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nature are few and far in between. In other incidences, UNAMID exaggerates the GoS denial of access to areas requiring investigation on crimes against humanity. An example that illustrates this point is when UNAMID claimed to have been “denied access by Sudanese military at a checkpoint” when they attempted to investigate the report about 200 women that had been raped in El Fasher, North Darfur. The official UN bulletin misinformed the world that the peacekeepers had been denied access to the area when in fact they interviewed a few witnesses before they were confronted by Sudanese intelligence officials who asked them to leave after they had obtained confirmation of the crime committed (Reeves 2007). Fabrication of such lies is meant to serve a hidden agenda of UNAMID leadership while at the same time angering the government officials in Khartoum,
The existence of an undermanned and ill-equipped hybrid UNAMID mission in Darfur in reality represents symbolic gestures and face saving measures to portray a positive picture that the world community was responding to the plight of Darfur’s civilian population yet in practice little is being done to protect the civilians. Moreover, because of the tasks related to the protection of civilians, the neutrality of UN peacekeepers has increasingly been compromised as demands from concerned governments and humanitarian agents call for the effective protection of civilians, which entails that peacekeepers take military coercive action against spoilers that potentially put them on a collision course with different armed groups embroiled in the conflict (Clement and Smith 2009).
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on the other hand the US developed the Chevron oil installations which it abandoned when the US imposed economic sanctions against Sudan (Ibid.). At the outbreak of the Darfur conflict in 2003, the US considered Sudan as an ally in its Global War on Terror yet at the same time accusing it of pursuing a policy of genocide against the Black African civilian population in Darfur. This was a practical example of the realist approach to US foreign policy where it considers that there are no permanent friends in international relations but permanent interests.
Having noted acts of indiscriminate killing of civilians by government sponsored Janjaweed militias in Darfur, former US Secretary of State General Colin Powell declared on 9 September 2004 that genocide was indeed taking place in Darfur and that the GoS and its Arab rebel militias bore the responsibility (US Department of State: 2004). This classification and categorization of the Darfur civil war as genocide, was neither adopted by the UN Security Council nor the Secretariat hence it remained a purely American labelling of this civil war.
This categorization generated controversy as the European Union (EU), China, Russia and the AU did not agree to the assertion that genocide was indeed taking place in Darfur (World Savvy Monitor Op.Cit. :2). The US declaration of genocide in Darfur was interpreted as both a heroic expression of concern and more cynically, as a way to transfer responsibility for the Darfur crisis to the UN (Ibid.). Despite different interpretations of what was going on in Darfur, the humanitarian crisis in this region triggered western calls for military humanitarian intervention to stop the Arab militias from terrorizing innocent and vulnerable civilian population in Darfur (Gberie 2004). The “Save Darfur” campaign exerted a lot of pressure on politicians in Washington to launch a humanitarian intervention in Darfur as if they were genuinely concerned about the welfare of African strangers. The proponents for a military humanitarian intervention had to resort to sensationalization of the humanitarian crisis in order to garner American population’s sympathy and support.
A US diplomat based in Sudan once acknowledged that by explaining to the American public that Arabs were massacring Africans in Darfur, “we are harnessing two very powerful feelings in American society: anti-Arab racism and pro-African paternalism” (Coulon and Liégeois 2010). This sensational advocacy and strategy did not work. It did not lead to a military humanitarian intervention as realist international politics militated against such action by those inclined to embark on such a military adventure (Heinze 2009:1). There was a US self-serving strategic reason and justification for passing on the responsibility of protecting civilians in Darfur to the UN. Alex de Waal noted that: “… it is not too cynical to assume that President Bush’s advisors calculated that once a UN force had been approved, any disappointments could
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be placed at the door of the UN and the troop contributing countries not the U.S.” (de Waal 2007: 378). There are other possible realist self-serving strategic reasons why the US avoided a military humanitarian intervention option in Darfur.
According to Engdahl (2007:1) the major American interest in Darfur is access to oil fields and not humanitarian concerns as he observed that the case of Darfur is a new Cold War over oil between China and the GoS on one side and the US with her western allies on the other side.
He highlights that of particular interest is Bloc 6 of oil concessions which straddles western Darfur, near the border with Chad and the Central African Republic. China’s National Petroleum Company, (CNPC) holds the rights to this oil field which the Sudanese government announced in 2005 that it had discovered oil in Darfur with an estimated capacity of 500 000 barrels/day (Ibid. :5). Had the US succeeded to convince the UNSC to accept the genocide charge, this would have given it the opportunity to spearhead a drastic and violent “regime change” intervention by NATO under the auspices of humanitarian operations leading to serious undermining of Sudan’s national sovereignty as was the case with Libya where the country was subjected to massive aerial bombardment by NATO under the pretext of
“protecting the civilian population” against the Gaddafi regime.51 This largely explains why the GoS refused the deployment of a purely UN “peacekeeping” mission in the Darfur preferring a predominantly African peacekeeping operation under African command. This stance adopted by the GoS resulted in the deployment of a watered down peacekeeping mission. UNAMID was deployed with a weaker mandate and very little material support from developed countries that initially favoured a robust UN humanitarian intervention force. The current weak UNAMID serves US interests in that it does not have the military muscle to interfere with insurgent activities that are being funded by the US and its allies. The US had to re-strategize having failed to sell the genocide theory to the international community. It sought to maintain a working relationship with the GoS in the fight against global terrorism whilst at the same time sponsoring rebel forces fighting the same central government in Darfur.
Engdahl (2007:11) observed that most of the arms that have fuelled the killings in Darfur and even in South Sudan have been brought into that country through murky, protected private
“merchants of death” such as the notorious former KGB operative, Victor Bout who operates
51 In an interview with a diplomat in Harare in November 2015, he expressed the view that the US and EU efforts to influence the deployment of a robust UN peacekeeping force in Darfur with a stronger mandate to impose peace in Darfur was meant to ultimately result in regime change or the secession of Darfur region adding that ultimately, the US and its allies want access to the untapped vast oil reserves in Darfur.
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from the US. He adds that since the discovery of oil in this region, the US has fuelled the conflict that has led to the deaths of tens of thousands and several millions displaced from their homes. In this regard, a strong UNAMID is not desirable as it will interfere with the operations of US proxy forces operating in Darfur fighting the Sudanese Government. It follows therefore that the US is the primary architect of the “organized hypocrisy” approach adopted by the UN as it has the overwhelming influence over its allies when it comes to adopting strategies to counter the spreading influence of China in Africa in general and Sudan in particular.
Given this situation, the US authorities opted to maintain a working relationship with the GoS at the strategic level as it feared that any western sponsored military attack on Sudan at a time when western powers were heavily involved in military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq would be interpreted as yet another invasion of an Arab country, thus fuelling further anti- Western terrorist sentiments and activities.52 At the operational level, the US continued financing insurgent groups fighting the Khartoum government. These self-serving priorities and considerations trumped gross humanitarian concerns over human rights violations in Darfur and ultimately influenced the adoption of a peacekeeping mission as opposed to a military humanitarian intervention to save Darfuris experiencing mass atrocities and crimes against humanity. This calculus in the US decision making process goes to demonstrate that national self-interests take precedence when considering the nature and size of peacekeeping intervention force to be deployed in any African country.53 In addition it demonstrates the nature of organized hypocrisy practiced by the UN under the leadership of the US strategists.
A closer examination of big powers’ politics and their interests in Africa reveals the
52 Interview with a Minister of Foreign Affairs (name withheld) held in Harare during visit to the National Defence College in Harare. He stressed that the US considered it safe to play double standards with the Sudanese authorities. On one hand the Khartoum government was considered an ally in the fight against Global Terrorism yet on the other hand, the US was sponsoring a proxy war to check-mate the growing Chinese influence in that country whose natural resources are at the centre of the conflicts bedevilling various regions of Sudan. He added that the establishment of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007 is indisputable evidence that US policy- makers now view Africa rich in mineral and natural resources as an area of military contention with China for the foreseeable future.
53 This was the view of one senior military commander who served with UNAMID. In an interview on 03 April 2016, he declared that, “Do not ever think or imagine that the big powers would ever prioritize the welfare and well-being of African populations sacrificing their own economic benefits in the process, even if it means watching the poor African civilians dying in their thousands as long as the end result is profitable to their cause as happened in Rwanda.” He went on to add that, “neo-liberal economic policies being propagated by the Bretton Woods Institutions through Structural Adjustment Programmes were impoverishing millions of African populations and their governments that are lured into perpetual debts yet the western powers continue with the same policies that are condemning the populations of Africa to eternal poverty.”
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machinations of the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) that fuels conflicts on the African continent.
Erlinder (2010) noted that the American empire’s political, economic and military manipulations benefit from fuelling local conflicts to ensure that its allies prevail in every corner of the globe. Accordingly the US has stepped up ongoing war for control of Sudan’s resources namely: petroleum, copper, gold, uranium, and fertile plantation lands for sugar and gum Arabic (essential for Coke, Pepsi and Ben and Jerry’s Ice cream. It has been observed that the war in Darfur is being played out on the ground through the “Humanitarian” NGOs, private military companies, “peace keeping” operations and covert military operations backed by the US and its closest allies. The Washington Post of 27 April 2006 pointed out that Sudan has been using its oil for committing a cardinal sin of developing an economy independent of the US. This, the paper continued, is not permissible to the US as any developing nation that attempts to develop an independent economy is considered a pariah state. Sudan has benefitted from its political and business relationship with China to the extent of being able to develop an economy independent of the US.
Considering that China is the biggest investor in the Sudanese oil industry, and that China is the biggest trading partner of the Sudanese government there is a conflict of interest between China and the US that has witnessed both powers fighting proxy Cold Wars in Sudan, starting with Southern Sudan and now in Darfur. The next section examines China’s interests in Darfur and how this influenced the peacekeeping efforts in that region.