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 Re: There are 3 days to go (Re: Salwa Seyam)
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Dear Community Leader:
As concerned citizens, we are called to stand against injustice. Today, our collective strength is urgently needed to end the humanitarian and security crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan.
Since 2003, between 200,000 and 400,000 people are believed to have been killed or seriously injured and more than two million people have been displaced. At this moment, over 3.5 million people risk starvation if the violence does not cease and adequate humanitarian aid is not provided.
Since the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement on May 5 of this year, conditions have actually deteriorated, and the possibility of a dramatic increase in death rates is increasingly real.
The Global Day for Darfur on September 17, 2006 will be an unprecedented effort to end this ongoing tragedy. International activists and organizations around the world are organizing a coordinated effort to urge the international community to:
Strengthen the understaffed and overwhelmed African Union peacekeeping force now. We must offer extra help to the African peacekeepers already on the ground.
Transition peacekeeping responsibilities to a stronger UN force as soon as possible. The UN must deploy peacekeepers with a strong mandate to protect civilians.
Increase aid levels and ensure access for aid delivery. Shortfalls in aid continue to mean that people are at risk of starvation. Humanitarian organizations must have unfettered access to all who need help.
Implement the Darfur Peace Agreement. For the violence to end, all parties to the agreement, in particular the Sudanese Government, must live up to their responsibilities.
Event planning is underway in New York, London, Paris, Abuja, Toronto, Cairo, Kigali, and Moscow– among many other cities. We encourage you to attend one of these events or organize an event of your own. Join the Global Day for Darfur to build awareness about the crisis and mobilize support for this international campaign.
One easy way to participate is to wear a blue hat on September 17th. When UN peacekeeping forces enter a region, they are recognized by the blue berets and helmets they wear. Wearing a blue hat will symbolize the urgent need to protect the people of Darfur with a UN peacekeeping force.
Yours sincerely,
Global Day for Darfur team.
http://www.dayfordarfur.org/Act_Now.htm
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Re: There are 3 days to go (Re: Salwa Seyam)
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ثلاثه ايام يا سلوى على (عيد الانسانيه)
فليس اكثر من تجمع البشر من كل السحنات والجهات والمجتمعات على الحق.
ثلاثه ايام ويقول شرفاء العالم كلمتهم عاليه.
لا لمزيد من القتل.
لا لمزيد من التشريد.
لا لمزيد من الاغتصابات.
سنقف معا ومن بقاع مختلفه
وبصوت واحد لنقول للعالم
الآن وليس غدا.
ارسلوا قوات الامم المتحده لحماية المدنين بدرافور وبدون اذن حكومة الخرطوم.
وكيف ننتظر اذنا من القتله؟؟؟؟؟؟ بأننا قادمون لانقاذ ضحاياهم منهم.
Never Again
ستدوي عاليه
Save Dar Fur Now.
ليس غدا او بعد اسبوع بل الآن.
تراجي.
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Re: There are 3 days to go (Re: bakri abdalla)
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UPDATED MEDIA ADVISORY FOR SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 17th AT 2:00 PM
Save Darfur Coalition Rally in New York’s Central Park
to Call for U.N. Peacekeepers
Suzanne Vega, Former Canadian Minister of Justice to Join Madeleine Albright, O.A.R.,
Lupe Fiasco and Big & Rich in international call to stop genocide in Darfur
WHAT: "Save Darfur Now: Voices to Stop Genocide,” will bring together musicians, celebrities, activists, faith leaders and key decision makers to call for world leaders to take immediate and clear action to end the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. Coinciding with a meeting of the 61st United Nations General Assembly, the rally will be the centerpiece event in a global day of action. More information is available at www.savedarfur.org/now.
WHO: MUSICAL PERFORMANCES BY:
• O.A.R.
• Suzanne Vega
• Lupe Fiasco
• Big & Rich
• Berklee College of Music Ensemble
SPEAKERS (Note: Additional speakers and entertainers expected to be announced)
• Dr. Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State
• Dr. Irwin Cotler, former Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General
• Joey Cheek, 2006 Olympic gold-medalist speed skater
• Jeff Johnson, BET, Hip Hop 4 Darfur
• Joe Madison, host, “The Black Eagle” radio show
• Larry Cox, executive director, Amnesty International USA
• Rabbi Steve Gutow, executive director, Jewish Council for Public Affairs
• Imam al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid, The Mosque Of The Islamic Brotherhood
• Representatives from 11 national Darfuri organizations
• John Prendergast, senior advisor, International Crisis Group
• Rev. Gloria White-Hammond, MD, chairwoman, Million Voices for Darfur campaign
• David Rubenstein, coordinator, Save Darfur Coalition
NOTE: Speakers, entertainers and spokespeople are available for advance interviews.
This document will be updated by Friday, September 15.
WHERE: “East Meadow” of Central Park, New York City
Press entrance at 97th Street and 5th Avenue (PRESS ONLY)
WHEN: Sunday, September 17, 2006, 2:00-5:00 p.m.
TRUCKS: Non-live feeds: 102nd Street Transverse, immediately west of 5th Avenue
Live Feeds: 5th Avenue at 97th Street (RSVP – see below; limited parking available)
LIVE FEEDS: Please RSVP to [email protected] for press riser space and for truck parking for live feeds.
CONTACT: Jeff Kovick: 202.478.6147-o, 202.487.6655-c, [email protected]
Dan Klotz: 917.438.4613.o, 347.307.2866-c, [email protected]
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Re: There are 3 days to go (Re: Kostawi)
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'
LIEUTENANT GENERAL ROMEO DALLAIRE
CONCLUDING REMARKS AND ANSWERS TO STUDENT QUESTIONS AT A COLLEGE STUDENT LEADERS’ CONFERENCE ON THE DARFUR CRISIS ]
What about the Darfur situation?
We've got to put the effort into bringing a solution to Darfur in providing protection and assistance to the Darfurians, and treat it as it is, the cause célèbre of our era. And it must be a commitment to provide that effort there and not continue to let the festering scenarios of diplomatic manipulations of interactions, prevent us from assisting people who are dying now, raped now, suffering now, and continue to do so.
One of the arguments why I never got a new mandate in Rwanda during the genocide in Rwanda was because China would veto any mandate in regards to providing forces for intervention in the genocide, or in human rights, and we heard early on that China is not the only one right now showing its hand that maybe it would veto a mandate that is going to set up the African Union as it's doing now to great failure and embarrassment and weaken the possibility for the African Union to bring resolution in its own region.
We should call their bluff. [[Good idea still? I would say yes]]. If you’re going to veto about intervention in the genocide, let's see you show your hand. Let's put the blood in the hand, and take it from there, and not continue to hedge bets on whether they will or not, and in so doing use ineffective instruments to bring solutions.
The African Union is going in to fail because it's going in to "report and observe." Ladies and Gentlemen, during the genocide my mandate, when they were able to articulate [one], was to "report and observe." For what? For whom? To what avail? And even when in Rwanda they called it a genocide, in six weeks over 300,000 people killed already...and they called it a genocide. And this government has called it [the Darfur crimes] a genocide. And as this report [of the UN Commission headed by Judge Anthony Cassese] has called it "everything short of a genocide." ...so what? Did anybody intervene? In '94, I needed 5000 soldiers to stop the genocide before even less than ten days. Only the developed nations could do that. And when they agreed in the Security Council to give me 5000 troops, not one developed country provided me with troops.
It took two months for the Ethiopians to get there. It was the first time in their life they wore a [blue, UN] beret. They had just come out of their own civil war. And by the by the civil war and the genocide in Rwanda had already been over for a month. You can call it what you want, but if you don't commit....if you don't commit, if you don't go in to protect [civilians, a function currently excluded from the AU mandate], to assist, then all you're doing is letting a lot of people do a lot of posturing and a lot of ink being thrown and a lot of trees being cut down all the while people are dying and suffering.
There was discussion about this responsibility to protect.* When we introduced the responsibility to protect three years ago, nations that we thought would embrace it were the first ones to not embrace it. In fact, developing nations saw this as an instrument of the developed nations to intervene in their country and in fact pooh-poohed the process.
*The General refers to the important report by Gareth Evans, President and Chief
Executive Officer of the International Crisis Group and former Foreign Minister of Australia. Mohamed Sahnoun, Special Adviser on Africa to the UN Secretary-General and a former senior Algerian diplomat. They co-chaired the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), whose report, The Responsibility to Protect, was published in December 2001 and is now available on www.iciss-ciise.gc.ca.
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It was a modern Africa that we were trying to bring about, and in fact the reforms that have been articulated recently--and I was at Northwestern University discussing the use of force and the responsibility to protect as part of the reforms--are I think going to be instruments that are very useful and are going to give us the tools we seek.
So, responsibility to protect is an overriding factor in human rights, and the ability of people to live in serenity and be able to build their nations and provide the leadership they need for their country.
And the solution right now is activism. Activism on your campuses, outside your campuses, in the United States, in Canada, in the developed world, throughout.
We must shame those who still have the blood of Rwanda on their hands [[J.W. comment here: RD is apparently referring to the US, Canada, France, and other developed nations.]] and make them very very conscious that there is a whole new set of blood coming on their hands.
And who can provide some of those solutions that activists should generate?
Well, right now it is my opinion that no, we don't want the Americans, or the French, or the British in Darfur and yes, there is a concern with the Muslim community. So what should be going in and what we should reinforcing and supportering is Middle Powers, like my country[Canada] and Germany and Japan to reinforce the African Union. And in the Security Council to call the bluff of those countries, in order to get the mandate, and should we not get the mandate to intervene, that is, to provide protection and assistance and support, then we should join the African Union and go in with them, under their mandate, [[The audience heard this as a mandate that would really protect civilians and aid workers, which is NOT true of the current mandate and rules of engagement, despite Dallaire’s recent claims to the contrary. (See also JW’s Petition Speech of 7 August 2005). I have evidence from Darfur, on Part 4 of the DVD Darfur Crimes 2004, that the Nairobi Security Council emendations to the mandate, touted by RD as effective protective solutions, are actually ineffective and ignored. I will turn in my own commission in the US Army if I cannot convince you that even the Nairobi emendations, if they were implemented in practice, have very little value in reversing the genocide in its current manifestation]]and reinforce them.
[[Developments since Feb have shown that Dallaire is not really contradicting himself by suggesting that we go in under a mandate that he has just pronounced to be useless. What he obviously wants is a Chapter 7 mandate, with the power to use force to protect. And he doesn’t care whose mandate it is. To borrow from the Chinese emperor ideology, what he might as well call for is a Mandate from Heaven, given to us by our own consciences. Such will be the basis of the Ad Hoc Coalition’s “mandate”-JHW 9/06]]
Because as it stands now, the African Union will be humiliated, will fail, and will continue to have an incredibly difficult time establishing its own credibility in its own region.
So we don't abandon “Africa to African problems” as in 1994 they told me to do. And we don't go then to take on a responsibility when we do not have the capability of doing it, let alone getting there and sustaining the forces. In fact, we reinforce them, we commit, and, if necessary, we relieve..[inaudible].....in the assistance of humans who have the same fundamental rights as we do. All humans are human. There isn't one who is more human than the others.
Thank you very much. [Applause]
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ANSWERS TO STUDENT QUESTIONS
[Student question, inaudible]
That is exactly the alternative that I'm proposing. If we can't get it through the UN, then in fact we reinforce that mutual capability that Boutros-Ghali [UN Secretary-General] advocated in the 1990s...building up regional capabilities. So, yes, we reinforce the African Union and support it in accomplishing the mission, and let that debate [occur] and [confront?] that humiliation that happened inthe Security Council. So yes, fund it, support it, and go with it.
[[And this is the current justification for not taking actually effective measures: the AU, with NATO as a taxi and highly limited trainer, can build its capacity to where it becomes a respected force.
This is also the position of the ICG, but NOT for the near term, where they advocate instead a “bridging force” of African and non-African troops who can take protective actions that the AU clearly cannot. The plan is that once this bridging force has “established an atmosphere of security”, which CANNOT be done without robust proactive measures against the Government security forces and the janjaweed militias it controls, then a trained and upgraded AU force, one which had somehow introduced sufficient amnesia into the Darfuri population to efface the memory of its disastrous and pathetic first year of deployment in that region, would take over.
Why would the ICG be ready to accept the possibility that the AU could ever become a serious intervening force (i.e., in a non-permissive environment)? It may be because Salim Salim, secretary-general of the old Organization of African Unity and now the AU’s representative at the Abuja talks between Kht and the rebel groups, is also a board member of the ICG. Salim and other civilian AU leaders are clearly committed to an AU capacity building exercise, regardless of whether it comes at the expense of Darfuri genocide victims. This is also, arguably, the position of the American and Canadian governments.
DAG member Elvir Camdzic, studying reports from the Chinese Xinhua news agency, has found that during an initial period of planning for troop deployments in Darfur NATO offered to send a Rapid Reaction Force to Darfur. At least according to sources in the Lagos, Nigeria, Institute for International Studies. But AU leaders apparently argued that such a move would be a kind of insult to their desire for “African Solutions to African Problems” -in the context of Darfur, the most lethal of slogans –and an indication of “disrespect” for African regimes and their collective military peace-creating forces. The DAG says to those AU leaders using this kind of implicit reverse racism and appeal to Western guilt from the colonialist period: If you want respect, you need to earn it, not just claim it. And you have a long way to go to earn that respect. Meanwhile, you should ask for truly effective aid from wherever you can get it and conquer your obvious fear of confronting strongly your fellow AU member, the Bashir-Taha regime in Sudan.]]
[Student question inaudible on sound track.]
The force now being committed is inadequate, in order to do the mandate even that it's called upon to do, which is to observe and protect [its own monitors]. And there is a certain argument that says that if we're there observing and reporting, that by, as John [Prendergast, ICG staff] was saying earlier on, by [?inaudible] the judicial processes, such as by bringing these people up in front of the ICC or just launching the Sudanese judicial system, that you can attenuate significantly their actions on the ground.
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However, in my estimation, that's a phase down the road from the initial phase of establishing as much as you can an atmosphere of security. But the mandate that they've got now is a mandate of watching people be raped--- "I am standing there and watching it" -- and not being able to intervene. Their authorizations [to use force] are purely in self defense. And that's what they gave us in Rwanda, the Security Council. The three major powers that took the ultimate decision of intervention or not in Rwanda were the Brits, the Americans and the French and they refused us the capabilities of doing it, not only on the ground but also by resources [?].
[[Post-April Dallaire now apparently considers the current mandate in no need of change. Evidence that the AU has ever made such an intervention in a case of directly witnessed crime is hard to come by, however. One might also add that in the United States, at least, one doesn’t need a mandate from anybody to intervene when a crime is being directly witnessed: the practice of “citizen’s arrest” is authorized on the statute books of almost every state. It has been used many times. ]]
So Rwanda is prepared to send a brigade of troops, right now, very effective troops.But unless the African Union gives more weight to the mandate than they've done, they will simply be part of that process. And what's worse is that they could get sucked in to intervening and then ultimately be called upon to stand for their actions which were outside the mandate and then be rebuked for having intervened.
[[An interesting insight into Dallaire’s mentality here. He apparently cannot imagine a situation in which a commander might take responsibility to intervene to stop a genocide against the wishes of his UN bureaucratic superior, and then suffer the “rebuke” and possible dismissal, and the end of his career as a UN or AU employee, in order to avoid disgracing his own sense of a soldier’s duty by failing to protect when it was possible. Shake Hands with the Devil suggests that he was highly reluctant to make such a career-ending—but life-saving -- move in Rwanda, as well.]] And that is the kind of limitations that we have to deal with. That is why we pressure, we argue, for our countries to make the UN produce an effective mandate, and we provide the assets to support the AU and believe that a great statement of the maturity of the AU is to take upon itself to articulate a new mandate and to maneuver, yes, with more determination, [against?] the Government of Sudan.
Yes, it may be a hostile environment to go into. But what's the price of other people and what are the arguments that you could present against it? I mean hundreds of thousands are dying or killed, and millions are displaced, so if we go in without the authority of Sudan, what worse can happen?..Another million? another two million? It the issue ......... what's going to happen? So the argument that [we should] continue to maneuver with and be....[outwitted?]....by the Sudanese government is completely unacceptable and was unacceptable six months ago, when the [UN ] Special Representative who was there eight months ago, who got FIRED because he said intervention was essential, was essential then.
[student question about internation peace force training together, to act as a rapid reaction force. This would nullify arguments of US and others that too few troops are available or that the troops are underprepared to deal with such situations:]
Sometimes I'm convinced that the big powers are quite happy to use the UN as a scapegoat for not doing something, and saying it's ineffective, all the while [themselves] rendering it ineffective.
On the other side, as I argued, I think that sovereign states who are, who have the capability of providing assets and capabilities that are not purely military--- there are humanitarian [capabilities] ,there's nation-building, there's political diplomatic, and human rights, judicial capabilities ---should make to the UN a standing commitment of providing what the UN calls for. Right now we beg and borrow.
When I went into Rwanda, I went on reconnaissance in August [1993], when they signed the peace agreement. I came back for a month. I lobbied inside the UN for the mission. And all the while I begged and borrowed from countries to commit themselves for Rwanda. And nobody wanted to go to Rwanda. It was of no significance. So we ended up with the force we ended up with because nobody wanted to come.
But what has happened in the 90s, which is even worse, is that many in the developed world are abdicating their responsibility to the developing world where the troops don't have the capabilities, they don't have the assets, and as such prove [to be] less than effective forces on the ground. In that circumstance, I totally agree with creating regional capabilities.. One of the proposals in 95 that I was participating in and did win in the General Assembly was creating what was called at the time a “rapid reaction” capability, and what it was: you set up regional centers in which battalions of troops,
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diplomats, and humanitarians go to these centers and work together and do contingency planning and are brought up to speed with the complexities of these missions. And so you build up that capability.
You know, one of the answers we got for not building that capability was that "if we give these [troops in Africa too much training and effectiveness and a modicum of equipment, you might simply be training the next palace guard to conduct a coup.
Four countries in Africa were prepared to send me battalions right off the bat, to reinforce my mission and stop the genocide. They couldn't get there. They didn't have the equipment,although they were trained by Western countries. When we tried to link up equipment with them, the overriding comment that we got from the developed countries that could have provided the equipment was that we don't really want them to have the equipment because we're not sure what they are going to do with it afterwards.
So we treat them as infants and in a highly irresponsible way and say "it's an African problem, so let the Africans solve it. "[[which is, of course, the effective result of Canadian and American policy at the present. 5000 more troops, or a mix of soldiers and police, will certainly not have a resolving effect on the terrorization of populations and the radical diminishing of their cultures. But we will soon be told, of course, that such is in fact the case. Whether it is Pronk or Zoellick or Rice, the announcement of the end of the genocide will be made before October 1st. It has already begun]] We're not allowed to set them up like that. It's...it's...unethical...to create scenarios like that and to use those, depending on what newscast you're in, what argument you're in the political sphere, to be inactive. I don't need excuses four years after. “We're sorry 800,000 people died”: That provides no solace at all to anyone. We certainly don't need it six years after that....seven years after that [referring to 2005, seven years after the apologies made by Clinton and others in 1998,four years after the Rwandan genocide]..in stating that we really can’t go in. We'll call it a genocide, but we really can't go in because we're occupied elsewhere. And we're not ready to put political capital out to create the capability to go in.
So get out there and fight it. And embarrass the decision-making processes in which people can get away with outright crimes against humanity. And I consider it a crime to not intervene, a crime to observe, and report [only]. That's my short answer.
[Applause]
[question from Stanford student...]
I think we gotta set an overarching grantee conference.....[???]
Four years ago, when I decided I'd stay on this earth, I took a perspective of the future in an optimistic spirit inasmuch as in my opinion, it will only take maybe two centuries, so that one day we will not have conflict because of our differences, and that between now and then there will be many setbacks and that millions will die as we try to find exactly those formulas, those instruments. But I believe that fundamentally we will achieve that, I believe that the movement of hum rights, I believe that the momentum is there and that the awareness is there we are not, in conscious hiding from the information that is there, and pertinent. And so right now the nations of the world, the developed world, [allocate] point 7 per cent of their GDP to international development. We're at point 38. [referring to Canada This country [referring to America] is at point 19. Now imagine, point 7 per cent of our GDP to go towards 80 per cent of humanity. And so even if you are a person who is very dominated by your self interest it would seem to me to be a wise decision that if you could go out there and eliminate that rage at its source that your security would be probably be better and you don't have to trip over yourself in eliminating some of the fundamental rights and conventions that exist. And so it is very easy for people to say, “you know , we punched in all this money and it produced nothing, and look, they exploded and we've got to start over again....so what!
When we went into Haiti for the first time, in the 90s, The American forces went in, and then the Canadians took over the mission for the UN afterwards. We were there for two and a half years, and all of a sudden the NGO community says We've been ...........maybe
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it's time to get out because it isn't stable...we don't want to create a dependent state. And so they started to pull out, the UN pulled out, and there was nothing underneath that veneer, and the country went into catastrophic failure, and we're back. By the by, the country has been devastated that much more, people have been killed, there's a lot more suffering. So we're a long way from creating "dependent states"...and we're a long way from neocolonialism. I think we are far more astute. And [today those].....nations are far more astute and far more aware of what is required.
But we can't do it on the cheap. It must be significant, and it must be mainstream, and it must not be a marginal capability, and just like the NGOs, they must move away from being a marginal entity in the argument of politics and humanitarian effort and become a mainstream player in the decision-making in the international comty.
This is the first real test of the new AU. And the troops that are on the ground, some of them are very effective, but exceptionally limited in what they can do. I was with the Rwandan foreign minister the other day and we discussed the deployment of their forces and what they're doing. There have been some successes in certain areas by merely being there. I believe that there are a number of nations in Africa that are very effective and only need support. The Ghanaians, the Senegalese, most of the Nigerians. [[German officers charged with transporting the new Nigerian forces to Darfur have reportedly concluded that these soldiers will not be ready for deployment for a long time]]There are the South Africans who are just starting to look at more and more this type of mission. I think that ECOMOG is doing a reasonable job in Liberia and in the UN force in Sierra Leone.[[A long debate with RD might be undertaken here. Darfuris, with whom he has yet to consult about anything, argue that the key to the Liberian outcome was the presence offshore (with scouting parties onshore) of several hundred American marines. The combination of African and non-African forces was the key, just as is recommended by the ICG for a bridging force. Amity B. Weiss has made a close study of the Sierra Leone case and would certainly argue that many other forces other than UN units were the key to the resolution of the conflict there]]
And so there are precedents that are existing .......but what you can't afford happening is that they get set up for failure. Because it's so fragile. And so it is essential that they be given a mandate that CAN be effective. and that they get the capabilities to do it.
[student question not audibale on track]
[student question inaudible on track, but discussing other conflicts in world]
WE don't pick and choose fights...We have the right to establish, I believe, the leadership of a country that is being set up.....that is nurturing itself into this new era of multiparty systems and trying to adapt democracy and trying to protect moderates to be able to create institutions of the rule of law. In the arenas where despotic abuses still exist....do we support them or...I think that attempting to bring support into those countries is...a million times better than creating sanctions. So the parameters around which the support and the development could be brought into those countries is in fact an area where we have found ourselves to be not particularly effective in judiciously providing or creating accountability for...but all the while the population was suffering. So that's why I think there is enormous potential in the NGOs for taking on a lot of that role. I often am concerned about the IMF and the World Bank and those types of institutional base structures set up. At the last G8 meeting in Canada, Canada asked to create the IMPAD where an African fund was established to build up control and so on and....I'm not sure that the instruments of goverment are necessarily the most effective in order to provide those assets. Nor do they provide continuity very much. But NGOs can.
My foundation supports projects in Africa as an example that are based on religious orders....nuns. The only reason that I do that is because I know there is no waste.
[[The issue is more than waste. RD seems here unaware of how difficult it would be to give aid money to Sudan in such a way that it would benefit anyone but the Khartoum elite and its agents. Sudanese NGOs are certainly the last place to expect any assistance actually delivered to the population:They are staffed entirely with Taha’s security police agents. The willful naiveté of American diplomats who expect to be able to benefit the Sudanese population with aid offers is not an edifying spectacle for this particular taxpayer]]They will be there, always........and they will be consistent
And they are............not the religious dimension, but the...................will continue to develop and build.And some of us will get beaten up and thrown out and so on in the process in those countries. And so what, we will keep on going. This is a Long Term Affair.
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Conflict resolution is a matter of years. As many of us know. Well, we had Dayton and in one year we're going to sort this situation out. We're into processes of decades. Success and failure must be assessed in decades and not in Cartesian political parameters.
[Inaudible student question.]
The research I'm doing now is based on the following: It is my opinion that we need a whole new conceptual basis of conflict resolution, that what we've been doing is adapting the nation-state, Westphalian, classic war, classic peace instruments and we're trying to adapt them to fit these conflicts which are far more complex and far more ambiguous. And what we've done is we've not invented any new lexicon of action verbs to meet these new challenges. I'll give you an example. In the military I spent thirty years with NATO, which is an instrument that we should get rid of [[RD should be asked to justify in detail this recommendation. NATO, after all, intervened in Kosovo to stop a nascent genocide, and did it successfully –even if Kosovo is not exactly a Switzerland today –WITHOUT any authorization from RD’s employer, the United Nations]]and get the Europeans to build their capability. In the thirty years in NATO we all learned action verbs--act, defend, withdraw, and so on. We all knew what it meant. In fact, even the Russians knew exactly what that meant. However, in 1993 when I got my mandate to go into Rwanda, the mandate was" establish an atmosphere of security."
Now, what does "establish" mean? Does it mean that I should be demobilizing both armies, that I defend the country against a third party? Does it mean I watch them? And what's an atmosphere of security? No weapons? Or weapons secured.?
[[One certainly would welcome any more detailed observations from RD regarding this crucial question. The continuing violent incidents, the reports from the few independent NGOs that the camps are becoming centers of unmanageable conflict and cultural decline, and the extraordinary and virtually universal mistrust of the AU, indicate the need for this kind of thing]]
And so the terms that are coming out are terms that seem from the past, that are trying to be put together to give the dipomats and poiticians a sense that they have done something. However, when it comes to the interpretation of that, all the way down to the corporal or the humanitarian, or the diplomat in the field, we find that the analysis is totally wanting, that those terms don't meet the requirements.And that we're operating in vacuums and in ambiguity, and so my argument is that yeah, we gotta reassess the whole conceptual basis of how we make solutions to these complex problems, that if genocide is a great term, but if it means absolutely nothing, then why use it? Why let lawyers and countries argue over NOT doing something because they have a term there that they're fiddling with.
For the spirit of genocide says you intervene. But why go with the spirit if you can argue over all kinds of ways of not doing anything, of not taking risks, of political capital in going in. And it's the same thing with sovereignty. Sovereighnty is now an instrument that is dividing us. And recently I gave a lecture about the complicity of the Catholic and Anglican churches in Rwanda in the genocide, at Boston College. And I ended it with the following:
Will the great religions of our time be instruments of reconciliation of humanity or instruments of conflict? And right now I would say that the jury is out.
And so even in those realms there's an overarching...perspective that's gotta be taken. Versus regional purity vs. national vs. provincial, vs. local.
[.U. of Washington student leading action workshop. Thanks him for mentioning Somalia. "In Oct of 93 when you were sent to Rwanda to make your first assessment, I was sent to Somalia as part of a peacekeeping mission. The guilt and remorse that I felt about that mission prompted me to be here. Four years ago I.......You did many of us a big favor, and you saved lives that you don;t know about
I also want to ask, given that intervention requires troops, and given that most of these students who are dealing with these issues are not going to pursue that commitment in a military way on their campuses, and given that........developments in this country suggest that there will be a decrease in development assistance and an increase in military aid, what do you say to someone who is considering becoming a soldier and how
7
do you feel about the profession of soldiering in general and all it means to make a commitment to that..[Applause]
Dallaire: "I say back home and I'll say it here, there has not been --short of war in the classic sense -- a more significant time to serve than now. For service to the military now is not, in my estimation, is not a service of grand strategic ambitions, but on the contrary, as we move more and more away from the classic warrior, conservative, to the intellectually based warrior and conflict resolver, we are moving towards prevention of conflict, not by the use of force, but by the threat of use of force, the prevention of conflict, and we integrate the security with the humanitarian dimension and the political dimension to provide an atmosphere of security as I described it.
And should catastrophic failure and crisis happen, soldiers are used in order to establish security. We establish a modicum of stability, in the context of permitting the local people to begin to .........[make progress].And so, be you wearing a blue beret, or whatever other instrument or regional responsibility, soldiering today is not anymore being a warrior with the experiential capability to go and beat somebody up. It is a far more sophisticated role.
So if you've got generals who are standing there and saying" I need a clear mandate, I need a clear exit strategy, I need clear objectives”, you tell the general that he's living in the wrong era, because there is nothing that is going to be clear. It's going to be ambiguous and it's going to be complex. And there's no more room for blue-collar soldiering. It's not because of the technology.it's because of the sophistication of the questions and the problems. and the ethical and moral dilemmas they face out there today. and the effects of that.
And so soldiering today is a mixture of a warrior capability to defend and protect mixed with a more intellectually based conflict resolution set of skills that come from [studying] things like anthropology and sociology and philosophy, so that you're not just standing there with a rifle saying do I shoot or not when in fact you're a value added [when you're ] in the alleyway discussing with those people and understanding because you've got more depth and a more disciplined response to be able to help to solve their[problems]
[[I set this in larger type because it is one of the most inspiring and insightful passages. Amity B.Weiss, enrolled in the same Princeton University Army ROTC unit from which I was commissioned, and who was leading the Princeton effort to help Darfur,
was in the audience and was thrilled to hear RD make the case for a humanitarian soldier. She plans a career in humanitarian work, and at this writing is serving with the IRC in Uganda, but she also values highly the managerial and leadership training, and training in military techniques of establishing security, that four years as an officer will give her]]
The era of running around Main Street at 50 miles per hour in an M1 tank waiting for someone to shoot at you is passé. You've got to be in the jeep, in the alleyway, stopping at the café and discussing. That's what modern soldiering is in this era.
[Applause]
Dallaire looks at his watch. Conference organizer Lisa Rogoff thanks him. He sits back down
I say this back home, and I say it to you here, to your campuses and to your other audiences: Those who are serving in uniform today ask two things of their fellow citizens. One: once they are committed to these operations,that they and their families be supported by you individually, and more often than not they are just missions that they are given. And secondly, if they come back in a body bag, or injured, that they and their families be treated with respect and dignity and they don't have to fight another war to live decently.
[[The arguments and assertions that RD made when announcing in April 2005 his repudiation of the policies and actions implied by this inspiring and passionately delivered speech will be analyzed in a separate document. J.W.]
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Tragie Mustafa
Ahmed Al Bashir
Kostawi
bakri abdalla
محمدين محمد اسحق
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست