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Crisis in Sudan - June 2007
Posted to: Crisis in Sudan Group by Jim Fussell (CCAL30) (1135), Fri, 01 Jun 2007 19:25:28 PDT
Edited: Fri, 01 Jun 2007 19:41:09 PDT
Feedback score: 0
Comments: 94 by 16 members
Viewed: 1021 times by 43 members
This thread is a continuation of discussions on Darfur and Sudan. Click here for the May discussion archive
EDUCATE
- ENOUGH Campaign has monthly reports and policy papers
- ICG, HRW, and Amnesty also have great reports
- USHMM Speaker's Directory (in cooperation with the Genocide Intervention Network).
- USHMM blog on Genocide Prevention weekly podcast updates, recently featuring Bec Hamilton of GI-Net, John Prendergast of ICG, Lee Feinstien and many others).
- Genocide Olympics and Where Will We Be Two campaigns to highlight China's complicity in the Darfur genocide
China's complicity in Khartoum's crimes in Darfur http://www.omidyar.net/group/sud ancrisis/news/71/
ADVOCATE
1-800-GENOCIDE (1-800-436-6243): Call the anti-genocide hotline and get the most up-to-date talking points before getting connected (for free) to your legislator at the state and federal level.
Targeted Divestment: Ensure you're not funding genocide from your state pension plan to your mutual fund.
- Fidelity Out of Sudan: One of the most active campaigns targeting a specific corporation.
Darfur Scores: Find out how your Congressional leader responds to stopping genocide as well as how the White House is doing in enforcing the law.
MOBILIZE
- Stop Genocide Now 2007 http://www.omidyar.net/group/sud ancrisis/news/70/
- i-ACT, Camp Darfur, From America with Love . . . On this thread, we will work on everything Stop Genocide Now, which is about connecting with others around the country and world that care about Darfur and about stopping genocide. http://stopgenocidenow.org/
- ENOUGH! The project to abolish genocide and mass atrocities
- an initiative of the Center for American Progress and the International Crisis Group (launched January 30, 2007). See http://www.americanprogress.org/experts/SharmaAnita.html Hear Anita Sharma http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbrq-6JplkA Website available soon http://www.enoughproject.org/
Comments page 1
By Gabriel Stauring (CCAL30) (1398), Sat, 02 Jun 2007 23:01:48 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Thanks for starting the June thread, Jim. Ashis, thanks for keeping us in touch with the reality on the ground.
We do have to keep the fire burning. JP always talks about raising the temperature just a few degrees, and we might make history. Let's make this summer hotter (and not because of global warming). Let's see the different challenges and changes in the movement as an opportunity to really turn the heat up and stop this genocide.
I've been going from place to place, and it's amazing how the young people of America are acting. There is so much energy. During the summer, because of schools letting out, the steam is sometimes let out also. We have to get the word out that this should not happen! Each student going home can bring his activism with him and share it with her/his family, church, all the community. We really have to coordinate and work together, hitting hard with all of our different projects and approaches.
One very important thing that we just have to keep at the front of our movement is the victims and survivors of this genocide. It is so easy focus only on our efforts and forget the real individuals, the faces behind the huge numbers.
I know, I'm preaching to the choir! :)
topBy Ashis Brahma (CCAL30) (1630), Sun, 03 Jun 2007 06:36:39 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Dear Gabriel,
Missing you man
I am considering opening a thread on interconnectivety
Why it is important to remain in direct contact with refugees and why we so horribly fail at it with all our best intentions...
I have bought a camcorder myself but forgot the need for a tape. It will arrive in 4-5 days and I hope to do some shooting myself.
Stories of those in the camp
My sprint is over in 28 days, but the marathon will continue
Namaskar
Ashis
www.bahaibeach.blogspot.com
yet another car stolen and still progress in the projects
By Ashis Brahma (CCAL30) (1630), Sun, 03 Jun 2007 06:40:15 PDT
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O yes Gabriel,
I will be in the USA from roughly July 16-August 23. Where can we hook up?
Namaskar
Ashis
By Ashis Brahma (CCAL30) (1630), Sun, 03 Jun 2007 14:50:44 PDT
Comment feedback score: 14 (* * * * * * * * * *)
Bahai Beach 67
What makes the heart tick?
June 3, 2007
Human touch, a story, sharing experience all this and more makes the human condition worthwhile. Imagine a world without myths, folk stories, songs, dance and laughter. You might as well not live.
Here in Oure Cassoni I am delighted daily with the stories of the Zaghawa’s. Despite their plight live moves on. For 11 months and 66 Bahai Beaches I have been trying to share the ups and downs of their lives with friends, family and anyone who wants to know more.
On first thought it is easy to presume life is horrendous, hard after being victim of mass murder, rape, destruction of houses, theft of all livelihood. No one will claim life is easy in a refugee camp when you have lost everything. Yet for me my Sudanese coworkers, patients and friends do not give me a feeling of hopelessness instead I think it is here I first realized what the word resilience truly means.
Never give up! Whatever is thrown on your path. Is there a choice?
Colorful anecdotes of their customs, traditions are shared daily during our shared meal of lentils and bread. It gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. The stories sometimes shiver my spine and I so much wish I could share them with more people. Not as a spokesperson. There are enough refugees eloquent to slam home the message.
Advocacy and humanitarian do not always gel well. Ask Mr. Rubenstein of the Save the Darfur Coalition. Yet the story of people themselves should be the starting point of any action or intervention. What is their viewpoint? All to often conclusion are drawn for refugees
People are people. Whatever their religion, skin color or nationality. All have sad, touching, funny and sage stories to tell. It is there where the deepest gap in communication lies. Reporters come for 3-4 days write a piece and whiz of to the next article. In depth and continuing communication is lacking.
The I-Act initiative with camera teams in the camps to have people tell their stories to a world wide audience via the Internet is something that has impressed me a lot. How can one not be touched when a personal story is being told? Having direct interaction would make it even harder for the world to not want to act in the reality that is called Darfur.
What makes a heart tick is an easy question to answer:
It is the real life story of any refugee.
Let us work on getting those stories out there
Namaskar
Ashis
By Esther Sprague (CCAL30) (564), Mon, 04 Jun 2007 07:17:09 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Ashis - Obviously I-Act's work is very important and helps provide those stories. I've had the impression that this sort of thing on a regular basis wouldn't be allowed and could create more danger for the people in the camps. What do you think?
Darfur Advocacy Group Undergoes a Shake-Up
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/0 2/world/africa/02darfur.html?_r= 2&pagewanted=print&oref= slogin
By Susan Sears (CCAL30) (24), Mon, 04 Jun 2007 08:59:00 PDT
Comment feedback score: 3 (* * *)
This lovely story appeared in the Washington Post yesterday. As a person, I'm proud; as a poet, I'm humbled. Susan
Words of Understanding and Hope Ashburn 5th-Graders Channel Compassion for Darfur Into Poetry Collection
By Delphine Schrank Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 3, 2007; Page LZ01
If a war could be stopped with flights of compassion, 10-year-olds in Darfur might sleep a little easier tonight.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp -dyn/content/article/2007/06/01/ AR2007060102800.html
By Susan Sears (CCAL30) (24), Mon, 04 Jun 2007 09:00:58 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Does anyone know why on earth my type above is gigantic? How embarrasing! That never happened before. I do apologize for appearing to shout. Susan
By Ashis Brahma (CCAL30) (1630), Mon, 04 Jun 2007 10:57:59 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Esther Sprague said:
Ashis - Obviously I-Act's work is very important and helps provide those stories. I've had the impression that this sort of thing on a regular basis wouldn't be allowed and could create more danger for the people in the camps. What do you think?
Darfur Advocacy Group Undergoes a Shake-Up
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/0 2/world/africa/02darfur.html?_r= 2&pagewanted=print&oref= slogin
Hi Esther,
It is tricky indeed.
When advocacy and humanitarian work mingle.
Yet the regime in Sudan has limitless access to the media.
Not all stories need to be about war or loss. Good news may not be news, but the aspect I am focussing on just as others before me is the interpersonal contact. It need not all be in the open. It is about connecting.
If ever I am at loss of words it is to describe what it does to you when you can talk, interact, listen to a refugee who is living in a camp for four years.
How is it that journalists have more or less unlimited access and there is a different set of rules for people like you and me?
Namaskar,
Ashis
By Jim Fussell (CCAL30) (1135), Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:11:02 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
The Washington POst had a number of worthwhile articles on Darfur this weekend. Another described the work of the Save Darfur Coalition. But this article by Julie Flint (associate of Alex deWaal) jumped out at me. She has a different perspective, which may be truer in some areas than others. Remember that Darfur i as big as Texas or France and hase many different groups and factions in it:
Darfur, Saving Itself
By Julie Flint Sunday, June 3, 2007; B02
NORTH DARFUR, Sudan
Kaltouma Musa walked home a few weeks ago carrying her baby on her back and holding her young brother tightly by the hand. She had left a camp for the displaced where she had been receiving aid to return to a rebel-controlled area with no aid, marked on maps as a no-go zone where the African Union and United Nations fear to tread.
"Home" is Bornyo, one of a string of villages in the Ain Siro mountains of North Darfur, the first base of the insurgency in the Darfur region. It was destroyed by Sudanese troops and the predominantly Arab Janjaweed militia soon after the rebellion began in 2003. The assault on Bornyo was, by the standards of the day, an everyday catastrophe. Supported by bombers and helicopter gunships, the government's ground forces killed, raped and looted. They burned every building in the village. Kaltouma, then just 16, was caught and whipped, but she somehow managed to escape. Her father and two brothers were shot dead. Her uncle ran for his life but was chased by Janjaweed on horseback until he collapsed and was killed, too.
Four years on, Bornyo is a ghost village. It lies close to the rebels' front line with the government and has not been rebuilt. But Kaltouma preferred to go to the nearby village of Ain Siro, building a new hut from the charred remains of the old, than to stay in Kassab camp 30 miles away, risking rape by the Janjaweed every time she ventured out. Life in Ain Siro is good, she told me when I visited Darfur in March. Now, the rebels of the Sudan Liberation Army protect the area as best they can and respect civilians. The abuses of the faction commanded by Minni Minnawi ended when his former comrades-in-arms hounded him out of rural Darfur after he signed a peace agreement with the government last May.
The Bush administration refuses to admit that it made a mistake in backing Minnawi, the sole rebel signatory of an agreement Darfurians overwhelmingly reject. Human rights activists, stuck on the term "genocide," see any other description of the conflict in Darfur as a form of moral equivocation. But Kaltouma Musa knows something that we in the West have barely begun to see and that policymakers do not acknowledge: In many of the areas controlled by rebels who reject the peace pact, life is returning to normal, as much as it can after so much death and destruction.
President Bush recently unleashed an uninformed, untimely broadside against the so-called non-signatory factions, turning a blind eye to the atrocities of Minnawi's men and grossly exaggerating the violence inflicted by the rebel commanders who would not follow him to Khartoum. "They're roaming the Darfur countryside pillaging and stealing at will," Bush said at the Holocaust Memorial Museum on April 18; last week, he tightened sanctions on Sudan by blocking the assets of 30 Sudanese companies and three individuals, including the leader of a rebel group opposed to the peace pact. "They have killed civilians, they've plundered vehicles and plundered supplies from international aid workers, they've added to the lawlessness," Bush said in his April address. "The government in Khartoum has been unable to control the problem."
Four days later, Khartoum tried. It bombed the rebels just as they were meeting to try to form a united, orderly movement. It had bombed them before, using high-flying Antonov bombers that missed their mark. This time, Khartoum used low-flying gunships. Two people were killed, both civilians.
Bush's words show the dangers inherent in much of the uninformed comment on Darfur that emanates from the United States -- driven, very often, by activists who have never been there and who perceive the war as a simple morality tale in which the forces of "evil" can be defeated only by outside saviors. For them, Darfur is not a place with a complex history; it's a moral high ground. Darfurians are no longer real human beings who laugh and love and care for their children; they are one-dimensional images of suffering.
For some, such as Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, salvation means a "surgical" military strike -- Iraq without the body bags. For most, it means an exclusive focus on getting U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur. There's a case to be made for putting under U.N. command the African peacekeepers who are now on the ground. But the stridency of the campaign for doing so has proved counterproductive. It propelled the Bush administration to setting an unrealistic deadline for the Darfur peace talks last year after Sudan's vice president, Ali Uthman Muhammad Taha, said that Khartoum would accept U.N. peacekeepers if the rebels would accept a peace agreement. More recently, it tied up the West in months of sterile confrontation that enabled regime hard-liners to get on with their business in Darfur, installing their own cadres and buying off weak and isolated rebel commanders under the guise of implementing peace.
Darfur's shifting complexities cannot be understood from afar. I have visited Darfur three times now -- for a month each time -- and on each occasion have been surprised by what I found. The region has sprung many such surprises on the humanitarian community in the past five years. Few expected that this Muslim government would unleash such a ferocious onslaught on its own Muslim citizens. Few expected the war to spread so rapidly beyond the Fur heartlands, and few foresaw the scale of criminality of some rebel commanders.
But not all the surprises are unpleasant.
In Ain Siro, Darfurians are putting their lives back together, with no help from the international community. I found children celebrating the end of the school year with a graduation ceremony and a play in which a girl defied her parents' wishes and won her sweetheart -- to the amused delight of a crowd of hundreds. Free of Minnawi's malign influence, other rebel commanders are trying to put their house in order. They have abolished some taxes -- on markets, animals, even on water. They have directed that relief cars not be attacked. They have stopped bringing civilians before military courts.
There is fear of the government, certainly, but that fear is tempered by the failure of Khartoum's last efforts to crush the rebels who opposed the peace deal. The village of Um Sidir, to the east of Ain Siro, bears silent witness to the magnitude of that failure: The battlefield is strewn with skeletons and brightly colored toothbrushes, the only remains of a government force of 600 that was defeated in 40 minutes of intense battle on Sept. 11, 2006. Darfurians fear the Janjaweed more than they fear Khartoum's troops. But despite this they are putting out feelers to their Janjaweed neighbors who, after all, need to pasture their camels in these areas. They are doing what they can to improve security, not waiting for U.N. peacekeepers to come, if they ever do.
There is change in Darfur. Why don't we see it? In the terrible days of 2003-04, the government unleashed a maelstrom of violence that could be described, with reasonable accuracy, as "Arabs" attacking "non-Arabs" or "Africans." Today, that simple picture has been replaced by a multiplicity of conflicts. Periods of relative quiescence are punctuated by flares of brutality that often escape the government's control. But as the violence decreases in Darfur, casualty estimates increase. Death in the region has always been exaggerated. In the 1984-85 famine, aid agencies estimated that 500,000 to 2 million people would die. When the famine was over, the death toll was closer to 100,000, despite a late and meager relief effort. Today some activists are using a figure close to 100,000 for annual deaths in Darfur, in the absence of famine.
The people of Ain Siro are among the 1 million who are "out of reach" of aid agencies -- people who we automatically assume must be facing starvation because we are not feeding them. But in North Darfur, at least, there is no starvation. Much is needed -- medicines, schoolbooks, decent wells -- but people are cultivating millet, rebuilding their herds after the devastation of 2003-04 and, when rains permit, gathering wild grasses and fruits to supplement their diet.
If the story of Kaltouma Musa tells us anything, it is something that close observers of Darfur have suspected all along: The people who will "save" Darfur are the Darfurians. And they may do it under our noses -- slowly, painfully and without our assistance, whatever we eventually choose to do.
Julie Flint is the coauthor, with Alex deWaal, of "Darfur: The Short History of a Long War."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp -dyn/content/article/2007/06/01/ AR2007060101850.html
By Haney Armstrong (CCAL30) (1784), Mon, 04 Jun 2007 21:19:45 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Susan Sears said:
Does anyone know why on earth my type above is gigantic? How embarrasing! That never happened before. I do apologize for appearing to shout. Susan
All text that is just above an underline is displayed like that.
By Haney Armstrong (CCAL30) (1784), Mon, 04 Jun 2007 21:22:15 PDT
Edited: Mon, 04 Jun 2007 21:28:12 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
At net2 I met Fabrice Florin who runs NewsTrust.net - "...NewsTrust is developing an online news rating service to help people identify quality journalism - or "news you can trust." - and he mentioned they are focusing on Sudan and here it is - http://beta.newstrust.net/world/ darfur.htm
Julie Flint's article above is rated highly, for example.
By Esther Sprague (CCAL30) (564), Tue, 05 Jun 2007 02:08:22 PDT
Edited: Tue, 05 Jun 2007 02:08:36 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Website for Mark Brecke's new film: http://www.desertintofire.com
Fundraiser June 13th in San Francisco to help Mark have enough funds to finish the film.
By Susan Megy (CCAL30) (1570), Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:30:09 PDT
Comment feedback score: 5 (* * * * *)
Thanks for the info re: Mark's film & fundraiser. been traveling and thus a bit outta the loop. Great to catch up!
By Esther Sprague (CCAL30) (564), Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:34:36 PDT
Comment feedback score: 6 (* * * * * *)
I just returned from a quick visit to The Institute for Sustainable Peace's conference, "Leading to a World without Genocide." Twenty-five young adults, including six Sudanese, are meeting for 12 days with some remarkable leaders in government, education, business, etc. www.2peace.org
The six from Sudan are from different parts of Sudan (including the North) but what they are learning by being together is that their hopes and dreams for their country are the same.
When I arrived at the conference, they were so excited to tell me that they want to form a Sudanese youth coalition that can advocate for change in Sudan -- so that Bashir and the current government cannot say that a crisis, like Darfur, is an American issue or a Southern Sudanese issue, but is an issue that concerns all Sudanese. Needless to say, I was thrilled because if the Sudanese people can unite and support each other, I have to believe they will have a much brighter future.
Our hope is that next year we will have a similar type of conference specifically for Sudanese, which will be led - in part - by the six who attended the conference this summer.
By Michele -> kids+art+charity (CCAL30) (1010), Fri, 08 Jun 2007 01:45:34 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Ashis - might you consider joining the o/net conference in Chicago July 20-22 when you're in the US? It sure would be awesome to have you there.
By Shawn Kelly (CCAL30) (211), Fri, 08 Jun 2007 09:30:10 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
I am not sure this is the correct place to post this, as it is more generally about Africa in general than Sudan in particular, but I just had to post it somewhere! If you know of a better spot for it, please let me know.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/de smond-tutu/three-billion-reasons -for_b_51108.html?view=print
This is a piece by Desmond Tutu entitled "Three Billion Reasons For Bush to Take Action on Climate Change at G8"
"I can think of three billion reasons why President Bush should agree to take action on climate change at this week's G8 Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, one for every person in the world living on less than two dollars a day. These people are not responsible for global warming, but they will pay the highest price if wealthy countries refuse to do their fair share...."
I for one am not going to hold my breath, but on the other hand, miracles do happen!
By Ashis Brahma (CCAL30) (1630), Fri, 08 Jun 2007 11:57:54 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
I am very happy to try.
It should not be that difficult as I am around!
Hope to see you there
Ashis
Michele -> kids+art+charity said:
Ashis - might you consider joining the o/net conference in Chicago July 20-22 when you're in the US? It sure would be awesome to have you there.
By Yobie Benjamin (CCAL30) (54), Fri, 08 Jun 2007 12:11:42 PDT
Comment feedback score: 8 (* * * * * * * *)
I wrote some software for Amnesty International's Darfur work.
I wrote 3 widgets for Amnesty International to help fight the Darfur crisis. It was exciting to part of a movement from the musicians, lawyers, designers and hundreds of others knowing everyone was bound by an altruistic goal of helping.
Please look at my blog and look at the widgets. Please send them around, put it on your blogs or best of all buy some music. It's one .99 cent buy you'll make that can make you feel good despite DRM.
Here is the URL: http://goodstorm.typepad.com/goo dstorm/2007/06/amnesty_interna_1 .html
Thanks,
Yobie Benjamin yobie@goodstorm.com music.goodstorm.com
Ashis Brahma said:
Another month gone bye,
Tons of activities
and sanctions...
mmm let us see if this has an inpact on Omar el Bashir's reign.
In discussions I have in the camp we sometimes speculate about the medium and long term future of Sudan. The referendum for the South and before that the elections clearly will have huge repercussions.
Here those brave enough to return to their home villages at about 100-140 kilometer away from the camp are frequently attacked by armed militias on the road. They go back to find out if the situation is stable. Last month it cost at least one life and one of the fellow travellers told me about the terrifying attacks during the trip back home.
For all you organizing activities keep the fire burning.
Namaskar
Ashis
By Susan Megy (CCAL30) (1570), Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:43:52 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Esther, this is fantastic. I've been wondering how it's all going. Can't wait to see what you have planned for 2008!!
:-)
Esther Sprague said:
I just returned from a quick visit to The Institute for Sustainable Peace's conference, "Leading to a World without Genocide." Twenty-five young adults, including six Sudanese, are meeting for 12 days with some remarkable leaders in government, education, business, etc. www.2peace.org
The six from Sudan are from different parts of Sudan (including the North) but what they are learning by being together is that their hopes and dreams for their country are the same.
When I arrived at the conference, they were so excited to tell me that they want to form a Sudanese youth coalition that can advocate for change in Sudan -- so that Bashir and the current government cannot say that a crisis, like Darfur, is an American issue or a Southern Sudanese issue, but is an issue that concerns all Sudanese. Needless to say, I was thrilled because if the Sudanese people can unite and support each other, I have to believe they will have a much brighter future.
Our hope is that next year we will have a similar type of conference specifically for Sudanese, which will be led - in part - by the six who attended the conference this summer.
By Michele -> kids+art+charity (CCAL30) (1010), Tue, 12 Jun 2007 01:02:10 PDT
Edited: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 01:06:03 PDT
Comment feedback score: 7 (* * * * * * *)
Anyone seen the new Vanity Fair AFRICA issue, guest edited by Bono?
I picked up my copy over the weekend, have read a bit and look forward to carving out some reading time to finish it.
Annie Leibowitz shot about 15 different covers - great photography.
I think the issue has alot of depth and the potential to reach many, many people.
By Mark Grimes (4111), Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:32:51 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Nice to see such real substance behind celebrity involvement.
By Jim Fussell (CCAL30) (1135), Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:54:40 PDT
Comment feedback score: 5 (* * * * *)
What does this mean? Will is make a difference? How may times have we heard this before? Will this time be different?
BREAKING NEWS:
BBC 12 June 2007, 14:31 GMT 15:31 UK
Sudan accepts joint Darfur force
Sudan has agreed to a revised plan for a joint UN-African Union (AU) peacekeeping force to be sent to war-torn Darfur, AU sources say. Under the new plan, the AU will run day-to-day operations, while the UN is expected to have overall control of some 20,000 peacekeepers.
Earlier, Sudan's foreign minister said that Sudan would accept peacekeepers made up of non-African troops.
The current AU force of 7,000 has struggled to contain the violence.
More than 200,000 people have died in the four-year conflict and around two million have fled to refugee camps.
The AU and UN presented their revised peacekeeping plan at talks in Addis Ababa. The new plan has been created to get round the objections of the Sudanese government, which does not want a solely UN force, which it says would be like a Western invasion of their country.
"In view of the explanation and clarification provided by the AU and the UN as contained in the presentation, the government of Sudan accepted the joint proposals on the hybrid operation," AP news agency quotes Said Djinnit, the AU's top peace and security official, as saying.
By Jim Fussell (CCAL30) (1135), Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:25:09 PDT
Edited: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:26:10 PDT
Comment feedback score: 3 (* * *)
Oil Trust Fund – A Proposal for Breaking the Deadlock in Darfur
Dear Colleagues
Please follow this link to see Aegis Trust's latest briefing paper proposing an Oil Trust Fund for Sudan as a means of moving towards ending the crisis in Darfur.
http://www.aegistrust.org/index. php?option=com_content&task= view&id=635&Itemid=88
http://www.aegistrust.org/images /PDFs/Oil_Trust_Fund_Briefing.pd f(12-page PDF file)
The Government of Sudan is conducting a brutal counter-insurgency campaign in Darfur – a strategy which has involved mass killings, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Khartoum has never felt under sufficient pressure to allow in UN peacekeepers mandated to protect civilians.
An Oil Trust Fund would allow oil to be exported – thus satisfying the energy security requirements of many countries including China. Existing contracts would be respected. Oil revenues would flow back into Sudan but via an escrow account. Revenues could still be spent on education, health and other normal services – thus avoiding any negative humanitarian consequences. Revenue would also be allowed to flow to help the rebuilding of South Sudan. A portion of the Fund could also be retained to pay reparations for Darfuri victims. The emphasis of the Fund would be to deny oil revenues to the Sudanese military and Janjaweed militia.
The precedent is the Oil-for-Food Programme for Iraq. The Programme was notoriously accompanied by widespread corruption and mismanagement. Nevertheless, it still diverted away from Saddam Hussein’s regime 85% of the c$75bn it would have received in oil revenues. It was also partially successful in reversing the humanitarian consequences of the total sanctions policy which prevailed in Iraq from 1991 to 1996. We note that Justice Richard Goldstone, former chief prosecutor for the International Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Republic of Yugoslavia, and member of the Independent Inquiry into the Oil-for-Food Programme in Iraq has endorsed the idea of an Oil Trust Fund for Sudan.
At present over half of Sudanese Government revenue is derived from oil exports. If the international community could learn from the Oil for Food Programme in Iraq we could create a powerful incentive for Sudan to comply with international humanitarian law.
The proposal is also available in Chinese, French and Russian. I look forward to hearing your views on this proposal.
Best regards,
Nick Donovan Head of Campaigns, Policy and Research Aegis Trust
By Ashis Brahma (CCAL30) (1630), Tue, 12 Jun 2007 12:55:52 PDT
Comment feedback score: 5 (* * * * *)
Dear Jim,
Tomorrow I will ask in the refugee camp what they think about this Phyrus agreement.
17.000-19.000 is more than 7.000 but it is a political number. Was there not military analysis saying that more troups were needed.
With all respect for Afican Union troops; if the salaries cannot be paid on time for 7.000, if the AU troops/officers are jeered while visiting this camp, if violence is still rampant will 2.5 times the number of likely poorly armed give enough assurance and peace?
If so let the Sudanese Government
- stop openly supporting certain factions in the conflict
- stop using Antonovs to bomb targets (sadly I have personally witnessed at least 4, the last one one week ago)
- hand over those suspects of crimes against humanities to the ICJ in The Hague
- disarm all involved in the conflict
- prepare the villages that were distroyed for returnees
- financial compensation for those that have lost all
- powersharing with all people in Sudan
- sharing of resources with all people in Sudan
- stop stalling intervention by endless rounds of chitchat
Small steps are better than none.
Work on peace resolving is required.
Let us just not get overexcited by these small steps of the GoS.
Keep the pressure on the regime and their moneyspinners.
Namaskar
ASHIS
Jim Fussell said:
What does this mean? Will is make a difference? How may times have we heard this before? Will this time be different?
BREAKING NEWS:
BBC 12 June 2007, 14:31 GMT 15:31 UK
Sudan has agreed to a revised plan for a joint UN-African Union (AU) peacekeeping force to be sent to war-torn Darfur, AU sources say. Under the new plan, the AU will run day-to-day operations, while the UN is expected to have overall control of some 20,000 peacekeepers.
Earlier, Sudan's foreign minister said that Sudan would accept peacekeepers made up of non-African troops.
The current AU force of 7,000 has struggled to contain the violence.
More than 200,000 people have died in the four-year conflict and around two million have fled to refugee camps.
The AU and UN presented their revised peacekeeping plan at talks in Addis Ababa. The new plan has been created to get round the objections of the Sudanese government, which does not want a solely UN force, which it says would be like a Western invasion of their country.
"In view of the explanation and clarification provided by the AU and the UN as contained in the presentation, the government of Sudan accepted the joint proposals on the hybrid operation," AP news agency quotes Said Djinnit, the AU's top peace and security official, as saying.
By Ashis Brahma (CCAL30) (1630), Sat, 02 Jun 2007 07:01:13 PDT
Comment feedback score: 8 (* * * * * * * *)
Another month gone bye,
Tons of activities
and sanctions...
mmm let us see if this has an inpact on Omar el Bashir's reign.
In discussions I have in the camp we sometimes speculate about the medium and long term future of Sudan. The referendum for the South and before that the elections clearly will have huge repercussions.
Here those brave enough to return to their home villages at about 100-140 kilometer away from the camp are frequently attacked by armed militias on the road. They go back to find out if the situation is stable. Last month it cost at least one life and one of the fellow travellers told me about the terrifying attacks during the trip back home.
For all you organizing activities keep the fire burning.
Namaskar
Ashis