Romeo Dallaire speaks

Romeo Dallaire*, former commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, spoke to a packed lecture theatre in London tonight. The end of his speech was met with much ovation and even a smattering of standing applause.

The basic thesis of Dallaire's lecture was that the world has changed, the conflicts and security situation has become more complex, notably through the advent of international terrorism, and the 'middle powers' (countries like Germany and Canada, among others) need to flex more military muscle in places like Darfur.

This message came across as alarmingly colonialist in its dimensions. It was consistent with the centuries old narrative of victims and villains in situations that forever require the intervention of powerful, Western states. There were tell tale signs that what Dallaire was saying was very much cut from this very ancient of cloths. For one, he weighed the crimes of powerful states such as the US in Iraq on the scale of negligence and error. The US had made a tactical error by not first seeking a UN mandate for its invasion of Iraq. Saddam should have been toppled during the First Gulf War. Clinton set the tone for US intervention in the third world, or the lack of such interventions, when he decided not to fully commit his forces to the conflict in Somalia because there was no strategic interest in the region.

Conversely, terrorists, militia groups and third world states like Sudan represented a new type of evil which needed to be disciplined by robust international military intervention. To be sure, the modern military commander must be inventive and dynamic in executing such interventions. But it was nevertheless through the military that such dynamism has to be expressed.

One cannot doubt Dallaire's sincereity, nor that he has a genuine interest in ending the suffering of innocents in places like Darfur, Sudan. But frankly, such sincereity is not, singularly, sufficient to justify the promotion of military solutions to complex problems.

This is not to say there aren't any solutions, let alone simple solutions. What is necessary is indeed quite simple. To begin with, the conflicts must be considered not merely in terms of warring tribes or militants or sweaty palmed third world despots. The origins of the conflict must be examined. The voices of the local people must be heard. Socioeconomics must be at the forefront of our analysis.

Sudan might as well serve as an illustration of this point. The janjaweed militias, the group of armed men on horses widely attributed to the ethnic cleansing in Darfur, are themselves the product of oppression and poverty. Many atrocities have been committed by other militias not aligned with the Sudanese Government. There is no clear distinction in Darfur between African victims and Arab villains. Sudan is a desperately poor nation whose borders, like those of most developing nations, were crudely drawn up by the European powers with limited consideration of the ethnic, tribal and other cultural affinities of the people within and outside these borders.

Indeed, one could go widen the scope even further to consider the prevailing international economic conditions which ensure that African countries like Sudan remain desperately poor, and therefore vulnerable to manipulation by local elites and multinational corporations.

One cannot address all these matters in a short item, but it is nevertheless of vital importance not to reduce the situation into a battle between good and evil, where the key relationship between the people of the South and the developed North is the barrel of a gun. A gun either pointed at them, or against some among them deemed too uncivilised for anything more.

* Dallaire is an interesting personality. He went through several years of depression and alcoholism as a result of the genocide his peacekeeping force failed to prevent. This failure was effectively inevitable given the lack of political will on the part of the international community to stop it, even though it was obvious well before the event that it would occur. The US and France may have also contributed directly to the success of the genocidal program. For further information on the US's role read this. For France, go here.