[Mb-civic] A US plan for Darfur - Wesley Clark, John Prendergast - Boston Globe Op-Ed
William Swiggard
swiggard at comcast.net
Mon Apr 10 04:10:29 PDT 2006
A US plan for Darfur
By Wesley Clark and John Prendergast | April 10, 2006 | The Boston Globe
ONCE AGAIN, the drumbeat is intensifying for stronger action to end the
untold human suffering in Darfur, Sudan.
Senator Hillary Clinton recently sent a letter to President Bush,
warning that ''our continued inaction will enable the killings to
continue." A senior UN official told us that the international community
is ''keeping people alive with our humanitarian assistance until they
are massacred." After leading a bipartisan congressional delegation to
Darfur recently, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi stated, ''We all
went to Darfur with a sense of deep concern, and we all left with a
sense of outrage and urgency." The question now is whether all this
noise will translate into concrete measures to protect the people of Darfur.
For nearly three years, President Bush has watched from the sidelines
while senior officials in his administration have searched for solutions
to the catastrophe in Darfur. So the president took a lot of people by
surprise -- especially members of his own foreign policy team -- when he
recently called for NATO to help protect civilians and stabilize the
security situation there. But Bush's unscripted remarks on Darfur are
consistent with his erratically implied policy of siding with oppressed
people against their oppressors.
His administration has yet to form a united front on Darfur because of
competing interests at the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA.
Bush needs to pull together these disparate players and create a real
policy to end atrocities, punish human rights violators, and create
sustainable peace.
Now that Bush has finally admitted that his administration needs to do
better, he should appoint an envoy to harmonize US policy toward Darfur
and demonstrate his personal resolve to end the suffering. The
president's previous envoy to Sudan, former Missouri senator Jack
Danforth, was critical to ending the 22-year war between Khartoum and
southern-based rebels. Darfur deserves the same level of engagement.
While Bush did call for NATO to oversee a UN peacekeeping mission, the
African Union buckled to pressure from Khartoum to delay any sort of UN
transition until at least October. Meanwhile the people of Darfur
continue to wait, and the security situation along the Chad-Sudan border
is deteriorating into a regional conflagration with grave humanitarian
implications. Bush needs to ensure an accelerated AU handover to the UN
and identify a capable nation to lead a UN-mandated stabilization force
to immediately buttress the AU's civilian protection efforts and help
secure the border.
Military planners at the Pentagon need to work closely with this lead
nation to plan the mission and provide military assets that enhance the
force's ability to respond quickly and aggressively to attacks against
civilians. Like many policies, there are countervailing interests and
concerns. The US military is heavily committed in Iraq and Afghanistan,
but there are still some resources available. A choice must be made to
do our part to protect innocent people from tyrannical leaders, ethnic
cleansing, and human rights abuses in this part of the world too.
The CIA also will have concerns, though for different reasons. Since
Sept. 11, 2001, Sudanese military intelligence officials have cooperated
to some degree with the United States on counterterrorism. No doubt,
they had their reasons for doing so. In fact, these same officials --
notably the head of military intelligence and friend of the CIA, Salah
Abdullah Gosh -- have orchestrated a terror campaign against civilians
in Darfur. The Bush administration has called this organized slaughter
genocide.
Gosh was Osama bin Laden's handler when the Al Qaeda leader lived in
Sudan in the 1990s, and he is no doubt useful. But Gosh is also very
likely a war criminal whose policies are responsible for the deaths of
thousands of Darfurians.
To build even greater leverage for cooperation, the Bush administration
should focus on accountability. The United States has the best signal,
satellite, and human intelligence in the world. The United States should
share what it knows about crimes committed in Darfur to the
International Criminal Court, the body charged with punishing those who
commit atrocity crimes in Darfur. In addition, the United States should
press much harder for UN Security Council sanctions against government
and rebel officials most responsible for the crisis. Properly executed,
such a policy would strengthen cooperation from the government of Sudan.
President Bush has opened the door for stronger US action in Darfur. Now
it's time for him to follow through by leading a focused diplomatic and
military effort to end the crisis.
Wesley Clark is former Supreme Allied Commander for Europe and a board
member of the International Crisis Group. John Prendergast is a former
director of African affairs at the National Security Council and a
senior adviser to the Crisis Group.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/10/a_us_plan_for_darfur/
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