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24 August

In 1996 I wrote a paper for an NGO I was working for about conflict-prevention in Rwanda and Burundi. A bit bloody late you might think, and you'd be right, as the slaughter there was over by the end of 1994. But the point was to ask - as many have been asking since - why it happened and how such a thing could be prevented in the future.

Now we have Darfur, in which the situation appears to be very similar: government-sponsored ethnic cleansing, in this case an attempt by extremist Sudanese Arabs to rid their land of black Africans (and then to take that land, and its livestock, for themselves). Mass rape, the murder of children, numbing widespread brutality. As before, we are doing nothing.

It would be easy at this point to make a cheap and dark comparison with Iraq, and it wouldn't be unjustified. 'Intervention' in Iraq was a good old-fashioned war for resources and strategic contol of the middle east, poorly disguised as a 'moral' intervention to uphold international law. In Darfur, meanwhile, mass slaughter is going on this very minute, and if ever there were a case for genuine intervention, it's here.

We need to tread craefully around this subject, but we need to make sure, too, that 'debates' don't disguise the need for urgent action. It's obvious, in my view, that there is sometimes a case for international intervention into sovereign territories. In the late 1970s, Pol Pot's Cambodia was such a case; it was invaded by Vietnam and its regime toppled for just this reason (the US government, by the way, condemned the invasion). It couold be said that Iraq was such a case in the 1980s (though not in 2003.) Rwanda certainly was in 1994. Darfur is now.

What to do? In the long-term, I can't see any alternative to an armed, international peacekeeping force under UN control, able to swoop on places like Darfur when the genuine 'International Community' (not simply the US and UK) decides it is necessary. This is surely the best option, but it's also beset with problems: how could it possibly work without a democratised UN (at the moment, one major nation's veto is enough to stall any such mission, while people continue to die)? How could the UN be democratised without US backing? How would an international army - which would effectively be what we're talking about here - be democratic? What would the criteria for intervention be?

These are the questions that need to be answered. But none of them will help the people of Darfur; solutions there need to be instant. Personally I would be more than happy if, instead of sending Jack Straw to Sudan, we sent a few army divisions we'd pulled out of Iraq , with orders to disarm the Janjaweed by any means necessary and protect the innocent civilians they are currently massacring in their beds with the help of the Sudanese army.

That would be a genuinely just military intervention and I, for one, would be out on the streets supporting it.

Posted by paul at August 24, 2004 05:55 PM

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