Congress Says "Genocide" in Darfur; UN Sanctions Threatened

A Darfur update: UN sanctions threatened.

The United States circulated a Security Council resolution on Thursday threatening sanctions against Sudan if it does not arrest the leaders of marauding militias responsible for a wave of violence in the Darfur region.

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The draft resolution, which the United States hopes to introduce formally next week, also urges all states to prevent arms and military equipment from getting to the fighters and calls on other nations to provide more financial aid and to reinforce human rights observers and an African Union monitoring team going into the area.

The measure did not specify what sanctions should be applied, but it said they would become an option if the Sudanese government had not produced tangible evidence in 30 days that it was honoring its commitment to take action against the militias.

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Mr. Annan said the Security Council would receive reports on the situation every 30 days from Jan Pronk, the new United Nations special representative.

On the 18th, it was reported that the Sudanese rebels walked out of the peace talks, which isn't unreasonable, given that the government wasn't keeping its agreements.

But the rebels, insisting the government fulfill a list of previous commitments first, walked out Saturday without having met the Sudanese government delegation.

"These talks are now finished," Ahmed Hussain Adam said on behalf of his Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudanese Liberation Army. "We are leaving Addis Ababa."

Ibrahim Ahmed Ibrahim, spokesman for the government delegation, said Sudan was not prepared to accept preconditions.

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The rebels' main demand was an internationally supervised timeline for Sudan to make good on its promise to disarm shadowy Arab militias accused of killing tens of thousands of black Africans and driving more than a million from their homes in a systematic campaign of terror.

The insurgents also were seeking government commitments to respect previous agreements, allow an international inquiry into the killings, prosecute those responsible, lift restrictions on humanitarian workers and release prisoners of war. Finally, the insurgents wanted a more neutral venue for future negotiations, arguing that Ethiopia has close ties with Sudan.

Most of the rebels' demands were contained in a widely ignored cease-fire deal signed April 8 with the government.

"There's no progress being made because the government has refused these demands," Adam said.

He said government-backed attacks continued as recently as Thursday, when militia fighters known as the Janjaweed raided the southern Darfur village of Majreia, killing 17 people. His claim could not be independently verified.

Sudan also signed an agreement with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on July 3 calling for disarming the Janjaweed, deploying soldiers, facilitating aid and allowing international troops and monitors into Darfur.

Days after the American secretary of state and the United Nations secretary general ended their tour, witnesses said, gunmen stormed a girls' school in the desert region of Darfur, chained a group of students together and set the building on fire. The charred remains of eight girls were still in shackles when military observers from the African Union arrived on the scene.

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On this reporter's third visit since April to government-held portions of Darfur, always accompanied by government officials, the signs of misery seemed more acute than ever, and the camps significantly larger.

At the Nyala hospital, one man writhed on the floor with a gash in his bicep that he said he received in a militia attack days earlier. There were skeletal babies, many of whom no longer had the energy to cry. Outside of town, one boy with burn marks on his face, his arms and much of his body approached a visitor and asked for something to eat. He was burned, he said, when his village was set afire.

Most experts predict that the situation in Darfur will get much worse. The Agency for International Development has estimated a death toll of about 300,000 by year's end, even if the aid response is swift, and up to a million casualties if it is slow. The World Health Organization's estimates are lower, but it projects 10,000 deaths a month if infectious diseases break out.

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The health situation is similarly dire across the border in Chad, where several hundred thousand villagers have fled.

A survey conducted in June of 896 children living in desert refugee camps and other settlements in Chad, near the border town of Tine, found that 27 percent of those in the camps and 29 percent of those living outside the camps were severely malnourished.

Tons of relief food are arriving at camps throughout Darfur, but children continue to grow weaker. The lack of clean water is a prime culprit. Diarrhea is now rife in the camps, sapping whatever nourishments people have managed to take in.

"Diarrhea is a beastly killer of the weak," said Dr. David Nabarro, of the World Health Organization.

Sanitation is another challenge. Latrines are scarce in the camps. In all of Western Darfur, with a million people, there are about 4,000.

"That is minuscule," said Ces Adorna, Unicef's representative in Sudan, standing in a Nyala field covered with human excrement.

With sewage out in the open, diseases spread quicker. When the rainy season begins, doctors fear cholera and typhoid. Measles already flared up, but doctors may have contained the outbreak.

In camps, "it's like sitting on a bomb," said Dr. Nevio Zagaria, who works for the W.H.O. in Nyala.

The rains will also prompt an increase in malaria. Crews have begun moving from shelter to shelter in Darfur's camps spraying for mosquitoes.

Mr. Osman, the health minister, scoffs at suggestions that his government created the crisis. While accompanying Dr. Lee Jong Wook, director general of W.H.O., on a tour of Darfur this week, Mr. Osman disavowed any connection between the Janjaweed and the government and singled out the rebels for blame. Outside governments and relief workers question that.

Mr. Osman said he feared that talk about ethnic cleansing in Darfur from the Bush administration is designed to justify an American military invasion.

"They're saying that so they can bring their troops in," he said.

PBS did a major story on the 20th.

The genocide debate continues.

The question is more than academic. The Genocide Convention, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, calls on signers to "prevent" and "punish" genocide. If what is happening in Darfur is genocide, as many contend, the United States and other governments would be compelled to step in and put a stop to it.

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An ethnic dimension to the attacks is undeniable. The militias are Arab and the villagers they attacked were, by and large, from black African tribes. Those who survived, now clustered together in camps, reported that they were subjected to ethnic taunts during the violence. The victims say they were called "abid," which means slave, and "zurug," which means black in Arabic.

But when it comes to applying the "G-word," as Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman, recently referred to genocide, disagreement is deep. On this issue, even Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say that more evidence is needed.

The African Union similarly said that the threshold for genocide had not been reached. "Even though the crisis in Darfur is grave, with unacceptable levels of deaths, human suffering and destruction of homes and infrastructure, the situation cannot be described as a genocide," the group of African states said.

Many others, though, including Senator John Kerry, some other members of Congress from both parties and a variety of serious-minded activists, maintain that the standard has already been met. But that is far from clear.

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In some cases, the Arabs have lighter skin than the black Africans. But years of intermarriage have blurred that distinction. In general, Arabs tend to speak Arabic as their first language. They are nomadic. The black Africans use African languages as well as Arabic. They tend to be farmers. There are exceptions to that as well. The cloudiness does not stop there. Most of the victims in the conflict have been from the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups, all black Africans. But not all Arabs have joined the Janjaweed militias, which are accused of carrying out most of the atrocities. The Beni Hussein, an Arab group, have not taken part in the violence, and the Dorok, another Arab group, have been attacked by the militias. The Tama, still another Arab group, have been found to be attackers and victims.

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Not surprisingly, perhaps, politicians are divided on the genocide question. The Bush administration has studiously avoided the term. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said recently that he had experts in the region interviewing victims and trying to determine whether the legal standard of genocide had been met. [Washington called Thursday for sanctions on Sudan if the government does not rein in the militias.]

Senator Kerry hedged awhile but said in July that he had found the evidence he needed to use the term, and in both chambers of Congress, the chorus for a genocide declaration is growing louder, though the final determination is made by the United Nations.

[On Thursday, the House and Senate passed measures declaring that the atrocities unfolding in Darfur constituted genocide.]

Much of the current disagreement centers on how much evidence is necessary to make a determination of genocide, said Susannah Sirkin, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights. Should enough facts be gathered to prosecute a genocide case in court or should the threshold be lower?

"The goal of prevention, which is paramount, cannot wait until a full legal determination is made," she said.

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The lone Bush administration official to speak of genocide comes down somewhere in the middle of the debate. "We see indicators of genocide, and there is evidence that points in that direction," said the official, Pierre-Richard Prosper, ambassador at large for war crimes issues. More investigation is needed to establish whether the killing in Darfur amounts to genocide, Mr. Prosper said. But he is not likely to be the one investigating. He applied for a visa to Sudan weeks ago but the Sudanese, stung by the discussion, show no signs of letting him in.

In a rare show of bipartisan agreement, the House of Representatives passed the measure in a unanimous vote, and the Senate then approved it by a voice vote, in their last acts before Congress adjourned for a six-week summer recess.

Read The Rest Scale 5 out of 5.

Gary Farber's home blog is Amygdala.