Features > March 15, 2006 > Web Only

Raising a Million Voices for Darfur (cont’d)

I think we need international action. I think we need the United Nations to authorize a peacekeeping force, and while that’s being mobilized we need the United States and NATO to take the lead and put people on the ground to protect individuals as soon as possible.

How many peacekeeping troops would be necessary to ensure the safety of those currently in the refugee camps?

I think we need about 20,000 troops on the ground.

And that would require a Security Council resolution, right? Is that even possible?

I actually think a U.N. resolution is possible. The Chinese and the Russians have said recently that they’re willing to support a U.N. intervention force as long as the African Union asks for it. I was hoping the African Union would ask for it at their most recent mission, but they’ve put it off for six months. They could still decide in September to ask the United Nations to take over the mission, in which case it would come in front of the Security Council, and if the passed it, we’d likely see NATO play a larger role in logistics, even putting some forces in there short-term until the United Nations can move in.

I’m disappointed that the African Union put it off. We have some leverage, because the United States provides a lot of the budget of the African Union and we keep throwing money at them because they’re the only option. But we’re going to have create another option.

By that do you mean a NATO intervention?

Absolutely. I mean, even if the United Nations did approve a peacekeeping force it’s going to take six to nine months. We need something in the meantime. There’s the very real possibility of this expanding into a regional conflict if something’s not done soon.

At times it seems the United Sates has been on the right side of this issue, at other times not so much. What’s administration policy now?

We were the first country—and, to my knowledge, the only country thus far—that has called it a genocide. Bush just talked about the fact that NATO needs to take a larger role in this mission, and we need to get the United Nations involved. I think all that needs to be praised, but talking is only going so far. We need to take the next step. We need to introduce resolutions in the U.N. Security Council that call for a peacekeeping force on the ground, have Congress pass the supplemental funding budget that President Bush has put up that calls for $389 million for Darfur-specific problems. There’s a lot of talk, but we have to put it into action.

Right now you’re traveling around the country as part of the Million Voices for Darfur Campaign. How hopeful are you in the wake of Iraq that you can convince people this is the sort of thing we should be supporting?

I’m very hopeful or I wouldn’t be out there doing it. First of all, this mission and the United States support that would go to this mission isn’t anything along the lines of Iraq. I’m not advocating U.S. troops on the ground even if NATO goes in there. But more than people’s trepidation about Iraq, the biggest obstacle, really, is just trying to convince people to do something that is good, something that is right, for nothing. People tend to want something out of it: cheap oil, security. But what you get out of it is being able to go to bed at night and think, “I did something good today.”

If out of an audience of 400 people, I can convince half or a third or a quarter of them to write a letter to their senator or congressman, or come to Washington on April 30 for the rally, I’ve done my job and I can move on to the next city. I’m the catalyst, but they’ve got to do the work. They’ve got to pass out postcards on campus, they’ve got to walk around with bright green T-shirts or green armbands.

That’s why we have a democracy, so that we can influence the people we’ve elected to do what we want to see happen. If we can raise enough interest and get enough articles in newspapers, we can change policy in the United States.

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• Reader Comments

  oil

  If there is truth in this article, then the situation in Darfur is about much more than feelings of tribal superiority. I was happy to see that there is talk in my state of divestment from the oil market in the Sudan. According to the article, a lot of retirement folios have a lot of investments in Sudanese oil.

  It confuses me that this administration will use the word “genocide”, while the U.N. argues about what constitutes “genocide”, and yet we do nothing and the European nations do nothing, and NATO does nothing to intervene and stop the violence.

  If the U.S. would get back on the Human Rights Commission and join the International Criminal Court, perhaps we could be more helpful.

  Meanwhile, I wonder if it would be possible to get journalists and other writers and posters to start putting quotation marks around ethnic cleansing, please, to indicate that it is a euphemism for genocidal practices and not a “cleansing” process.

  Posted by wileywitch on Mar 16, 2006 at 1:19 AM

  I have already and often sent letters to my congressmen about Dafur. If a “moralistic” American foreign policy (which I hearily support) is to mean anything, we need to actually do something.

  I do take issue with the comment in the article about Russia and China being willing to sign on to some UN initiative. China notably is the one dragging its feet in the Security Council on this issue.

  Why?

  Google “china dafur un”

  The two most telling linked article are these:

  Who Funds the Genocide in Dafur, Sudan? :: Sudan :: bLogicus
  Who Funds the Genocide in Dafur, Sudan? Not surprising, China is now the largest foreign investor in Sudan, and, when the United Nations’ Security Council ...
  www.blogicus.com/archives/who_funds_the_genocide_in_dafur_sudan.php - 100k - Cached - Similar pages

  and

  China’s Evil Empire
  ... killing rampage that has consumed hundreds of thousands of lives in Dafur. ... The open threat of a Chinese UN veto has shielded Sudan from possible ...
  www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/1/16/165403.shtml - 36k - Cached - Similar pages

  Posted by Jay Cline on Mar 17, 2006 at 2:23 PM

  I don’t “google”, Jay. I use a search engine. I found some interesting articles and it appears that China is indeed, at least one of the sponsors of these atrocities in Darfur, and China imports a lot of petroleum from Sudan.

  But how about laying off, the evil empire schtick? China isn’t doing anything that we haven’t done for Exxon or Bechtel. Neither we nor China invented imperialism, colonialism, or the divide-and-conquer technique.

  I would like to see the Security Council abolished so that the U.N. can get down to business with majority votes of a quorum. Then we could have some serious peace keeping forces, and the rising, falling, and current superpowers that armed to the teeth can be threatened with sanctions when they go into kill-em-all and steal their resources mode.

  All oil producing nations have a serious need to protect themselves from all intruders.

  Posted by wileywitch on Mar 18, 2006 at 11:14 AM

  (god, I hate the way this blog sometimes just loses a post! - let me try this again)

  WW, if you got issues with the evil emipre schtick, take it up with www.newsmax.com.

  Their headline: not mine. I was only demonstrating that China is more of a problem to resolving the Sudan crisis than anyone else.

  Regardless of whether I agree with the China isn’t doing anything that we haven’t done schtick, that most certainly is an amoralistic schtick as it shuts down opposing arguments whilst blithely ignoring that moralistic notion of two wrongs do not make a right

  I would like to see the entire UN abolished and a new international security arrangement made that does not put totalitarian regimes in the driver’s seat of Human Rights monitors (Google Syria, Lybia, UN Human Rights Commission). Full membership should not be automatic merely because you control the capital city.

  As far as the anti-Google search engine rhetoric, take it up with someone who cares.

  Posted by Jay Cline on Mar 20, 2006 at 12:39 PM

  Schtick!  Schtick!  It’s my turn to say schtick!

  The UN is a crippled beast:  mostly useless, but too damn stubborn to die.  It’s unlikely that we’ll see a new organization rise to take on it’s intended responsibilities any time soon, so the global community is just going to have to work with what’s they’ve got.

  Countries like China, who’ve got a nice long list of human rights violations, are always going to try and sabotage any humanitarian efforts that negatively impact their investments.  The United States rarely intervenes in foreign affairs for purely humanitarian reasons, and the ideas of equality and human rights are (supposed to be) part of our political doctrine.  So… why would you expect anything different from an economic megalith with a large amount of money invested in the current regime?  That’s like expecting Pfizer to admit generic Canadian/Mexican drug imports are chemically identical to the brand name counterparts.

  Posted by Harrower on Mar 20, 2006 at 1:40 PM

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