Stalled UN is proving powerless to undo damage done by selfish states

GOAL’s John O’Shea has a question for Bertie Ahern. Why did he come out and make a plea for the release of British hostage Kenneth Bigley?

Or more particularly, why isn’t he also doing all he can for the two million people whose lives are threatened in Darfur?

It’s a fair question. O’Shea is obviously not objecting to any effort to save Bigley. The hostage crisis has rightly gripped the public imagination. People like Michael D Higgins, who opposed the war in Iraq, are to be commended for using any leverage they have to prevent Bigley’s murder. The line from the Talmud quoted in Schindler’s List says it all - “When you save one life, you save the world entire.”

But there must be grounds for concern at the inconsistency of world leaders - and especially the United Nations - where the lives of vulnerable people are concerned. Ten years after the world allowed 800,000 people to be murdered in Rwanda, we seem to be making the same mistakes all over again. A hostage horror story leads to a flurry of diplomatic activity. But a genocidal massacre in Africa is just a routine item on the agenda with no real action following.

It’s not as if the evil actions of the Sudanese regime have taken nations by surprise.

For 20 years the Arab and Muslim dominated government had been prosecuting a brutal war against the black Christian and Animist people of the south. Just as peace was being brokered there, problems broke out in the west, with the rebellion in Darfur 18 months ago.

The Sudanese government responded brutally. It armed the Janjaweed (“warriors on horseback”) militia, made up of various Arab groups which had been in conflict with the local tribes over the years. Now with the support of the Khartoum government, the Janjaweed has killed over 50,000 people in 18 months. Its campaign of killing, raping, burning villages, destroying foodstocks, seeds, agricultural implements, livestock, critical wells and irrigation systems, has caused mass displacement and terror - and prompted the US administration to use the word ‘genocide.’

How did the UN respond? It passed a resolution on July 30 demanding that the Sudanese government “disarm the Janjaweed militias... and bring to justice Janjaweed leaders and their associates.”

But nothing happened. The Sudanese government permitted the Janjaweed to maintain at least 16 camps in the west and north of Darfur. Five of these camps were shared with the Sudanese army.

Then the diplomats began their slow dance again, to see what they could do to persuade the murderers to stop. Here we saw the UN at its worst. The Americans had done their homework on Sudan and on September 9, their Secretary of State, Colin Powell, accused the Sudanese government of genocide in Darfur.

After all that happened in Rwanda, and last year’s diplomatic fiasco over Iraq, you might think this would have galvanized the UN to take action immediately. Surely Sudan would find itself isolated at the UN? But not at all. Some European diplomats expressed concern that Powell’s statement would complicate efforts to win broader support. China threatened to veto any UN resolution on action, noting that it did not believe genocide had occurred.

There were problems with the wording of the UN resolution. It wasn’t about to threaten invasion and dislodgement of the Sudanese regime or anything like that. Just sanctions. The Americans wanted the Security Council to say that it “shall take” action in the event that Sudan doesn’t disarm the Janjaweed and stop the slaughter.

China and Pakistan, which both do a lot of oil business with Sudan, threatened to vote against the resolution. They wanted the words “shall consider,” and they got their way.

Despite the fact that Sudan already thumbed its nose at one Security Council resolution, the UN has only committed itself to ‘consider’ oil sanctions in the event of non-compliance. Only now is the UN ordering its own inquiry into whether the atrocities constitute genocide.

But note this - the Security Council expressed “grave concern” that Sudan had not fully complied with its earlier resolution. That last bit, no doubt, will cause sleepless nights among the Janjaweed. Is it any wonder people like John O’Shea are upset?

“The UN has abdicated its role,” he says. “It has decided that it has no effective role to play in the disaster despite the fact that two million lives are at stake.”

Why this should be, we can only guess. But the UN is bedevilled by the selfish interests of individual states. Indeed, the complicity of European governments in the past may explain the reluctance of the EU to support the American assessment of genocide in Darfur.

CHRISTIAN Solidarity International has criticised France for providing Khartoum with military intelligence for the prosecution of its earlier conflict with tribes in the south. They accused France and Germany of supplying helicopters that were used for ethnic cleansing in southern Sudan’s oil fields. By helping to drive non-Muslims out of their homes, France and Germany wanted to provide greater security for the investments of oil firms such as Total Fina, a French-Belgian company, and the German engineering giant Mannesmann.

Could it be that Irish foreign policy is being influenced by the selfish, and sometimes invisible, agenda of larger countries, in this case France and Germany, with whom we share EU membership? Shouldn’t Ireland be doing at a diplomatic level what Michael D Higgins is doing at a personal level - pulling out all the stops to prevent a massive injustice being perpetrated in another country?

We might also ask if the UN is now doing more harm than good by being such an inactive presence in the world. That may seem like an odd statement in the current climate. Critics of the Iraq war are wedded to the idea that the UN is the only hope for the resolution of world problems. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction to justify the preventive war in Iraq proves their point, they feel. Left to do his job, Hans Blix would have established, peacefully, that war was not justified in Iraq.

Even if all that were true, what about Sudan? Isn’t the UN now proving itself incapable of taking action to prevent genocide? We have thousands of people killed, UN resolutions ignored by the perpetrating regime - even a link with weapons of mass destruction.

The German newspaper Die Welt reported that in June, during the Darfur extermination, Syria and Sudan drilled in joint military exercises. According to the German report, Syria, at Sudan’s suggestion, used Darfur residents as human guinea pigs for chemical weapons testing. Dozens are said to have been murdered.

According to some people, if the UN decides not to act, nobody has the right or duty to do so. Sadly, the point is academic. Unilateral action by the US is not on the cards. It’s an election year and the stakes are too high.

So we seem doomed to mark the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide by allowing another one to happen. No doubt, the UN will pass a resolution condemning it.