4 August 2004
interview
Washington, DC — Nearly four months after President Bush called the situation in Darfur the "worst humanitarian crisis of our time," the international community has responded with resolutions from the United Nations and the U.S. Congress condemning the violence. But there has been little concrete action to stop the killing, and a debate rages over whether to formally designate the conflict and refugee crisis a 'genocide.'
More than a million people have been displaced from their homes, and between 30,000 and 50,000 people have suffered preventable deaths, the United Nations said last week. Unless firm measures are taken to protect the threatened populace, the death toll could climb into the hundreds of thousands, relief agencies estimate.
The International Crisis Group's (ICG) John Prendergast visited the rebel-held areas of Darfur late last month with Harvard University professor Samantha Power and was an eyewitness to atrocities in the region. Prendergast is currently special adviser to the president at the ICG. He was also special adviser to the U.S. State Department on conflict resolution in Africa and served as director of African Affairs at the National Security Council. He has worked for many years in Africa with organizations such as the U.S. Institute of Peace, Human Rights Watch and Unicef. Prendergast has written six books on Africa, including God, Oil & Country: Changing the Logic of War in Sudan, and co-authored the forthcoming ICG book, Blood and Soil: Land and Conflict in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Prendergast spoke with AllAfrica about the situation in Darfur and the reluctance of many U.S., UN and African officials to use the term 'genocide', as well as what he thinks should be done in Darfur. ICG Researcher Gideon Maltz contributed to the discussion on legal definitions of genocide.
What do you think it will take for the international community to take decisive action in Darfur?
John Prendergast: In Somalia, there were stick-thin figures on our nightly television when former President Bush decided to send in American troops [in December 1992]. In Darfur, the pictures aren't as graphic yet. The Darfurian population has survived cyclical drought and some conflict for generations through a very sophisticated array of survival activities, which they cannot utilize while they are trapped in the camps that they are in now, camps that they can't leave because of the ongoing threat posed by unrestrained Janjaweed militias.
What's going to start killing them in large numbers, which will then create the dramatic graphics that will - three months from now - instill the kind of emotion necessary for sufficiently robust action, are the diseases that are going to rip through these camps. I think that there will eventually be some form of action, but it just may happen after a couple hundred thousand people who could have been saved will have died.
Does it matter if the word 'genocide' is used to describe the situation in Darfur?
John Prendergast: As far as the international community's legal obligations are concerned, nothing should be riding on the formal determination. However, the determination has political significance. The crime of genocide resonates with the broader public and inspires in them a special revulsion. A recent opinion poll, for example, found that 53 percent of the U.S. public supported the UN sending peacekeeping troops to Sudan with U.S. participation, but the figure jumped to 69 percent if an official determination of genocide were made. Calling the crimes "genocide" certainly would have the practical effect of creating much greater pressure to intervene more forcefully than the Bush administration is now prepared to do.
Is that the primary reason you think the U.S. government is reluctant to call it genocide?
John Prendergast: In part, yes. The Bush administration does not want to foment additional public pressure on itself to act. But ironically, the political effect of the g-word has also inhibited some human rights and conflict prevention organizations. They are worried about the potential cheapening of the term because it is invoked every time a handful of people are killed. And they are concerned that if the international community intervenes this time only because the events in Darfur are labeled genocide, it might stand aside next time when a crisis - which threatens massive loss of life but does not qualify as genocide -- spirals out of control.
Secretary Powell and other leaders have suggested that the genocide debate is a diversion. How do you respond ?
John Prendergast: Given the lack of any significant action to prevent further atrocities or punish those crimes, these protestations seem hollow and themselves diversionary. Rather than make self-serving statements about the need to respond to the humanitarian emergency and leave other issues in Sudan until later, Secretary Powell and other government officials around the world should acknowledge that this humanitarian crisis is a direct result of the most appalling human rights crisis in the world. Sudan is at its core a human rights emergency created by a criminal, autocratic regime.
The international community has a responsibility to protect civilians in circumstances of mass atrocities, war crimes and crimes against humanity. That responsibility to protect has the same implications as the Genocide Convention - the compulsion to prevent and punish atrocities. And in fact, under the Genocide Convention itself, signatories' duty to prevent genocide and the obligation to initiate legal proceedings for punishment both start long before any formal legal pronouncement of genocide.
What do you think the international community should do about Darfur?
John Prendergast: The international community must discharge its legal obligations by making civilian protection and accountability the core elements of its future action. It must act to stop the atrocities by supporting the deployment of an African Union-led force to protect civilians. There is absolutely no reason one American soldier has to go to Darfur, so that false argument should not be allowed to undermine the imperative for immediate action. The U.S. has spent the last decade working very assiduously to train African forces for just this kind of event.
What forces are available and willing to go?
John Prendergast: The United States has already agreed - with the European Union - to pay for the deployment of three hundred troops. So that's not an issue. At this point, any hold-up in the deployment is a bureaucratic problem driven by a lack of political will at the top. So they haven't been able to deploy.
Our effort now has to be to capacitate the African Union in its infancy. President Kagame [of Rwanda] has volunteered troops, as has Nigeria. The force should be mandated to protect civilians, and be much larger than the 300 currently authorized. This will demand a great deal of assertive diplomacy to make this force acceptable to Khartoum and will require much greater resources to support the deployment of these forces. The European Union, the Arab League, Japan, China, all have to pony up for this effort, in addition to the U.S.
Do these troops have transportation to get to areas in Darfur where they're needed?
John Prendergast: Kagame doesn't have the lift capacity, but that's our job. The issue is whether the U.S. would agree to resource the lift and logistical supply line for a larger force for the AU. Now that there's a developing consensus that there has to be a larger force in Darfur to protect these civilians from the militias - that the Khartoum government is actually supporting as opposed to obstructing - then the U.S. has to be at the center.
The international community must also double the grossly inadequate humanitarian assistance effort, impose targeted sanctions against specific regime officials and ruling party businesses, and hold leaders accountable. These are arguably the measures that could have a greater effect on Khartoum's calculations than anything else, by authorizing a Commission of Inquiry to investigate charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in Sudan.
You don't need a formal determination of genocide to start punishment proceedings?
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