Opinions

Now What for Sudan?

Rebekah Seder — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 11:56:50 -0400

JUBA, Sudan — While celebrations marked the inauguration of Sudan president Omar al-Bashir to another term of office in Khartoum, the mood was more somber and determined in southern Sudan. The people of southern Sudan are looking ahead to the referendum in January 2011 when they will vote to determine if the south can secede to become an independent country.

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How We Can All Help Women in the Congo

Patrick Furey — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:53:55 -0400

The epidemic of rape and sexual violence in the Congo takes center stage in an all-new episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, airing on Wednesday night.

Portraying the world's worst violence against women -- taking place half a world away in Central Africa -- in a TV show set in New York City is a challenge. But Law and Order: SVU creator Neal Baer and writer Dawn DeNoon have managed to convey the facts on the ground in Congo through the eyes of a Congolese woman portrayed in the episode.

Eastern Congo is the world's deadliest conflict globally since WWII. Widespread rape is used as a strategy of war and an instrument of communal terror, making this region the world's most dangerous place to be a woman or a girl. Armed groups compete to control lucrative mines and smuggling routes. Rape becomes their principal means of terrorizing local populations into passive compliance, so they can steal the mineral wealth without opposition. These crimes destroy families, decimate communities, and lethally spread HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

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Genocide in Darfur: How Sudan covers it up

Patrick Furey — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 09:57:48 -0500

Most governments don’t acknowledge it. The Sudanese president dismisses it. Darfurians demand that it be recognized. Academics, activists, and lawyers dispute whether it is still occurring or whether it occurred at all. International Criminal Court (ICC) judges debate standards of evidence surrounding it. The nature of recent attacks this past week by Sudanese government forces and militia allies against defenseless civilians potentially augurs its resurgence. And if a fledgling peace process continues to move forward, then any evidence of it ever happening may well be swept under the rug.

The “it” in question is Darfur’s genocide. Seven years after a small rebellion in western Sudan by Darfurian insurgents unleashed a massive counter-insurgency strategy by the Sudanese government and its Janjaweed militia allies, the debate continues: What should be done about the genocide? How can justice and peace simultaneously be pursued?

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A Light at the End of the Tunnel in Congo

Patrick Furey — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:56:50 -0500

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is not an obvious candidate to be Africa's turnaround story of the coming decade. This is a country that has been pillaged by outsiders for more than a century, cursed by its extraordinary natural resource base to unparalleled levels of death and destruction. With a seemingly intractable war in the east, one of the worst corruption-fighting records in the world, and some of the highest rates of sexual violence ever recorded, Congo does not, understandably, lend itself well to optimistic prognoses. But sometimes a situation deteriorates so badly that it catalyzes transformative responses. And things can actually change, no matter how entrenched the troubles. That opportunity for real progress is exactly what I found on my recent visit to Congo.

Congo's conflict, the world's deadliest since World War II, is not really a war -- it's a business based on violent extortion. There are numerous armed groups and commercial actors -- Congolese, Rwandan, and Ugandan -- that have positioned themselves for the spoils of a deliberately lawless, accountability-free, unstable, highly profitable mafia-style economy. Millions of dollars are made monthly in illegal taxation of mining operations, smuggling of minerals, and extortion rackets run by mafia bosses based primarily in Kinshasa, Kigali, and Kampala. The spoils are tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold, minerals that go into laptops, cell phones, MP3 players, and jewelry stores in the West. Armed groups use terrifying tactics such as mass rape and village burning to intimidate civilians into providing cheap labor for this elaborate extortion racket.

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The Clock Is Ticking on Sudan

Patrick Furey — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:33:57 -0500

(Jan. 29) -- On Jan. 22, a little-known but highly influential group of senior policymakers met in Washington to hash out the next steps for U.S. policy toward Sudan.

Because of the confidential nature of this meeting at the National Security Council, we may never know the exact decisions made, but in the coming weeks we hope to see indications that the Obama administration is willing to ratchet up pressures in Sudan to produce meaningful progress toward peace at a time when a return to large-scale war looks increasingly possible.

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Five myths about genocide and violence in Sudan

John Prendergast — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 22:27:38 -0500

During Sudan's half-century of independence, few spots on Earth have witnessed as much death and destruction, with 2 1/2 million war-related fatalities during the past two decades alone. Although the Darfur genocide that began in 2003 is only one of the conflicts raging in the country, they all stem from the same cause: the abuse of power. The ruling party represses independent voices and supports militias that have used genocide, child soldiers and rape as weapons of war.

Sudan faces a critical new year, with an unfree election coming in April and a referendum on the independence of the south the following January -- tripwires that could provoke a return to full-scale war. In Washington, meanwhile, few challenges have produced a greater chasm between words and deeds. A first step toward closing that gap is debunking the myths about Sudan that persist among policymakers, diplomats and the public.

Rape and murder, funded by cell phones

Tom Burton — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:39:47 -0500

Last year, the bus in which a young Congolese woman we met named Mary was riding was stopped by a militia. "They wanted to all have me, to rape me," she related haltingly to us. "I told them no, and then they took off my shirt and beat me. I have terrible marks now."

Mary's story is similar to hundreds of thousands of women's experiences in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where rape is routinely "deployed" as a weapon of war by the armed groups fighting over a nation that has some of the richest nonpetroleum natural resource deposits in the world.

House Subcommittee Hearing Reviews U.S. Sudan Policy - The Huffington Post

Patrick Furey — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:23:55 -0500

Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health today at a hearing to review the administration's new Sudan policy, I expressed the Enough Project's deep concern that the existing strategy of the United States and the broader international community to prevent all-out war in Sudan is failing.

One month after the release of the Obama administration's new policy, the situation on the ground has further deteriorated, with life or death implications.

Central to the administration's new policy is support for full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA, as U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration reiterated in his testimony today.

To date, not one of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement's (CPA) preconditions for holding credible elections has been met. The risks of ignoring preconditions and holding a non-credible election are enormous.

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Opinion: Consumers Can Influence Trade in Conflict Minerals - GlobalPost

Patrick Furey — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:14:12 -0500

WASHINGTON — In an effort to shine a light on the darkness at the heart of the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II, the Enough Project traveled to eastern Congo to better understand how the 3Ts (Tin, Tantalum, and Tungsten) and gold make their way from Congo’s killing fields to our cell phones, laptops, MP3 players and video game systems. (Read more about the first American company to be indentified, in an upcoming U.N. report, as a buyer of conflict minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo.)

What we found is that the conflict minerals supply chain is far less intimidating than the electronics industry would have consumers believe. In fact, the journey from mine to cell phone can be broken down into six major steps that make the supply chain relatively easy to understand.

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Electronics and Atrocities: Tech Supply Chains Must Do No Harm - The Huffington Post

Marianna Golovan — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:10:49 -0500

From the satellite mapping of atrocities and data-driven prosecution of war criminals to the use of social networking to mobilize against repressive regimes, advances in science and technology hold unprecedented potential to make human rights a reality across the world.

A new report from the Center for American Progress, "New Tools for Old Traumas," calls on President Obama -- recently dubbed "Scientist in Chief" for his unprecedented commitment to research and development -- to lead efforts to use these new tools to bring human rights perpetrators to justice; halt ongoing atrocities; and empower victims to fight against injustice. Cell phone companies have crucial roles to play as well because part of the complexity of this issue is ensuring that these tools do not foster human rights atrocities as well as stop them.

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Will Obama Finally Pay Attention to Sudan? WSJ

Tom Burton — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:58:14 -0400

For the past seven months, U.S. diplomacy toward Sudan has veered dangerously in the direction of appeasing Sudan's ruling National Congress Party (NCP). Since taking power in a 1989 coup, the NCP has engaged in a systematic assault on the Sudanese people. The use of starvation as a weapon in Southern Sudan and the genocide in Darfur have killed nearly two and a half million people. Omar al-Bashir, the country's president, is the first sitting head of state indicted by the International Criminal Court. Under his rule, the body count continues to climb.

Some of the Obama administration's recent lowlights have included public and private rhetoric favoring incentives over pressure, talk of lifting longstanding sanctions without demanding anything in return, and a disconcerting lack of emphasis on the need to hold this heinous regime accountable for what this and the previous U.S. administration have declared genocide. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden talked tough when they were presidential candidates, but this administration's day-to-day diplomacy on Sudan has been troubling.

Testing Obama's Sudan Policy - The Guardian

Rebekah Seder — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:34:39 -0400

After a lengthy internal battle, the Obama administration has formally rolled out its new Sudan policy. The policy spells out some ambitious goals: a definitive end to conflict and genocide in Darfur, implementation of the 2005 North-South peace deal and peaceful moves toward a 2011 referendum that will likely result in South Sudan becoming independent.

Like many such policy reviews, this one looks good enough on paper. But how will we know if this policy is actually working? These are the practical measures by which Obama's new policy will ultimately be judged a success or a failure.

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Sudan Score Card - ForeignPolicy.com

Rebekah Seder — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:32:47 -0400

Over the last nine months, the Sudan policy review has taken on something of a mythical air. Activists and others lost count of the number of times they were told the review would be completed "in weeks, not months" -- even as months stretched on. Tales of sharp-elbowed infighting between the U.S. special envoy for Sudan, retired Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, dominated the narrative. So did a series of high-profile gaffes, ranging from the absurd -- with the special envoy talking of handing out "cookies" and "gold stars" to Sudan's ruling National Congress Party -- to the just plain bizarre, as former National Security Advisor Bud McFarlane was found to be lobbying the administration to normalize relations with Sudan, after receiving $1.3 million from Khartoum passed through Qatar.

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Sudan's State-sponsored Pyromania - L.A. Times

Zack Brisson — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:10:56 -0400

The Khmer Rouge's Pol Pot had hundreds of thousands of people dig their own mass graves before they were beaten to death in Cambodia's killing fields. Rwanda's Interahamwe militias used machetes to kill 800,000 people in 100 days. Now, another low-tech, clandestine approach to orchestrating mass atrocities is being perfected by the ruling National Congress Party, or NCP, in Sudan. No need for shovels or machetes when you have a box of matches.

Over the last two decades, I've gone to smoldering village after smoldering village in Sudan and the surrounding region, interviewing the survivors of attacks by militias supported by the NCP. Each time the pattern is the same.

In Darfur, I've sneaked across the border eight times to listen to stories of genocidal attacks carried out by the janjaweed militias. In southwestern Sudan, I listened to the testimonies of survivors of slave raiding and ethnic cleansing carried out by the murahaleen militias. In southeastern Sudan, I watched the beginnings of targeted village raids carried out initially by minority "white army" ethnic militias. In northern Uganda, I've driven all over to find escapees who can document the forced recruitment of child soldiers and gruesome killings carried out by the Lord's Resistance Army of Joseph Kony.

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Lawyers, Guns, and Money - ForeignPolicy.com

Rebekah Seder — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:04:44 -0400

As the Obama administration's Sudan policy review drags on, the Sudanese government, led by a wanted war criminal, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, clearly looks to Washington and dreams of normalizing relations. So how has Bashir tried to work his way back into the good graces of the United States? Well, there has been a recent spate of government attacks in Darfur, and a recent Small Arms Survey report suggests that most of the new and heavier weaponry appearing in militia clashes in South Sudan likely comes from government stockpiles. Certainly, the government has not given the slightest suggestion that it will hand Bashir over to the International Criminal Court to face charges. Khartoum has not been on a charm offensive.

Instead of actually changing its behavior, Sudan's ruling National Congress Party wants to return to favor in Washington the old-fashioned way: by swamping a bunch of high-powered lobbyists in a sea of money to make its case.

Continue reading here.