The root cause of the violence in Darfur

According to the new UN Secretary, it's all about global warming [excerpts out of sequence]:

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...

But Mr. Ban Ki Moon has a reason for optimism:

...Tough but patient diplomacy produced...[a] win, as yet modest in scope but large in humanitarian potential. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir accepted a plan to deploy, at long last, a joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur. This agreement, too, is personally gratifying. I have made Darfur a top priority and have invested considerable effort, often far from public view, toward this goal. Clearly, uncertainties remain. This deal, like others before it, could yet come undone. It could be several months before the first new troops arrive and longer before the full 23,000-member contingent is in place [emphasis added - MC]. Meanwhile, the fighting will probably go on, even if less intensely and despite our many calls for a cease-fire. Still, in a conflict that has claimed more than 200,000 lives during four years of diplomatic inertia, this is significant progress, especially considering that it has come in only five months...

However, I'm still from Missouri:

At the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, said more details on the agreement were needed, especially on whether non-African troops would be restricted.

“If this is an unconditional acceptance, this would be a positive step that we would welcome,” he said. “But if it is conditional, as we hear, that there will be only African troops involved and no non-Africans, that is putting a condition on the acceptance, and that would be unacceptable.” The Security Council announced that it would discuss the plan on Wednesday.

[...]

At a news conference in Addis Ababa, the African Union’s Peace and Security Commissioner Said Djinnit said that Sudan had agreed to the deployment of a force of 17,000 to 19,000 troops, and that the command of the force would remain with the African Union [emphasis added; another way to reduce effectiveness]. The United Nations would play a supporting role, and a majority of the troops would come from Africa.

“We agreed that priority should be given to finding troops from Africa,” Mutrif Siddig, the leader of the Sudanese negotiation team, told Reuters. “If there are not enough contributions from Africa, then troops can be brought in from elsewhere.”..

I hope Jack Layton et al. take note that non-Africans aren't wanted by Khartoum--if the "hybrid" UN/AU force is actually deployed, still no certainty. Restricting the UN element mainly to African armies will go a long way to ensuring its ineffectiveness (you can be pretty sure that if any African Arab states like Morocco take part, they aren't going to hurt the interests of a fellow Muslim state). Besides which, there's still plenty of negotiating space for the Sudanese government to string things out.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at June 16, 2007 09:26 PM