Home > The Magazine > Features

Saturday 22 November 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

‘If we die today, you will be responsible’

David Bosco

Wednesday, 11th June 2008

David Bosco accompanies the UN Security Council on its visit to Darfur and finds that even meeting the victims of the conflict can’t stiffen the Council’s resolve

Hundreds of the displaced had lined up to witness the arrival of their potential saviours. A few held up makeshift signs depicting planes bombing helpless civilians. As security agents with Kalashnikovs watched nervously, the Council walked quickly through the camp’s wooden gate and ducked into a large hut for a planned meeting with selected representatives of the camp’s residents. The ambassadors sat cross-legged on the ground, and they sweltered in the hut’s heat. A donkey brayed loudly a few metres from the hut.

‘The hour we have been waiting for has finally arrived,’ intoned a camp leader. ‘In the name of Allah, we welcome our honoured guests.’ For the next half-hour, the Council heard about rampant insecurity and the inability of the peacekeepers to curtail it. ‘Unamid can’t protect us and they can’t protect themselves,’ one refugee told the Council. Another Darfurian demanded that the Council force Khartoum to accept peace. ‘If we die today, you will be responsible.’ The ambassadors asked a few questions, but there was no time for a walking tour of the camp; instead they had to head off to an entirely pointless meeting with the Khartoum-supported governor of North Darfur and then fly back to meet with President al-Bashir. South Africa’s ambassador apologised for the brevity of the visit. ‘It was better to hear you for a short time than not to hear you at all.’ The Council could barely talk the talk, let alone walk the walk.

Security agents propelled the ambassadors through a throng of camp residents and into the convoy’s vehicles for the drive back to El Fasher. The UN helicopter again circled overhead, and Sudanese police raced alongside the convoy. One building the Council passed bore a large sign: ‘Sudanese Armed Forces: Construction and Protection.’

The brief encounter with Darfur’s victims was over. Had the consciences of Sudan’s protectors on the Council been pricked by the refugees’ tales? It was difficult to tell.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Next page

More articles from: David Bosco | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (2)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

sebastian

June 13th, 2008 6:53am

The failed litmus test for that expensive talking shop and vote mart called the UN. David has done well to describe this charade so vividly. And so......is it better to have a largely useless organisation; or none at all? Would it be better to abandon the Darfur (and millions of other) victims the UN can do little or nothing for; or to continue with breadline rations for a few and false promises for most?
How much did that visit cost? Lots. How much was gained? Nothing.
The UN's often a cruel and wasteful disgrace. It talks itself into regular inertia. There's much interest in national (or private) profit - minerals; ore; oil; cheap labour; contracts drafted and sold; mining rights peddled - not humanitarian matters. It's disgusting. Our continued payments to it should be linked to reforms.

Riaz Ahmad

June 15th, 2008 10:18pm

David Bosco, you and others like you know extremely well why UN is incapable of preventing mass murder and suffering; for the sake of national vested interest, you all are conveniently very silent. The problem is the scurity council deliberately designed to serve the vested interest of the powerful at the expanse of fairness and justice for the weak and poor. If there was a free vote of the member states, things will be totally different. If the powerful, like the USA failed to act, then all this talk of spreading democracy and human rights will sound very hollow and fake.

Thank goodness we can have a run on the pound when we need one

Martin Vander Weyer

Martin Vander Weyer looks ahead to next week’s Pre-Budget Report and reflects on George Osborne’s contentious remarks about the devaluation of sterling. It looks like Gordon Brown is getting away with his borrowing binge — leaving the Tories isolated

I loved Oliver Stone’s Bush film — and I know why the critics hated it

Rod Liddle

The movie W. did not provide the crude anti-Bush agitprop that the reviewers craved, says Rod Liddle. This was precisely its strength: we need to get inside the minds even of those we most deplore

The great Tory tax and spend battle: seconds out...

Fraser Nelson and Daniel Finkelstein

In the wake of Cameron’s decision to drop his pledge to match Labour spending, Fraser Nelson and Daniel Fin kelstein of the Times trade rhetorical blows over the issue that is gripping and troubling the Conservative party as it adjusts to the transformed economic context

Where is our inspiration when we most need it?

Bryan Forbes

Bryan Forbes remembers listening to Churchill as a 14-year-old evacuee and now looks with envy at Obama’s capacity to galvanise hope. Where are his UK counterparts?

For a bit of perspective, try thinking Jurassic

Christopher Lloyd

The first takeaways originated about 150 million years ago, says Christopher Lloyd; global travel is pretty ancient, too. And as for democracy...

Russia’s aggression in Georgia is a portent of perils to come

Philip Bobbitt

Philip Bobbitt says that the crisis reflects Russia’s determination to remain an old-fashioned nation state, dominating its region. Intellectual imagination will be needed to thwart that ambition: a recognition that the post-Cold War world needs new global institutions

Monty Python’s guide to the Darfur conflict

Justin Marozzi

The genocide publicised by movie stars is over, says Justin Marozzi. What must now be resolved is a civil war with unlimited breakaway factions — and Hollywood cannot help

Very discreetly, Cameron is writing his first Queen’s Speech

Fraser Nelson

In spite of their commanding poll lead, the Tories are terrified of seeming complacent. But, as Fraser Nelson discloses, work is well advanced on a first-term plan for government in which education reform and a welfare revolution will be the centrepieces

We have a duty to protect Zimbabwe

Peter Oborne

Robert Mugabe is murdering, starving and brutalising his people in the run-up to the presidential elections next week, says Peter Oborne. We should act now to prevent civil war and ethnic cleansing

Naked commercial greed meets Stalinist control

Leo McKinstry

When Leo McKinstry objected to his neighbours’ plan to build two blocks of flats, he quickly discovered the limits of ‘community empowerment’ under New Labour