I was greatly intrigued by this report in yesterday's Observer. It suggest that USAID have deliberately exaggerated the level of violence in Darfur in order to encourage regime change in Sudan. The report is backed up by quotes from anonymous aid workers in Sudan, who claim that they have not observed large numbers of people dying in the refugee camps, and thus hint at US motives for overthrow of the Sudan government being behind the reports.
Even as I wave my anti-Bush flag proudly, I find all this a bit perplexing. The world's leading humanitarian groups have for far too long had to loudly bang the drum demanding action from the international community to stop what is unquestionably government-sponsored ethnic cleansing in one of the world's poorest regions.
The fact is that, like it or not, the UN has, as in the case of Rwanda, found its hands tied by its desire not to offend the offensive within its ranks of supposedly civilised members. Political expediency has led to stagnation. The latest news from the UN is that Kofi Annan is about to establish a Commission of Inquiry which is expected to a further two months to determine whether genocide has indeed taken place.
In the meantime, we have 300 peacekeepers from the African Union patrolling an area the size of France with 50 to 100,000 already suspected dead, and 1.2 million and counting holed up in refugee camps.
While the UN strokes its multitude of chins, the US has been bold enough to declare that what waddles and quacks is indeed a duck, two month enquiry or no two month enquiry. In spite of my sincere wish that it was the UN taking the lead, it is sadly not the case.
And now we find a group of aid workers accusing the Americans of playing politics. Well, according to the Observer we are supposed to accept this analysis on the basis of the testimony of a small number of anonymous people working in the camps. Firstly, who are these people? What do we know of the political axes they may have to grind? Even if we accept that they are well-intentioned whistle-blowers, what is their level of knowledge of what is going on in the villages? Are they in a position to make a valid judgement of the death toll in the villages from their limited perspectives? Or are we being asked to look in the wrong place for those who are playing politics?
Another report came out of Darfur this week from the French Epicentre Group, which has worked together with Médecins Sans Frontières to establish statistically the true extent of the crisis. This study was no focus group - 43% of the estimated 500,000 refugees from West Darfur were questioned. Such studies are obviously very approximate, but the range of 6 to 95 deaths per day per ten thousand people puts the scale of the problem well into "humanitarian disaster" territory, regardless of semantic definitions of the UN's compulsion to act. Even in camps, people continued to die at the rate of 5.6 per ten thousand each day. Worryingly, twenty per cent of these deaths continued to be due to violence.
I would love to think that Darfur is now a land of milk and honey needing no support from outside, but I cannot accept this sudden change in analysis which seems entirely based on a dislike for one's rescuers. In international politics, being in a position to choose one's friends is, like choosing one's enemies, a luxury.
In the absence of will from those who should have learnt the lessons of history, I am loath to put my anti-US interventionist politics before the lives of a large number of innocent people. The United States should be applauded and supported for standing up and being counted on this one. It presents a challenge to the rest of the world to step up to the plate and ensure that there is a multilateral response to this issue.