Via Instapundt: Now that the Bush administration is stepping up the pressure regarding the situation in Darfur, Sudan, the crisis is revealed to be a Bush-created fiction:

US 'hyping' Darfur genocide fears

Peter Beaumont
Sunday October 3, 2004
The Observer

American warnings that Darfur is heading for an apocalyptic humanitarian catastroph ehave been widely exaggerated...

The US warned of an "apocalypic" catastrophe? Who's exaggerating here again?

... by administration officials, it is alleged by international aid workers in Sudan. Washington's desire for a regime change in Khartoum has biased their reports, it is claimed.

Ah, the old "it is claimed". Claimed by whom? Read the whole article, and of course we'll never learn who is alleging this "claim". Perhaps the claimant is, in fact, the journalist himself, joining in an attempt to create news rather than report it.

The government's aid agency, USAID, says that between 350,000 and a million people could die in Darfur by the end of the year. Other officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, have accused the Sudanese government of presiding over a 'genocide' that could rival those in Bosnia and Rwanda.

Ah. So there is no "genocide". That's just a fictional claim by Powell. Or was it from the US charities? Guess the reader is supposed to be buying the idea that US charities like "USAID" and "World Vision" are actually political tools of the Bush administration, willing to fabricate a crisis wholesale in order to further US political aims.

That is the implication here.

But the account has been comprehensively challenged by eyewitness reports from aid workers and by a new food survey of the region. The nutritional survey of Sudan's Darfur region, by the UN World Food Programme, says that although there are still high levels of malnutrition among under-fives in some areas, the crisis is being brought under control.

The killings? The Janaweed mauraders? Didn't exist? Have disappeared? Will never happen again?

Even if we read what's written: The crisis has been "hyped". Oh, and it's also being brought under control.

"I didn't steal his money. And anyway, it wasn't much."

So we have differing testimony, now. On one side, we have groups like USAID, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International offering firsthand testimony of nothing less than massive human rights violations.

On the other hand, we have the "UN World Food Programme"? Would this be under the same UN whose Human Rights Council which is headed by ... uh... Sudan -- who has refused to let observers in the country and claims reports of a crisis are greatly exaggerated. (They claim "only" 5,000 were killed.)

So, uh, who are we to trust again?

It's clear who this reporter trusts...

'It's not disastrous,' said one of those involved in the WFP survey, 'although it certainly was a disaster earlier this year, and if humanitarian assistance declines, this will have very serious negative consequences.'

Ah, that's the real threat: Not giving us enough money. Everything is fine unless you stop giving us money. That would be disasterous.

The UN report appears to confirm food surveys conducted by other agencies in Darfur which also stand in stark contrast to the dire US descriptions of the food crisis.

The most dramatic came from Andrew Natsios, head of USAID, who told UN officials: 'We estimate right now, if we get relief in we'll lose a third of a million people and, if we don't, the death rates could be dramatically higher, approaching a million people.'

A month later, a second senior official, Roger Winter, USAID's assistant administrator, briefed foreign journalists in Washington that an estimated 30,000 people had been killed during the on-going crisis in Darfur, with another 50,000 deaths from malnutrition and disease, largely among the huge populations fleeing the violence. He described the emergency as 'humanitarian disaster of the first magnitude'.

Huh. That's funny. Just as late as July the 30,000-50,000 number was coming from the the UN's top guy on this topic, Jan Egeland himself. Now, in October, this is a fiction created by the Bush administration?

If the number was so fictional or hyperbolic, why was the UN itself saying it? Is Human Rights Watch, which regularly criticises the Bush administration, also acting a puppet for it's imperial masters in the Bush administration?

Perhaps they're counting on Europeans to be as soft-headed as American voters, who forgot it was Democrats who pushed the idea that Iraq had WMDs in the 90s.

My guess would be that they're right.

So here's the new narrative for Europeans to start absorbing...

By 9 September Powell was in front of the Congressional Foreign Relations Committee accusing Sudan of 'genocide', a charge rejected by officials of both the European and African Unions and also privately by British officials.

'I've been to a number of camps during my time here,' said one aid worker, 'and if you want to find death, you have to go looking for it. It's easy to find very sick and under-nourished children at the therapeutic feeding centres, but that's the same wherever you go in Africa.'

Oh, I get it. Things are fine in the camps.

Another aid worker told The Observer : 'It suited various governments to talk it all up, but they don't seem to have thought about the consequences. I have no idea what Colin Powell's game is, but to call it genocide and then effectively say, "Oh, shucks, but we are not going to do anything about that genocide" undermines the very word "genocide".'

I believe Colin Powell has been pushing for sanctions. I also believe France has been resisting, after formerly agreeing official pressure was needed.

While none of the aid workers and officials interviewed by The Observer denied there was a crisis in Darfur - or that killings, rape and a large-scale displacement of population had taken place - many were puzzled that it had become the focus of such hyperbolic warnings when there were crises of similar magnitude in both northern Uganda and eastern Congo.

So what are we saying? That 30,000 people aren't killed in Sudan? Or that 30,000 or more people were also killed in the Congo and Uganda and we just never heard about it?

You know how to tell if you're reading good journalism? When they refuse to cite even a single source for their information.

Concern about USAID's role as an honest broker in Darfur have been mounting for months, with diplomats as well as aid workers puzzled over its pronouncements and one European diplomat accusing it of 'plucking figures from the air'.

Again, the unnamed accusation.

Under the Bush administration, the work of USAID has become increasingly politicised. But over Sudan, in particular, two of its most senior officials have long held strong personal views. Both Natsios, a former vice-president of the Christian charity World Vision, and Winter have long been hostile to the Sudanese government.

And I'm sure this line, issued last month from the Sudanese government, has nothing to do with this crisis being revised downward.

Nothing.

And, I have no idea if the charges are true, but I can understand how aid workers might have a bit of dislike for a government which just murdered two million of it's own people. In my opinion, we should be a bit, uh, "hostile" to such people.

Unless you're a reporter for The Guardian, I guess.

(Acting on orders from who?)

Let's recap, shall we?

From 1989 until now, the Sudanese government has killed two million of it's own people. So we're not talking about a bunch of Boy Scouts.

Then, in April:

UN: Sudan conflict 'ethnic cleansing'

Stopping short of calling it genocide, a senior U.N. humanitarian official said Friday a coordinated, "scorched-earth" campaign of ethnic cleansing is taking place in Darfur, Sudan.

At the same time, the U.N. Security Council called for a cease-fire in Sudan's western province.

Undersecretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland, who is also the emergency relief coordinator, was asked if the Darfur situation amounted to genocide. He told reporters "no."

"We have now seen an organized campaign being undertaken of forced depopulation of entire areas," he said. "Most of the attacks have been indiscriminate, indeed they have often even targeted the civilian population."

The undersecretary-general said U.N. agencies received credible reports that show a consistent pattern.

"Entire villages are looted, burned down and sometimes bombed," he said. "Large numbers of civilians have been killed and scores of women and children have been abducted, raped and tortured.

"Scorched earth tactics are being applied throughout Darfur, including the deliberate destruction of schools, wells, seed and food supplies, making whole towns and villages uninhabitable," he continued. "Not even the camps for the refugees and internally displaced are immune from attacks. I consider this to be ethnic cleansing. I cannot find any other word for it."

U.N. agencies estimate that some 750,000 Sudanese have become internally displaced in Darfur since fighting erupted early last year between the Sudanese government, allied militias and rebel groups. Another 110,000 people have fled into neighboring Chad.

"I consider this to ethnic cleansing" said UN's Englund, in April. 750,000 were fleeing. From what? Mass hysteria from trumped-up USAIR reports?

Then, in early May:

Bertrand Ramcharan, the acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, yesterday asked that an international inquiry be set up to identify perpetrators of the violence in Darfur.

A report, which was to be presented to the UN Security Council yesterday, called on the Khartoum government to allow the UN and African Union to deploy human rights monitors in Darfur, where a "severe human rights and humanitarian crisis" has unfolded.

The report was compiled by a five-member team that returned from the region last week.

"The mission identified disturbing patterns of massive human rights violations in Darfur perpetrated by the government of Sudan and its proxy militia, many of which may constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity," the report said.

"The inevitable consequence of the killings, rape, burning and looting of villages has been massive displacement."

Sudanese refugees in Chad described a pattern of attacks beginning with air bombardments on ethnic minority areas.

"They said that bombs were sometimes dropped on crowded areas such as markets or communal wells; homes, shops and fields were also destroyed. These attacks terrorised the population."

To my knowledge, we never were able to put observers in. We have no idea what's going on in there.

And yet, suddenly, this is all "hype" from the US.