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It is Darfur again and the
misery goes on
E.
Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot
Three days after the brutal murder of African peacekeepers in
Darfur, Archbishop Tutu, the highly regarded leader of
conscience, led a council of elders on a mission there. In tow
also was President Carter, the perpetual peacekeeper.
It is hard to fit President Carter in any African leadership
construct, but he was there. Perhaps, after this junket, he
could earn a Nobel Peace prize like he did after Oslo, and then
there would be peace in Darfur, like there has always been in
Palestine since!
Indeed, we need to dull our senses to believe that this hybrid
council of elders is necessary because our African villages,
towns, cities, parliaments and the AU organization itself are
empty of competent elders, so President Carter can act as
substitute!
Still, with great respect to this council, the purpose of the
trip is the question to ask. Has there not been enough talk and
fact finding already? Peace in Darfur, this hell hole which the
Sudanese government has allowed to exist since the beginning of
this century, will not come through talk alone.
Ten AU soldiers have been reported murdered in the latest attack
at Haskanita, Darfur. Many are wounded and some are still
missing.
The AU, as usual, is threatening action, which it will not take,
instead of asking how it got itself hoodwinked into providing a
fighting force that it is incapable of sustaining without help
from outside nations.
But to hear from President Carter, it is as if the end of the
conflict is near. He reported the following from President Omar
Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan.
"He (Bashir) promised us there would be $300 million in all
coming to the Darfur region in compensation, $100m coming from
the government, and $200m to be a loan from the Chinese."
Permission for mirth should be granted at this point: But the
question is compensation for what, the lives of the 400,000 plus
African Sudanese who have been killed in Darfur so far? A paltry
sum of $750 per head for each dead?
You would think money is all that is needed to bring peace to
Darfur. If so, then why not let President Bashir keep his $100
million, and the borrowed $200 million from the Chinese, so he
could assure peace within his own dominion rather than accept
this insult on the heads of so many dead African Sudanese?
Again, Darfur is an ongoing conflict. The UN doesn’t seem to see
it as genocide. And now that the AU has gotten itself right
smack in the middle, the conflict is conveniently being seen as
a tribal one as the latest report seems to suggest.
The 157 AU soldiers at the Haskanita outpost were attacked by “a
large force numbering up to 1,000 well-equipped Darfuri rebels.”
Note, the Darfuri rebels, the Sudanese Africans, are now the bad
guys, not the Arab Janjaweed .
Of course, in the middle of a desert and in the dark of the
night, optical illusions do happen. A Janjaweed could be
mistaken for a Darfuri rebel, especially when the former is in
disguise. Hopefully, it will take another tour of the Council of
Elders to find that out.
But all may not be lost. It seems Archbishop Tutu, the great
freedom fighter, would have been calling for war were it not for
his cassock. All one need to do is to listen to his language
during this mission of the elders, when he called on world
governments to speed up deployment of the 26,000 joint UN-AU
replacement force of peacekeepers for Darfur.
"I am making a call to people of good will ... for goodness
sake, tell your governments to get off their butts," Tutu said.
St. Peter will not tolerate this outburst, but for an Archbishop
to use this language means his spirit has been pushed beyond his
human skin.
"It is unacceptable that the AU mission is not better equipped.
They couldn't even evacuate the injured after the Haskanita
attack because they don't have military helicopters," Reuters
reported the Archbishop as saying.
So the Archbishop is mad. The AU can get mad too. Individual
governments can stand up to Sudan. At least South Africa can. So
can Nigeria or the ECOWAS countries. But what are they doing?
Just listening to Mr. James Kalilangwe, chairman of the AU peace
and Security Council explain future AU action is enough to make
your stomach turn. The AU, he said, was thinking about
“strengthening the camp defenses of the peacekeeping force.”
Perhaps, with the $300 million from Sudan now in the hands of
President Carter of the African Council of Elders; AU troop
defenses can be rebuilt and strengthened. Sadly, the defenses
can also be blown to smithereens by Chinese supplied arms.
A lot has been said about how easy is it is to ridicule Africa.
The $300 million in the hands of the Council of Elders is one
sure way. Allow this writer to think that a lot can be done for
Darfur by banishing Sudan from the AU.
E. Ablorh-Odjidja,Publsiher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC,
October 4, 2007
Permission to publish: Please feel free to publish or reproduce,
with credits, unedited. If posted at a website, email a copy of
the web page to publisher@ghanadot.com . Or don't publish at
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