Jan Pronk on His Forced Departure from Sudan · 24 October 2006, 23:52 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Tonight, in Dutch public television news show NOS Journaal, United Nations special representative Jan Pronk for the first time commented on his forced departure from Sudan. According to Pronk he wasn’t expelled because he had stated on his weblog that the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) had recently suffered two crushing defeats and that in consequence ’[t]he morale in the Government army in North Darfur ha[d] gone down’, but because the Sudanese government wanted to get rid of the United Nations presence in Darfur to get free play to force a military solution. In fact, notwithstanding the existing, feeble Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), the Sudanese government had started to mobilize its army in Darfur just preceding Pronk’s expulsion.
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Western Sanctions and Hot Khartoum · 24 October 2006, 11:16 CET by Charles Vermeulen
As the U.S. tries to harness Khartoum by Executive Order 13067 (‘Blocking Sudanese Government Property and Prohibiting Transactions With Sudan’) ‘companies from China, Malaysia, India, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are racing in’, Jeffrey Gettleman reports in ‘Far away from Darfur’s agony, Khartoum is booming’, an article in yesterday’s edition of the International Herald Tribune.
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Division Among Darfuri Rebels Obstacle for Peace · 15 October 2006, 10:27 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In a yesterday posting on his weblog ‘United Nations special representative for Sudan’ Jan Pronk meticulously describes the current division among the Darfuri rebels movements and expounds why this division has turned out to be a major obstacle for a viable peace agreement. A must read for a better understanding of the current state of affairs in the war torn Sudanese region.
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Unscrupulous Arms Trader Belarus · 9 October 2006, 20:42 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In an op-ed on the website of the International Herald Tribune Mark Douglas, ‘senior associate at the Democratization Policy Council’, depicts Aleksandr Lukashenko’s Belarus as ‘an eager and reliable supplier of illegal lethal military equipment’ to Hezbollah, North Korea, Sudan, Iran and Syria. Click here to read his ‘Choke off Belarus’s deadly arms trade’. (October 9, 2006).
Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Arms Trade
If Necessary: deploy NATO Response Force · 25 September 2006, 08:09 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In Time Magazine’s edition of October 2 (2006) Peter Beinart expounds a plan to save the people from Darfur from genocide. A plan which might require deployment of the NATO Response Force, which, according NATO itself, will be ‘fully up and running by the end of this year’. Click here to read Beinart’s plan.
NATO Response Force, Darfur, Sudan
It's Zionism Again, Even in Sudan · 24 September 2006, 21:31 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Why does Sudan reject the replacement of 7,000 ‘cash-strapped and ill-equipped’ African Union troops by a U.N. peacekeeping force of 22,500 troops? On Reuters AlertNet Omar Hassan al-Bashir, president of Sudan, explains why Khartoum would never allow U.N. troops into Darfur: ‘the main purpose (of a U.N. force in Darfur) is the security of Israel. Any state in the region should be weakened, dismembered in order to protect the Israelis, to guarantee the Israeli security.’ (Reuters AlertNet, 20 September 2006)
Khouri and the Arabian Silence about Darfur · 18 August 2004, 23:06 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In his article Darfur’s Ugly Resonance in the Arab World (11 August 2004), Rami G. Khouri, executive editor of the Lebanese paper The Daily Star, tries to shed light on what he calls ‘the silence of the Arab world’ concerning Darfur. By ‘Darfur’ Khouri refers to the slaughter by Arab militias in the Darfur region of western Sudan. His attempt is a problematic one.
To start with, Khouri is of opinion that ‘it would be a terrible mistake to misdiagnose the Arab silence on Darfur as reflecting some Arab, Islamic or Middle Eastern cultural acceptance of violence.’ On the contrary: ‘Darfur troubles us all’ and ‘we grieve in our hearts for the suffering of Sudanese nationals in Darfur (...)’.
The ‘silence’ must rather be explained by the history of the Arab world of the past 50 years. In this period a small economic and military elite has arisen, which is responsible for a ‘steady provision of basic services and job opportunities to the citizenry’. ‘As the average citizen experiences a relatively consistent improvement in basic life conditions (...)’, Khouri continues, ‘he or she tends to leave the government alone in its conduct of other political policies – including violent actions against one’s own citizens. This basic governing contract explains much of the silence and acquiescence by otherwise decent Arabs in the face of atrocities or criminal activity carried out by fellow citizens, or even by their own government.’ The silence concerning Darfur doesn’t constitute an exception, but fits in a long ‘depressing list’.
Another explanation Khouri adduces is that recent history taught the Arabs that ‘they have neither the right nor the ability to impact on the policies of their own government, let alone other Arab governments. The Arab citizenry collectively has been numbed into a sad state of helplessness and docility in the face of government policies.’ Khouri summarizes: ‘We watch Darfur today like we watched atrocities in decades past – as pained but powerless spectators.’
What is striking about Khouri’s article is that the author feels the need to justify himself for militias from a country which must be at least a thousand kilometers away from Beirut. He even speaks of ‘fellow citizens’ when he refers to the Sudanese militias. In his article not these militias are responsible for ‘Darfur’; no, the Arab world is called to account in it. Khouri tries to find an explanation for the ‘silence’ which applies to the Arab world as a whole. This explanation can be summarized as follows: 1) The ordinary Arab is inclined to prefer a ‘consistent improvement in basic life conditions’ to a conflict with its own government. A government which doesn’t deal with or is responsible for abuses, but which does provide for a certain level of prosperity. 2) The Arabs are numb and feel powerless.
Apart from the question whether both explanations are mutually exclusive, it can be questioned on what grounds Khouri’s analysis is based. Is it based on a public opinion poll in ‘the Arab world’? Is there some kind of research wich serves as starting-point for his analysis? The article mentions neither. Rather, one gets the impression that in Khouri’s world view not individuals, but peoples determin the course of history. Peoples figuring in it as monolithic, natural units with an own will and destiny. In such a view some self-analysis suffices to find out how other members of the group feel about a subject.
Therefore Khouri’s analysis isn’t very clafifying. And what’s more, although in Khouri’s world view violence as in Darfur is condemned, a ‘we versus them’ thinking is preserved by it, which lies at the root of the violence.
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