President's Corner: U.S. Inaction Allows Genocide to Continue in Darfur

This week marks the first anniversary of the Darfur Peace Agreement, a failed attempt to end the four-year civil war in western Sudan. (For an interesting look at the origins of the Darfur conflict, and its connections to global warming, read Saturday's article in London's The Guardian. ) Since the agreement was signed on May 5, 2006, Darfur has become less secure, not more, and the number of displaced people has grown by more than 10 percent to over 2.5 million.

The failure of the DPA was abundantly clear last summer, when Refugees International representatives met with high government officials in Sudan and the only rebel group (of three at the peace talks) that signed the agreement. While everybody talked of peace in the capital of Khartoum, violence was exploding in Darfur.

Since last summer two more things have become clear. First, new efforts to reach a political settlement are necessary, since neither the government nor a proliferating number of rebel groups can win the war. Second, no outside party -- including the United Nations, the United States, or China, Sudan’s largest trading partner -- has the necessary combination of will or influence to force the parties back to the bargaining table.

One reason is that both the U.S. and the U.N. have misplayed their hands in recent months. Since late last year Andrew Natsios, the Bush administration’s special envoy to Sudan, has been talking about imposing tougher economic penalties on Sudan, but so far the threats have been no more than empty rhetoric. What’s more, pressure on Khartoum slacked off after Ban Ki-moon succeeded Kofi Annan as U.N. Secretary General on January 1. In fact, he has urged both the U.S. and the United Kingdom to delay placing tougher economic sanctions on Sudan to give diplomacy more time.

Right now there is no sign that diplomacy is working. “A political and military stalemate exists in Darfur,” concludes a new report by the International Crisis Group. The U.S., which has accused the government of Sudan of committing genocide in Darfur, seems equally stalemated about putting more pressure on Khartoum. I am still asking myself: why is the U.S. refusing to act in the face of genocide?

Trekking the Jungles of Malaysia

Before I left on mission, a friend told me to watch out for the leeches in the Malaysian jungles. But since my colleague and I were not traveling for eco-tourism reasons, I figured that I had little to worry about. The reason we came to Malaysia was mainly to look at the situation for the urban refugee population of ethnic Burmese in Kuala Lumpur. Little did I know that one week after arriving in Malaysia, I would be trekking up a path through the jungle with my colleague and two representatives from the Mon Burmese ethnic group.

We had been invited by the local Mon community organization to visit refugees working on a rubber tree plantation outside of Penang, about 4 hours north of Kuala Lumpur. After climbing up the path we came to a shelter with a tin roof, concrete floor, and one back wall. There we met a group of around twenty Mon refugees who worked on the rubber tree plantation. The refugees ranged in age from 16 to 41, all men. Most had arrived in Malaysia in the past few years, they had all had paid agents smuggle them into the country from eastern Burma. All had come to find work, but the reason they left Burma was because of the ongoing violence and human rights abuses in their home state.

They told us stories of active conflict in their villages, and of land confiscation and forced labor by the Burmese military. Clearly this group, like the majority of the refugees who have come to Malaysia from Burma, have legitimate asylum claims. But since Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, they are not given any special protection or assistance by the government, and they are instead classified as illegal migrants.

UNHCR has been able to register a fair number of the Burmese refugees in Malaysia, particularly those who are seen as the most vulnerable, but the agency is dealing with a large backlog of cases and inadequate resources. Groups like the one that we met with slip through the cracks, mostly because they are living in the jungle in makeshift shelters, afraid to leave the plantation for fear of being arrested since they have no documents. Many of them are also not familiar with UNHCR or the work that the agency is doing in Malaysia.

While we were speaking with the group, the thick humidity in the air gave way to pouring rain. When it rains, the refugees cannot work in the plantation, and they do not get paid. They also may not get food that day, since they depend on their employer for this as well. There is no assistance from their employer for health care, they instead rely on a local Mon contact who helps the most serious cases travel to Kuala Lumpur for medical assistance. If they were to go to the local hospital they would most likely be arrested, since they do not have any proper documentation.

The police and immigration officials have conducted several raids of the jungle settlements, and the refugees told us that while their shelters are usually destroyed, most of them are able to escape being caught. When asked, most said that they would like to eventually move to the city and find work in a restaurant or factory. Without any documentation, however, leaving the plantation means that they risk being arrested, detained, and deported, like so many other Burmese refugees in Malaysia.

After the rain finally let up, we made our way back down the jungle path. The refugees were left to hope for clear skies so that they could go back to work again. Their situation will clearly not improve until the Malaysian government recognizes the Mon, as well as other ethnic groups who have fled Burma, as refugees. However, in the meantime, increased assistance through mobile registration and mobile health clinics could help.

President's Corner: Honoring Immigrants -- Where are the Iraqis?

Today the State Department celebrated the gifts and energy that immigrants bring to the United States. The ceremony honored four leaders, all naturalized Americans, and included the oath of citizenship for 50 new Americans.

The wonderful event highlighted the openness, tolerance and opportunity for success that continue to attract the world's brightest and best to America's shores. And yet during the ceremony I was haunted by one thought: What opportunities is America providing for Iraqis who are fleeing violence in their country and looking for protection and new lives elsewhere? If the State Department holds a similar ceremony a decade from now, will it be recognizing Iraqis who fled insecurity at home to find success in the U.S.?

Two million Iraqis have left the country to escape violence. Most of them are refugees in Syria and Jordan. In this growing flow of refugees are thousands who worked for the U.S. as translators, sometimes accompanying U.S. troops into the battle. Their support of the U.S., however, has made many of them targets of terrorists in Iraq. They are being threatened or attacked as collaborators, and many are leaving the country to protect their lives. (A March 26 New Yorker article by George Packer describes their terror in detail.)

The U.S. resettles more refugees than any other country. Last year the U.S. took in 41,277 refugees, but only 202 came from Iraq. In 2005, the U.S. resettled 53,813 refugees with only 198 from Iraq. As of March 31, the U.S. had resettled just 68 Iraqi refugees in the fiscal year that started last Oct. 1. (Download PRM Admissions as of March 31, 2007 from the State Department's official site to view more refugee admissions statistics.) However, it is gearing up and hopes to resettle 2,000 to 3,000 Iraqis by the end of the current fiscal year. This is a baby step in the right direction. A State Department official estimates that 22,000 Iraqis are currently working for the Defense Department in Iraq and 5,000-6,000 are currently working for the State Department. Officials assume that many thousands more have worked for the U.S., including private contractors and humanitarian organizations, over the last four years. Many had families who are also under threat.

People who worked for the U.S. are just a small subset of the two million Iraqi refugees, but they deserve special attention because many of them are now at risk because they helped the American effort in Iraq. Why isn’t the U.S. doing more to help them?

The ceremony in the State Department’s Benjamin Franklin room was far way from the violence in Iraq and the stream of refugees it has created. For one thing, the event celebrated naturalized American citizens, immigrants who came here by choice looking for a better life. The focus was not on refugees who are resettled in the U.S. to protect them from persecution abroad. Fifty foreigners from 23 countries came to the State Department today, and 50 Americans left after hearing speeches from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Emilio Gonzalez, the Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and taking the oath of citizenship.

The same event honored four Americans who had been naturalized years ago and then risen to top jobs. They were:

• Farooq Kathwari, who came to the U.S. 41 years ago from Kashmir, the disputed territory between India and Pakistan. He the chairman, president and CEO of Ethan Allen Interiors, Inc. and also the chairman of the Refugees International Board of Directors.


• M.J. Khan, an immigrant from Pakistan, who is president MAK Development, Inc., and a member of the Houston, Texas, City Council.


• Indra Nooyi, who came from India and is currently the CEO of PepsiCo.


• Dina Powell, who came to the U.S. as young girl from Egypt and is currently the
  Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs.

In her remarks today, Secretary Rice told these four "Outstanding Americans by Choice," as well as the 50 new citizens that "...If we as a nation are truly to be ‘one out of many’ then we must also look to our responsibilities: to treat one another with civility and fairness, to work together to protect this great land and the precious things that we hold in common, to honor and understand our nation’s past, so as to better navigate the present and to chart a better future and last but not least, to serve as a just and principled leader in the events beyond or borders."

Today, both justice and principle require us to do more to protect Iraqi refugees.

President's Corner: Outwitted, Outmaneuvered by Sudan... Again

Once again, Sudan is getting favorable headlines simply because it has stopped being totally unreasonable. It's an old trick, but the West gets taken for a ride every time.

Sudan told the United Nations yesterday that it would allow the UN to deploy up to 3,000 armed police officers in the war torn Darfur region, along with six attack helicopters.

Predictably, and correctly, newspapers hailed the agreement as progress. "Sudan to Allow UN Force in Darfur," The Washington Post said. "Sudan Drops Objections to UN Aid Darfur" was the headline in The New York Times.

However, Sudan deserves no credit for being reasonable. Last August, the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for the deployment of nearly 21,000 UN peacekeepers and police to Darfur, where about 400,000 people have died of war related causes in the last four years. The UN troops were to augment 7,000 African Union peacekeepers, who have done little to improve security for the more than two million displaced people in Darfur.

But the deployment never took place, because Sudan refused to allow UN troops in Darfur. After a series of negotiations in November, Sudan and the UN agreed to a "hybrid" force comprised of African Union soldiers and some UN advisers, police and equipment. It set a three phase deployment plan, starting with a "light" phase of 180 UN advisers to help the AU force with communications, logistics and other functions. That phase is underway. The second, or "heavy" phase, includes the police and helicopters Sudan agreed to — again — yesterday. The third phase, if it ever happens, would be the deployment of a hybrid force of a size yet to be agreed to by Sudan.

So, eight months after the UN Security Council ordered the deployment of 21,000 peacekeepers and police to Darfur, less than 180 advisers have been deployed. This is because Sudan has resisted every step of the way, raising objections and barriers that must be negotiated away by endless streams of envoys to Khartoum. The latest to make the trip was John Negroponte, the newly installed Deputy Secretary of State.

While Sudan has diddled, more Darfurians have died or been displaced. Fighting and insecurity in Darfur got so bad toward the end of last year, that UN agencies said it was getting too dangerous to work in Darfur and raised the threat of a pull out. This would interrupt a life line that is helping to feed nearly three million in Darfur.

What’s more, Sudan might even be rewarded for agreeing once more to a deployment it agreed to in November and has blocked ever since. Both the U.S. and the Great Britain, have been threatening to impose new sanctions on Sudan, but now they are likely to wait to see if Khartoum delivers on its new promise.

For the last four years, the government of Sudan has outwitted the West, making the U.S. in particular look weak and indecisive. After all, the U.S. Congress and President Bush have accused Sudan of committing genocide in Darfur. Article 1 of the Genocide Convention says: "The contracting parties confirm that genocide... is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish."

Every day I ask myself: Has anybody in the U.S. administration read the Genocide Convention? Does anybody take it seriously?

Viewing the crisis in Darfur from above

Thanks to Google Earth's satellite images and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, you no longer have to travel to Darfur to witness the destruction and chaos of the 4-year genocide. On Tuesday, the Holocaust Museum launched Crisis in Darfur -- a new initiative with Google. Through this project, photographs, data and eyewitness testimony have been mapped onto Google's satellite images of Darfur.

As you zoom in to the Darfur region, the level of destruction becomes clear as vast swaths of area become blanketed by thousands of red and yellow symbols indicating damaged and destroyed villages.


As you continue to zoom in, you can view the individual villages. Below, you can actually see the burn marks left behind. In the left of the below photo, the huts and trees are intact. But in the center, you can see the ashen remains of those homes that were destroyed.

If you don't have Google Earth already, the Holocaust Museum's Google Earth page has links to download the program and the Crisis in Darfur layers. Check it out here.

Also, the New York Times reports that Actress Mia Farrow and Director Steven Spielberg have pressured China, which has extensive business and oil ties to Sudan, to urge Sudan to accept a UN peacekeeping force. A senior Chinese official actually traveled to Sudan and toured Darfur's refugee camps -- a rare event for a government that refuses to interfere in the "internal affairs" of another nation. How did they accomplish this? By linking Darfur to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

New videos show recovery in Democratic Republic of the Congo

What's a blog without video?!

Refugees International is slowly entering the YouTube era thanks in large part to one of our board members. The board member sent videographer John Baynard on our last mission to the Congo with Rick & Andrea. (Rick actually mentioned some of John's run-ins with authorities in the Congo in this November blog post.)

Recovering from War

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President's Corner: Why Isn't the U.S. Promoting Peace in Northern Uganda?

In Northern Uganda, some 1.7 million people have been displaced by a brutal civil war between a rebel army comprised mainly of abducted, brainwashed children and the government's Ugandan People's Defense Forces. For nearly 15 years, one woman, Betty Bigombe, has been negotiating to end the horrific war.

On Wednesday, Ms. Bigombe, a former cabinet minister in Uganda and World Bank official, will speak at a Washington Circle event hosted by Refugees International. Her appearance got me thinking about how wars end or more precisely, why do some peace talks succeed and others fail?

Unfortunately, there is no easy formula for ending a messy civil war. If there were, such wars wouldn't last long. However, the fact that northern Uganda shares a border with south Sudan, where a 21-year civil war ended in 2005, makes it easy to compare the peace negotiations in the two countries.

There are many, many differences between the wars in south Sudan and northern Uganda, but one difference between the peace negotiations stands out: The U.S. was heavily involved in pushing for peace in south Sudan, but it has devoted far less energy and attention to negotiating peace in northern Uganda.

In 2001, President Bush made retired Senator John Danforth (currently a member of Refugees International's board of directors) his special envoy to Sudan and took a personal interest in his efforts to secure peace. Several years later, Mr. Bush appointed Sen. Danforth the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and from that post, Ambassador Danforth worked hard to get the UN Security Council committed to a peace agreement in Sudan. A Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in early 2005, and the peace has generally held since then.

Unfortunately, the U.S. has not made a similar high-level effort to promote peace in northern Uganda. Ms. Bigombe believes that the lack of U.S. leadership has allowed the war to continue. "If America wanted this war to end, it would have ended," she told a congressional panel earlier this year. Obviously, Washington doesn't have the diplomatic muscle to end civil wars all over the world; our efforts to end the fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan are failing miserably, for example. But Ms. Bigombe is not alone in believing that a U.S. diplomatic push in Uganda could lead to peace.

Wouldn't it be great if Washington decided to prove Ms. Bigombe right? The U.S. would lose nothing by trying.

President's Corner: Hints of Good News About Darfur

At first I thought it was an April Fools Day joke.

On April 1, the Los Angeles Times ran a story with this headline:

Ground Shifting Beneath Sudan’s Longtime Leaders
President Bashir Has Become Weaker, Analysts Agree, And Rumors of a Coup Are Buzzing in the Capital

Then today, Jackson Diehl, an editor and columnist for The Washington Post, reported in a column titled "Darfur on their Radar" that President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair this month will “push for serious punishment of the regime of Omar Hassan al-Bashir at the U.N. Security Council.”

If this is true, then Sudan’s President and the regime that the U.S. has accused of committing genocide in Darfur could be getting a push at exactly the time he is already facing problems.

When it comes to Darfur, Sudan has established itself as the land of bad news and broken promises of peace, so it would be dangerous to bet on a change for the better. Since 2003, an estimated 400,000 people have died in Darfur and about 2.5 million have been displaced. The reasons for civil war in the Darfur are complex, but the victims are generally African farmers who have lost their villages, their lands and sometimes their lives to Arab militias that often act in concert with the government.

Analysts have speculated before that Bashir might be slipping from power, only to see him gain strength. Even if he were to go, it is hard to know whether this would be good or bad. He is surrounded by hardliners who seem determined to rule by force and fear, not by consensus or by sharing the benefits of Sudan’s growing oil wealth with poor or marginalized regions, such as Darfur or the south. However, a change in leadership would at least open the possibility of new government policies and an end to the war.

And what about a tougher U.S. policy? Since 2004, when the U.S. charged Sudan with genocide, Washington’s policy has been much more talk than action. As a result Bashir’s regime has gotten bolder and less responsive to international pressure. The U.S. should have gotten tougher a long time ago. If President Bush is determined to apply tougher diplomacy and economic sanctions, he should do so as soon as possible. Delay only means more death and displacement.