Some Things Don't Change, But Should

The following is being reprinted in full from an article I wrote at Suite101.com. Why is it so important? Well, the NY Times is getting behind a rougher and tougher peacekeeping operation in Congo. It's nice to know that the Times is ahead of the curve on this issue.

Problem is that peacekeeping is always going to be insufficient to deal with warring factions. Peacemaking is the only way, even if it means taking sides in a conflict. And the side on which the peacemakers should take are the civilians caught in the middle. If it means opening fire on government forces or militias who are causing those civilians harm, the peacemakers must make the defense of civilian populations their prime mission.

And this is where the UN has failed repeatedly over the past decade (indeed, failed for much of its history - choosing to appear neutral, all while civilians are put in harms way or killed because of the UN's need to appear neutral).

Genocide has been repeated throughout history, but it was only in the 20th Century that people became horrified at the results - particularly because of the mechanism by which an entire people could be eliminated from the planet with cold efficiency. Sadly, few want to take the steps to prevent genocide even as it occurs around the world today.

With that in mind, starting with last night's episode and continuing for the next two weeks, PBS is running a series on Auschwitz, which was the most well known of the Nazi death camps. Such horrors were perpetrated there on such a massive scale that it boggles the mind, even to this day.

Among those who participated in the project was Genocide scholar and Africana studies professor Edward Kissi of the University of South Florida. The six-hour PBS/BBC presentation of Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State [also available on DVD), is scheduled to air in the US and Europe beginning Jan. 19, 2005.

I found the first installment of this program intriguing because it approaches the subject from an interesting direction; namely that the problem of genocide isn't confined to the Holocaust or that genocide is a recent phenomenon. The recent phenomenon is that people are horrified by genocide, which can now kill more people more efficiently than ever before.

Auschwitz was only a symbol of the desire to make genocide more efficient and deadly - to kill millions where earlier efforts were considered crude and inefficient by the Nazis (who had tried using mobile trucks to gas victims, special SS units who terrorized areas by shooting victims, and deporting victims into ghettos where they would starve and be worked to death).

Professor Kissi's position in the discussion was to expand on this angle, which is namely that the Holocaust was not a unique situation and it keeps happening as the world looks the other way.

Cambodia. North Korea. Vietnam. Iraq. Rwanda. Congo. Sudan.

All those nations witnessed genocide on a wide scale. Governments sought to eliminate political, social, and economic opponents systematically. In Cambodia, it was the killing fields where more than 2 million died. In North Korea, it is the starvation and imprisonment of political opponents and their families much like the Soviet gulags of the Stalin period. Hundreds of thousands have died in North Korea, all while it seeks nuclear weapons at tremendous cost. Vietnam saw the Communist North wipe out opponents to the Communist takeover, which led to the Vietnamese boatlift. Tens of thousands perished. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein sought to wipe out the Kurds in Northern Iraq and the Shi'ites in Southern Iraq for standing the way of his power and control. At least 300,000 perished in his military campaigns, complete with the use of chemical weapons. Rwanda saw ethnic fighting between rival Hutus and Tutsis lead to the slaughter of at least 800,000 people in 90 days as the world and UN looked on.

Unfortunately, we have not moved on from simply being aghast at the stories after the fact. Nations that have the capability to step in and stop acts of genocide from turning into a killing field are unwilling or unable to do so. International organziations that were established in order to prevent such atrocities from happening again look on in indifference or even silent approval.

What, then, to make of the mess in places like Sudan, Congo, North Korea, or places where genocide may yet visit.

Speeches by important national and worldwide figures isn't enough. President Bush stating that he vows to end tyranny in the world is not enough. It isn't enough because there is tyranny that could be ended with the dispatch of peacemakers to Dafur to stop the genocide there. Note, I say peacemakers, not peacekeepers.

Peacekeeping suggests that there is a will between warring factions to set aside their arms and allow an outside force to patrol and observe that both sides are abiding by the decision to put down their arms. Peacemaking suggests that you have an international (or unilateral) force that is capable of imposing a peaceful resolution to the violence that is ongoing.

In Rwanda of 1994, UN peacekeepers were present and watched the slaughter up close and personally, yet they did not do a damn thing to step in. The soldier in charge of the peacekeepers implored his superiors to do something, but was rebuked. His orders did not allow him to intervene, and in the process hundreds of thousands died.

Indeed, the UN faults itself for not stopping the genocide.

"There was a serious gap between the mandate and the political realities in Rwanda and between the mandate and the resources dedicated to it," Mr.Carlsson told a news conference at UN headquarters in December, referring to the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR). The inquiry concluded that the UN mission had not been planned, deployed or instructed in a way that would have enabled it to stop the genocide. UNAMIR, it said, was also the victim of a lack of political will in the Security Council and by other member states.

"This international responsibility is one which warrants a clear apology by the Organization and by the members states concerned to the Rwandese people," the report says.

The inquiry noted that a number of steps have been taken over the past few years to improve the UN's capacity to respond to conflicts, and specifically to respond to some of the mistakes made in Rwanda.

Sorry to say, but the mistakes made in Rwanda are being repeated in Sudan, as the genocide continues and everyone at the UN walks on eggshells when describing the conditions in Dafur.

They say that atrocities have been committed.
They say that 'acts' of genocide have been committed.

They do not say that genocide is ongoing.

Doing so would invoke and require UN and worldwide action against a member state, and few nations are willing to do that. The US has said that genocide is ongoing, and is assisting an African Union effort to stop the violence, but not much else is being done.

Meanwhile the killing continues.

Technorati: Human Rights, Genocide