Special to UN Dispatch from the UN Foundation's Kevin Blesdoe, who attended the hearing on S.Res. 432
Last night the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted in favor of Senate Resolution 432, urging the international community to provide the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) with essential tactical and utility helicopters. The resolution calls attention to the lack of necessary equipment in Darfur and urges President Bush to personally contact heads of state to ask for the necessary commitments.
The UN-AU force has requested 18 transport and 6 attack helicopters, but has not yet received them. Ethiopia has pledged 3 transport and 2 attack helicopters, while Bangladesh has also offered some support, though it is not clear how much. Without this critical air support, UNAMID cannot quickly transport troops across large areas to respond to crises, protect civilians or carry necessary cargo and supplies. In the rainy season, ground transport will become even more difficult and perhaps even impossible in some areas.
The spirit in the room was congenial, with leaders from both party's agreeing on the urgency of the issue. "We cannot allow genocide and suffering to continue because the combined nations of the world cannot find 24 helicopters to help stop it. That is inexcusable," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Joe Biden, who introduced the legislation jointly with Richard Lugar, the committee's Ranking Minority member. Senator Biden admitted that helicopters alone would not be enough to save Darfur, and urged the European Union and the United Nations Security Council to join with the US in imposing sanctions on the Sudanese government.
"History has shown that peacekeeping success depends on size, resources, mandate, mobility, and command structure of the force," said Lugar, stressing the importance of aerial support, "And the mission must be accompanied by a peace-building process among the parties in the conflict."
Among the bill's cosponsors are Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Carl Levin (D-MI) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ). Here's how you can take action to support the legislation.
Pointing to John's post on the $500 million shortfall facing UN peacekeeping in the President's new budget, Foreign Policy's Carolyn O'Hara chides
Can the Pentagon spare some change for UN Peacekeeping?...We're talking chump change when you consider the fact that the Pentagon is due to get more than half a trillion dollars in 2009. U.N. peacekeeping is far from perfect. But it becomes far less so when it's underfunded."A very fair point -- and one that speaks to a structural difficulties facing Peacekeeping funding. The United States is the single largest contributor to UN peacekeeping, picking up about 25% of UN Peacekeeping's approximately $5.5 billion budget. US funding, though, comes from State Department, not the Pentagon. Whereas 25% of $5.5 billion may be a trivial sum for the Pentagon, it is not so at Foggy Bottom. There is noise in some quarters advocating that the peacekeeping account simply be transferred to DoD. Another solution, is to fund the State Department at levels that reflect the critical need to bolster civilian instruments of American national security and foreign policies. This includes paying our UN dues on time and in full.
On February 24, 2003 a militia from the National Integrationist Front--many of them child soldiers--attacked the village of Bogoro in Ituri, a restive province in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. 200 civilians were killed in the attack, prisoners were thrown into a locked house with decaying corpses, and women and girls were enslaved by the marauding force.
Not long ago, an attack like this would simply go unpunished--and in all likelihood, unnoticed. But not today. The International Criminal Court announced the arrest and detention of the leader of the attack, one Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui. DRC authorities arrested Ngudjolo, handed him over to ICC authorities where he was transported from DRC to the Hague. He is currently in prison in the Hague awaiting arraignment.
I, for one, am thankful to be living in an era in which crimes like this do not go unpunished. Visit the Coalition for the International Criminal Court to see how you can help end the era of impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Top Stories
>>Serbia - Nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica has blocked plans for a Serbian-European political and economic agreement, suggesting that it was an attempt to make Serbia concede the independence of Kosovo. Boris Tadic, a pro-European moderate who was elected President of Serbia on Sunday, is part of Serbia's governing coalition. The rift between Kostunica and Tadic threatens to dissolve that coaltion.
>>Zimbabwe - The war veterans' association, a militant group in Zimbabwe's ruling party, Zanu-PF, has threatened former Finance Minister Simba Makoni, who is running for president against Robert Mugabe, by saying, "traitors should know Zanu-PF has a history of dealing harshly with their kind." Makoni was also expelled from Zanu-PF yesterday.
>>Food - The global commodities boom has significantly raised the price of food, straining both the budgets of the poor and the programs of those trying to help feed them. The World Food Programme's costs by 70 percent over the last five years. The boom is also rekindling the debate over whether donor nations should continue to provide surplus food or simply provide funding to be used on the open market.
>>Eritrea-Ethiopia - The UN fears that conflict could reignite between Ethiopia and Eritrea if 1,400 UN peacekeepers are forced to withdraw because the Eritrean government cut fuel supplies. Eritrea is attempting to apply pressure on the international community to force Ethiopian to withdraw from the border town of Badme. From 1998 to 2000, tens of thousands died in conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Quote of the day
"With this blockage, certain politicians are in a way filing for a
divorce before the marriage has yet even been agreed. I find that...rather regrettable."
- EU Commissioner Olli Rehn
Yesterday in UN Dispatch
- Why it's better to be Idriss Deby than a Darfurian civilian - by John Boonstra
- Opium and the Insurgency - by Mark Leon Goldberg
On Monday, the Security Council issued a statement condemning the rebel assault on Chad's capital, N'Djamena and urging Member States to support the Chadian government. The speed at which the Security Council responded to this threat underscores the distinction between defending a sovereign government from rebel attack and responding to a genocide perpetrated by a government on its own people.
Even though the Security Council's statement had been toned down to omit references to military force or to Sudanese involvement in the attack, it implicitly gave France, which maintains 1,400 troops in Chad, the green light to defend President Idriss Deby's government. French president Nicolas Sarkozy explicitly articulated his country's willingness to intervene militarily, asserting yesterday that "if France must do its duty, it will do so." In the tragic history of the Darfur genocide, by contrast, no country has so baldly proclaimed its readiness to pony up military support -- or even peacekeepers or equipment -- in the face of opposition from the Sudanese government.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released a new report warning of another huge opium harvest in Afghanistan this year. This from the New York Times
Afghanistan will produce another enormous opium poppy crop this year, close to last year's record harvest, and Europe and other regions should brace themselves for the expected influx of heroin, the United Nations warned in its annual winter survey of poppy planting patterns. Cultivation is still increasing in the insurgency-hit south and west of the country, the report said, and taxes on the crop have become a major source of revenue for the Taliban insurgency. "This is a windfall for antigovernment forces, further evidence of the dangerous link between opium and insurgency," Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, wrote in the report’s preface.Full report here.
Obama won more states, but Clinton claimed more delegates, and the battle continues. McCain solidified his frontrunner status in the Republican primary (even though Huckabee wasn't too shabby).
Top Stories
>>Chad - Rebel attacks have ceased in Ndjamena in the wake of France's declaration that it would get involved if necessary and the dispatch of troops by a Darfur rebel group in order to bolster Chad's president. France's Defense Minister, Herve Morin, is in town.
>>Afghanistan - The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has reported that opium cultivation increased by 14 percent in 2007 in southern and southwestern Afghanistan, bolstering the insurgency with up to $100 million. Marijuana production is also on the rise. Outside of rebel strongholds, production decreased.
>>Pakistan - Taliban fighters in Pakistan have declared a ceasefire after months of fighting that has left hundreds dead.
>>Counting the Dead - The BBC reports on the work of the International Rescue Committee, who has taken on the responsibility of counting the dead in difficult to reach places. By their estimates, 45,000 people a month are dying in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Quotes of the Day
- "Indeed, it is the insurgents, the Taliban, that are deriving an enormous funding for their war by imposing ... a 10 percent tax on production"
- Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime - "People aren't dying dramatically. They're dying quietly and anonymously ... In the eyes of Western powers, Congo doesn't represent major political or economic interest."
- Richard Brennan of aid agency International Rescue Committee
Yesterday in UN Dispatch
- President Bush's budget beefs up defense spending, shortchanges UN peacekeeping - by John Boonstra
- How a Peacekeeping Mission Fails...And Can be Rescued - by Mark Leon Goldberg
In the record-setting $3.1 trillion budget proposal that he unveiled yesterday, President Bush allocated nearly $1.5 billion for 18 UN peacekeeping missions across the world. While the administration lauds the budget's contributions to helping "end conflicts, restore peace, and strengthen regional stability," this figure actually falls over half a billion dollars short of the amount that the US needs to provide for these UN missions to perform effectively. Moreover, the $610 million shortfall that this gap creates will only add to the $1.195 billion that the US still owes in arrears to UN peacekeeping.
Not Darfur, but the mission along the Ethiopian-Eritrean border, UNMEE. The Secretary General today warned that unless the Eritrean government lifts restrictions the import and purchase of fuel, the UN Peacekeeping mission along the Eritrea-Ethiopia border will have to fold. The mission has just two days left until it must tap into strategic fuel reserves.
UNMEE was created in 2000 to monitor a ceasefire along a disputed border region between. Both countries, though, have not made life easy for the peacekeeping force -- at various times, the two governments have hindered UNMEE's operations by throwing up bureaucratic roadblocks. Manufacturing a fuel shortage is simply the latest manifestation of the governments' strategies to undermine the mission.
As always in these situations what's needed is pressure from member states. If members of the Security Council think that UNMEE is worthwhile, (and they should, given the fact that the Council just extended the mission for another six months) they must do more to twist the arms of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Government to secure their cooperation.