a $120 million headquarters for the African Union, the chief organization of African nations this month. Wu Bangguo, one of China’s top leaders, called the gift “another example of the growing friendship between China and Africa.”

The International Crisis Group correctly summarizes the operative factors behind international policy in relation to the conflict, “The sad reality is that Darfur simply does not matter enough, and Sudan matters too much, for the international community to do more to stop the atrocities.”

Meanwhile, claims of peace after the ceasefire by the Sudanese government have been contradicted. On December 2, 15 human right organisations, including Human Rights Watch and Save Darfur Coalition, said in a report that continued attacks on civilians showed the emptiness of Khartoum’s promises for the ravaged region. The 22 page report, titled “Rhetoric vs. Reality: The Situation in Darfur,” documents the lack of progress in Darfur in recent months regarding security, the humanitarian situation, the deployment of peacekeepers, and domestic justice. “The situation in Darfur is far from what the world would define as ‘normal’,” said Julia Fromholz, director of the Crimes Against Humanity Program at Human Rights First. “Millions of people are living under daily threat of violence and are dependent on humanitarian aid that is hindered or entirely blocked by ongoing insecurity and endless bureaucratic hurdles.”

The report describes the ongoing insecurity in Darfur. Even in November, following the government’s declaration of a “unilateral, unconditional ceasefire,” the Sudanese army continued to bomb villages in North and West Darfur. “Once again, the Sudanese government is talking peace with diplomats and journalists while waging war in Darfur,” said Save Darfur Coalition President Jerry Fowler. “And once again, civilians are bearing the brunt of the violence.”

UN’s top humanitarian official admitted that Darfur was getting more dangerous. “The longer this conflict goes on, the more dangerous it becomes in terms of the ability to return to normality as it was before,” John Holmes, UN emergency relief coordinator, told a news conference after a six-day visit to Sudan.

UN officials estimate that up to 4.7 million people receive aid in the world’s biggest humanitarian relief operation, set to cost one billion dollars in 2009. UN officials say security in Darfur has worsened considerably in 2008, with 11 humanitarian workers killed, 172 assaults on humanitarian premises, 261 vehicles hijacked and 170 staff temporarily abducted so far this year.

The United Nations/African Union peacekeeping force (UNAMID) remains at less than 50 percent of its mandated strength and has repeatedly come under attack. The Sudanese government has once again recommitted to fulfilling its obligations to facilitate the force, but these commitments have yet to be tested. At a local level, government forces and authorities consistently hamper the ability of the force to protect civilians, through obstruction, bureaucracy, and even violent attacks.

Sudanese authorities have also announced a series of steps ostensibly designed to improve domestic justice for crimes in Darfur, including a new prosecutor for Darfur.  However, to date the prosecutor has only considered three cases, and no fresh prosecutions in relation to major atrocities have begun.

“Above all what we need to see in Darfur is a rapid political progress, a rapid political settlement… only that will enable the kind of progress we want to make in terms of development in Darfur,” Holmes, the UN emergency relief coordinator, said.

This piece appeared in the op-ed section of The Word, the paper at the Asian College of Journalism.

Cricket and 9/11 in Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland

Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland is an extended reflective essay, an exploration of the tumultuous New York of 9/11 and the Iraq war.

It is the story of Hans van den Broek, a banker who spends two strange, forlorn years in the bohemian Chelsea Hotel after his English wife Rachel leaves him along with their son Jake, in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center. Early into the novel, we are introduced to the emotional vulnerability and pervasive fear that gripped the city’s inhabitants. As Rachel leaves for London, Hans wonders,

She had fears of her own, in particular the feeling in her bones that Times Square, where the offices of her firm were situated, would be the site of the next attack. The Times Square subway station was a special ordeal for her. [...] Throngs endlessly climbed and descended the walkways like Escher’s tramping figures. Bare high-wattage bulbs hung from the low-lying girders, and temporary partitions and wooden platforms and posted handwritten directions signalled that around us a hidden and incalculable process of construction and ruination was being undertaken. The unfathomable and catastrophic atmosphere was only heightened by the ever-present spectacle of a little Hispanic man dancing with a life-size dummy.

Thrust into despair by the abandonment by his wife, Hans seeks comfort in the thriving and invisible world of New York cricket, which we are told, has a unique history. (‘First modern team sport in America; played in New York since the 1770’s. First international cricket matches were between the USA and Canada and watched by thousands of fans.’)

Hans grew up in Holland and got hooked to cricket as a young kid as one day while walking in the woods he saw ‘through the trees the white flashes of boys mysteriously organised in a green space.’ In New York, the game is played mostly by immigrants from Asia and the West Indies, and in this sub-culture, Hans finds relief from the inertia of his quotidian existence. Hans reflects, “What we talked about, when we did talk, was cricket. There was nothing else to discuss. The rest of our lives – jobs, children, wives, worries – peeled away, leaving only this fateful sporting fruit.”

O’Neill is at his best in Netherland when he writes about cricket, threading prose with such elegant beauty and perceptive vision, which makes you wish the novel would have made cricket the sole object of its enquiry. At one moment, Hans says, “For what was an innings if not a singular opportunity to face down, by dint of effort and skill and mastery, the variable world?” In another burst of poetic rumination, he reflects,

But I still think, and I fear will always think, of myself as the young man who got a hundred runs in Amstelveen with a flurry of cuts, who took that diving catch at second slip in Rotterdam, who lucked into a hat trick at the Haagse Cricket Club. These and other moments of cricket are scorched in my mind like sexual memories, forever available to me and capable, during those long nights alone in the hotel when I sought refuge from the sorriest feelings, of keeping me awake as I relived them in bed and powerlessly mourned the mysterious promise they held.

It is through cricket that he meets Chuck Ramkissoon, a Trinidadian, who talks “incessantly, indefatigably, virtuosically.” Chuck has ambitions of building a grand cricket stadium in New York, which would lead the revival of the game in the United States and would make America a proper civilization. He explains, “All people, Americans, whoever, are at their most civilized when they’re playing cricket.”

Hans finds in Chuck an escape from the dull and tedious rhythm of his own life. They develop an unusual friendship as Hans chauffeurs Chuck on his business dealings as preparation for his driving test. He becomes keenly aware of Chuck’s world – his ambition, his recklessness, his guiltless affairs while having a devoted wife.

It may seem baffling why Hans feels a sense of solidarity with Chuck – why, for example, could he not feel such affinity with someone else, someone closely bound in terms of interest and lifestyle? It becomes to easier to fathom this once you realise the breadth of O’Neill’s transnational vision – New York being a place where geography both expands and contracts. Hans is a product of this vision, growing up in Holland, married to an Englishwoman and living in New York. Chuck, like Hans, does not feel any sense of oneness with any national entity, but an obligation only to oneself.

One of the strengths of Netherland is how effortlessly it navigates from the recesses of memory to the fierce urgency of the present. The account of the virulent anti-Americanism following the attack on Iraq in the novel comes as Hans is marooned in thought, sitting in his balcony, when a call from Rachel informs him that she’s not moving back to New York. She says “she would not expose Jake to an upbringing in an ‘ideologically diseased’ country, a ‘mentally sick, unreal country’.”

Chuck, in early 2006, is found dead at the bottom of a New York canal, handcuffed to the back. His death is an apt reminder of the limitations of the boundless myth of the American Dream, which led Chuck to harbour grand delusions about the result of his New York Cricket Club. As one character, a business associate of Chuck, remarks after his death, “There is a limit to what Americans understand. That limit is cricket.”

The brutal death of a man ‘who had more life inside him than 10 people’ is a subtle metaphorical retort to the delusions America harbours and encourages within its inhabitants about the ability to control one’s destiny, the totality of individual control over agency and desire. 2006 is not an entirely co-incidental timeline, as the Iraq war becomes a quagmire and forces a nation to question its assumptions of self-worth.

Yet, 9/11 and Iraq are terms that are used sparingly, never to overtly exert on the reader the nature of the political climate in which Hans exists. The big, external conflicts are examined through the inner tumult of the protagonist. This makes Netherland a deeper and more meaningful exploration of that time and space than a novel like Don DeLillo’s Falling Man. The fundamental flaw of DeLillo’s novel, and others like John Updike’s Terrorist, is that they strictly view 9/11 through the prisms of exclusion, and frame their plots and narrative around the sequence of subsequent political events. Netherland is a more honest document of that fateful September, and its repercussions, because it artfully delves into the psychological cost through which came to define individual lives.

This review first appeared in The Word, the paper at the Asian College of Journalism.