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Talk Nation Radio for April 24, 2007

Peace versus Oil in Sudan and Darfur

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Groups like the Save Darfur Coalition have been working hard to get the Khartoum Government of Sudan to agree to all of the terms of the latest UN Security Council plan; peacekeeping forces consisting of UN and African Union members as well as attack helicopters. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte is also pushing for the helicopters and it seems Sudan will allow them in. But even as the agreements were lauded in the corporate press Sudan attacked rebel sites in Darfur by air using it’s own helicopters. What are the pros and cons of military intervention and why don’t rights groups want to take a closer look at oil industry influences?

James A. Paul, Executive Director of Global Policy Forum issues a warning about intervention in the absence of a political agreement and notes that one needs to take state actors and oil developers into consideration where any military solution is devised. He goes over some of the history of the region to note where similar processes have taken place.

David Morse is co-host. He is author of numerous articles on Darfur and resource wars in the region. His web page featuring information about Darfur is at:
http://david-morse.com/

Welcome to Talk Nation Radio, a half hour discussion on politics, human rights, and the environment. Our guests this time are Lynn Fredriksson, Africa Advocacy Director at Amnesty International USA, and Helene Caux of UNHCR, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. Her area of concern is Sudan, Chad, Darfur and the Central African Republic.

Total Running Time: 29:42 music fades at .22

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We turn first to Lynn Fredriksson in Washington, D.C.

Dori Smith: Lynn: welcome to Talk Nation Radio.

Lynn Frederiksson: Thank you Dori.

Dori Smith: Let me ask you first about what is happening in South Eastern Chad now. We’ve had Matthew Conway from UNHCR the United Nations High Commission on Refugees on the program to report on a massacre there. How should the international community be responding to this news?

Lynn Fredriksson: Thank you. We are very glad that we are able to talk about Chad today because we believe from our reporting in recent months that what we are seeing in Chad is a repetition, a recreation of the horrors that have been perpetrated on the people of Darfur. What we have seen in recent months is that there has been an increase in violence cross-border from Darfur into Chad and also by Chadian groups against the civilian population.

Dori Smith: They are also evidently burning villages. We have heard reports out of Chad of mass graves, again there are humanitarian aid organizations in there. What can Amnesty do and what can Amnesty International’s many supporters do at this juncture?

Lynn Fredriksson: There have been recent reports and Amnesty has been as well reporting on the massacres in Tiero and Marena in Eastern Chad. The mass graves have also been reported. The problem is that we can’t accurately gauge the number that have been killed because people were buried very quickly due to decomposition of bodies. The estimates, however, according to Andrew Natsios as one source, he is our special envoy from the President (President Bush’s special envoy for Darfur) to Sudan are between two and four hundred people in that particular area at this time.

What Amnesty and other concerned citizens can do at this point is call for a number of things from our government. President Bush has been very consistently supporting action to bring peace to the people of Darfur. We want to make sure that the US Government places as much attention on the people of Chad and what they are suffering there. We are talking about perhaps 130,000 displaced Chadians now as well as about 200,000 displaced Darfuris in Eastern Chad. Chadians are actually moving into Darfur to seek protection, the terrible irony of the situation.

What we can do is we can call for a speedy implementation of a hybrid force that combines United Nations peacekeepers with African Union peacekeepers in Darfur. We can also call for the US to actively support a UN Security Council Resolution that authorizes not only troops in Darfur but also peacekeepers in Eastern Chad. On top of that we want to make sure our funding levels stay sufficiently high to support these eventual humanitarian operations and the peacekeepers themselves.

Dori Smith: What about the Government of Chad? It has been serving that role to a certain extent according to UNHCR.

Lynn Fredriksson: The sad part of that is that for us is that we have been in conversations as Amnesty with the Government of Chad officials in Washington and until very recently they were very supportive of the United Nations coming into Eastern Chad because they freely admitted they didn’t have the security capacity to provide civilian protection to their own civilians or the Darfuri refugees inside their borders.

However recently, President Deby has changed that position and he is now only inviting a police presence and not the United Nations peacekeepers. And this has to change. So we need to find ways to encourage President Deby to allow those peacekeepers into Eastern Chad. This is essential.

Dori Smith: Lynn what is China’s role at this time and has that role been shifting?

Lynn Fredriksson: Actually it has. It’s a fascinating situation. Amnesty International in the fall decided that we would focus a lot of energy on promoting Arab League assistance in this matter to get the Arab League countries to work with their ally Khartoum to encourage them to allow in UN peacekeepers. And I just want to step back one minute and describe why that’s required: In UN Security Council Resolution 1706, which initially authorized the United Nations to go into Darfur at the end of August last year there was a provision that invited Sudan’s consent to that peacekeeping presence. And President Bashir in Khartoum has been creating obstacles to that, to the implementation of that ever since.

Now Arab League, China, Russia, economic and political partners of Khartoum are very important because they can use their more significant influence than perhaps the US even has to encourage President Bashir to actually allow those peacekeepers in. China initially abstained from the UN Security Council Resolution 1706 but over the months that followed Kofi Annan created a compromise agreement with Khartoum and international partners to allow in what’s called a hybrid force. So the African Union peacekeepers currently there would be supplemented by United Nations peacekeepers. That agreement was made in principle with Khartoum.

Since then the President of China has gone to Khartoum and Chinese diplomats have much more consistently been publicly stating that they want to see implementation of that agreement and that they want Khartoum to be flexible in doing that. And just over the last couple of days we saw what we are hopeful is a positive shift in Khartoum’s position that might be a result of Chinese influence to at least some degree and that is that they have agreed to the second phase of a three phase implementation of that hybrid peacekeeping force.

Dori Smith: Now the hybrid peacekeeping force, in what way would that be different from other peacekeeping units that have gone into the region. In fact, there was an incident recently where some five members of the peacekeeping force were killed. Just talk about first of all what their orders would be. Do they have authority to use deadly force and what kind of pressure they might be under.

Lynn Fredriksson: Right. Well currently this is an African Union peacekeeping force that does not have a sufficient mandate to adequately protect civilians. There are about 7,000 troops over an area the size of about France or Texas so it’s a minimal force to begin with, they don’t have an adequate mandate, they haven’t received sufficient funding or logistical or other types of support. So I think that they have done the best they could under the circumstances but their presence has been woefully inadequate to protect civilians.

For instance, women have been on the front lines of a lot of this violence because when they are in the camps or the settlements for displaced persons they have been the ones to take the risk to go out to collect water or firewood. And that has been a conscious decision on the part of the women in their communities because if the men go out the likelihood is that the Janjaweed militias might kill them. But if the women go out, sadly, the sacrifice is that they would be raped but perhaps not killed. The African Union has been creating patrols around these camps and settlements which has been somewhat effective in decreasing the level of violence in Darfur but they haven’t been fully successful and clearly given the devastation in Darfur and what’s now going on in Chad what we need is a much more highly mandated force with the command and control, the logistical support, the intelligence, the communications, and so forth, that the United Nations would bring. And what has been authorized is approximately 20,000 United troops to come in and work with the African Union for that to be implemented. We are only in phase one of that implementation process which means that less than a thousand people are currently on the ground in Darfur for the United Nations. The African Union peacekeepers remain.

Dori Smith: When it comes to the Bush administration what does it mean that they have initiated the set up of this AFRICOM force? Would that force be involved? Is that something that you have looked at? I mean if peacekeepers go in and a UN-led operation is underway is it possible that the AFRICOM force will get involved?

Lynn Fredriksson: I don’t know the answer to that question because it’s in the very first stage of the implementation. I don’t know what the United States will do in relation to that new body, however, the U.S. has been contributing financial support and in kind support regarding the building of camps, logistical support, communications, and transportation, and that type of thing. We are highly unlikely to contribute any troops so that’s a partial answer to the question.

Dori Smith: Just this morning NPR announced a policy initiative raised by Sen. Joe Biden that he was calling for the “use of force” in the region. Have you heard that?

Lynn Fredriksson: I had understood that something like that would be introduced. Yeah. Amnesty International wants to see implementation of a successful and effective peacekeeping force with consent from Sudan. The majority of the international community would like to see that as well. The reasons for that are not that we are not interested in responsibility to protect; we are devoted to responsibility to protect civilians. However, when you go in without consent you risk injuring further civilians, you risk violating the principle of ‘do no harm’ and there could be the possibility of inciting further fighting. –I don’t know. I have not yet seen the piece of legislation that you are referring to in its introduced form so I can’t comment on that specifically. But we are interested in getting the United Nations in there and we think that we have made progress in that direction and we would like to continue on that track.

Dori Smith: We are speaking with Lynn Fredriksson. She is Advocacy Director for Africa at Amnesty International USA. She is based in Washington, D.C. Lynn describe the violence that’s going on in Darfur right now.

Lynn Fredriksson: There has been a minor lull in Darfur violence over the last couple of months due to a couple of things. One is that a large number of people have already been displaced; another is that the Governments of Chad and Sudan until the last couple of days when the Chadian Military apparently inadvertently attacked Sudanese Military officials, there had been a cease-fire or a cessation of hostilities between them. There has also been conferencing going on between rebel groups. All of these factors have contributed to a slight lull, however, that said what we are talking about is mass displacement over the past four years, 2.5 million people have been displaced in an educated estimate, and approximately well several hundred thousand people have been killed, it’s very hard to gauge that accurately.

In North Darfur we have seen aerial bombardments which have targeted as well as inadvertently targeted civilian population that the Government of Sudan and the Jajanweed militias believed to have been supportive of local rebel groups. In Western Darfur we have seen an utter decimation, a scorched earth policy implemented where the majority of the population has been displaced and villages flattened. In South Darfur what we have seen is a different situation where rebel groups have been fighting one another and civilians have been caught in the crossfire and sometimes intentionally targeted. And I do want to mention that even though the vast majority of the human rights violations have been committed by the Government of Sudan or its proxy Janjaweed militias, the rebel groups have also been responsible for targeting civilians and for the commission of human rights violations in Darfur.

Dori Smith: Let me ask you about aid programs. We did hear a lecture on campus at the University of Connecticut delivered by Brad Clift, he is an international photographer, well known, and he went into Darfur some years ago. (in 2005) He was kidnapped, held for fifteen days, he was actually tortured, and Brad Clift explained that there was a tremendous amount of secrecy, pressure not to come into Darfur, not to report on the atrocities and what was going on there; his evidence of what he saw which was burning villages, destruction that was not being reported at the time. Just talk about how that presents difficulties for human rights organizations in both reporting the violence and also helping to bring aid in which is really a great part of what you do is to call attention to the need and then hopefully aid is forthcoming.

Lynn Fredriksson: It’s created enormous difficulties for the provision of aid. Many humanitarian operational organizations have been providing the functional assistance to the vulnerable populations of Darfur. I can’t overestimate the importance of their activities. But the Government of Sudan has created intentional road blocks at times in both media and to human rights and humanitarian workers in Darfur by creating problems with their travel documents and so forth. They have also sadly, and intentionally targeted at times the humanitarian workers, the humanitarian workers have also been subject to abuses in the region. What we have seen as a result is that some 130,000 Darfuris may be so far from humanitarian support that they are not receiving any basic assistance. We need to keep funding levels up for these humanitarian operations through the international NGO bodies. We need to keep pressure on Sudan through the international community to insure that access to both groups, to the refugee camps will open, to anyone who is not able to be in the camps or settlements, is unhindered.

If I could I would just like to for a moment read a brief testimony from someone who has been a refugee from Darfur who is currently in Chad. This is a woman from Koloy. She was raped outside of the displacement site. And I think this gives a better idea than perhaps the numbers do of what it’s really like to be in Darfur or Chad as a civilian at this point.

Lynn Fredriksson quoting woman rape victim: On the 20th day of Ramadan this year (this is last year) as I went looking for wood with two other women we came across four armed men. Three were wearing white and two were in green uniforms. They asked us where we came from and we told them from Goz Beida. They asked us again where we came from and who we were, whether we were displaced or refugees. When we said displaced they said that we were the ones they had been looking for.

They started to beat us and took our head scarves and sandals. They grabbed me and took me away from the two old women I was with and they managed to run away. First they took my child from me and threw her on the ground. Then two of the men raped me. Afterwards they left and they picked up my daughter and I came back to the camp.

I have not told anyone what happened to me. If others knew it could bring me problems with my husband. I do not know how my husband would react if he were to know.

Lynn Fredriksson: This is a woman in Chad. I wanted to read that because this is the situation for thousands and thousands of people every day.

Dori Smith: Lynn Fredriksson as we now know about 9,000 more internally displaced people which is the IDP designation have arrived in I believe it’s Goz Amir, I don’t know if there are other camps now that these newly displaced people are going to; so 9,000 to the already existing population of displaced at Goz Amir which I believe had already reached 9,000. So we are talking about many thousands now of internally displaced people in Chad that are going to be needing support, assistance, medical care, and protection.

Lynn Fredriksson: Yes, this is the case. These are overcrowded refugee camps, these IDP camps, internally displaced refers to the people who are displaced within their own country of origin, so there are IDPS and refugees in both Darfur and Chad. And I actually want to add that there are also internally displaced and refugees in the Central African Republic as a result of this conflict spilling over the border into yet another country. In fact we are looking at numbers of approximately 46,000 refugees from Central African Republic in Chad.

Obviously as you noted the conditions are dire. The need is great. So yes, of course, we would encourage people to support the organizations that have taken the risk to go in to provide the humanitarian assistance. But we would also encourage people to go to www.amnestyusa.org and click on Darfur and you will find an entire page of actions which help you to target the international actors who can do the most to alleviate this situation on a regional basis. So that would be our own government and China and a number of other actors and please do take action if you can.

Dori Smith: There are students on campuses in the U.S. organizing for divestment from their campuses of holdings in Sudan. I’d like to ask you do you think the divestment project in America on US campuses and in communities can be helpful in the same way that it was helpful in South Africa?

Lynn Fredriksson: I think it’s always helpful for student populations to become active on a humanitarian and human rights emergency like this one. Amnesty International does not take a position on divestment. We neither support it nor oppose it. However, I want to note that the United States has had very minimal investments in only certain companies that are allowed to continue to operate in Sudan and this has been the case for quite a few years now based on a presidential directive.

I think that the long term impact of the divestment movement could be great but we are also talking about an emergency that has a human cost every single day so this is not the only means by which we can or need to be acting to insure security for the civilians of Darfur and Chad. So I would encourage greater action on Congress and the US administration to make sure that the President particularly follows through on his promises, and he has made very good promises on Darfur, to get the United Nations troops on the ground, to create a timeline and bench marks by which we can measure the progress in implementing those troops, and then to look at the many other needs of the people in the area; and the source of the conflict and the economic disparities and how the needs of the people of the region will be taken care of long term.

Dori Smith: Now Amnesty International has great efforts going on where prisoners are concerned worldwide. Let me ask you are there prisoners you have expressed concern about in this region, particularly in Sudan?

Lynn Fredriksson: We have but the sad part about doing work on prisoners and others who have been abused individually in the region is that often times we cannot use names because we could risk putting people under further risk. That said there are prisoners, there are individuals who are in specific areas that are under attack at the current time, all of those types of actions can be found on our web site. What we would say though is that we are talking about such a widespread conflict at this point in time that we are not focusing on the names of individuals, we are focusing on the collective of individuals who are all facing similar risks of rape, of beatings, of torture, of displacement, of arrest without judicial and arrest without warrants. All of these various violations are taking place every day so we need to look at the crisis as a whole as well as the individuals at risk and act to do something for both.

Dori Smith: We are speaking with Lynn Fredriksson, she is Advocacy Director for Africa with Amnesty International USA. The web site is Amnesty USA dot org click on Darfur. Lynn finally, any closing thoughts on what the hold up has been when it comes to Darfur and this region in general. Why has it taken so long for policy initiatives to take effect or for people to get the sense that we are talking about so many deaths now?

Lynn Fredriksson: There are a couple of things. One is that the President of Sudan is clearly afraid of the United Nations going into Darfur. This is an odd situation in that UN forces are already in Southern Sudan and operating fully effectively there so they are in the country. We need to create the conditions by which he feels sufficient international pressure from all of his allies in the general international community that he relents and allows the United Nations to go in. Not only in phases one and two which are our minimal number of UN support staff but in stage three which would allow a full UN contingent with a chapter 7 mandate to protect civilians to go in.

Another hold up has been that I think the international community often is sluggish to respond. In this case it’s been four years now since the worst of the conflict began and it is the responsibility of our own government and Europe and the European Union and African Union and Arab League countries to get on the same page and put forward a consistent language to Khartoum that this is a requirement. I have to also note that it’s very frustrating that this seems to be an ongoing debate between the US Congress and the Administration as to how to regularly fund the peacekeepers and the humanitarian operations who are vital to civilian protection and service in Darfur and Chad. And we need to insure that that’s done on a regular basis and not require us to constantly be going into emergency appropriations bills but to recognize this requirement, this urgency, and to fund Darfur and Chad on a regular basis through Congressional legislation.

Dori Smith: Lynn Fredriksson, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
Lynn Fredriksson, Thank you Dori.

Lynn Fredriksson is Africa Advocacy Director at Amnesty International USA’s Washington, D.C. office.

We also contacted Helen Caux of UNHCR the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, and we asked her about the plight of internally displaced people after a massacre in eastern Chad that took place March 31st.

Helen Caux: There was indeed a massacre which occurred on March 31st of this year. So less than three weeks ago. Between 200 and 400 people were killed during a brutal attack. Survivors of the attack described their attackers as groups of armed men on horses and camel-back who attacked their villages early in the morning, who looted everything, burned their huts, and killed hundreds of people. As a result of this main attack about 9,000 people have been displaced. Not only people from the two villages which were attacked but also from surrounding villages which means that people were anticipating new attacks and moved in anticipation of these attacks.

There are presently some 140,000 people, Chadians, who have been displaced within a year and a half and there is no reason to believe that this number is going to remain the same because the security situation continues to be very volatile in this part of Eastern Chad. There were several waves of inter-communal violence in the year 2006 and many people were killed as well and people were displaced.

So there is definitely spill over of the Darfur situation into eastern Chad as well as in the north of the Central African Republic, you mentioned it. But in the case of the Central African Republic it is also mainly a problem regarding the different rebel groups involved in the northern part of the Central African Republic and fighting against governmental soldiers. This fighting has displaced more than 200,000 people in the past few years and some of these people, some of the villagers from the CR, the Central African Republic, have fled to Darfur.

What is also important to note is that of course you have people who have fled from Darfur to eastern Chad as well. Since 2003, about 230,000 Sudanese refugees are staying in twelve camps in eastern Chad. But because of the ongoing insecurity in eastern Chad you also have about 20,000 Chadians which have fled into Darfur. So you have a completely surreal situation where people are crossing the Chadian border in both directions, and they are going into very insecure areas.

Dori Smith: We were given to understand that there are some 9,000 newly displaced Chadians. How are they doing in terms of their status right now? Are they able to find shelter? Perhaps medical care? The kinds of things that they need?

Helene Caux: Just to make it clear I would like to remind your public that you have in eastern Chad 225,000 Sudananese refugees who fled Darfur in the years 2003-2004. They fled aerial bombings and attacks from the Janjaweed militia and they found refuge in eastern Chad.

Since 2006 and up to now there were waves of brutal inter communal fighting in eastern Chad, of Chadians against Chadians mainly, and this resulted in the displacement of 140,000 Chadians on their soil, in eastern Chad.

Nine thousand people have been recently displaced because of a huge attack which occurred on March 31st and these people fled in a panic to save their lives. They gathered near refugee camps and of course the humanitarian agencies and non-governmental organizations tried to assist them by first transporting them to displaced sites where they could have access to basic services such as access to water, access to basic medical services and also access to food.

What needs to be mentioned is that of course there is always a huge humanitarian crisis with taking care of the Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad and now the Chadian Government and the humanitarian organizations also have to face an IDP crisis, an internally displaced persons crisis. Of course, to be able to assist these people the humanitarian agencies need more funding, they need more people to be able to handle the newly displaced, and this takes a little time of course. But the humanitarian agencies are working closely with the Chad Government to aid these people as soon as possible. And when you talk to the displaced people they also tell you that they want to be able to come back to their villages as soon as possible. They want to be able to cultivate again. They want to be able to see what happened to their cattle. But their condition is that they will only come back if there is security in their villages.

Dori Smith: So these attackers in eastern Chad have been described as ‘Janjaweed’ and you are broadening the picture a little bit about the attackers and who has been involved in the conflict there. But can you tell us more about the perpetrators and the fact that heavy weapons were used. What are you learning now?

Helene Caux: Well what the survivors have told us, after the attacks we interviewed a lot of the survivors that were transported to Goz Beida hospital. Goz Beida is the main town in south eastern Chad and we had UNHCR teams going in to talk to them. What they told us is basically that their attackers were a mix of people they knew and people they didn’t know and they were referring to Chadian Arab tribes they had been living with for years and years who turned against them and these people were being accompanied by other Arab tribes who could have actually come from Sudan or it’s still unclear.

The survivors were calling their attackers, ‘Janjaweed’ so ‘Janjaweed’ usually refers to Arab Sudanese militia in Darfur but what you have to know is that the border between Chad and Sudan is a very artificial border and so you always have a lot of cross border movement. People can cross easily through the border and attack villages on the each side of each border.

What is new is that these survivors said these Janjaweed attackers could have been accompanied by Chadian rebels as well. As you know President Deby of Chad is facing Chadian rebel movements on his territory and these Chadian rebel movements are training in Darfur so there again they cross the border very easily and can come to eastern Chad easily.

Dori Smith: Accusations have been flying at this very volatile and sensitive time between Sudanese and Darfurian leaders and leaders in Chad and you mentioned the Deby Government. Members of the Sudanese Military accused them of crossing the border into Darfur but we have also heard reports that displaced people from Darfur have been moving back and forth across the border, perhaps even returning to Darfur, which is kind of shocking to people that have been hearing these reports about what is going on there. Can you tell us more about this increase in instability that is causing more people to move across the border between Chad and Darfur?

Helene Caux: Well I don’t have precise numbers on people who would have crossed back from eastern Chad to try to get back to their land in Darfur. What I can tell you again is that the border is very volatile and it is easy to cross most of the time. You have a 600 kilometer stretch border between Chad and Darfur, eastern Chad and Darfur, and you have the same ethnic groups on both sides of the border. So there has always been a lot of cross border movements. And it’s not surprising. You had about 10,000 Sudanese refugees who had decided to remain at the border on the Chadian side and not go to join their families in refugee camps further in Chad.

They wanted to remain at the border on the Chadian side to be able to cross easily into Darfur and go back to their land and their villages to cultivate or check on their properties. It’s completely possible that some of them decided to cross back for good because of the instability in eastern Chad. It just shows that the border is completely volatile, very dangerous, and it is also dangerous not only for the refugees and the displaced persons but it is also dangerous for the humanitarian workers.

Dori Smith: We have heard some reports of peacekeepers dying in Darfur. Is this a situation where you have put your workers in the region on some sort of new level of alert then?

Helene Caux: No we have not put workers on a new level of security or emergency level. This is unfortunately not a new situation. There were some AU soldiers who have been killed in the recent past and that just shows that there is an emergency to reinforce the present 7,000 AU, African Union, soldiers in Darfur.

Of course the Sudanese Government just recently yesterday said that they were approving the UN plan to reinforce the African Union presence in Darfur. So they are accepting, according to the Sudanese Government they are accepting the idea of the hybrid international presence in Darfur. Now let’s see if they really implement this decision.

The level of insecurity in Darfur and eastern Chad keeps deteriorating especially since the end of 2005 and it is just getting worse and worse there. To give you an example last year there were 13 humanitarian workers who were killed in Darfur and humanitarian agency compounds have been attacked, people have been ambushed, and to the point now that it’s completely insecure for humanitarian workers to travel by road.

In west Darfur where UNHCR is normally based we humanitarian workers, UN agency workers, are obliged to travel by helicopter. It is too dangerous to drive on the roads there because you can be ambushed, you can be kidnapped, you can be attacked. So it is really becoming a very dangerous game to be there as a humanitarian worker and of course this kind of situation needs to cease, to stop, and hopefully this agreement about reinforcing the AU presence will be implemented soon.

Right now the priority is of course to assist the displaced persons in Chad and also to be able to reach the displaced persons in Darfur. You have over 2 million internally displaced Darfurians in Darfur and as I said it’s very hard to reach most of them for security reasons. So it’s true that we need to keep mentioning that as long as there is no political solution there won’t be security in Darfur and the situation won’t change. There will still be attacks from militia against villagers. As long as there is no political solution this will not stop. So this is the priority for humanitarian workers, is to be able to have a safer environment to access the displaced persons, to assist the refugees and to make it possible for all humanitarian workers to work in a safer place.

Dori Smith: Helene Caux thank you so much for joining us and we look forward to hearing more from you about what UNHCR is doing in this region. Thank you so much.

Helene Caux: Thank you.

Dori Smith: Helen Caux is a spokesperson with UNHCR, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. Her area of concern is Sudan, Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic.

For Talk Nation Radio, I’m Dori Smith. Talk Nation Radio is produced in the studios of WHUS at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. WHUS.org to listen live Wed. at 5 PM. Talknation .org and Talknationradio.org for transcripts and discussions.

In upcoming broadcasts we hear about the role of oil in the conflict. James A. Paul, Executive Director of Global Policy Forum discusses politics, militarys, and oil in Africa.

Welcome to Talk Nation Radio, a half hour discussion on politics, human rights and the environment. I’m Dori Smith.

When US and coalition forces invaded Iraq four years ago there were promises made to Iraqi women that their lives would be more free. We look at myth versus reality this time for Iraqi women and consider what might happen to Iraqi society, in general, if coalition forces were to withdraw from Iraq.

Violence has taken up a life on its own. American soldiers, British soldiers, are not able to stop it but their presence aggravates the situation and I think they have to go for it ever to become better. That doesn’t mean that it will become better right away, I think we would probably see it get worse for a while. But it will become much clearer who is who, who really has Iraq’s interest in mind and who is a terrorist. Nadje al-Ali is of German and Iraqi descent. She spoke to us from Ohio and will be in New England the week of April 16th continuing a US book tour.

Listen

Nadje al-Ali is our guest. She is a senior lecturer in social anthropology in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. Her 2007 book published by Zed Press is Iraqi Women, Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present. It’s available from Amazon or from the publisher Zed Press at Zedbooks.co.uk.

Dori Smith: Nadje al-Ali welcome to Talk Nation Radio.
Nadje al-Ali: Thank you.

Dori Smith: You are becoming well known as someone who dispels western myths about Iraqi women. What do you see as the biggest myths about Iraqi women?

Nadje al-Ali: For me it was very important to try to unearth the different layers in terms of how women are actually doing in terms of Iraqi society prior to the recent invasion. There has been this misconception that Iraqi women were just oppressed, passive, sitting at home. While I am in no way apologetic about the previous regime, which was clearly a very cruel authoritarian dictatorship but in terms of women, especially in the 1970s and 1980s women were very much pushed by the regime to be part of the labor force, women were pushed into the education sector. So the idea that we have to “save” Iraqi women just does not hold true.

Of course, everyone was suffering, as I said, but it was not that women were suffering particularly, and certainly not from Islam. I mean there is this myth that Iraqi society is just another Muslim society and similar to Afghanistan. You know women were suffering. The irony of it all is that now four years after the invasion we see Iraqi women being oppressed, not being able to leave their homes, being very restricted in their movement, having to wear certain dress codes, girls not being able to go to school. I mean under the auspices of the American and British forces we see women now suffering from a situation very similar to the one that women suffered in Afghanistan during the Taliban.

Dori Smith: When we bring up the story of Rosie the Riveter in the US we are talking about women who stepped into the traditionally male jobs that were held during WWII. And you have documented a similar role really that was played by Iraqi women during the Iran/Iraq war. Just explain how that makes Iraqi women and their lives and cultural position so different from what we thought it might have been.

Nadje al-Ali: Yeah I mean even prior to the Iran/Iraq war it was not because, obviously Saddam Hussein was not a feminist, or he did not believe in egalitarian principles, but because of economic needs on the ground you had a booming economy after the oil crisis in 1973, you had an expanding labor market, you had expanding middle classes, and labor was needed. And unlike the oil rich countries in the Gulf such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which very much relied on quote unquote importing foreign labor, the Iraqi government opted to mobilize its own human resources and fifty percent were women. That was happening in the 1970s, very much pushing Iraqi women into the labor force, the “good” Iraqi women was an educated working women.

Then on top of that you had from 1980 to 1988 war with Iran. In any war situation when predominantly men were fighting at the front in a prolonged war, thousands of men were fighting, thousands of men were losing their lives; the women had to step in even more in terms of the public sphere. I remember traveling to Iraq in the mid 1980s and women were everywhere, you know not just women engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, but I could also see women at petrol stations, women driving trucks, women driving taxis, as you were describing I mean a similar situation in WWII in the United States. Women really had to step in. But there was a twist to the story in that because there was a demographic imbalance or discrepancy between the Iraqi population which is much less than the Iranian population, Iran is a much bigger country, many more people, the Iraqi government was pushing women during the Iran/Iraq war to have more children.

In the mid 1980s Saddam Hussein in a speech famously announced that the “good” Iraqi woman should have five children right? So Iraqi women were supposed to be the mothers of the future soldiers and in a way they had to become super women because on the one side they had to work, they were the main breadwinners, they were looking after their families; they also had to run the state bureaucracy and all of the public sector; at the same time they had to produce children.

Dori Smith: The definition of an Iraqi woman being always shaped by political circumstances of the time.

Nadje al-Ali: That holds true for every society no? I mean you have the prevailing political elite, economic elite, trying to appropriate what it means to be a real American, or a real Iraqi or a real German. I think that’s something that we find everywhere but within that you have differences. Iraqi is not a homogeneous society and there are different social classes, different tribes, there are people living in urban areas and rural areas. You know the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein being a particularly well fascist, centralized dictatorship; they had the means to very much control the imagery whether it was in the media, magazines, television or radio and so on. They could control the symbolism and the imagery with respect to the ideal man and women. But within that of course you always have differences; you have people who are resisting even though not openly. But I don’t see how it’s that different from other countries really.

Dori Smith: Well when you watch Mosaic on Link TV or when you watch Al Jezeera out of the region you see many women broadcasters from the Middle East. And we were fortunate to be able to interview Yanar Mohammed of OWFI, the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq, another powerful woman’s voice from the region. So it is possible to find these voices even though the western corporate press tends to ignore them. Has the corporate media contacted you for expert interviews Nadje?

Nadje al-Ali: No. I mean now a little bit more so and that’s because I have just published a modern history of Iraqi women and there is a bit of interest. But right now, in the current situation I think you have these two very different kinds of images that are prevailing. One is the Iraqi woman who is now the heroine who is really part of the new Iraq, the woman who is a Member of Parliament, who is fighting for her rights. And then most of the time there is the prevailing image now of the poor oppressed veiled from head to toe women. Now, of course, reality is more complex and nuanced than that. The fact is, as you describe in terms of the media the people don’t really have access to Iraqi society so what you get in the Green Zone is not Iraq, it’s very very far from Iraq, and those women who are part now of the political process and who live in the Green Zone they are very remote from the rest of Iraqi society. And then the images that you get from women wearing abaya and then there is certain text attached to it, of course does not go into any depth about actual gender relations and gender ideologies. But I should say that having studied, having looked at the changes over the last decade, and having written a history, right now I’m focusing more specifically on the situation after 2003 and I am very sad to say, but one has to say that women are the biggest losers in what has been happening. I mean women have been pushed back systematically.

Yanar Mohammed, one of the few women left despite several death threats who is very active, the political spaces, the social spaces for women are shrinking day by day. I have many friends who had to leave the country, friends who were targeted, assassinated, friends who are just staying at home because they are too worried to step out.

Dori Smith: Are educated women being targeted specifically?

Nadje al-Ali: Yes,

Dori Smith: Just talk about that.

Nadje al-Ali: Well I’m an academic so I have lots of contacts with academics in Iraq and male and female Iraqi academics have been targeted. I mean 400 academics have been killed since 2003. I mean Sunni, Shiite, Christian, Kurd, Arab, and it is not very clear why. Some people inside Iraq say it’s a systematic attempt to really destroy any kind of intellectual class in Iraq.

You know women since the end of 2003, there have been systematic attempts to really push them back and push them out of the public sphere. I mean initially it was just Islamist militias and Islamist insurgents in neighborhoods and communities handing out leaflets stating women should wear Islamic dress code, they should wear hijab, that is head scarf; OK many women started to do this if they were not doing it already. I mean dress is not a big deal, it just means that you can move around. But in the next instance I know at university students were being told that female and male students should not sit in the same class together. Then women professionals received threatening letters; you should not go out, you should not work, you should not drive the car. And now if you are a professional educated woman you are a major target for sure.

Dori Smith: It’s kind of ironic that the corporate press in the US are focusing on Hillary Clinton as a potential president for the United States and at the same time we never hear from any of the women who were elected to Parliament in Iraq or from women leaders in general, in Iraq. For example we just heard from Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki again yesterday that he doesn’t think a deadline for US troop withdrawal is necessary. And of course that was fitted into a political discussion about Congress versus the President on major US networks. But Iraqi women seem to have no voice in the US press.

Nadje al-Ali: No but they don’t have much voice inside Iraq either right now one should say. Initially, things did not look so bad I have to say. In 2003 after the months of looting and chaos and lawlessness, the people who came together and tried to deal with the situation and tried to step in where there was no space, who tried to clean up hospitals that had been looted, tried to clean up schools, were women. They came together on the level of neighborhoods, communities, real grass roots activism. But women also started to mobilize politically and they resisted the attempts by the Iraqi Governing council to abolish the existing personal status laws in Islamic society, the type of law based on Islamic law that basically rule, guide, marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, and Iraq since 1959 had a relatively progressive law and then the Iraqi Governing Council that was appointed by the Coalition Provisional Authority decided to abolish it and replace it with a much more conservative form of Islamic law. And women did campaign and lobby against it. So women activists inside Iraq lobbied to get a 40% quote of representation in all levels of government, and Bremmer (Paul Bremmer, CPA) said, “we don’t do quotas.” He was not in favor of it. And it’s despite Bremmer and the CPA that women at the end managed to get a 25% quota insuring in the transitional administrative laws and later on in the Constitution.

Of course the problem is we have officially a 25% quota but the majority of women that are now in parliament are not the least interested in politics, are not interested in women’s rights, these are the sisters, daughters, wives, of conservative male political leaders who had a hard time trying to find any women who were volunteering to go to Parliament. There are only I think only five or six women now in Parliament who are actually seriously interested in politics and interested in women’s rights.

Having said that, most of the men in Parliament don’t really have experience in political activism, are not interested in human rights and women’s rights and so I think in a situation where we would have no women, I think it’s good to have a quota but obviously a quota does not in and of itself assure that there is a lobby for women’s rights in Parliament. But certainly inside Iraq, voices of women politicians and women activists, there are shrinking spaces that are made available for them.

Dori Smith: We’re speaking with peace activist, feminist and scholar, Dr. Nadje al-Ali. Nadje you specialize in post conflict reconstruction and have worked in Bosnia Herzegovina with Women in Black. And during a recent talk you shared your idea that women from countries like Bosnia where there has been intense conflict could meet with Iraqi women to talk about their recovery and share experiences and hope. Talk about that idea.

Nadje al-Ali: Yeah I mean I have to say having worked in Bosnia Herzegovina for a while, and done research there, and I’ve met a number of women’s organizations who worked across ethnic and religious differences. I think we had Medica in Zenitza who had been raped during the war in the former Yugoslavia, where Bosnian Croat, Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serb women worked together to help victims of sexual violence. And also having spent six years in Egypt and I was involved in the women’s movement, and then generally I’m part of, I follow closely the work of the network, Women Living Under Muslim Law; I know that Iraqi women would benefit greatly from an exchange with women who have gone through comparable situations. You know conflict, war, in also predominantly Muslim societies; I just wish I could bring them together to facilitate encounters. Unfortunately it’s really difficult to get funding for that. Iraqi women are being brought to London or to Washington to get training by US gender specialists or British gender specialists or they are Amman. But I found it really difficult to find any government or non governmental body that is willing to facilitate and encounter with women who have actually already undergone very similar experiences.

Dori Smith: Nadje how do you respond to those who say an end to the occupation will mean an increase in the violence?

Nadje al-Ali: My answer to that would be that the sectarian violence that we are seeing right now is partly the result of the occupation. It is to a large extent the result of the policies after 2003. Those who say that everything was fine before, I mean I have Iraqi friends who speak about Iraq always having been this harmonious multicultural multi religious society where people intermarried and lived in mixed neighborhoods, I mean that narrative holds true for urban middle classes who to a large extent were very mixed, and there was this not just tolerance but living together and to a certain point people didn’t even know whether their neighbors were Sunni, Shiite, Kurd. It didn’t really matter and social class was a much more defining factor than ethnicity or religion. But one really needs to acknowledge that for instance Saddam Hussein very much played on ethnic and religious differences. He did single out Kurds when he used chemical bombs during the Anfal campaign of the 1980s. He did single out Shiites when he deported thousands of them to Iran before and during the Iran/Iraq War. There were people who were targeted but that did not mean that people were turning against each other, the Kurds and the Shiite who had been targeted they were turning against the government. They were fighting the regime they were not fighting others because Sunnis who were opposed to the regime were also suffering and at the end of the day most of the Sunnis were as oppressed as everyone else. It was the very close family and the very close tribal clan of Saddam Hussein that was benefiting, not the vast majority of Sunnis.

Unfortunately, after the fall of the regime so many mistakes were made starting with disbanding the army, one million men without jobs, and then replacing it with an army that is not a unified army but mainly consists of Shiite Islamist militia, people related to Shiite Islamist political parties and then the Kurdish Peshmerga. The same for the police in the way the governing council was set up sort of along ethnic and religious lines. If I were of Sunni background in Iraq I would feel that I’m being targeted and I’m being marginalized. And then, of course, we have been having a problem of people from outside, I mean Al Qaeda in Iraq which I also hold very much responsible for creating a situation where this sectarian violence has taken hold of the population. Initially people resisted. Some of these I think foreign Islamist extremists, it’s not so much the occupation they are targeting. They are clearly targeting Shiites. These are Sunni extremists. They are much more interested in harming Shiites. They are much more interested actually in creating sectarian violence. And for a long time people resisted, they were part of the police and part of the army which was clearly not a unified army on behalf of the Al Qaeda insurgents and at some point unfortunately it went into a more general situation where it has become this revenge killing, tit for tat revenge killing. And people started to feel hatred for the other and totally dehumanized the other. So having said that I don’t see that either the American Army or the British Army are in control. I don’t feel they are stopping the violence and in addition I feel that there are some people who are using the occupation to create violence, help engage in terrorist activities, but in the name of fighting the occupation, in the name of fighting imperialism they are getting away with it.

I am under no illusion that once the occupation ends that things will be fine. They will not be fine. I mean that’s the whole problem. I don’t think they are actually that relevant anymore. Violence is taking up a life on its own. American soldiers, British soldiers, are not able to stop it but their presence aggravates the situation and I think they have to go for it ever to become better. That doesn’t mean that it will become better right away. I think we would probably see it get worse for a while but it would become much clearer who is who, who really has Iraq’s interest in mind and who is a terrorist.

Dori Smith: There have been recent demonstrations in support of Muqtada al-Sadr. What are your thoughts about what could happen in Iraq if the al-Sadr organization gains more and more power and perhaps if Iran starts to have more influence in Iraq?

Nadje al-Ali: Well first of all I should say that Muqtada al-Sadr is not that closely linked to Iran. You know you have the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution that is elected and in government, which is much more closely linked to Iran. Muqtada al-Sadr is much more of an Iraqi nationalist and I think that is one thing that gets lost in the way things are reported.

I mean amongst the various Shiite groups there are tensions. Even the United Alliance of Shiite, the Dawa Party and SCIRI, at some point already now we see tensions because al Dawa is much more Iraqi nationalist but SCIRI is much closer affiliated to Iran. And Muqtada al-Sadr is not that closely affiliated to Iran, obviously there are links, but he is much more of an Iraqi nationalist. He and his people would not want actually Iran to take over.

I mean I don’t, I’m not keen on Muqtada al-Sadr I don’t think but I have to say he is someone who you cannot just write off as a crazy Islamist. Actually the Mahdi Army, in many parts of Iraq where there are impoverished Shiites living the Mahdi Army are the only ones who are right now providing food and medicine and job opportunities for people. I mean as in many other Muslim societies they actually work as a welfare organization as well. Muqtada al-Sadr initially did not want to engage in violence. He and the Mahdi Army were very much pushing for local elections and for a year they were told no, it’s not possible. So it was only when they thought that there was no political channel that they turned to violence.

Obviously it’s sort of moving back and forth between wanting to be part of the political process or not. I think they have to take him seriously in terms of right now being able to mobilize masses. I’m not sure what the future role of Muqtada al-Sadr will be. In any case Iraq, as it continues to develop, the people in government are Islamist. That is the irony of the whole situation that this government really facilitated Islamists to rule Iraq. Although they are not really ruling, no one really is in control right now.

Dori Smith: And what about the impact of the Muqtada al-Sadr organization on the lives of women?

Nadje al-Ali: Yeah. I wouldn’t really want to single out the Mahdi Army because there is also the Badr Brigade. That’s another Shiite Islamist militia and that is linked to SCIRI the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the militia is similar to also the Sunni Islamist insurgent groups who are controlling certain communities and have very similar policies and strategies and follow very similar actions where women are concerned. I think women are being used as symbols both in terms of the United States and Britain, in terms of ‘we are liberating Iraqi women’ but they are also used as symbols by those resisting the occupation right whether they are Shiite or Sunni. So women are the first ones who were targeted in terms of well you should really wear this, you should wear Islamic dress, you should do this and you shouldn’t go out. And this is seen as part of resisting western imperialism, western occupation, and western cultural encroachment.

Dori Smith: We have heard about the impact of Iraqi clerics on politics there but what about the role of Iraqi women. Do they have an influence when it comes to clerics?

Nadje al Ali: In many Muslim societies they do. I mean not women clerics but Muslim women are really struggling for women’s rights within an Islamic framework and increasingly women have been engaged in re-interpreting Islam. And basically their argument being that it’s not Islam per se that is responsible for oppressive practices but it is culture, it is interpretation, it is conservative men interpreting Islam in a way that is oppressive. So the largest trend in terms of women’s rights activism in Muslim societies right now is to work from within this Islamic frame work.

In Iraq we don’t see that yet. That tradition has not really had the chance to develop. I mean that was not really encouraged under Saddam Hussein. It was mainly a secular regime under Saddam Hussein. So right now in terms of women you find it quite polarized. You have the secular women’s rights activists and then you have the Islamist women who are not that much concerned about women’s rights. And I would say that it’s a matter of time until we see more and more women of the Islamist movement who are similar to what you saw in Iran, for example, where we have very sophisticated rich and active women’s movement and women working within an Islamic framework. I think we will see that in Iraq one day as well.

Dori Smith: Given peace enough and time perhaps?

Nadje al-Ali: Nothing is possible with this violence that women are experiencing and men are experiencing from all sides whether it’s from the occupation forces, whether it is from the militias, Sunni to the government, whether it’s from the Islamist extremist insurgents, the mafia type gangs, the criminals; I mean with all of these different layers of violence it is not possible to engage in any serious women’s rights struggle right now.

Dori Smith: So just to clarify are you saying that an increase in official adherence to Sharia law is not the worst thing in the world for Iraqi women let’s say?

Nadje al-Ali: Islamic law can be fine if it is being interpreted by the right people. It’s very open to interpretation. But what I’m worried about is that it’s left open, especially now the debate is around in the Constitution Article 41 which basically states that every religious and ethnic community can follow its own set of laws with respect to marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance. That I find very dangerous because it doesn’t provide any safeguards for women in terms of some extremist cleric interpreting law, you know we need to have law codified, we need to have it written down and it has to be unified law so that we could in the future still have again mixed marriages and that it applies across the country.

I’m not saying that the worst scenario is to have a regime, a country that is more Islamic in nature, no. And I think that also would be unrealistic. That’s how it’s going. The majority of the population is now following the more Islamist parties. We have to go through this process to then also be able to have reform like we saw in Iran. But the point right now is if we leave law open to interpretation in a context where you don’t have progressive moderate voices prevailing, what you have right now very regressive, conservative and extremist voices prevailing, and if they have the authority to interpret law Iraqi women are in big trouble.

Dori Smith: Nadje al-Ali thank you so much for joining us.
Nadje al Ali: Thank you.

Dori Smith: Nadje al-Ali is a sociologist and anthropologist at the University of Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. In addition to her scholarly work she has also been active with Women in Black UK and is a founding member of Act Together, Women’s Action for Iraq. Her most recent book published in 2007 is Iraqi Women, Untold Stories from 1938 to the Present. You can find it at Amazon.com or Zedbooks.co.uk.

For Talk Nation Radio I’m Dori Smith. Talk Nation Radio is produced in the studios of WHUS at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. WHUS.org to listen live Wed. at 5 PM. Talk Nation.org and TalkNationRadio.org for transcripts and discussions.

Nadje al Ali is a senior lecturer in social anthropology in the Institute of Arab and Islamic studies at the University of Exeter. Her 2007 book is available from Amazon.com or from the publisher Zed Press.

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Transcript in progress for Nadje al-Ali, a feminist scholar from Exeter University in the UK. She is of Iraqi and German descent.

Talk Nation Radio for April 11, 2007

An Interview with Nadje al-Ali about Iraqi Women
Total Running Time 29:27.7

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Scholar, peace activist and feminist Nadje al-Ali shares her insights about a way to empower Iraqi women so that they might take up their natural role in rebuilding Iraqi society. We discuss her latest book, “Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present.” And she separates truth from myth, offers historical context for women’s lives, and explains her view that US and coalition forces should withdraw from Iraq.

‘Violence is taking up a life of its own. American soldiers, British soldiers are not able to stop it. But their presence aggravates the situation and I think they have to go for it ever to become better. That doesn’t mean that it will become better right away. I think we would probably see it get worse for a while but it will become much clearer who really has Iraq’s interest in mind and who is a terrorist.’ Nadje al-Ali, Exeter University

Nadje al-Ali’s experience working with women’s organizations in the Balkans has provided her with an idea. Women from various parts of the world that have come through conflict could meet with Iraqi women to share experiences.

Finally, we discuss the media. America’s corporate media has been focusing on an historic White House run by Hillary Clinton yet ironically the very women “liberated” by U.S. forces in Iraq have been virtually ignored. News outlets feature male Iraqi leaders such as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki but no interviews with Iraqi women in leadership roles.

Nadje al Ali is a senior lecturer in social anthropology in the Institute of Arab and Islamic studies at the University of Exeter. Her 2007 book is available from Amazon.com or from the publisher Zed Press

Produced at the studios of Pacifica Affiliate WHUS FM 91.7 at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT Listen live Wed. at 5 PM.

Transcripts are available at: http://www.talknationradio.org
Music by Fritz Heede http://www.fritzheede.com

Welcome to Talk Nation Radio, a half hour discussion on politics, human rights, and the environment. I’m Dori Smith

Matthew Conway of UNHCR on a massacre in South-Eastern Chad and Graham Saul on oil related problems in Chad plus the down side of the Ethanol boom.

Listen to the audio click

The UN is reporting 65 people dead and dozens more wounded in South-eastern Chad. We were able to reach Matthew Conway with the UN High Commission on Refugees in Abache by phone Tuesday. Matthew Conway is UNHCR’s information officer. I asked him to talk about
the latest reports on this massacre.

Matthew Conway: Yeah I’m afraid it is shaping up to be a bit of a massacre unfortunately. It appears from the information we have been able to gather so far that early Saturday morning March 31st the villages of Tiero and Moreno were surrounded by attackers on horseback, camel back, on foot, and also in vehicles with heavy weaponry. The villages of course were caught entirely by surprise and they were targeted by these attackers that many people are referring to as “Janjaweed” militias. This has caused the displacement of several thousand people and we know that there are at least dozens dead and many dozens more injured.

Dori Smith: The violence going on about 45 km east of Koukou in South-eastern Chad. Up to 3,000 people arriving in the Goz Amir camp. Just talk about what this new flight of Chadians means and what UNHCR is doing to help. (pdf Map illustrates where refugee populations are in the region of Eastern Chad.)

Matthew Conway: We are already dealing with several thousands displaced Chadians, many of them were among the first people to welcome the Sudanese refugees from neighboring Darfur when they fled hostilities in their own country. So what we are really concerned about now is just the carrying capacity to deal with this influx of people in terms of sufficient water, food, sufficient non-food items such as jerry-cans, mats, plastic sheeting, soap, it’s really a very big concern because we still don’t know how many new people we are going to be dealing with. People continue to arrive.

Dori Smith: So thus far we are talking about roughly seventy wounded, thirty four badly enough to be evacuated to a hospital. 65 dead. What else do you know about the extent of this massacre and will the refugees be able to get any kind of immediate medical care when they arrive in I guess you are calling this a “displacement site” Aradif near Goz Amir refugee camp?

Matthew Conway: That’s right. I should point out that we are talking now about not refugees, which has a legal implication. The refugees we are dealing with are people who have fled from the Darfur region of neighboring Sudan. And in the Goz Amir camp we have got about 20,000 of them that we are caring for. We’re talking about now Chadians themselves who have been displaced from their homes in Chad. They don’t have any special recognition in terms of international law. But it certainly is an imperative of humanitarian agencies to give whatever assistance they can to these people.

Dori Smith: What if anything do you expect the Chad government to do?

Matthew Conway: It has to be said that the Chadian Government has been and continues to be a very good partner for us in facilitating the work we are all trying to do out here in cooperation. The military has deployed to restore some order in there. It appears they succeeded in repelling this so-called Janjaweed attack. Unfortunately it appears that some fighting is continuing. Our teams in the field are reporting sporadic gun fire. I’m not sure what that involves exactly but the Chadian Military has deployed to restore order but I think in addition to that we really need to start looking at inter-communal peace building initiatives and conflict resolution. Otherwise this already desperate situation really could spiral out of control.

Dori Smith: Apparently residents of the camp at Goz Amir could hear heavy weaponry, explosions during the fighting. How typical is that of what we often hear as related to these Janjaweed attacks?

Matthew Conway: Well what sort of surprised us about this one was the use, the involvement of heavy weaponry. I can’t say that this is the first time we’ve heard it but it is particularly concerning that such heavy weaponry would be used against a civilian population. We are hoping to have more details about what exactly might have been involved in the coming hours. But a lot of those areas we would need to get access to are still no go zones for us.

Dori Smith: Is there a chance that an investigation could be done to learn what kind of weapons were used and whether or not there were perhaps air attacks or what exactly went on here?

Matthew Conway: In fact I’m sure that’s actually going on right now. We, because of security concerns, haven’t had access to the region but I’m sure in the coming days we are going to have a clearer picture of what kind of weaponry was involved and what the unfortunate consequences were in terms of loss of human life.

Dori Smith: What kinds of policies is UNHCR looking at to diffuse the violence and help the displaced people?

Matthew Conway: Well the High Commissioner himself during a visit here at the end of last year called for some kind of international presence to be deployed here in Eastern Chad. What form that may take exactly is certainly open for discussion. But it has to be noted that this is a very vast and uncontrolled region and some kind of force is needed in the region to protect the population, not just the refugees but the Chadian host populations and the thousands, the tens of thousands of Chadians who have been displaced in their own country.

Dori Smith: We have heard critics warning of the potential outcomes if the US leaders start using language about regime change and sending a military into this region. What are your thoughts on that idea.

Matthew Conway: Well I think certainly from HUR’s perspective we would always look for the most peaceful means of reconciling differences. I think there is a lot of work that could be done at grass roots level just to promote peace building initiatives between the communities which are now unfortunately turning against one another. We would like to see a political solution rather than a military solution to the situation that’s currently going on but in the interim it might be advisable to have some kind of international presence here that could insure the security of these civilians until that kind of solution is found.

Dori Smith: What about the effectiveness of sanctions that have been tried?

Matthew Conway: There is always a debate about sanctions and making sure they are targeted at not hurting the people that they are meant to help. It should also be noted that the International Criminal Court has been very active out here in studying the situation and building a case that they are going to bring before a prosecutor about some of the atrocities that have been committed out here. Whether stronger sanctions are needed or whether they have failed I’m really not in a position to say yes or no.

Dori Smith: Tell us finally about what else the United Nations High Commission on Refugees intends to do in the next few days for the displaced in Eastern Chad and also internationally to call further attention to all of this.

Matthew Conway: Certainly here in Chad we will be working with many many humanitarian partners and government authorities as well in addressing the immediate needs of the tens of thousands of people who have been displaced from their homes within their own country. There are numerous UN agencies present on the ground, NGOs, and there is also, of course, the International Community for the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, all doing spectacular work in a very difficult environment to bring aid to these people. On a larger level, more macro, UNHCR is going to be involved in certainly trying to promote a peaceful solution to the crisis here. But in the interim time advocating for some kind of international presence to protect the civilians on the ground.

Dori Smith: Matthew Conway is the public information officer for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, UNHCR. He is based in Abache, Chad. Matthew Conway thank you so much for joining us.

Matthew Conway: Thank you for bringing attention to the issue. We are grateful for any attention we can bring to the suffering of the people here.

Dori Smith: We turn now to US Energy Policy and George W. Bush on Ethanol development:

George W. Bush : You know I have said that it is a serious problem; I recognize that Man is contributing greenhouse gases. Here are the principles by which I think we can get a good deal. One, anything that happens cannot hurt economic growth. I say that because one I care about the working people in the country but also because in order to solve the greenhouse gas issue over a longer period of time its gonna require new technologies which tend to be expensive and its easier to afford expensive technologies if you are prosperous.

Dori Smith: Bush was speaking at a press conference April 3rd. He had been asked if further regulations on auto emissions were inevitable. Graham Saul joins us next. He is International Programs Director at Oil Change International. They expose the true cost of oil and facilitate the coming transition towards clean energy in a way that identifies political barriers. As part of their efforts they set up a campaign they call, ‘Separation of Oil and State’. It’s designed to get oil money out of politics. In light of George Bush’s most recent proposals to increase Ethanol production we wanted the experts at Oil Change International to tell us if another campaign should be waged to separate Ethanol and State. But first we wanted to know more about a story Graham Saul wrote back in November of 2005 on assistance projects for Africa. He pointed out that the World Bank had fueled a project led by ExxonMobil that wound up exacerbating conflict and poverty. I asked him to go over what he had learned about the Chadian Government, big oil, and conflict.

Graham Saul: Yeah the project you are referring to is called the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project. Basically it’s a massive investment from ExxonMobil in a pipeline coming out of Chad through Cameroon to the coast of Africa for export to the North. And it falls within kind of a broader pattern of the World Bank’s engagement in the oil sector over the past 20 years. Ever since the oil shocks of the 1970s the World Bank has been actively engaged in working with Western governments most notably the United States in diversifying the supply of US access to oil around the world. One of the impacts that this has had is that often the bank has been prepared to enter into relationships with dictatorial regimes in ways that only serve to increase the level of oppression and conflict within a country. So it has become quite clear, for instance, that many World Bank investments have made conflict worse and oppression and human rights violations in countries worse rather than better. And the Chad-Cameroon pipeline is kind of an interesting example of that where the World Bank working with ExxonMobil in a wide variety of other public institutions with the support of the United States chose to make an investment in a country that was essentially ruled by a brutal dictatorship over the objections of civil society organizations and groups from Chad and Cameroon and from around the world who were calling on the Bank to have a moratorium on the project until certain governance and human rights issues were addressed.

Instead the bank chose to blaze forward irrespective of those concerned and what we have seen is that the Debi regime which is the government that controls Chad actually quite quickly began breaking the agreement that the World Bank entered into with the Chadian government and rather than using resources to reinvest in poverty alleviation in the country the Deby regime (Prime Minister Idriss Deby) has been using resources to purchase weapons to increase its security apparatus, and to effectively fuel the various tools for repression and control within Chad. So it is yet another example of the World Bank investing in oil basically at the behest of the United States and other Western governments for the purpose of extracting that oil to fuel consumption in the North. But actually serving to retrench and complicate conditions on the ground for civil society organizations and people that are struggling to try to address democracy and human rights and governance concerns in their own country.

There have been steady calls for peace keepers for the region of the Sudan, Darfur and even Chad now, and this sounds good in theory but the Bush administration and the State Department have set up a US Military force for the region that would be based in the Horn of Africa, that’s AFRICOM. Couldn’t AFRICOM be more set up to protect corporate interests than societal ones?

Graham Saul: Yeah in many ways the Gulf of Guinea, the area in the West Coast of Africa is the next big oil region. There already is a lot of oil coming out of there, whether it’s through Angola down in the South of the Gulf of Guinea or Nigeria further to the North of it but there are expectations or thoughts that there is more oil off the coast that has not yet been harnessed. And there are real concerns within Africa and beyond that what’s happening is that the Bush administration is effectively militarizing the region through the establishment of AFRICOM as kind of a prelude to insuring through force and diplomatic and financial means, but AFRICOM obviously would be with the former in mind, insuring that there is a steady supply of oil coming out of the region. And as I said earlier the concern is that oil often has quite a direct relationship with conflict, whether it’s exacerbating the likelihood of civil unrest within a country as we have seen in places like Nigeria or whether the insecurities associated with access to oil has the potential to fuel or make more likely interstate conflict like we have seen with relation to Iraq. So groups in Africa and around the world are increasingly concerned that AFRICOM represents sort of the next phase in what has been a long history of the militarization of oil and suddenly we have seen from the Bush administration a willingness to go to unprecedented lengths to secure access and to maintain that access.

Dori Smith: Your web site, http://www.priceofoil.org www.priceofoil.org describes the separation of oil and state campaign. Describe what that is.

Graham Saul: We have seen vicious cycle over the past 100 years in terms of the relationship of the growth of the oil industry and governments. On the one hand the oil industry, especially in places like the United States, have been pumping huge amounts of money into the electoral process in support of individual candidates. And on the other hand public institutions and governments have been going to great lengths to support the expansion of the international oil industry and this has led to a patronage relationship, a vicious cycle, where the worst of both worlds end up emerging.

Oil Change International is basically calling for an end to this patronage relationship. We think we need a separation of oil and state, we don’t think that governments, especially today, should be in the business of subsidizing and encouraging the expansion of the international oil industry. It’s time for them to start refusing to take money from the oil industry and refusing to provide the kinds of lavish subsidies that we have seen over the past 30 or 50 years. So that’s basically what we mean by a separation of oil and state and we think it’s a necessary precondition to an effective transition away from our dependence on oil. Until our politicians stop being beholden to the oil industry, and until they stop actively strategizing about how to expand the industry and meet its interests we are never going to really be able to get beyond the addiction that pretty much everybody has identified. And we are also not going to be able to deal with the growing problem of climate change.

Dori Smith: The former Governor of Florida Jeb Bush is positioned to play a key role in bringing the US and Brazil together on Ethanol development. He was named co-chair of the year old Inter-American Bank Commission on Ethanol and C-span aired their April 2nd 2007 event designed to pave the way for private investment and international development. URL

Jeb Bush: Just as protectionism is not the answer neither is isolationism. In creating a national energy strategy we should not confuse energy independence with energy autonomy. The United States imports 4.9 billion barrels of crude oil, nearly 2/3rds of our total annual consumption and that number as we grow as our economy grows that number as a percentage grows even more. Attempting to eliminate all imports is unrealistic. Nor is it necessary in my opinion. Instead we should reduce our dependence on energy from countries that are politically unstable or downright hostile.

Dori Smith: Former Governor Jeb Bush not talking about oil there but Ethanol and the setting up of what sounded like an Ethanol cartel run by the U.S., Brazil and the Inter-American Development Bank.

Graham Saul: My first reaction is that what Bush is once again doing is ignoring the fact that the first objective needs to be reducing our energy use in general. We are consuming at essentially an unsustainable rate and we can’t replace one form of fuel for another at the same levels of production that we currently have. So the first step, and we need to constantly emphasize the importance of reducing our energy use in general.

The second thing is in relation to the Ethanol boom there is a real and growing danger that the Ethanol boom becomes a biodiversity nightmare and we need to do what we can to avoid that both from the perspective of insuring that we are not fueling a process of crop expansion into pristine rain forests and other areas of high biodiversity value. And also in a way of insuring that the Ethanol boom doesn’t drive food prices to unsustainable levels in ways that effect people’s capacity to meet their basic needs.

The thing that worries me most about the way the Bush administration talks about the Ethanol boom is that it sounds like what they are trying to do is build corporate power rather than community power. And when we look at a future sustainable energy strategy and energy system Oil Change International would like to see a distributed energy system that’s fed locally that is both driven by and responds to the needs of communities. We would like to see Ethanol play a small role in an energy mix but ultimately we need to find a way of approaching the energy question in a way that builds community power rather than building corporate power.

Dori Smith: As we listen to another segment from the April 2nd C-span broadcast we can hear how Jeb Bush Co-Chair of the Inter-American Development Bank Commission on Ethanol and fellow Commission member Roberto Rodrigues of Brazil discuss how to set up an Ethanol deal. First you will hear Rodrigues answering a question about getting rid of the 54 cent tariff on Ethanol in order to invite investment and then Jeb Bush interrupts the host of the event to spontaneously award big Ethanol contracts to his favorite US companies.

Roberto Rodrigues: This is the money that could belong to Ethanol producers in Brazil I guess. So why don’t we realize under our understanding in this commission, why don’t you propose to our governments, the United States and Brazilian Governments: Ambassador Sobel I ask you to work on that, Ambassador Sobel is a very good friend of Brazilian producers of Ethanol and working hard in favor of this commission also, why don’t you use this money to develop research in both countries in a kind of synergetic activities. Let’s research together with Brazilian money and North American….(unclear because he was interrupted by loud laughter and applause).

Thank you Minister for your usual candid and passionate response to…(he is interrupted by Jeb Bush)

Jeb Bush: Can I just respond. I just, I think it’s important, I’ll do that deal with you as long as John Deer and International Harvester sell the harvesting machines in the expansion of the production.

Roberto Rodrigues: With Brazilian jobs! (More laughter and applause.)
Jeb Bush: We’ve got a deal.
Roberto Rodrigues: Done!

Dori Smith: Now we heard Roberto Rodrigues mention Ambassador Sobel, that’s Clifford Sobel, the U.S. Ambassador to Brazil. According to the web site Open Secrets Sobel was also chief fundraiser for New Jersey Republicans including Christine Todd Whitman, the former head of the EPA, when she was running for the office of Governor of New Jersey. A lot of opportunity in that room certainly to at least understand how to manage what they hope will be this booming new Ethanol industry.

In terms of Congressional regulation or oversight George W. Bush has outlined a plan to use 35 billion liters of biofuels by 2017 and brother Jeb Bush seems to think that the plan will go through in a very similar way to the way the Vice President’s Energy Bill went through; in other words it will be a slam dunk.

Jeb Bush: I don’t think it requires legislation but if it did as was the case with the Energy Bill of several years ago, there was a goal that was significantly smaller, my guess is if it was presented to the Congress today it would uh it would pass.

Dori Smith: Graham Saul let’s start with the way Jeb Bush and Rodrigues set up business to include John Deer and International Harvester. Is that something of a look at the way these deals are actually done?

Graham Saul: Well unfortunately it sounds like its business as usual in the house of Bush and that the Ethanol industry is shaping up to be a giant cash cow for many large corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland with billions of dollars in public subsidies flowing into it every year. And its not surprising unfortunately that the Bush family and their allies are trying to insure that there is a piece of the pie that feeds into the industries and corporations that they are very actively associated with. And as I said earlier this is one of the things we definitely need to be aware of. That if we just reproduce a model of production that has been really problematic in other sectors of the energy industry; if we just reproduce it in the Ethanol sector we are asking for more troubles than we are going solve. We need to be wary that we are not reducing one form of destructive dependence for another form of destructing dependence.

Dori Smith: And they did mention this concept of changing Ethanol from a setting of agro energy to a setting of just energy and sort of writing this energy plan. What could this mean? I mean we are already living with the plan that gave these big give aways to the oil industry and now we are going to see the same thing for Ethanol?

Graham Saul: I think it’s conceivable that Ethanol can have a positive role to play in our energy mix at a very modest level but it’s important to keep that level in mind. What’s happened now is that because this offers an opportunity to subsidize the US farming industry, and because it also offers an opportunity for many large corporations to receive subsidies for their ongoing agriculture, there has been an enthusiasm that has developed around Ethanol that is totally out of proportion to the degree that it actually represents a solution. We just don’t have enough land to fuel our cars at the level of consumption we are currently using. It would not only be a biodiversity nightmare in the sense of whatever remaining pristine forests and unused land that is currently supporting life on earth would suddenly become much more vulnerable to encroachment from various different crops. But it could also be quite a big problem from the perspective of people being able to afford basic necessities in many parts of the world; that rather than going to put food on the table for people for people that currently don’t have it, that food is going to be turned into fuel that is going to go into the gas tanks of gas guzzling SUVs in the North in families that are much better placed to pay for it.

So we do need to look at all of the options we have in terms of where we can get alternatives to our dependence on oil and Ethanol and Biodiesel and biogas and other kinds of ways of harnessing organic matter to create energy do need to be part of the energy mix but we can’t rely on them to the degree that many people seem to want to rely on them and we have to be very suspicious of some of the motivations involved here and I think the references you have been making to Sobel and Jeb Bush and others are a perfect example of why we need to be wary of what we are getting ourselves into and where all of these public subsidies are going.

Dori Smith: Then there is the implication here that just as we saw new oil laws being written for Iraq from Washington we could start to see new Ethanol laws being written for any number of countries both in Latin America and abroad and they could find themselves having their policies and their laws dictated from Washington.

Graham Saul: It’s certainly the case that the development of the legal and regulatory frameworks that govern the oil sector in many countries of the world have been shaped by not only military and diplomatic pressure but also wealthy countries using foreign assistance to both subsidize the expansion of their own oil industry and to reform or force countries to adopt legal and regulatory frameworks for their own oil industries that are conducive to the industries of the North. So for instance ever since the oil shocks of the 1970s countries like the United States have been using international institutions like the World Bank to both finance oil corporations in their expansion in countries around the world, in Africa, Asia and South and Central America, but also to use the financial power that institutions like the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank have over many poor countries to force countries to reform their energy sectors in ways that meet the interests, that facilitate access for major oil companies. And there is no reason to think that that same model wouldn’t be reproduced in other sectors I mean it’s not just the oil sector where that approach has been used. There are similar approaches in a variety of sectors and there is no reason to think it wouldn’t expand into the Ethanol one.

The point is that wealthy countries are using a totally unsustainable amount of energy have for the past 25 years been cynically using foreign assistance including aid and development assistance to shape the energy sectors of countries around the world in ways that meet their interests. And Ethanol won’t be an exception to that.

Dori Smith: Graham Saul thanks so much for joining us.

Graham Saul: Thank you very much.

Dori Smith: Graham Saul is International Programs Director at Oil Change International, the web page is priceofoil.org You can find his November 22, 2006 report ‘Ending Big Oil Aid to Africa’ co-written by Debayani Kar at TomPaine.org For Talk Nation Radio I’m Dori Smith. Talk Nation Radio is produced in the studios of WHUS at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. WHUS.org to listen live Wed. at 5 PM. Talknation.org and talknationradio.org for transcripts and discussions.

http://english.aljazeera.net/English/archive/archive?ArchiveId=35557

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Transcript in progress….you can download Talk Nation Radio for rebroadcast on your station every week free of charge after 10 a.m. Thurs. or by special arrangement earlier. The program is uploaded to Pacifica’s Audioport.org and Radio4all.net.

Talk Nation Radio for April 4, 2007

Total Running Time: 28:49

Listen here

We begin with UNHCR’s Matthew Conway speaking to us by satellite phone from Abeche where a massacre took place Saturday morning in the villages of Tiero and Marena, about 45 km east of Koukou in south-eastern Chad. Thousands have arrived at the Goz Amir refugee camp, home to some 19,000 refugees from Darfur. And we discuss the need for a peace keeping mission to Chad to protect civilians and deter cross border attacks. 65 are known dead in the village of Tiero and at least 70 are known wounded with 34 serious enough that they were taken to the hospital. The sounds of the attack and heavy artillery could be heard by residents of Koukou. Several thousand Chadians made their way out of the towns and to the camp yet there may be others hiding from the violence. UNHCR is trying to determine what type of weapons were used in the attack and verify who the perpetrators were. The attackers may have been the notorious Janjaweed.

Then we speak with Graham Saul the International Programs Director at Oil Change International. We discuss the way World Bank funding to an ExxonMobil project in Chad made violence and instability there worse. (From his 2005 report in TomPaine End Big Oil Aid to Africa.) We look at the potential harm that could be done if a force like AFRICOM is set up to protect the oil industry in the region of the Horn of Africa.

And we assess an April 2, 2007 meeting of the Inter American Development Bank Commission on Ethanol and air portions of the remarks of former Gov. of Florida, Jeb Bush. Are they using the template from big oil to develop Ethanol? C-Span coverage

Listen to WHUS live for Public Affairs broadcasting of Democracy Now, (12 noon EST) Free Speech Radio News (M-F 5:30 PM) and locally produced public affairs programs from 5-6 PM weekdays and 4:30 to 7:00 PM Sat.)
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