I'm talking about Darfur today. By the time I have my evening drink, I assume dozens of women will have been raped, mutilated or killed. And a few more before my morning coffee. And we will do nothing, not Obama, not Sarkozy, not Gordon Brown, not Putin, and not Jintao Hu. Why?Absence of choice is a choice. And the choices we made yesterday constrain those we can make today.
Yesterday, the US chose to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. Its troops are wearing thin and tired.
Perhaps understandably, the EU continues to fail to choose a coherent foreign policy and corresponding allocation of resources. It remains a fairly impotent giant.
That was yesterday.
What about today?
China has decided to carry its weight on the international scene and be present in Africa. It has decided there is good business to be made with Sudan. And it has decided not to get into the moralizing business with other nations--a very welcome move by despots, dictators and skunks everywhere.
I don't blame the UN--it's like blaming the puppet instead of the puppet master.
I'm not sure I want to talk about Egypt, but if my neighbor was raping women and banging their heads on my wall, I might want to call 911 - what about you Mr Moubarak? Guess there's no money to be made there. It's not like letting Palestinians bribe you for a chance to get out of Gaza.
So, women will be raped, men will be killed and children will become soldiers in Darfur.
Let's face it--it's not that the US is in charge of everything, it's that it has this little thing it is so proud of: leadership. That's a fact. An evolving fact, but still a reality.
And today the US is even less well placed to push action against Darfur (some in the Obamesque administration have raised that flag high at some point), because its credibility as a source of Rule of Law Principles, Human Rights, and basic morality is in the dumps. Particularly when it comes to the Muslim world.
Of course there's been Abu Ghraib and there is still Guantanamo. But the main thing is the obvious (to anyone watching) hypocrisy of the US policy toward Palestine. As long as the US chooses to remain blind and complicit to ethnic cleansing -- I'm calling a spade a spade, as I'm in a bad mood -- it has a credibility of zilch with the Muslim world. Consequently, we're not about to send the 82nd airborne and deliver President Bashir to the International Court of Justice (which the US does not recognize anyway).
We--all of us--live with the choices made yesterday. And we will live with those made today. I think it will affect us, even if it's not our daughter, sister, mother, or wife being raped out there.
Read the column from Michael Gerson in the Post today.
Don't let it ruin tonight's drink.
Elrig
Photo source and story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15718844/ns/nightly_news_with_brian_williams/
The genocide in Darfur is no longer a trendy, breathless global cause. But the women of Darfur haven't gotten the message.
On May 15, a woman near the Al Hamadiya camp in Zalingei was collecting firewood. Three armed men in khaki uniforms raped her, stabbed her in the leg, inflicted genital injuries and left her bleeding. She spent 45 days in the hospital. In 2003, the same woman was raped and shot while fleeing her village.
Her story is in a recent, exhaustive, chilling report on Sudan written by a panel of experts at the United Nations. A U.N. official told me, "We have not talked to a single woman [in Darfur] who has not stated that sexual violence is their first concern." The panel documented sexual assaults against pregnant women and 12-year-old girls. Prosecutions are nonexistent. Local officials are indifferent.
The Darfur revealed in the report is a heavily armed state of nature. Uniformed troops, Janjaweed militias and rebel groups all abuse civilians. The Sudanese government routinely violates the Darfur arms embargo imposed by the U.N. Security Council in 2004, unloading weapons, according to the U.N. official, "openly, in front of you." Arms and ammunition manufactured by Chinese companies can be found everywhere. Child soldiers are recruited. Political dissent is repressed.
This is not, at present, the active phase of Darfur's genocide, involving mass attacks on civilians. Instead, it is the evidence of a genocide that has succeeded. The Sudanese regime achieved its policy aims -- targeting disfavored ethnic groups, destroying their way of life and forcing millions into camps. And now it is threatening to forcibly relocate these victims in 2010 -- a plan of Stalinist scale and brutality.
Global attention has been diverted by the complexity of the conflict, the unsympathetic nature of Darfur's fractious rebels and the threat of renewed war between Sudan's north and south -- a war that would overwhelm the region.
But the suffering in Darfur is also being actively hidden from view. In March, the Sudanese regime expelled several international relief organizations, including those dealing with sexual violence. This cut an important pipeline of humanitarian information to the outside world -- which was precisely the goal. Sudan's regime is pulling a curtain across Darfur that may also be a shroud.
The Obama administration's lengthy review of U.S. Sudan policy culminated in October with more of a whimper than a bang. The administration presented Sudan with a choice between two roads: one path of cooperation, engagement and incentives; the other of defiance, isolation and disincentives. But neither carrots nor sticks were specified. And the administration seems divided on how the engagement of Sudan -- lifting sanctions, moving toward more normal relations -- should proceed. U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice wants such benefits to follow major concessions by Sudan's government. Scott Gration, the special envoy to Sudan, would distribute carrots liberally and preemptively.
But all this has been tried before. The Sudanese regime receives small threats with insolence. It views minor American concessions as signs of weakness.
The administration's Sudan policy was produced by an exhaustive, interdepartmental process in which no one won or lost completely. As a part of the previous administration, I saw this kind of process at work -- and it is incapable of producing boldness.
Yet boldness -- much larger carrots and much larger sticks -- is needed. The ultimate carrot would be to offer Sudan's leader, Omar al-Bashir -- currently under international indictment for war crimes -- the legitimacy he seeks, in exchange for the peaceful independence of south Sudan and unconditional cooperation in Darfur. This would be distasteful. But it might be worth repressing our gag reflex to gain permanent, irreversible limitations on the power of Sudan's regime to do harm.
This approach, however, could not succeed without serious consequences for its rejection -- economic, political and military pressure, by a coalition of willing nations. No bureaucratic process would produce such ambitious options. Only a president and his secretary of state can insist on boldness.
Absent that insistence, America's Sudan policy is in a holding pattern, waiting for the next crisis to refocus global attention. Meanwhile, women are raped, with impunity. Weapons are illegally imported, with impunity. Civilians are attacked, with impunity. And at some point, impunity becomes permission.
The world looks at Darfur and responds, in effect: We can live with that. There are many in Darfur, however, who will not live.
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