Uffe:

Thank you for so meiticulous a response ("Reply to David," August 17).  I believe that the answer to your question (or questions -- though they all revolve around the same center) is straightforward.

As you know, the establishment's argument for the morality of the war turned on what the resort to war -- the "supreme international crime," as I never tire of repeating -- was alleged to have prevented -- something much worse than the minor indiscretion committed by the NATO powers.  (See all of your carefully assembled examples from the British House of Commons May 23, 2000 report.  Esp. -- I guess -- these paragraphs.)

Imagine, Uffe, what might happen in this world, were the kind of criteria put forth by Chinkin (and a cast of thousands: Another notorious case was in the Independent International Commission on Kosovo's late 2000 report) ever adotped and seriously enforced: Military intervention is permissible if the following criteria can be met:

(i)  a gross violation of human rights occurring in the targeted state
(ii)  the UN is unable or unwilling to act 
(iii)  an overwhelming necessity to act
(iv)  the intervention must be proportionate

Okay.  Are gross violations of human rights occurring inside foreign occupied Afghanistan and foreign occupied Iraq?  Has the UN been unable or unwilling to act?  Might there be an overwhelming necessity to act?  And act where, ultimately? 

It is allegedly on the basis of criteria such as these that, when applied to NATO's springtime 1999 aggression over Kosovo, was "of dubious legality in the current state of international law," but nevertheless "justified on moral grounds" (para. 138).  Do you believe them?  Or might not a much simpler explanation be in order: That in 1999, the perpetrators cited these principles to launch a war, but from late 2001 thorugh the present, such principles would have to be cited against these same perpetrators, so it doesn't dawn on anybody to bother -- except among the resistance to the occupations, so-called "Al Qaeda in Iraq," and the like?

If there are "threshold" and "contextual" principles the meeting of which justified NATO's 1999 war over Kosovo (remember that I reject this for a lot of reasons), then why not in those cases where the "severe violations of international human rights or humanitarian law on a sustained basis" are perpetrated by NATO? 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Postscript. Excerpted from The Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned, Independent International Commission on Kosovo (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).  (Scroll down near the bottom.)  Note that they rightly emphasize that "These principles are not designed to let the genie of human rights imperialism out of the bottle, but to prevent a doctrine of intervention from becoming a license for the unprincipled exercise of great power politics."  Too bad that these principles didn't even work in what the Commission believed at the time counted as the textbook case for their application.    

THRESHOLD PRINCIPLES

1. There are two valid triggers of humanitarian intervention. The first is severe violations of international human rights or humanitarian law on a sustained basis. The second is the subjection of a civilian society to great suffering and risk due to the "failure" of their state, which entails the breakdown of governance at the level of the territorial sovereign state.
2. The overriding aim of all phases of the intervention involving the threat and the use of force must be the direct protection of the victimized population.
3. The method of intervention must be reasonably calculated to end the humanitarian catastrophe as rapidly as possible, and must specifically take measures to protect all civilians, to avoid collateral damage to civilian society, and to preclude any secondary punitive or retaliatory action against the target government.

CONTEXTUAL PRINCIPLES

1. There must be a serious attempt to find a peaceful solution to the conflict. This solution must ensure that the pattern of abuse is terminated in a reliable and sustainable fashion, or that a process of restoring adequate governance is undertaken.
2. Recourse to the UN Security Council, or the lack thereof, is not conclusive. This is the case if approaching the Council fails because of the exercise of a veto by one or more permanent members; or if the failure to have recourse to the UN Security Council is due to the reasonable anticipation of such a veto, where subsequent further appeal to the General Assembly is not practical. Effectively, the latter case suggests that the veto right be superseded by a 2/3 or better majority determination by a "coalition of the willing" that a humanitarian catastrophe is present or imminent.
3. Before military action is taken, lesser measures of mediating and coercive action, including sanctions, embargoes and non-violent methods of peace observation, must have been attempted without success. Further delay must be reasonably deemed to significantly increase the prospect of a humanitarian catastrophe;
4. Recourse to the threat or use of force should not be unilateral, but should enjoy some established collective support that is expressed both by a multilateral process of authorization and the participation of countries in the undertaking;
5. There should not be any formal act of censure or condemnation of the intervention by a principle organ of the United Nations, especially by the International Court of Justice or the UN Security Council.
6. There must be even stricter adherence to the laws of war and international humanitarian law than in standard military operations. This applies to all aspects of the military operation, including any post cease-fire occupation.
7. Territorial or economic goals are illegitimate to justifications for intervention, and there should be a credible willingness on the part of intervening states to withdraw military forces and to end economic coercive measures at the earliest point in time consistent with the humanitarian objectives.
8. After the use of armed force has achieved its objectives, there should be energetic implementation of the humanitarian mission by a sufficient commitment of resources to sustain the population in the target society and to ensure speedy and humane reconstruction of that society in order for the whole population to return to normality. This implies a rejection of prolonged comprehensive or punitive sanctions.

 

David: 

A few observations about Foreign Affairs Committee's Fourth Report.

It's worth noting that in the sections about the legality of the bombing of FRY the opinions of a lot of legal experts are cited and the conclusions drawn are backed by their assertions. Yet, when dealing with the crucial question about the morality of the intervention, the report only cites three pieces of evidence.

The report concludes: “overall the Government was right to support the launching of air strikes on 24/25 March 1999” (para 138); “NATO's military action, if of dubious legality in the current state of international law, was justified on moral grounds” (para 123). And yet another way of putting it: “it was not possible to settle our political differences with Milosevic without the use of force.” (para 122).

The main reason for this conclusion is that the report believes that the “Serb campaign would have continued over many years, eventually resulting in more deaths and instability in the region than if NATO had not intervened” (para 123). Because of the NATO intervention the “humanitarian catastrophe” was “concentrated within the 78 days of the NATO campaign” rather than unfolding “perhaps over a number of years” (para 138).

What is the evidence? As far as I can determine only three pieces are cited.

1. A Foreign and Commonwealth Office telegram attributed Milosevic's decision to “back down” to "the cumulative effects of NATO's bombing campaign; the continued unity and resolve shown by NATO partners; the mounting likelihood of a ground offensive in Kosovo; and the realisation that the Russians were not going to bail him out of this.” (para 120)

2. The report quotes Jonathan Steele: Kosovo had "a 90 per cent Albanian majority, there was no way that Serbia could really legitimately or seriously, practically, think of holding it for very many years in the future." In short, Steele is arguing precisely the opposite of the report's claim that the “Serb campaign would have continued over many years”. (para 122)

3. The report quotes Tim Judah: “at any time we could have had a new Srebrenica: how was one supposed to know that was not going to happen?" (para 123) But the very next sentence shows that the report thinks that Judah's speculations are irrelevant: it is not “the issue […] whether Srebrenica would happen again”.

So to back up the conclusion that “Serb campaign would have continued over many years, eventually resulting in more deaths and instability in the region than if NATO had not intervened”, the report gives a quote from a Foreign and Commonwealth Office telegram, a quote which contradicts the conclusion, and a quote the report doesn't think is relevant (please tell me if I missed something). Again: compare with the report's sections about the legality of the war.

Of cause, this is just a purely textual critique (I've said nothing about the relation between the report's assertions and the real world). The report also presents this quote from the FCO telegram: “There is clear evidence that air strikes against Milosevic's forces in the field were successful in restricting their operations...air operations had an impact on public opinion in Serbia: from an early stage, there were reports of mothers demonstrating against their sons being forced to serve in Kosovo.” (para 120) The question is: are they serious?

Uffe:

It's heartening to learn that you've taken up my suggestion to look over Ian Brownlie's two submissions to the British House of Commons' sprintime 2000 report on the NATO-bloc's war over Kosovo.

In this inquiry's final report, it is rightly noted that Brownlie was the "sternest critic of the legality of NATO action" who gave testimony to the inquiry ("International Law," para. 126).  What is more, I can recall at least three occasions in which Brownlie has represented states before the International Court of Justice (though my list very well may be only partial):

Nicaragua v. United States of America (1984-)
Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro (1993-)
Yugoslavia v. United States of America (1999-) [i.e., Yugoslavia v. NATO]

In two of these cases, Brownlie argued on behalf of the plaintiff (i.e., Nicaragua, Yugoslavia), and once on behalf of the defendant (i.e., Serbia and Montenegro).  But in all three cases, Brownlie argued on behalf of the side against which the United States argued. 

And as I always tell people, whichever sides Ian Brownlie advocates, they are a very reliable indication of how the judgment of international law itself falls -- and would in fact fall, were the human world not so distorted by Great Power relations and the beliefs and roles that follow from them.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

David:

Thanks a lot for your reply and especially the Ian Brownlie links. Great stuff.

Brownlie says “It is generally accepted among international lawyers that action can be taken against a State for humanitarian purposes with the authorisation of the Security Council by virtue of Chapter VII of the Charter. This is the recognised means of conferring legitimacy and community approval upon action for humanitarian purposes.” (para 81) 

So yes, the question was if there is any basis for unilateral humanitarian intervention in international law – in Brownlie's terms, “whether the use of force against a state for humanitarian reasons is compatible with the principles of international law”. Brownlie argues that it is incompatible with international law. For example, he quotes Baroness Symons: “There is no general doctrine of humanitarian necessity in international law.” (para 15)

Peter Viggo Jacobsen's claim, as I understood it, was that until recently there hasn't been such a doctrine, but now the idea of humanitarian intervention is somehow “codified” in international law. Still don't know what he had in mind.

 

A few good quotes from Brownlie's discussion:

56.  Professor Schachter, Michigan Law Review, Vol 82 (1984), pp 1620-46 at p 1629. 

In 1984 Professor Oscar Schachter expressed the following opinion:

The reluctance of governments to legitimize foreign invasion in the interest of humanitarianism is understandable in the light of past abuses by powerful states. States strong enough to intervene and sufficiently interested in doing so tend to have political motives. They have a strong temptation to impose a political solution in their own national interest. Most governments are acutely sensitive to this danger and show no disposition to open article 2(4) up to a broad exception for humanitarian intervention by means of armed force."

 

59.  Brownlie, in Cassese (ed), The Current Legal Regulation of the Use of Force, Dordrecht, 1986, pp 491-504, at p 500. The writer evaluated the concept of humanitarian intervention in these passages:

On the index of human rights policies followed by those powers able to impose `sanctions', humanitarian intervention would be highly selective and nearly always dictated by political and strategic interest. The major powers will not intervene in their political allies, except when a threatened or actual change of regime endangers their political interests. Humanitarian intervention will be in practice be oldfashioned hegemonial intervention.

SK:

Aside from the fact that Ignatieff promoted his advocacy on behalf of American Power more successfully than George Packer ever did, both individuals are fairly equally loathsome.

And how about this one single ten-word excerpt from Ignatieff's mock mea culpa in last Sunday's NYT Magzine?

America defended human rights and freedom in Bosnia and Kosovo.

In contrast to the lies now torn to shreds by the Iraqi resistance, this is the even bigger lie that keeps right on giving.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

 

Oops, sorry, it's getting harder to keep track of all the knaves who have or are in the process of disingenuously recanting. Lewis Lapham wrote an essay (search for 'Lapham') on the of the "soft-headedness" of suchlike professional humanitarians, policy wonks, writers, and public personalities when it came to the invasion of Iraq:

 

Or the bewildered journalist George Packer, publishing a 467-page book, The Assassin's Gate, in which he deconstructs every policy initiative and every policy maneuver preliminary to what he had hoped would prove to be the creation of a fair and free Iraq subsequent to the second coming of Thomas Jefferson in a Bradley fighting vehicle, but finding at the end of his labors that he can't answer the question "Why did the United States invade Iraq?" It still isn't possible to be sure--and this remains the most remarkable thing about the Iraq War". Unwilling or unable to guess at what he calls "the real motives of the Bush administration", Packer declares himself a victim of his own idealism, decides that "Iraq is the Rashomon of wars", and concludes that the reason for it "has something to do with September 11." 

 

 

Uffe:

I can only approach your query about Peter Viggo Jacobsen on a very slender anecdotal thread, as the relevant literature is written and reported in Danish.

Shortly after the March 2004 multiple commuter train bombings in Madrid, one topic that was very hot (i.e., that generated a lot of commentary) turned on which other country might be the next target of "Islamic extremism," the general fear being that other states which supported the U.S.-U.K. invasion of Iraq or that were then contributing troops to the occupation force the way that Spain under PM Aznar had?  Among the many people then cited in the international media was Jacobsen, who told Associated Press: "Now they will try to repeat the success in other countries that have supported the war against terror, hoping they can scare them to pull out the troops" ("U.S. Allies on Iraq Fear They're Targets," Monica Scislowska, March 16, 2004).

This is but a particle of evidence.  But in it, Jacobsen sounds like nothing other than an establishment figure. 

We might play with the referent behind Jacobsen's "they," as well as his use of the phrase "war against terror."   

For example, if "they" are likely to repeat their successes in other countries after Madrid, might not the invaders of Afghanistan and Iraq also repeat theirs?  After all, they acted with impunity, just as they did in Yugoslavia.  So why not?  What will it take to stop them?  The world can't count on their own citizens and political system to stop them.  On the contrary, these enable them every step of the way. 

Suppose someone really does believe (as you put it in your paraphrase of Jacobsen -- note that I'm not saying that you yourself believe this) that a "country's failure to guarantee security for its own population [is] a legitimate basis for violent intervention" in that country, with the circumstances in the western Sudan being the most often cited example. 

Okay. -- Then what about those cases in which a country (e.g., the United States) successfully decimates other countries (Afghanistan and Iraq) and guarantees not only insecurity for their populations, but kills them outright?  Might Jacobsen and his colleagues at the Danish Institute for International Studies regard this circumstance as a legitmate basis for violent intervention on the territory of the country causing this death and mayhem?

Of course I can't answer this question for them.  But I'd sure like to know.

"Is the U.S. Responsible for the Death of Nearly a Million Iraqis?" Robert Naiman, CommonDreams.org, July 11, 2007

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

SK:

Yeah.  I picked this up on Sunday over at NC's space.  Also at ElectricPolitics.com.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

On a more vulgar level than legal debate, another Cruise Missile Liberal is desperately trying to come across as a less "arrant knave" (no shortage of such villains dwelling in "rotten" states of our time).

Uffe:

Some exacting questions.  Thanks for raising them.

Without some additional checking of Peter Viggo Jacobsen's work, I can't tell you exactly what he had in mind.  (Though I'll inquire further.)

However, you cite two important documents: The late 2004 Report by the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change; and the 2005 World Summit Outcome (A/RES/60/1).  (There are a lot more reports and proclamations along these lines. Drafting them became very popular after the collapse of the Soviet bloc.  Only not by Russia and China, note well.  But by their longstanding nemesis.)      

The general issue at stake here is when or under what circumstances is the use of force (i.e., war) legitimate?  But my instincts tell me to rewrite the entire field and pose the question like this: Under what circumstances is the use of force against U.S., British, and Danish national territories legitimate?  If the majority repsonses emanating from the United States, Britain, and Denmark turn out to be something close to "Never," the whole discussion lacks seriousness, and we can dispense with it.   

In the first of the two documents you've hyperlinked (A more secure world: Our shared responsibility, December 2004), in keeping with longstanding customary practice, what I believe is rejected is the unilateral right of any kind of intervention, adducible by a particular state or states outside the rules of the UN Charter.  (Though I caution that when this document warns that "in a world full of perceived potential threats, the risk to the global order and the norm of non-intervention on which it continues to be based is simply too great for the legality of unilateral preventive action, as distinct from collectively endorsed action, to be accepted. Allowing one to so act is to allow all" (para. 191), it is referring explicitly to the right alleged by the chronic belligerents in the White House, who for example had as recently as September 2002 proclaimed the right of "preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security."  It was this kind of so-called preemptive or anticipatory self-defense -- aggressive war by any other name -- that the High Level Panel was rejecting.)

In the second document you've hyperlinked (A/RES/60/1), pretty much the same principles are re-affirmed: That there is no unilateral right of intervention, and that the so-called "responsibility to protect" can be exercised only in conformity with the UN Charter. --

Also, don't forget the fifth paragraph of this document, which very loudly reaffirms Chapter I (esp. Art. 2) of the UN Charter:

5. We are determined to establish a just and lasting peace all over the world in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter. We rededicate ourselves to support all efforts to uphold the sovereign equality of all States, respect their territorial integrity and political independence, to refrain in our international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes and principles of the United Nations, to uphold resolution of disputes by peaceful means and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, the right to self-determination of peoples which remain under colonial domination and foreign occupation, non-interference in the internal affairs of States, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for the equal rights of all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion, international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character and the fulfilment in good faith of the obligations assumed in accordance with the Charter.

So Peter Viggo Jacobsen aside, no one who asserts a unilaterial right of intervention is on firm ground.  And while this alleged right has found many an advocate within the Great Powers, I would hope that most of humanity does not fall for fancy sales pitches about any "emerging norm" the real-world consequences of which will be to grant the same Great Powers the near-exclusive privilege of interferring in the affairs of others.  (Pretty much what they do already.  Although more clearly illegally.)

I myself don't believe that media attention is a decisive factor.  (Fifteen years ago, this used to be referred to as the "CNN factor.")  Were the media truly independent, my conclusion might be different.    

FYI: For perhaps the best discussion of the notion of "humanitarian intervention" in international law, drafted in response to the U.S.-led NATO bloc's 1999 aggression over Kosovo, see:

Memorandum Submitted by Professor Ian Brownlie, Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, British House of Commons, May, 2000 
Supplementary Memorandum Submitted by Professor Ian Brownlie, Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, British House of Commons, May, 2000 

In my opinion, Brownlie's assessment shows us how these issues look when they are not viewed through the prejudices of Great Power politics. 

More another time.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

David (and others):

You asked: “I wonder how many of the people who have heard something about Darfur have also heard the news that, over the course of 2007, the United States is busy establishing a new regional military command for the continent of Africa -- the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM)?“ I had not heard about it. Thank you for writing about this issue.

A few questions. In an Danish radio program about UN's role in the post-911 world, a Danish political science scholar and recently “visiting scholar” at MIT, Peter Viggo Jacobsen, said that the principle of “humanitarian intervention” had recently been “codified” in international law, making a country's failure to guarantee security for its own population a legitimate basis for violent intervention.

However, last time I checked there was no such principle:

UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change (December 2, 2004). A more secure world: Our shared responsibility. http://www.un.org/secureworld/report.pdf, paragraph 188-192 

UN General Assembly (September 15, 2005). 2005 World Summit Outcome. http://www.who.int/hiv/universalaccess2010/worldsummit.pdf: paragraph 5 and 78-80.

 

 Do you have any idea what Jacobsen could be referring to? Is he right?

Claiming that only about a fifth of the cases where humanitarian intervention might be appropriate had triggered such a response, he said that there are essentially two factors determining whether there's a humanitarian intervention response to humanitarian crises: 1. media attention, 2. the predicted chances of success (namely, can we get out? – a critical issue since, according to Jacobsen, in most cases it's difficult to get in, get the job done and get out). One could think of other factors. Indeed, one could consider which factors determine the media attention factor. Any comments?

He also said that USA foreign policy had fluctuated between “unilateralism” and “multilateralism” in the post-war period and he thought that USA would adopt a more “multilateral” approach from now on, making UN more relevant. Any comments on this?

Uffe Kaels,

Copenhagen, Denmark

ha ha ha tarek, you are so funny... :) , I have nothing to sell except programmer and catcha lovers who pokes fun of me.. Cyrano, Okay, sending in a "surge" (if you will) of UN peacekeepers-- a laughable term, as they lack the mandate to keep any peace whatsoever-- into Darfur "will escalate the violence"? On what basis? Where's your crystal ball, can you let me see it? Jonas UN peace keeper lack both the mandate and the weapons to be peace keepers, eventually the US will feel compelled to intervene.. Sudan is not without interest, it is als rich in Cheney's oil. --------------------------- just in case belows------ On 5-Aug-07, at 11:08 AM, davidepet@comcast.net wrote: Dear Stephane: For the record (see below): I am worried that Tarek Lubani asserted that your "test without log in" post (1) was in fact "spam," and (2) was "correctly detected as spam" by the ZNet blogging software, thus blocking you from posting in the future, until such time as he "manually unmarks" the post as "spam." I do not know the inner-workings of ZNet's or any other blogging software. -- Might you yourself be able to explain to me why the ZNet blogging software would identify this particular post of your as "spam"? There very well may be a good reason for it which simply exceeds my knowledge of how blogging software works. Is there? Sincerely Yours, David Peterson Chicago, USA David I am glad you saw the post, I think tarek either missed the issues or is joking to me. I think that my new IP address was previously identified may be erroneously as posting spam by the catcha software , when I attempted to make my test being "unlogged" the catcha software still readme as spam.. It could also mean that I was assigned a 'spammer IP' by my provider and for this to stop, Tarek have to unblock my IP inside the Catcha software.. Sat, 2007-08-04 21:06 — Tarek Loubani Correct detection Posts like this are correctly detected as spam, and I am forced to manually unmark them as spam (though they are) to stop you from being prevented from further posts in the future. Please stop. tarek : ) • delete • edit • reply • report as spam Keep Smiling!

Posts like this are correctly detected as spam, and I am forced to manually unmark them as spam (though they are) to stop you from being prevented from further posts in the future. Please stop.

tarek : )

test one, see my post yes or no..

 

cyrano 

A recent positive development is that notable black commentators are waking up to the reality of how much of the Black Caucus in Congress (not to mention much of church leadership) made "common cause with" or fell hook, line, and sinker for emotionally arresting cover stores for "imperial ambitions in the Horn of Africa."

It may be hard to remember, given the prevailing cluelessness, but there was a time when a black leader could spot "cold blooded" manipulation in the name of the "humanitarian project" of the day for Africa from 8,000 miles away and could dissect the process in an interpretation that has stood the test of time:

 

The step by step process that was used by the press. First, they fan the flames in such a manner to create hysteria in the mind of the public, and then they shift gears and fan the flames in a manner designed to get the sympathy of the public, and once they go from hysteria to sympathy, then their next step is to get the public to support them in whatever act they're getting ready to go down with. You're dealing with a cold, calculating international machine that's so criminal in it's objectives and motives, it has the seeds of it's own destruction right within it.

That leader was Malcolm X who can be heard in this audio program (between minutes 9-13) about a book called The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba by Ludo De Witte. The steps remain Hysteria, Sympathy, and Support in the century after the one Lumumba and Malcolm X lived in.

SK:

Thanks for the latest hyperlink to the KPFA (Berkeley) audiostream interview with Ludo de Witte.  For the book where de Witte lays out his research on the first prime minister of the Congo, overthrown by the U.S. Government shortly after the Congo had achieved independence from colonial Belgium in 1960, see:

The Assassination of Lumumba, Ludo de Witte (Verso, 2002)

You know.  With respect to the imperial assault on the former Yugoslavia during the decade of the 1990s (adn still ongoing), I always remind people that while Europe once contained on its soil a country that, along with Nehru's India, Sukarno's Indonesia, Nasser's Egypt, Nkrumah's Ghana, and Castro's Cuba, stood out as a leader of the peoples of the Third World, the South, and the Non-Aligned Movement, namely, Tito's Yugoslavia -- all but Castro's Cuba having been wiped off the map of the world -- I will now remember to make a point of adding Lumumba's Congo to this list.  

And how long did Lumumba's Congo last? 

Less than a year.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Arek:

See my reply to Cyrano (evidently, this reply and your post crisscrossed), in particular the three items I hyperlinked at its bottom, including this one:

Sudan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment (Nairobi: United Nations Environment Program, 2007)

The point is immensely important: In lieu of the rich-world amenities upon which the populations of Cambridge, MA, and Hollywood, CA, depend like slaves, "there is a physical limit to what [ecological] systems can sustain, and so you get one group displacing another" (UN Environment Program director Achim Steiner) -- and the origins of the conflicts in the western Sudan are a textbook case of dramatic climate change disrupting ways of life -- of actual material human culture -- quite unlike the "culture" that Disney, Dreamworks, and the Sportsworld provide -- dating back centuries.  The real crisis in Darfur isn't local to Dafur but global in scope: Darfur happens geographically to be one theater where its extreme manifestation has struck early.  As the UN Secretary-General wrote in the Wahington Post in June ("A Climate Culprit In Darfur," Ban Ki Moon, June 16 -- I don't believe that Kofi Annan ever could have signed-off on a commentary as honest as this):

  Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand -- an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic. Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change.
  Two decades ago, the rains in southern Sudan began to fail. According to U.N. statistics, average precipitation has declined some 40 percent since the early 1980s. Scientists at first considered this to be an unfortunate quirk of nature. But subsequent investigation found that it coincided with a rise in temperatures of the Indian Ocean, disrupting seasonal monsoons. This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming.
  It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought. Until then, Arab nomadic herders had lived amicably with settled farmers. A recent Atlantic Monthly article by Stephan Faris describes how black farmers would welcome herders as they crisscrossed the land, grazing their camels and sharing wells. But once the rains stopped, farmers fenced their land for fear it would be ruined by the passing herds. For the first time in memory, there was no longer enough food and water for all. Fighting broke out. By 2003, it evolved into the full-fledged tragedy we witness today.

The "Crisis in Darfur," on the other hand, the one that animates and canalizes both Harvard, NGO, and Hollywood types, as well as countless university student-activists and cynical moralists, is a propaganda construct developed within the rich world at the precise historical juncture that the same states had launched their own bloody resource wars on a global scale.  Nor was it an accident that this propaganda construct shifted into high-gear in early 2004, as the conquest of Iraq began generating serious resistance to the invaders, and the lies of the invaders became undeniable.  Focus on the Arab perpetrators, wring your hands over the Western failure to prevent genocide, call on Beijing to stop dealing with Khartoum, and call on the International Criminal Court to open investigations into the crimes of the Sudanese government and its allies.  

And take not one of these steps -- nor even advocate them -- for your own states as they invade and they decimate entire foreign countries, and threaten to expand their aggressive wars to others still.   

"Not on our watch -- how Hollywood made America care about Darfur," Dan Glaister, The Guardian, May 19, 2007
"Spielberg may quit Beijing Olympics role over Darfur," Andrew Gumbel, The Independent, July 28, 2007
"Spielberg may quit Beijing Olympics role over Darfur," Voice of America News, July 28, 2007

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Cyrano,

Okay, sending in a "surge" (if you will) of UN peacekeepers-- a laughable term, as they lack the mandate to keep any peace whatsoever-- into Darfur "will escalate the violence"? On what basis? Where's your crystal ball, can you let me see it?

Cyrano:

My expectation is that the current plans for a (perhaps) 26,000-member joint UN - African Union force for the western Sudan (UNAMID) will serve to separate the combatants, increase the number of monitors on the ground, and therefore reduce the violence in the region.  Some kind of neutral force of this size would have been immensely constructive in 2003.  So as long as our world is awash with the tools we use to kill one another, even grim solutions can play constructive roles.  Were the UN Security Council able to act according to something like the role assigned to it by the UN Charter, and were the human world not distorted by great power and were every succeeding generation not raised to plug-into the structure of errors of the preceding generations, but rather to counter, resist, and reject it,...  

(S/RES/1769), July 31, 2007 
(S/PV.5727), July 31, 2007
(SC/9089), July 31, 2007

However, there is a categorical difference, let's say, between the Red Cross and the U.S. Government, the British Government, and so on.  Actual motives and reasons mean everything in the human world -- including the self-deceptions of institutional actors.  (Check out Samantha Power, for a very rich case in point.)

With the coming of the U.S. Africa Command, the direction in which the great power interference in the continent of Africa is headed has been announced: It will be justified by the conjunction of the "War on Terror" and "humanitarianism."  This is even how the American general David Petraeus' "counterinsurgency" strategy is now sold: As first and above all providing "security" for the Iraqis. -- Imagine that.

There is a more basic point crying out to be made here about the nature of the conflicts in the western Sudan and how they've been reported to be world: We've been lied to about them from 2003 on, in the liberal military interventionist's favorite sexed-up mode: As a case "genocide" orchestrated out of Khartoum.  

Sudan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment (Nairobi: United Nations Environment Program, 2007)
"A Climate Culprit In Darfur," Ban Ki Moon, Washington Post, June 16, 2007
"Darfur conflict heralds era of wars triggered by climate change, UN report warns," Julian Borger, The Guardian, June 23, 2007

And there is zero reason to expect anything that AFRICOM touches to work any differently.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

FYI, an interesting paper by Jordi Raich that has observations like: "It is not the human being that is loved, what is loved is to take care of him". Slavoj Zizek has also written insightfully about the paradox of the "false ideological universality"--based on an exceptional state of humanitarian emergency--that buttresses imperialism under the guise of helping "a human being ‘in general'".

David, it look like the US will escalate the violence in Sudan.. That is bad news for sudanese people; as I can see forecoming illegal and untruthful aerial kosovo-like interventions..