South Sudan News Agency (Colorado Springs)
July 27 2012
South Sudan: Obama Promised to Prevent Atrocities but Remains Mum As
the People of the Nuba Mountains Starve to Death
by Samuel Totten
An untold number of people (certainly thousands and possibly tens of
thousands) in the Nuba Mountains are suffering severe malnutrition and
many have already begun to perish from starvation. Huddled in mountain
caves and crevasses as they seek security from the ongoing bombings
from Government of Sudan airplanes, the Nuba Mountains people are
resorting to eating insects, weeds, and leaves in a desperate effort
to remain alive. The international response to this latest crisis
instigated by Sudanese President Omar al Bashir, who has been indicted
by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and crimes
against humanity for the atrocities perpetrated in Darfur, Sudan, has
been anemic.
In late January, rumors began circulating that both the United Nations
and the United States were discussing the possibility of establishing
a humanitarian corridor in order to truck foodstuff to the people in
the Nuba Mountains. Purportedly, both the UN and the US approached al
Bashir about such a possibility but he categorically refused to allow
such a corridor to be established. This is exactly what he did in the
early- to mid- 1990s when he, for the first time, purposely withheld
food from the Nuba Mountains people, which resulted in genocide by
attrition. Very few in the world knew about that tragedy, and as a
result al Bashir and his cronies were never held responsible for their
murderous actions. In other words, impunity reigned. (Tellingly, not
ten years later the Sudanese Government carried out another genocide,
this time in western Sudan in a place called Darfur.) And now the
nightmare has started all over again in the Nuba Mountains, but this
time the tragedy has been well documented from its outset.
To allow a dictator, who is an accused genocidare, to dictate to the
UN and US what they can and cannot do in regard to saving thousands,
or more, from imminent starvation is not only ludicrous, it’s
unconscionable.
The time to halt genocide is before it happens. In other words, when
it is evident that crimes against humanity are being perpetrated the
international community must staunch them immediately. When such
crimes are allowed to fester not only does it result in an
ever-increasing number of deaths but it suggests that the killers
enjoy impunity. That, obviously, sends the wrong signal to the
perpetrators. When not held accountable for their actions some
perpetrators are emboldened to kill again and again, all the while
believing that no matter what they do they are above the law.
Standing by and doing little to nothing in the face of genocide is
nothing new to the international community. Indeed, as noted in a book
I recently co-edited, Centuries of Genocide: Essays and Eyewitness
Accounts (New York: Routledge, 2012), the international community
largely stood by and did nothing during the Ottoman Turk genocide of
the Armenians (1915-1919), the Nazi extermination of the Jews during
the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge slaughter of its own people in Cambodia
(1975-1979), the 1994 Hutu genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, and the
1995 Serb slaughter of Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica. Be that as
it may, President Barack Obama promised that his administration would
be more proactive in preventing genocide than previous administrations
had been. In fact, at a talk this past April at the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum during which President Obama announced, and
touted, his administration’s establishment of the Atrocities
Prevention Board, he said: “Last year in the first ever presidential
directive on this challenge, I made it clear that preventing mass
atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a
core moral responsibility of the United States of America.” And yet,
President Obama’s Administration has seemingly taken no action other
than engaging in a lot of diplomatic jibber jabber. And, as a result,
the situation in the Nuba Mountains has slowly but surely morphed,
first, from the forced dispersal of the people of the Nuba Mountains
as a result of Government of Sudan aerial and ground attacks to
malnutrition and, now, from severe malnutrition to starvation or what
Yassir Arman, the Secretary General of the Sudanese Peoples Liberation
Movement-North, has recently referred to as “the imminent starvation
of thousands of people in the Nuba Mountains.”
What is particularly ironic about the Administration’s inaction
vis-à-vis the imminent starvation in the Nuba Mountains is that Ms.
Samantha Power, who, for years, in one magazine article, editorial and
speech after another, berated one U.S. presidential administration
after another for being weak in the face of genocide, now serves as
Obama’s Special Assistant and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs
and Human Rights and the Chair of the newly minted Atrocities
Prevention Board. But, she, like her boss, has largely been silent
about the critical need to stanch the incipient starvation in the Nuba
Mountains. As far as can be ascertained, she has done little to
nothing to urge, prod and cajole Obama to apply sustained pressure on
al Bashir to immediately allow for the implementation of a
humanitarian corridor from South Sudan to the Nuba Mountains.
In a 2001 article entitled “Bystanders to Genocide,” which appeared in
the Atlantic Magazine, Power asked a series of questions aimed at the
administration of Bill Clinton: “Why did the United States not do more
for the Rwandans at the time of the killings? Did the President really
not know about the genocide, as his marginalia suggested? Who were the
people in his Administration who made the life-and-death decisions
that dictated U.S. policy? Why did they decide (or decide not to
decide) as they did? Were any voices inside or outside the U.S.
government demanding that the United States do more? If so, why
weren’t they heeded? And most crucial, what could the United States
have done to save lives?” One has to wonder whether Power, who
certainly has President Obama’s ear, has had the integrity and
gumption to posit the same sort of questions to her boss (or, for that
matter, herself) vis-à-vis the tragedy that has been unfolding in the
Nuba Mountains over the past twelve months.
Indeed, one has to wonder whether Power is better at criticism and
wielding the pen than she is at heeding her own advice. More
specifically, back in 2002 while speaking about the need for
individuals to stand up and be heard whenever genocide rears its ugly
head, she said: “… Unless regular people and not just human rights
people start to identify with upstanders, we’ll always be saying
‘never again’… Instead of marginalizing upstanders as soft and
irrational, we have to send a message that there will be a political
price to be paid for looking the other way” (quoted in Kirst, 2002).
Thus far, instead of being an “upstander” within the Obama
Administration, Power has seemingly been the loyal bureaucrat who does
not, for whatever reason, make waves. In her fiery days as an
“upstander” she would more than likely have deemed such a stance
nothing less than “hypocrisy.”
Also in 2002, while speaking to the graduating class at Swarthmore,
Power said: “How many of us do not believe that the presidents,
senators, bureaucrats, journalists, and ordinary citizens who did
nothing [during the Holocaust years], choosing to look away rather
than to face hard choices and wrenching moral dilemmas, were wrong?
And how can something so clear in retrospect become so muddled at the
time by rationalizations, institutional constraints, and a lack of
imagination? How can it be that those who fight on behalf of these
principles are the ones deemed unreasonable?” Again, one has to
wonder: has Ms. Power asked herself this very question as she sits in
a seat of power in Washington, D.C.?
Quite frankly, President Obama and Ms. Power seem little different
than the presidents and bureaucrats, respectively, who proceeded them;
that is, they, like their predecessors, seem to more readily gravitate
to realpolitk than humanitarian action.
That said, there are two distinct differences between Obama and Power
and their predecessors: first, the former are much more slick in their
effort to appear caring (i.e., saying the “right words” and
establishing this and that job title/position or agency to purportedly
fight genocide); and second, they are far more inclined to pat
themselves on the back for ostensibly being proactive vis-à-vis the
prevention of genocide. But, as we all know, actions speak louder than
words.
For those U.S. citizens who truly care that tens of thousands of
innocent men, women, children and infants are facing imminent
starvation, it is time to stand up and be counted. And in doing so, it
is imperative for them to flood their members of Congress, President
Obama, Ms. Power, and Ms. Hilary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State,
with the demand to act now to establish a way to get food to the
people of the Nuba Mountains.
What we, the people, cannot do, is allow more time to pass without our
voices being heard. For as time passes, the people of the Nuba
Mountains shall continue to die horrific deaths.
Together, we must hold Obama to honor his words and promises, starting
with the following utterance he made at the USHMM at the 2012
Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony: “On this day, and all days, we
must do more than remember. We must resolve that ‘never again’ is more
than an empty slogan. As individuals, we must guard against
indifference in our hearts and recognize ourselves in our fellow human
beings.”
Samuel Totten is a genocide scholar based at the University of
Arkansas, Fayetteville. Over the past two years has conducted research
in the Nuba Mountains. His latest book, Genocide by Attrition, Nuba
Mountains, Sudan (about the genocidal actions of the Government of
Sudan in the 1990s) was published last week by Transaction Publishers.