Graph Credit: Foreign Policy Magazine, "The Grim Toll of Syria's Violence"

Over the past several days, the international community has worked to increase pressure on the Syrian government as violence continues.

The United Nations (UN) has said that at least 3,500 have been killed over the past eight months as government forces violently target civilians throughout the country.

Report Finds “Gross Violations of Human Rights” in Syria

In a report released today, the Independent International Commission on Syria found that “gross violations of human rights have been committed by Syrian military and security forces since the beginning of the protests in March 2011.”

Commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council, the report expressed concern about documented patterns of “summary execution, arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, torture, including sexual violence, as well as violations of children’s rights.” The report also found that at least 250 children have been killed as a result of the violence.

Read the report (PDF).

UN General Assembly Passes Resolution Condemning Violence by the Syrian Government

Last Tuesday, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution condemning the violence. According to Foreign Policy Magazine’s Turtle Bay blog:

“Not a single Arab country voted against the resolution. Even Sudan backed it.

The resolution was co-sponsored by Turkey, a former ally, and six Arab governments — Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Kuwait and Morocco, which will begin serving as the Arab world’s lone representative on the Security Council. Egypt, which had initially urged governments to oppose the resolution, ultimately voted in favor.”

The resolution is non-binding, but represents a political victory. The UNGA resolution demonstrates that the vast majority of the international community supports action against the Syrian regime. Additionally, the resolution highlights the efforts of regional actors to further increase political and economic pressure.

Meeting of the Arab League

Arab League Imposes Sanctions on Syria

Yesterday, the Arab League approved sanctions against the Syrian government. Despite signing an agreement with the regional body several weeks ago, Syria has failed implement key provisions. The regime has failed to cease attacks on civilians and has prevented Arab League observers gaining access.

The sanctions halt transactions with Syria’s central bank, impose an embargo on investments, freeze Syrian government assets, and ban government officials from traveling to member states. Some details still need to be worked out, including exceptions to lessen negative impacts on the Syrian people and a ban on all flights into Syria from Arab nations.

Russia Sends Warships to Its Syrian Military Base

This morning it was announced that Russia is sending warships to its base in Syria. According to news sources, a navy spokesman “confirmed that the Russian warships would head to the maintenance base Russia keeps on the Syrian coast near Tartus but said the trip had nothing to do with the uprising against Assad.”

There is some speculation that the move is an attempt by Russia to protect its interests in the region, including millions of dollars in weapons sales to the Syrian regime. Russia has been a troubling influence and has continued to support the regime both politically and economically. Last month, Russia was joined by China in vetoing a resolution at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that would have imposed sanctions.

Up Next: Action at the UN Security Council

Despite last month’s failure to adopt UNSC sanctions, it is anticipated that there will be another push to pass a resolution. This effort is bolstered by the UNGA resolution and an explicit request for UNSC action by the Arab League.

However, challenges remain. It’s worth noting that four key UNSC members abstained from the UNGA resolution: China, India, Russia and South Africa. Given the Arab League’s call for action, China would seem unlikely to cast a vote against future UNSC resolutions on Syria. Support from India and South Africa would be politically helpful, but neither country has the veto power that would be required to block a resolution.

This leaves Russia, which has already served as an enabler of the regime. Unfortunately, it seems likely that Russia will continue to play a problematic role and would be willing to exercise its veto power once again to prevent the UNSC from taking action.

Thousands of activists in 14 countries around the world and in New York, LA, and Washington, DC gathered on September 19^th for a global day of action for Sudan.  Activists urged world leaders to support a timely, free and fair execution of the referendum scheduled for January 2011 in accordance with the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement and sent a powerful signal to the international community that people care about ensuring a peaceful future for Sudan.

New York:

The activities in New York began with a viewing and discussion of “Darfurian Voices,” a project by 24 Hours for Darfur documenting interviews with Darfuris in refugee camps.

Viewing "Darfurian Voices" / Photo by Martha Bixby

Discussing "Darfurian Voices" / Photo by Martha Bixby

We then rallied in front of the UN headquarters alongside Darfuris and Southern Sudanese who had traveled to New York from all over the east coast to challenge President Obama and other leaders at the U.N. General Assembly to take responsibility for ensuring justice and respect for human rights in Sudan.

Rallying at the United Nations / Photo by Martha Bixby

Click here to view the embedded video.

Activists and Sudanese diaspora members then moved onto Lincoln Center to participate in Stand Up Against Poverty, an event aimed at calling attention to the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. The concluding portion focused on Sudan and featured dancing and music, which drew quite a crowd!

Sudanese dancers at Stand Up / Photo by Martha Bixby

Sudanese musicians / Photo by Martha Bixby

A global drumming circle was also part of the day’s events, and the drum beats were meant to “send a warning cry” about the risk of conflict in Sudan and the need for leaders to work together and develop concrete actions for the region.

Drumming Circle / Photo by Kim Howell

We also rallied at the U.N. on Friday the 24^th, just before President Obama met with other world leaders in a special summit on Sudan.  Once again, the activists demonstrated their passion and desire for justice with chanting, singing, and protesting for action to be taken in Sudan.

Protest at the United Nations before the 9/24 meeting on Sudan / Photo by Martha Bixby

Los Angeles:

Photo courtesy of I-ACT

On the west coast, i-ACT hosted the launch of the MY HOME, an art exhibition featuring pieces by Darfuri children who have been forced from the homes they know to live in a new one: a refugee camp.

"Please stop, we are children" / Photo courtesy of I-ACT

“During our visits to the camps, we are surrounded by children saying ‘HALLO,’ reaching for our hands, and hoping we will take a photo of them. Many have given us drawings and asked us to share their story with the world. They truly believe that if people see their pictures and hear their stories, that the genocide will end and they will be able to return home.”

"UN Convention on the Rights of the Child" / Photo courtesy of I-ACT

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video courtesy of I-ACT.

The event gave attendees opportunities to take action,

Attendees lending their voices to the Global Day message / Photo courtesy of I-ACT

and featured musical performers, including Taylor Hanson.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video courtesy of I-ACT.

Washington, DC:

Global Day activities continued in DC with a special edition of the Darfur Interfaith Network‘s monthly vigil outside the Sudanese Embassy.

Protesting in front of the Sudanese embassy / Photo courtesy of Martha Boshnick

Standing with the people of Darfur / Photo courtesy of Martha Boshnick

United Nations Headquarters in New York City

Jimmy Mulla, president of Voices for Sudan, sent a memo yesterday to world leaders in New York City this week, encouraging them to use “an all-Sudan approach” while discussing how to tackle the current crises in Sudan at the September 24^th U.N. Summit on Sudan. The memo, addressed to President Barack Obama and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, and Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kenya Ambassador Zachary D. Muburi-Muita, outlines four areas of concern:

• Regarding the Abyei Area, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile: Under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, Abyei will hold a referendum on being part of the north or south, yet Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile are entitled to a vaguely-defined “popular consultation” regarding the CPA’s implementation. This ambiguity may diminish the people of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile’s power to influence the final agreement.
• Regarding Eastern Sudan: The Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement has not been fully implemented, which has effectively marginalized some groups. VSF implores Summit participants to “seize the opportunity to ensure that human rights abuses and the political, social and economic marginalization of the Beja People in Eastern Sudan are improved so that a return to sustainable economic development, peace and security is realized. In doing so, humanitarian aid workers and other relief and development organizations should be allowed free and safe access to the Beja areas to help the population.”
• Regarding Nubia Region: Dam construction is threatening populations and several areas of historical importance.
• Regarding Justice and Accountability: Both are essential for an enduring peace in Sudan. Thus, VSF urges world leaders to push for the enforcement of the outstanding ICC arrest warrants for those who have committed (and continue to commit) crimes in Sudan.

“The situation in Sudan remains fragile and a return to war would be a humanitarian disaster of massive proportions, potentially displacing millions of people in all parts of the country, North-South-the three contested areas, Darfur, Eastern Sudan and further destabilizing the region,” Mulla warns.

Activists in Melbourne, Australia beat their drums for Darfur. Uploaded on September 18, 2006 by The Lab.

The first Global Day for Darfur occurred on September 17, 2006, in concurrence with the sixty-first meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. The violence in Darfur was at its peak, and the united demands of activists around the world helped ensure that the genocide in Darfur did not go unnoticed. Since that pivotal September day, other Global Days have had similar results. In December 2006, one was planned to highlight rape and sexual violence in Darfur. On April 29, 2007 a third Global Day for Darfur called for the immediate deployment of a peacekeeping force to Darfur. More recently, in January and April of 2010, Global Days took place across the world once again, marked by the constant beat of drumsas famous and novice musicians alike played their drums for Darfur. Throughout their history, Global Days have served as a constant reminder that no individual or organization in the activist community for Sudan is alone.

The fight for peace and justice in Sudan is a battle fought by Irish, Dutch, Kenyans, and many other activists from every corner of this vast planet. Only by standing together can we ever hope to achieve the many goals for Sudan. Global Days allow us to do so, uniting our hopes and desires for a better future in Sudan.

Stay Posted. Further information regarding the upcoming events will be sent out as the big day approaches. All are welcome, and All are needed. If you wish to plan your own Global Day please let us know!

One of our mobile billboards in downtown Pittsburgh

If you can read this you can save lives in Sudan.

That was the message that we brought to world leaders in New York at the U.N. General Assembly and in Pittsburgh at the G20 summit last month.  We also brought them your messages – your reminders in photos and petitions to those world leaders: Don’t Forget Darfur.

Take a moment to check out what we accomplished together:

During our street actions in New York we delivered your 45,383 petition signatures to Special Envoy to Sudan General Scott Gration. In the short program before the Darfur/Darfur exhibit began, General Gration told the crowd:

“And this letter that I’ve got from you all is very important. I’ll make sure that the President gets this, and that he understands the concern that America has to solve this problem in a very expeditious way; a concern that we’ll see in these pictures… What you’re doing is so important to bring the visibility and the pressures to bear, so that we can take the appropriate actions in Darfur to make a difference in the lives of people who deserve this and a lot more.”

—Special Envoy to Sudan General Scott Gration

In Pittsburgh, President Obama drove by our street teams—and waved at our activists holding signs along the route to the G20 opening dinner.  Also in Pittsburgh we held a live webcast policy briefing on “Sudan and the G20: what the world’s richest countries can do.”  In combination with our TV ads, print and billboard ads these actions reminded world leaders that they can all save lives in Sudan.

Check out what we accomplished together during our United Nations and G20 “Don’t Forget Darfur” campaign by taking a few minutes to see our TV and print ads, policy briefing, photos of our street actions, and our new “Don’t Forget Darfur” video on YouTube.

Our efforts to promote peace, however, cannot be limited to defeating violent extremists for the most powerful weapon in our arsenal is the hope of human beings, the belief that the future belongs to those who would build and not destroy, the confidence that conflicts can end and a new day can begin.

And that is why we will support — we will strengthen our support for effective peacekeeping while energizing our efforts to prevent conflicts before they take hold. We will pursue a lasting peace in Sudan through support for the people of Darfur and the implementation of the comprehensive peace agreement so that we secure the peace that the Sudanese people deserve.

Save Darfur Coalition president Jerry Fowler said he was encouraged by President Obama’s words, but that concrete actions were necessary to end the crisis in Sudan:

Save Darfur is pleased that President Obama used his UN speech to reiterate his determination to pursue a lasting peace in Sudan. But, now he must turn these words into action by building an international coalition to apply incentives and pressures to push Khartoum to end the conflict in Darfur and fully implement the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The President should use the opportunity presented by the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh to encourage the world’s richest countries to leverage their economic influence to ensure that Khartoum’s debt is not forgiven until it makes concrete and lasting progress toward ending insecurity and instability in Darfur and throughout Sudan. The Save Darfur Coalition looks forward to the release of the administration’s long-overdue Sudan policy review, which we hope will outline the administration’s specific plan for achieving lasting peace in Sudan.

We’ll have a full write-up of the event tomorrow, but we wanted to make sure we got a few shots up ASAP:

Right now, Save Darfur street teams are fanned out across midtown Manhattan promoting the exhibit and talking with people about the situation in Sudan. If you want to help out you can come by the Starbucks on Park Avenue near 42nd Street.

Muammar Qaddafi

Colonel Muammar Qaddafi will trek to New York City this week to participate in the opening of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) – his first appearance at UNGA in his forty year rule of Libya. Columnists have been speculating for weeks, especially after the return of the Lockerbie bomber, on what the ever-enigmatic Qaddafi will say during his address and whose hands he will (be allowed to) shake.  Despite causing a controversy almost every time he speaks about African or Middle East politics, his about-face in 2003 on weapons of mass destruction restored his good graces in Washington and the allure of Libyan oil contracts assures his amenability to most European leaders.

Libya’s involvement in Sudanese affairs, and the Darfur crisis particularly, rarely make much news in the American press.  There is a possibility of course that Qaddafi will say something truly outrageous about Sudan during his UN address that will make headlines.  Speaking on the same day as President Obama and Iranian President Ahmadinejad, the threshold though for significant news coverage will be high.  Then again, claiming as he did last month that Israel is behind all of Africa’s conflicts – including Darfur – may grab him some serious ink.

While many see such a ludicrous statement as Qaddafi just being his regular abhorrent anti-Semite self, other previous comments by the Libyan leader on Darfur begin to reveal a much more sinister role for the Libyan leader.  Two years ago, for instance, speaking at the opening of a short-lived round of negotiations in Tripoli between the Sudanese government and the Darfuri rebels, Qaddafi said:

“You might laugh if I say that the main reason of this issue [Darfur] is a camel…Africa has thousands of issues – they are about water, about grass – and Africa is divided into 50 countries, and the tribes are divided amongst so many countries, although they belong to each other.  The problem we are having now is that we politicize such problems between tribes.”

His seemingly innocent remarks actually affirm President Omar al-Bashir’s standard excuse that the Darfur crisis is merely a tribal conflict that escalated because of foreign intervention.  Perhaps we should expect this message-consistency from two authoritarian leaders (and neighbors) who collectively have tightly held their grips on power for sixty years as of this summer.   But there is more that Qaddafi hides from these remarks and his other comments on Darfur and the politics of Sudan.

To start, Qaddafi serves as an originator of the guns and ideology of the janjaweed.  As Alex de Waal has written:

In the 1980s, Colonel Qaddafi dreamed of an ‘Arab belt’ across Sahelian Africa. The keystone was to gain control of Chad, starting with the Aouzou strip in the north of the country. He mounted a succession of military adventures in Chad, and from 1987 to 1989, Chadian factions backed by Libya used Darfur as a rear base, provisioning themselves freely from the crops and cattle of local villagers….Many of the guns in Darfur came from those factions. Qaddafi’s formula for war was expansive: he collected discontented Sahelian Arabs and Tuaregs, armed them, and formed them into an Islamic Legion that served as the spearhead of his offensives. Among the legionnaires were Arabs from western Sudan, many of them followers of the Mahdist Ansar sect, who had been forced into exile in 1970 by President Nimeiri. The Libyans were defeated by a nimble Chadian force at Ouadi Doum in 1988, and Qaddafi abandoned his irredentist dreams. He began dismantling the Islamic Legion, but its members, armed, trained and – most significant of all – possessed of a virulent Arab supremacism, did not vanish. The legacy of the Islamic Legion lives on in Darfur: Janjawiid leaders are among those said to have been trained in Libya.

…In 1987, returnees from Libya took the lead in forming a political bloc known as the Arab Alliance. At one level, the Alliance was simply a political coalition that aimed to protect the interests of a disadvantaged group in western Sudan, but it also became a vehicle for a new racist ideology. The politically insignificant racist epithets of earlier times began to take on an alarming tinge in Darfur. The Alliance also latched onto the dominant ideology of the Sudanese state, the very different Arabism of Nile Valley. The war in Darfur at the end of the 1980s was more than a conflict over land: it was the first step in constructing a new Arab ideology in Sudan.

While Qaddafi introduced weaponry and ideology to Darfur in the 1980s, President Bashir and his National Congress Party were the ones to seize upon these assets and set Darfur ablaze in 2003.  One might, given his history in Darfur, expect that Qaddafi subsequently supported the genocidal counterinsurgency coordinated by Khartoum.  But the motives and objectives behind Libya’s policies towards Sudan since 2003 have been much more difficult to interpret and understand.

On the face of it, Qaddafi has presented himself as a peacemaker.  As the International Crisis Group writes, “While consistently opposing an international force in Darfur, it has hosted at times Darfur rebel and tribal leaders as well as government delegations.”  Rumors also abound that Qaddafi has provided Darfuri rebels with critical supplies of arms and financing.  Another ICG report concludes:

Libya has played a highly significant, albeit inconsistent, role in Darfur since the conflict began, culminating in its function as host of the peace talks. At various times it has shown a significant ability to influence all rebel groups and push them toward participation in a broader political process. Simultaneously it has given the NCP diplomatic cover to resist international pressure and efforts to strengthen the peacekeeping operation. As elsewhere in Africa, Libyan actions have been motivated in part by Qaddafi’s desire to be a powerful regional player and mediator but the proximity of the conflicts in Chad and Darfur and their domestic impact have triggered a more sustained effort than elsewhere.

And with the reunification of six Darfuri rebel groups in Tripoloi last month, Qaddafi is once again deeply involved in the currently stalled peace process.  For these efforts, U.S. Special Envoy Scott Gration even publicly praised Libya’s contributions to the peace process recently.

Given this history, if Qaddafi does mention Darfur or Sudan in his address to UNGA, be sure to consider the historical context.  The U.S. has no choice but to engage Libyan officials as it pushes for the resumption of peace talks in Doha.  As a neighbor to Sudan and with significant clout over certain rebel leaders, Libya will be involved one way or another.  At the same time, the international community should not count on the mercurial Qaddafi to support unwaveringly a push for peace.  The AU/UN Chief mediator Djibril Bassolé, supported by the U.S. and other key countries, should claim this responsibility.

And if Qaddafi – with his trademark, megalomaniacal righteousness – does choose again to place all the blame for Darfur on external forces, someone should ask him:

• Who supported a coup attempt against the Sudanese government in 1976?
• Who funded the Southern Sudanese rebels against Khartoum from 1983 to 1985?
• Who switched sides and supported a new government brought to power via coup in 1985?
• And then who began talks about unification plans (Sudan and Libya) with Bashir after the Sudanese leader seized power in his own coup in 1989?

The answer, of course, to these stories for another day is the one and only Colonel Qaddafi.