Genocide in Africa…Again

“At what point do we ask the uncomfortable question, why does the U.S. seem to consider it acceptable for such genocidal acts to occur in Africa?” It was a rhetorical question, posed by Africa Action Executive Director Salih Booker on April 7 as the world marked the tenth anniversary of the genocide that left at least 800,000 Rwandans dead. Two week’s later, President George Bush answered Booker’s question in the usual manner: the U.S. has more pressing business at hand than ending a genocide-in-progress, this time in the western region of Sudan.

While U.S. diplomats feigned outrage at the UN Human Rights Commission’s weak response (“grave concern”) to massive ethnic cleansing of Black Africans in Darfur – the committee could not bring itself to even whisper the terms “rape” or “forced removals” – Bush last week vouched for the Khartoum government’s good faith in ending a much longer campaign of genocide against Blacks. As Newsweek reported:

What tantalizes the U.S. is Sudanese oil reserves, which are at issue in negotiations between non-Muslim Black southerners and the Arabized rulers in Khartoum. American and European companies are anxious to return to their operations in the oil-rich Abyei region, abandoned during the North-South war that claimed two million lives. Stability in Abyei weighs far more heavily than the lives of one million Blacks in oil-poor Darfur, victims of Khartoum’s “strategy of ethnic-based murder, rape and forcible displacement,” according to a Human Rights Watch report.

In a Euro-American dominated world, Sudan’s rulers are permitted to launch a second genocidal race war, so long as they allow oil to flow from the scene of the first holocaust. Declan Walsh, Africa correspondent for the UK’s Independent, describes ethnic cleansing in Darfur:

The first sign is the ominous drone of a plane. Ageing Russian Antonovs sweep over the remote Sudanese village, dispatching their deadly payload of crude barrel bombs. They explode among the straw-roofed huts, sending terrified families scurrying for safety – but there is none.

Under cover of ending the southern genocide, Khartoum unleashes ethnic cleansing in the West – with impunity. Although both sides in the Darfur conflict are Muslims, there is no doubt this is a race war. As the Independent’s Walsh reported: “One 18-year-old woman told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that her attacker stuck a knife into her vagina, saying: ‘You get this because you are black.’”

The UN Human Rights Commission ignored both the HRW report and its own investigators, who concluded that Khartoum has engaged in “crimes against humanity” in Darfur. Apparently, it is a far worse crime to leave oil in the ground, in Abyei.

American diplomats scored easy propaganda points by voting for stronger UN language on Darfur while their President withheld sanctions that might have actually forced Khartoum to abandon its newest genocidal campaign. Europeans, finding few excuses for doing nothing to stop genocide in the present, pretended to make big plans for the future. According to the EU Observer:

While EU and UN diplomats discuss the possibility of an EU-led peacekeeping mission to the Sudan region of Darfur, the European development commissioner has warned against hasty decisions. Speaking to journalists on Wednesday (28 April), Poul Nielson urged “not to let things happen without professional, well-analyzed co-ordination.”

The Dane went on to state that time was needed for “collective analysis” between the EU member states in order to ensure a mission with “maximum authority.” He suggested that a possible mission might fail under disagreements between EU member states. “If one man can fix a tire in 10 minutes this does not mean that 10 men can fix a tire in 1 minute,” he said….

The Europeans issued a statement on the crisis that scrupulously avoids asking anyone in particular to stop killing anybody:

Having done their bit to save humanitarian “space,” if not the human beings themselves, the EU got on with the business of…business.

African states make up 14 of the 53 members of the UN Human Rights Commission, 50 of whom voted for the toothless resolution on Darfur. Two abstained; only the U.S. called for stronger language. Clearly, the African Union (AU) is seeking unity, above all else.

The AU expressed “concern” over violations of a (clearly non-existent) ceasefire in Darfur, and announced it would send a team of military observers to the region. The U.S. offered to help the AU with unspecified “logistical support” – as well it might, since American Special Forces, Marines and contract mercenaries now operate in nearly every country of the Sahel. The European edition of Stars and Stripes reported:

The extent of recent American military penetration of Africa just below the Sahara can be glimpsed from the accompanying Stars and Stripes interview with Army Col. Vic Nelson, the Department of Defense’s country director for West Africa:

The whole reason [for the Pan-Sahel Initiative] is regional cooperation, so that the terrorists can’t use these artificial state borders at the seams, against us. “Aha! I’m in Algeria! Aha! I’m in Mali! Aha! I’m in Algeria!”

[Including more states] would foster regional cooperation, which is what this is all about. The policy is, helping Africa build the capacity to enable them to deal with these problems as a force multiplier for our own forces in the global war on terror. Well, what does it mean, that buzzword? That means, if they can do it, we don’t have to do it. And they want to do it, they want to help us and be partners in the global war on terror. They have needs, training and equipment needs.

At least 110,000 survivors of the ethnic cleansing in Darfur have fled across the border to Chad.

The U.S. goal in the Sahel, says Col. Nelson, is to establish direct ties (“mil-to-mil”) with African militaries:

American military tentacles now stretch across the Sahelian belt of Africa, from Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden to the Atlantic. They are there for the oil, and to cultivate relationships with the generals, and would-be generals – men whose purchase can yield more barrels for the buck than negotiations with governments beholden to fractious civil societies.

In 1994, Canadian General Romeo Dallaire tried desperately to convince the United Nations to reinforce his peacekeeping mission in Rwanda. President Bill Clinton’s administration used every device to sabotage an international rescue effort. (See Paul Street, April 15.) Last week, Dallaire testified before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Africa:

“Rwanda simply had no strategic value in its geography or in its resources. As [one country’s] interlocutor, who came in to do an assessment whether or not to send troops to support me, said, ‘The only thing you’ve got here in Rwanda is a lot of people – and too much of [them].’

Dallaire fears “the nature of the political interplay in the world has not fundamentally changed” in the last decade.

Let’s revisit Salih Booker’s rhetorical question, and put it slightly differently: At what point will the U.S. commit itself to effectively oppose genocide in Africa?

Answer: When acts of genocide impair US ability to extract what it wants from the continent. In the case of Sudan, stability in the oil fields takes precedence over the lives of Darfur’s one million displaced and hunted persons.