04/25/2006

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Below is an excerpt from the PBS Charlie Rose Show featuring: Guest Host Nicholas Kristof, Senator (D) Illinois, Barack Obama; Ken Bacon, President of Refugees International; and Jan Egeland, undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs at the United Nations.

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NICHOLAS KRISTOF: …Is there a risk that all of Chad is going to end up looking like Darfur?

KEN BACON: Well, I think that’s a possibility. So far, however, the attempt to overthrow the president seems to have been deflected. It’s not to say there won’t be other attempts, but there are now international mediation efforts under way to deal with some of the political and diplomatic problems that led to this coup attempt in the first place.

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First, there are indigenous instabilities within Chad. It’s an extremely poor country that has oil revenues that aren’t being distributed perhaps as broadly as they should be. Has a president who stayed office for a long time. That’s the first thing. Second, it clearly has been destabilized by a large influx of refugees from Darfur; 220,000 or more have come in and are living in camps, but there’s a lot of ebb and flow across the border on a regular basis.

And third, there have been rebel forces targeting the president of Chad, training in Darfur, probably with the help of the Sudanese government. So the instability in Chad, the militaristic approach to solving all problems that we see in -- that we see in Sudan is now spreading into Chad.

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KEN BACON: I think we should go beyond airlift, and I think we should begin to plan to put a no-fly zone into effect. This would be difficult, but it’s been mentioned in U.S. congressional resolutions. It’s been hinted at in U.S. Security Council resolutions. And the reason a no-fly zone would be important, and I think have a huge impact, is that there is a real pattern to the genocide taking place in Darfur today.

Typically, villages are attacked by Sudanese air force planes and helicopters. After the initial attack, then the so-called Janjaweed, people on camels, horses, in pickup trucks, come in and begin the hand-to- hand, face-to-face killings with machine guns and Kalashnikovs, AK-47s. This is when the men and boys are killed, the women are raped, the animals are killed or stolen, and dead animals and people are stuffed into wells to poison the water supply, so the villages can’t be rein habited quickly.

This is this type of horrendous activity that has caused President Bush to call this genocide.

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I believe that if we had a no-fly zone, if we took -- if we shot down some of the Sudanese aircraft, they would stop doing this. This would be a sign that we were ready to act, not just talk about genocide. It would have a huge impact, and I believe it would stop this, and that thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives, would be saved.

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JAN EGELAND: ... If people are dying, on horrendous scales, I think there should be intervention. I mean, the humanitarian intervention, whatever you call it. Then again, yes, you would have to have forces coming from outside of Africa as well. But today, it’s the 7,000 African Union forces is the only thing we have. And in the next days and weeks, at least make them mobile, make them move around. I’ve been to Darfur. I was barred from going there in 2004, when it was really, really bad, in -- at the of the year, I was able to go again. I was able to go again in 2005. I have been with these African Union forces. There were 70 people there, 80 people there. They could have two pickup trucks. You know, they don’t have logistics; they need it today.

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BARACK OBAMA: I mean, the first thing [to do] is, write a personal letter to your congressman and your two senators… And you can organize in your church, in your synagogue, in your mosque, in your union hall, in your book club so that you can make sure that more and more people are participating. I think that’s important… There is going to be on April 30th a large rally in Washington… the Web site is SaveDarfur.org.

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