Escalating Crisis in Darfur

ESCALATING CRISIS IN DARFUR -- (Senate - December 06, 2006)

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this evening there was a meeting in my office with the U.S. Special Convoy to the Sudan, Andrew Natsios. It was an unusual meeting by Senate and Capitol Hill standards. It was a bipartisan meeting called by Senator Sam Brownback, my Republican friend from Kansas, and myself, inviting our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to try to address the escalating crisis in Darfur, in the Sudan.

In the meeting, we talked about the urgent need for international action to stop this genocide. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Darfur over the last 3 years. Two and a half million people have been driven from their homes. There are refugee camps not only in Sudan but in Chad and neighboring countries filled with those from Darfur who have been driven out by the violence.

Nearly two-thirds of the people living in this region are now dependent on humanitarian aid, and hundreds of thousands are in need but far beyond the reach of humanitarian organizations. Humanitarian access, the ability to help those in such desperate straits, is, sadly, diminishing when, in fact, we need more.

The Sudanese Government in the capital of Khartoum has orchestrated this campaign of genocide. It continues to deny the death toll, and it continues to reject the United Nations peacekeeping mission.

On November 21, Special Envoy Natsios announced that the Bush administration would resort to an unspecified ``Plan B,'' as they called it, if the Sudanese Government does not agree by January 1, 2007, to allow an expanded international peacekeeping force in Darfur. Mr. Natsios made clear to us in the meeting in my office just a short time ago that this force is to be under the command and control of the United Nations. It is a very important part of our plan. In September, Secretary of State Rice warned that Khartoum faced a choice between cooperation and confrontation.

I believe it is time--it is well past time--for the world to make clear to Khartoum and the Sudanese Government that serious steps will immediately follow the beginning of the new year if a United Nations or combined United Nations and African Union force is not agreed to immediately. The United States and the world have a number of things we can do, things we can do to persuade the Sudanese that they have to stop this genocide in Darfur.

Militarily, the United Nations has authorized and the Senate supports the principle of a no-fly zone over Darfur.

It is not going to be easy to implement it, but it is possible. Although it is logistically challenging, that is no excuse to allow the Government of the Sudanese people to continue attacks on the Sudanese people themselves by air.

The United Nations should also be working with the International Criminal Court, sharing intelligence that could help accelerate indictments against those Khartoum officials and others guilty of crimes against humanity. Economically, the United States has sanctions against U.S. companies doing business in Sudan, but most countries don't. Sudan is a rich country when it comes to oil. They are expected to bring in $7.6 billion in revenue this year from oil. The major oil companies in the Sudan are owned and run by the Chinese, the Indians, and the Malaysians.

Independent reports estimate that 70 percent of that oil revenue is likely to be used by the Sudanese Government in Khartoum for military expenditures. Think of that. An otherwise poor African nation taking 70 percent of the revenues from oil, converting it into military equipment that in many cases is being used to kill its own citizens. Those same military expenditures have financed helicopter gunships, automatic weapons, and vehicles that have allowed the Sudanese Government and their militia to terrorize the population of Darfur.

The international community needs to join the United States in sanctions on Sudan. You can hardly pick up a newspaper in our country without finding a full-page ad exhorting our Government and people to do something about the genocide in Darfur. I salute those who are supporting that effort. I encourage them to take that information to other countries in Europe and other places so that they can engage with us in an effort to stop this genocide. Civilized nations should not do business with genociders.

In the United States, we need to do more. We should close our ports to oil tankers that have operated in Sudan. The President could block the assets of 17 individuals named in the United Nations investigation as responsible for crimes in Darfur. The list includes the Sudanese Minister of Interior, the Intelligence Director, and the Minister of Defense. To date, the President has only blocked the assets of four people: Two rebel leaders, a former Air Force officer, and a Janjaweed militia leader. We need to move up the chain of command. We need to do more, and we need to do it now.

All across America, State and local governments, universities, organizations, and private citizens are doing more by divesting their pension and other investment funds from companies that do business in Sudan, companies that support and enrich the Khartoum Government that is looking the other way when it comes to this genocide. Divestment is a powerful tool. I believe Congress and the White House should support it.

My State of Illinois was one of the first to step forward and divest its State pension funds. Five other States followed. Recently, I joined Senator Brownback in writing to every other Governor, urging them to join in the divestment effort. We have also each taken steps to personally divest. There is an interesting side note here. After Senator Brownback and I sent a letter to all of these Governors in States that have not divested from investments in the Sudan, an enterprising reporter reviewed my personal financial information on file and reported to me that one of the mutual funds that I owned, owned stock in a company doing business in Sudan. I was shocked to learn that. Quickly I sold it. But I think it is a warning to all that if you want to be participating in this effort to try to get the message to the Sudanese, we should all start with our personal savings and mutual funds and make sure that we are not supporting, indirectly, the Government of Sudan. I have sold that mutual fund, and I will try to be vigilant that if another mutual fund I own purchases something in Sudan, that I divest very quickly.

All of these are small actions but cumulatively they can make a difference. Tonight, as I have done before, I can't help but think about Rwanda in 1994. I mentioned it this morning when I noted the retirement of my colleague from Vermont, Senator Jim Jeffords. In 1994, mass murder was launched in Rwanda. It was carried out by guns and torches and by the grisly use of machetes.

Five weeks after the killings began, Illinois Senator Paul Simon, my predecessor and my closest friend in public life, who was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa, and Jim Jeffords, then the ranking Republican on that same subcommittee, phoned General Romeo Dallaire, head of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda in Kigali and asked what he needed. A desperate Dallaire told them that if he had 5,000 soldiers, he could stop the massacre in Rwanda. Those two Senators immediately drafted and hand-delivered a note to the White House, to the Clinton administration, requesting that the United States get the Security Council to authorize deployment of troops.

In their letter they wrote:

Obviously there are risks involved. But we cannot sit by idly while this tragedy continue to unfold.

Sadly, they received no reply to their letter. The killings continued. At the end of the day, over 800,000 people died in Rwanda as victims of the genocide. Last year, about this time, Senator Brownback and I went to Kilgali. People there don't talk about the Rwandan genocide of 12 years ago unless it is brought up. As I looked down at a Catholic Church down the hill from the Hotel Rwanda made famous by the movie, I thought it was just a simple church in an African capital. I came to learn that over 1,000 people were hacked to death inside that church where they sought asylum during this massacre and the genocide.

Later, after it occurred, Paul Simon would say:

If every member of the House and Senate had received just 100 letters from people back home saying we have to do something about Rwanda, when the crisis was first developing, then I think the response would have been different.

Hundreds of thousands of innocent lives would have been saved. So many times I have stood on this floor pleading for our Nation to intervene in Darfur, and I have been thinking about Paul Simon and what he did in Rwanda. This time, during the latest chapter in the world's history of atrocities, hundreds of Americans, thousands of Americans are engaged. It is so encouraging to go to college campuses across the State of Illinois and find college groups that have made Darfur their issue. It is great to go to meetings of people old and young in my State and have someone afterward come up and discuss the genocide in Darfur. These people have not been silent. They have pleaded for action.

Paul Simon was right, in part. The response this time has been different. It has been different than the world's response to genocides against the Armenians, the Jewish people, the Cambodians, the Bosnians, and the Rwandans. It has been different in that this time we recognize that truly there is a genocide taking place on our watch, in our time in this world. But we haven't stopped it.

We are here today not as Democrats or Republicans but as advocates for the people of Darfur. The U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Mr. Natsios, has drawn a line in the sand. As of January 1, the Sudanese Government must either accept the peacekeeping mission or face the consequences. Personally, I believe this deadline comes too late. But I hope it is effective. I hope it convinces the Sudanese Government to accept the peacekeepers. If not, then the administration's plan B, the consequences of refusal, must be meaningful and immediate and decisive.

Let me close with the words of Paul Simon and Jim Jeffords, who retires this week from the Senate:

We cannot sit idly by while this tragedy continues to unfold.

I yield the floor.

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