June 23, 2008

Why the ‘World’ Cannot Intervene against Poisonous Governments

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman

Two concepts of governance are at loggerheads around the world today: the first being the sanctity of national sovereignty (written into the UN Charter) and second, the duty to intervene in a genocide.This latter need has come up a number of times, beginning with the Rwanda Hutu-Tutsi genocide and then with the Darfur government-supported genocide in Sudan. Now another category has surfaced in Burma, the fiefdom of a horrible government of military thugs. Their thuggery was ignored by the "world community" until the recent cyclone disaster that has left millions of citizens trapped with no food, shelter, or medical care. The Burmese government has impeded free access to UN, independent aid agencies, and the US Navy, all of which were there, prepared to act.The government rejected help and people are dying, which the world sees only because of courageous clandestine journalists.

Let's look at the other examples:

• Rwanda.When the Rwanda genocide took place, the UN had been warned six months earlier by the International Association of Genocide Scholars that this was in the works, a report that was ignored. The French, who had the most influence as former colonial masters of the country, declined to act for still mysterious reason. And UN peacekeeping forces were not permitted to intervene - although one brave officer disobeyed and helped rescue some refugees running from their murderous neighbors. That officer was fired.

• Sudan. Sudan has a long history of thuggery toward non-Arab, non-Muslim dissidents such as the Christian and Animist Black population in the south. The discovery of oil in that region is one underlyingeconomic reason for a government land grab, but racial and religious hatred also plays a role.The world did nothing for decades, as Black Sudanese were kidnapped, sold into slavery, raped and abused. Ultimately, however, that "civil war" was brought to an end with the help of American and European pressure.At the same time, people in another Sudanese province, Darfur (this time Black but Muslim), were subjected to genocidal attacks that destroyed hundreds of villages and displaced thousands of people. Without UN emergency help they would be totally exterminated; but even in their marginal UN camps, Arab militias hunt down and rape or kill women looking for water or fuel. The conflict has begun to spread to neighboring Chad, which has plenty of problems of its own.

• Bosnia. Why doesn't the "world community" intervene? Because they cannot do it as a UN function. The single intervention in genocide took place in Bosnia, in the crumbling Yugoslavia, whose Muslim population was being wiped out by their Serbian neighbors. Even the sight of emaciated Bosnian men in concentration camps and evidence of Serbian rape camps for women did not move the Europeans (on whose doorstep this was happening) to intervene. The UN Security Council could not get past vetoes of the Russians (patrons of the Serbs) or the Chinese (who have skeletons in their own closet) who not want intervention by outsiders.

And both the Russians and Chinese have the UN Charter and international custom on their side: that sovereignty is a ruling principal of the international order. But then what about humanitarian intervention?This is being much talked about, but as long as the UN has a Security Council hostile to such action and no capacity for peace making (only peace keeping), don't look to the UN to intervene on behalf of victims of genocide or blatant misrule.

Despite the UN and lack of enthusiasm by the Europeans and outrage by the Russians and Chinese, America intervened in Yugoslavia and stopped genocide in its tracks. And the rescue of Kuwait from a blatant Iraqi invasion was reversed by a U.S.-led coalition. South Korea in the 1950s was also rescued from takeover by the north only because the U.S. forced the UN to approve action while the Russians were away for the weekend.

We are the world order. There is no other.

Family Security Matters Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is an historian, lecturer, and author who also writes for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or http://www.globalthink.net/.