By Matthew Russell Lee
KHARTOUM, October 8-9, 2010 -- Why did the UN Security Council trip to Darfur feel so docile, so distracted?
Or perhaps perfunctory: the 15 Ambassadors were driven around in a convoy of some 40 four wheel drive vehicles, from being protested at the Wali of North Darfur's compound to the Abu Shouk Internally Displaced Person's camp to a hospital to the airport, where UK Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant took and largely dodged seven questions and then got on the plane.
Such a program implied that the UN Security Council is Mother Theresa, that its main work is humanitarian. That the Saudi Hospital in Al Fasher is unsanitary, as one Permanent Five Council member emphasized to the Press -- what exactly is the Security Council going to do about it?
Meanwhile things much more directly in the Council's jurisdiction like the host country Sudan's denial of freedom of movement to the peacekeeping mission established by the Council, UNAMID, and UNAMID chief Ibrahim Gambari prepares to hand over five supporters of rebel Abdel Wahid Nur to this same government, with a president indicted for war crimes and genocide, seems to have hardly been discussed or even accessed.
We say seem because the Press was excluded from nearly every stop along the Council member's humanitarian tour. A breakfast with international non governmental organizations was "for Security Council members only."
At the Wali's house, after formulaic speeches and much conferring with another delegation, Lyall Grant asked the Press to leave. The same occurred at the Abu Shouk IDP camp.
The Press wasn't allowed for a single second into the Saudi hospital, despite one delegation making various representations about conditions once they had left.
Rather, the Press was told to sit in a mini bus in front of the hospital. Here, Ibrahim Gambari approached to promise to try to ensure access to the program in Khartoum. He then jumped with armed guards into his four by four vehicle, which drove over and crushed green melons or squash painstakingly planted in front of the hospital.
During the 24 hours the Security Council was in Darfur, two UNAMID civilian staff living outside the Super Camp were kidnapped. Thursday night a UNAMID spokesperson confided coyly that there had been a “security incident” but wouldn't say anymore. He said to Inner City Press, “you'll probably be the one to get the scoop, but I won't help you.”
Later UNAMID fed partial information to a wire service, that one of the staff escaped and another was still missing -- the government of Sudan, the UN said, was helping look for the staff member, who it emerged is Hungarian. Despite Gambari's UNAMID implying that the rebels did the taking, Lyall Grant used the kidnapping as his example of the deteriorating conditions in Darfur.
What about the 47 people killed at Tarabat Market last month while the UN took three days to even go? This appears not to have been mentioned.
When at the airport Inner City Press asked Lyall Grant about Gambari's proposed hand over of five rebels to the Bashir government, and which it might mean for UN peacekeepers freedom of movement to places like Jebel Marra, Lyall Grant's main answer was that this wasn't in the Council's “terms of reference.”
Lyall Grant offered nothing but praise for UNAMID and Gambari, despite the latter's closeness to the Bashir government. And on the plane to Khartoum, even an unusable account of the meeting with IDPs from which the Press was excluded was glossed over, with a mention of “ad hominen” attacks by the IDPs but, even in this format, no mention of Gambari's name.
In Khartoum on Thursday night, things hardly got better in terms of transparency of the Council trip. The UNMIS Mission and its one year chief Haile Menkerios held an event with Council members, which the Press was not allowed to cover or attend.
When the Council, with different members and Ambassadors, visited Khartoum in 2008, Inner City Press attended and covered the similar event thrown by then UNMIS chief Ashraf Qazi. So are the UN Security Council and UNMIS getting less rather than more transparent over time?
The people the Council is meeting with on Saturday, it is not clear how and by whom they were selected. Watch this site.
Footnotes: in rare praise of Khartoum, once excluded by UNMIS and the Council, Inner City Press went with hard working Sudan-based journalists to the Papa Costa restaurant in downtown Khartoum, for grilled hamour from the Red Sea accompanied by a jazz quartet. It's not like this every day, one of the correspondent said.
He pointed to a traffic circle that until recently, and four two years, had Al Qaeda graffiti. Now the government belatedly painted it over -- one tangible effect of the Council's lightening visit.
