Former UN Sudan Chief sounds the genocide alarm in two Sudanese States

(Vatican Radio) Ten years from the start of the genocide in the Sudanese region of Darfur, a book is being launched that chronicles the author’s struggle to bring the humanitarian catastrophe to the attention of global leaders.

Entitled “Against A Tide of Evil”, the book is by Mukesh Kapila, former UN Chief for Sudan and professor of global humanitarian affairs at Manchester University .

Speaking to Vatican Radio’s Linda Bordoni, Professor Kapila explains that the book focuses particularly on his traumatic year as UN coordinator in Sudan where he arrived in 2003 hopefully to oversee peace-building after a long internal war there, but found himself grappling with the suffering in Darfur.

It also raises the alarm that ethnic cleansing continues to be perpetrated in other Sudanese regions where hundreds of thousands of people, bombed out of their villages and farms, have been cut off from international humanitarian relief since the outbreak of hostilities between the Sudanese government and opposition groups in June 2011.

Listen to the interview…

Professor Kapila explains that the book stems from his own life experiences and focuses on the situation in Darfur ten years ago, however it also touches on the experiences he had witnessing the genocide in Rwanda 10 years previously as well as his experiences in Srebrenica, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan.

The focus – he says – is on his efforts to grapple against the crimes against humanity in Darfur, but “the journey begins in locations in many other places”.

Kapila says he knew what was going on from day one. When he got to Sudan in April 2003 “the evidence soon became clear that what was going on was an orchestrated ethnic cleansing attempt, masterminded by the government of Al Bashir in Khartoum, targeted against tribes of black African ethnic origin, and it met all the criteria of ethnic cleansing, in other words the violence was directed at going away with a group of people and their way of life, on a permanent basis, exterminating them”.
“When I brought that evidence to the attention of world leaders”, he says “such as Kofi Anan who was Secretary General at the United Nations at the time, and to other senior leaders in the UN system, as well as members of the Security Council, like the British government, as well as the French, the Americans and so on, it soon became clear that this was not the kind of information that wanted to hear at that moment in time, because the world was grappling with Iraq and many other issues”.

Also, he says the fact that at that moment a peace process was going on between Khartoum and Juba, and it was felt that the suffering and the violence in Darfur may have endangered the peace process. So, he continues, he was told there were other and more important things to do at the time.

So Professor Kapila decided to go beyond the leaders – who had other concerns at heart – and speak to the media. And that was when the story became well known and the Security Council was forced to act. “As soon as people became aware that there was a place called Darfur where terrible atrocities were being perpetrated, and that this was the first genocide of the millennium a lot of activists, civil society and celebrities got into action.”

However – says Professor Kapila - “it was somewhat too little, somewhat too late, because by then the ethnic cleansing was complete”. So even though after Rwanda we had heard “never again” etc., we were presiding over the 1^st genocide of the century.

A very important message of the book is that although the primary responsibility for the genocide lies with those who masterminded, organized and carried it out, those in charge of institutions charged with the responsibility to prevent and protect are almost equally guilty. We live in the global media age and Kapila says: “the tragedy is, that even as atrocities were unfolding in Darfur, we were able to document and gather information that was not available for example at the time of the Rwanda genocide ten years previous to that, so the fact that we did not know what was going on cannot be used as an alibi for inaction”.

“I strongly believe that those who stood by and did nothing are almost as equally culpable of those who pulled the trigger or did the stabbing”.

He says that unless the accountability of those who stood by and did nothing is properly acknowledged – at least in historical terms – the chapter cannot be closed. And the book – he says – is all about accountability at all levels. “Because if you don’t have accountability, then these kinds of atrocities will continue to happen again and again”.

And speaking of his recent return visit to the region, in particular to the Blue Nile State, the Nuba Mountains and very close to the Darfur border, Kapila says he was appalled to see the violence of Darfur is not just being replicated, but is even more intense because in the intervening years the government of Sudan has become richer, and has armed itself with modern warfare and is currently perpetrating the same kind of violence as that perpetrated in Darfur ten years ago.

So we have not just the impunity for what happened, but the fact that the perpetrators were allowed to get away with it has emboldened them to repeat what they were doing in the other regions as well.

Kapila speaks positively of the indictment of the President by the International Criminal Court and acknowledges that it is not easy to apprehend a presiding leader in a foreign country and he does not advocate revolutionary actions. However, he mentions the possibility of economic, diplomatic, trade sanctions that may reduce the means with which he wages war on his own people, and “to turn up the pressure on him, may help bring political change in Sudan”.

“So while these things are going on , resistance is mounting and it is only a matter of time for change to come, but my concern is that along the way there is more suffering to come and we must ensure that we stay in solidarity with the people who are suffering”.

The book he says, intends to be a wake-up call that should move readers to action. “Ordinary citizens all over the world have a responsibility to take an interest in what is done in their names by their governments: both acts of omission as well as acts of permission”.

It is for citizens to come together and promote positive change with all the means we have at our disposal and make sure the wrongs are righted. So it is a call for all citizens to call to account their leaders who act or don‘t act in their particular names, and by doing that I hope the world will become a better a more just place”.

Mukesh Kapila’s book, “Against A Tide of Evil” is available at major bookshops and on order through Amazon.