Catalyst

Darfur Mothers: Caught in the Conflict

How does one begin to understand the plight of mothers who are living in areas of conflict, war, great poverty?  How does one truly relate to a mother who has no food to give her crying, starving baby?  How does one stand in solidarity with a mother who can be prosecuted if she gives birth to a child that resulted from rape by her enemy, but who bravely births and then cares for her child?  In Darfur we find many of these mothers.

The Darfur mother may be a member of the semi-nomadic cow herding Arab Hotia tribe or the nomadic Arab Abala tribe.  For centuries these tribes lived in harmony with one another.  Then in February 2003, rebels took up arms against the Sudanese government, complaining that almost none of Sudan’s wealth was being distributed to the Darfur region.  In response, the government mobilized Arab militias, called Janjaweed.

Thus the lives of so many Darfur women changed.  The Darfur mother  is often confused by the politics and cannot relate to human rights organizations who fired the first shot.  Following murderous attacks on her village in which huts, animals and household belongings are torched, men are killed, and women are often raped, the Darfur mother treks, with her children,  many days across the barren desert, fleeing the enemy and arriving at a refugee camp where upwards of 15,000 are often gathered.  Thus she joins  the 2.5 million people who have been displaced during the past four years.

The Darfur mother at the refugee camp must start with scraps of plastic and cloth to construct a new home, which is not much more than shelter from the hot burning sun.  She awaits the arrival of trucks that bring basic food rations to feed her family, but even these trucks are often ambushed.  She can no longer rely on a few chickens or goats nor even a few vegetables from a garden plot to feed her family.  She has lost all she has and now is completely reliant on humanitarian aid for survival.  Water is a scarce commodity that also implies danger.  To access water, she must often go outside the relative safety of the refugee camp in order to go to a river or well.  Along the way, she may be captured by enemy forces, raped and branded.  The 12 liters per day that she is strong enough to carry is enough only for basic drinking and cooking, not for washing clothes nor bathing away the sweat of the day.

The Vatican, U.S. Catholic Bishops and world leaders have called on the Sudanese government to allow peacekeepers to enter the region.  As a result of these negotiations Sudan has agreed to an expansion of a small peacekeeping force of the African Union.  Special UN envoy to Sudan, Jan Eliasson reports that the regional government of southern Sudan plans to bring together Darfur rebel factions for a meeting in preparation for future peace talks with Sudan’s central government.  Eliasson at the same time expressed concern about three developments:   “land grabs, infighting among Sudanese tribes, and a radicalization and taking up of arms by refugee camp residents.  The U.S. government is considering the expansion of an airfield in Chad which borders the Darfur region.  [For more information refer to www.washingtonpost.com/world]

As the governments of the world consider their next steps, the women and children of the region remain vulnerable.  Perhaps putting a face on the situation – entering into solidarity with the Darfur mother – can quicken the process of intervention, which has been painfully slow and unproductive for many, especially the very real people being impacted each day by our delay.

Sources: ”Talks May Help Unite Rebel Forces in Darfur”, Nora Boustany, The Washington Post, May 17, 2007;  Oxfam America, Human Rights Watch, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights.

Posted by Sr. Janet Cashman, SCL - Intern, Center of Concern

Presidential Veto Threatens an Easter Resurrection in Iraq

In recent weeks, supplemental funding legislation for the war in Iraq has passed both the House and the Senate. Media attention focused on the inclusion in both versions of language around the withdrawal of troops: the House version included a timetable and the Senate version a “commencement date” for withdrawal from Iraq.

In the shadow of such significant statements, lesser-known aspects of the versions which would be important steps forward in Iraq did not receive the media attention they deserved. For example:

• Most importantly, both versions provide increased funding for the Community Action Programs (CAPs), small development programs run by Iraqis for Iraqis, which have been 98% effective at maintaining stability and development where they have been implemented.
• The Senate version allocates $100 million for restarting factories in Iraq—a move that would provide employment for 150,000 Iraqis if the 143 formerly state-run enterprises that Under Secretary of Defense Paul A. Brinkley has already identified are reopened.
• Both bills significantly increase the funding for assistance for Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons.
• Both bills drastically increase funding for civil society, democracy, and peace-building support, to over $380 million.
• Both bills extend the mission of SIGIR, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, through December of 2008. SIGIR has been instrumental in uncovering billions of dollars lost to corruption and misuse of funds in Iraq.

My blog entry from December, highlighted some of the commonalities between recommendations made by the Iraq Study Group and the U.S. bishops for a new course of action in Iraq. Both proposals recognized a failure in U.S. policy in Iraq due to an inflated dependence on military efforts to end the conflict. Improved reconstruction efforts and international diplomacy were two key ideas in need of attention, both documents said. The funding priorities contained in the supplemental spending bills—for development programs, job creation, and humanitarian assistance, for example—would be a big step toward meeting the first of those goals.

What is missing from the policy arena now is any trace of a verbalized strategy to move the Iraq conflict into the global arena where an internationally or regionally-led solution can take the place of the U.S.-led efforts—which by now have lost the confidence of all meaningful observers in reaching a viable solution to the conflict.

Unfortunately, even if the House and Senate can now reconcile their versions of the supplemental spending bill and come up with a plan for meeting reconstruction needs, the final result is likely to be vetoed upon reaching the president’s desk because of the withdrawal date language. But the step in the right direction that the bill would provide is too important to let go of as a fleeting moment in congressional history.

The challenge for us as people of faith and concerned citizens is to ensure that our leaders acknowledge the importance of many positive and essential elements for reconstruction that are currently on the table and that these ideas last beyond the likely veto. Even if there can be no immediate political agreement on the issue of withdrawal, many of the provisions currently included in the supplemental bills could do a lot of good, and quickly. On the other hand, if we fail to provide funding for development, job creation, humanitarian assistance, and monitoring, things will only get worse.

As we, as Christians, celebrate one of the most important events of our faith this Sunday, the resurrection of Christ, we should also remember to make our voices heard: the Iraqi people are badly in need of an Easter Resurrection and unless we do something quickly, it may never come.

by Jill Rauh, Senior Program Associate, Education for Justice Project, Center of Concern

NOTE: Many thanks to Simone Campbell, of NETWORK for her concise but thorough briefing on the supplemental legislation passed in Congress.

The World Social Forum: Why It Was Worth It

World Social Forum, January 25, 2007, Nairobi, Kenya

On the second day of the World Social Forum (WSF), the lead editorial in the main Nairobi newspaper attacked the gathering.  It spoke of the exuberant noise and music and drumming as no atmosphere for serious development of alternative globalization strategies.  It accused it of being a tool of the global foundations promoting an agenda of political correctness that distracts civil society from serious work for social change.

It was simply wrong – and nasty – in its attack on the issues of gender, race, and class that ran all through the marketplace of ideas that the WSF is.  It is probably a good sign that the established order takes the WSF seriously enough to attack it like that.  But it also misses the point.

The main important thing I experienced happening at the WSF through the workshops, marches and cultural exchanges was the building of solidarity and hope among people who need to know that they are not alone in their serious and at times desperate life struggles.  It was the affirmation of the justice and importance of those struggles.  It was the linking of people’s struggles around the world.  It was esteem building.  It was legitimizing.  As the children chanted, leading our march: ‘We are somebody’ and we don’t have to stand for this.  Another kind of world, a world of justice for everyone, is possible if we struggle together for it. 

If nothing else occurred here, that would be enough to make the WSF inestimably valuable.

But much more went on.  Stories of successes were shared across cultures and new ideas sparked.  Transnational partners were found who could work together to confront the transnational injustices of corporate actors.

Personally, I am coming away with three new realizations and some exciting organizational developments.  The first new awareness is of the passionate resistance growing to micro-credit financing.  The critique is not only that it is too little to make any macro difference.  That is true – look at Bangladesh after 35 years of micro-credit financing.  It has been a palliative measure within the dominant economic system.  But the opposition to it here at the WSF went on to detail how in many cases it has reproduced the debt crisis at the personal level.  If individuals have not been able to repay the loans, the peer pressure has too often led them to borrow money elsewhere at exorbitant rates to repay or has driven them to despair and suicide.

The second new awareness for me was of the central role of extractive industries in forcing the migration of peoples, exporting profits and creating poverty by driving people from their lands, destroying the ecology of the areas involved, and sparking armed conflict.  Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo are obvious examples.  The TNCs profiting from unjust contracts made with corrupt governments are principally European, American and Chinese.

The third realization is the immense role of China in the future of Africa.  Africans at the WSF describe China as the “new crocodile” coming to exploit Africa’s resources to satisfy its immense appetite for energy.

The organizational developments emerged as the result of a gathering of Jesuits and their colleagues (an “Ignatian Family Encounter”) from around the world.  Following a 3-day seminar on the global economic development agenda that looked at issues of trade, debt and global governance, we worked to give shape to further international collaboration.  A group of 20-25 people from Africa, Latin America, North America, Europe and Asia identified five different clusters of issues that people were working on back home and that we felt could be helped by international collaboration through the International Jesuit Network for Development (IJND).

The key insight behind this approach is that everyone involved has plenty of work to do – too much to take on additional projects.  But all involved are doing work that could be enhanced and strengthened by some simple international collaboration.

The five areas we identified are: 1) Migration and Development, 2) Governance, especially capacity-building for local communities to hold their governments accountable, 3) Debt and Trade, 4) Extractive Industries, and 5) Conflict and Peace-making.  Small working groups formed around each issue cluster and identified the ways that they would be helped by sharing resources, promoting transnational research, devising joint advocacy strategies, etc.

A contact person was identified in each group who will see that follow-up activities are animated.  Listservs will be established for each group to make communication easy, and each working group will have its own space on the IJND website www.ijnd.org to collect and share materials, identify best practices, strategize, etc.  They will be operative before mid-February.  If you are working on any of these areas, you may wish to join the relevant working groups.  Just let us know.

Posted by Jim Hug, SJ - President, Center of Concern

Pinochet's Legacy: Tyranny, Brutality, and Economic Disaster

This is a time "to pray for the soul of Gen. Pinochet, but also for the soul of Chile" Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz of Santiago. Monday, December 11, 2006. The Chicago Tribune.

There is no question Augusto Pinochet was a bloodthirsty fascist, and the notion that we would pray for his soul – not his victims – challenges my ideas of forgiveness and love. However, I think Cardinal Errazuriz’s point is one of reconciliation, the violence Pinochet stood for should not continue in a cycle after his death.

Many news outlets are reporting on the Pinochet regime’s dark and murderous reign, and some have included details of the complicity of the governments of the U.S.and Great Britain. Pinochet’s state sponsored terrorism and violent repression are well documented, but what has become muddled in the wake of his death is, of all things, his transformation of Chile’s economy.

Marketplace, a news program focusing on business, economics and money and often heard on NPR, reported on Monday December 11th, that after Pinochet’s 1973 military coup and murder of democratically elected President Salvadore Allende, “(Pinochet) then turned his country into a laboratory for free market reform. He removed trade barriers, created an independent central bank and privatized social security.”

Dan Grech, a reporter for Marketplace went on to say: “Even Pinochet's worst critics admit his economic model has been a success.”

While it has become fashionable to point out Allende’s flaws, giving credit to Pinochet for his economic policies is completely misguided. In fact, crediting Pinochet with anything other than proving that unchecked economic liberalization will lead directly to economic disaster is a blatant disregard of the historical record.

As author and economist Greg Palast chronicles here, in the first ten years of Pinochet’s rule, unemployment rose from 4.3% to 22%, real wages declined by 40%, and by 1990 the number of people in poverty doubled – from 20% to a stunning 40% of the population.

Make no mistake, it was not dumb luck that Pinochet was able to cripple a once thriving economy the way he destroyed a once fully functioning democracy. According to Palast, “...the General abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatized the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and on business profits, slashed public employment, privatized 212 state industries and 66 banks ...”

This is what led President Ronald Reagan’s State Department to report: “Chile is a casebook study in sound economic management.”

Pinochet’s economic policies had nothing to do with Chile’s economic growth of the past two decades. It was not until Chile was on the brink of utter economic collapse, and its citizens took to the streets that Pinochet restored many of the programs and controls he had previously abolished. It was the restoration of those measures that allowed Chile to recover and thrive.

Chile’s economic growth has clearly been in spite of Pinochet’s legacy and of the neo-liberal economic orthodoxy, not a result of them.

Bob Lyon

Donor Outreach Coordinator

Center of Concern

The link to Greg Palast’s full article on Augusto Pinochet’s disastrous economic policies: http://www.gregpalast.com/tinker-bell-pinochet-and-the-fairy-tale-miracle-of-chile-2#more-1551

An article on Pinochet by Christopher Hitchens, whose reporting ten years ago in Harper’s magazine was among the first to reveal the extent of U.S. involvement in Pinochet’s rise to, and brutal grip on power: http://www.slate.com/id/2155242/

Casualties of War

If the United States and its coalition forces are “winning the war in Iraq” as George W. Bush would have us believe through his repeated claims, what would losing the war in Iraq actually look like?  By every conceivable measure, there can be no use of the word winning, or victory in connection to what is happening in Iraq.  Over the past three years there has only been a steady spiral downward into chaos and now a looming civil war that will only exacerbate political instability in the region and most likely lead to greater violence and terrorism.

The President may use all the rhetoric he chooses, but the underlying reality reveals a very different truth.

• As of September 30, 2006, the current death toll of U.S. service men and women killed in the line of duty in Iraq stands at 2,715 and counting.[1] 

• The number of U.S. troops who have been wounded in Iraq continues to climb and as of August 30, 2006 stood at 19,910 wounded.[2]  Their lives will never be the same.

• The number of Iraqi civilians killed since the war began is estimated to be between 43,546 and 48,343.[3]  In military terms, the innocent civilians caught in the cross fire, or victims of roadside bombs are conveniently referred to a “collateral damage.”

• Iraqi security troops who have died number 5,468 as of September 30, 2006.[4]

Numbers by themselves will never tell the more personal story of specific lives lost, or of the thousands of lives of family members and friends whose futures are forever changed by the landscape of grief and the burden of their loss.  There is no way to communicate in number or otherwise the magnitude of destruction that visits all sides of this conflict.  The loss of human life alone prevents this from being any sort of victory.

If we are “winning this war” how should we account for the mounting losses?

If we are “winning the war” then how should we account for the unquestioned erosion of our own civil rights vis a vis the Patriot Act?  While we fight for greater democracy abroad, we stealthily erode its integrity here at home.

If we are “winning the war” then how should we explain that as human lives are lost the major oil companies and the U.S. defense contractors are actually recording record profits as a result of the war?

If we are “winning the war” then why is there greater instability in the region, and insurgency efforts are only getting stronger, not weaker?

If we are “winning the war” then how should we account for the lack of moral standing the U.S. now has in international arenas?  We have a president who is actually arguing for the use of torture and other tactics clearly banned by the Geneva Conventions.

If we are “winning the war” how do we tell our children that domestic spending priorities vastly favor the purchase of military equipment that will destroy life, over investment in education, which will actually better their lives?  How do we explain to them the skyrocketing deficit and diminished social spending  both of which weaken the very foundation of our own democracy?

The casualty list for this war grows greater every day.  In no way is there a victory at hand here.

The question surely arises, ‘so what must be done’?  The war in Iraq is a key election issue this fall.  Great efforts will be made to deflect attention from what’s happening in Iraq in order to distract us from the devastating reality.  As citizens, we must not let that happen. 

In this election season we must reclaim and reform the rhetoric that is being used against the American people.  We are not only losing the war in Iraq, we are losing a great deal more.  While we “fight for freedom and democracy” abroad, we must exercise our own hard won freedoms at home and reinvigorate our own democratic privilege by asserting our civil and moral voice through our own participation in the political process here at home.  If we allow apathy and ignorance to win out over careful consideration of candidates, we fail to use an opportunity to speak as people of conscience.  If we fail to participate in this upcoming electoral opportunity, we too may be casualties of the war.

Submitted by Katherine Feely, SND - Program Associate, Center of Concern

1 Source:  http://www.icasualties.org/oif/US_chart.aspx
2 Source:  http://www.icasualties.org/oif/woundedchart.aspx
3 Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
4 Source: ibid.

Finding Our Way

Who do people say that we are, as Americans?  We used to know and be proud. 

We were a nation, welcoming

"... your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

We were the nation where anyone who worked hard and played by the rules could succeed and support themselves and their families.

Now corporate-designed globalization and outsourcing have removed the American Dream of prosperity from the reach of all but a few of the wealthiest, while workers’ pension funds are collapsing and stories of corporate and political corruption fill the media.  Our national budget shows us to be turning our backs on the poor and needy, handing more power and wealth to the already powerful and wealthy.  Ensuring that too many people never get a fair shot in life.

We were the most powerful and secure nation in the world, working for the peace and freedom of all nations. 

Now we launch, support and promise more preemptive wars, wars very costly in human lives, resources, and global reputation, wars that cannot be won by sheer military force.  As a nation, we invest vast amounts of resources in trying to dominate the world through “shock and awe” rather than win its friendship with generous, fair and mutually respectful policies of support and care.

We were a nation committed to human rights, support and opportunities for people in need, democratic values, generous neighborly relations with the rest of the world. 

Now we continue our human rights rhetoric while torturing prisoners held without charge and violating the civil rights protections of our own citizens. 

We were a religious nation, welcoming people of all faiths and nations to live in peace side by side with us as a witness to the world of the oneness of the human family. 

Now we send vigilantes to our borders and build walls instead of golden doors to keep out the tired and poor who are yearning to feed their families – because they don’t obey our laws.  If Jesus were to come as an immigrant from South of our border, he would have to wait years for a legal visa.

We are a nation headed in the wrong direction, and now the majority of us know it and are willing to say so.  We are a nation headed for an election, a chance to begin to shift direction. 

But we are also a nation deeply divided, and a nation plagued with too many leaders who see aggravating and manipulating the divisions as in their political advantage.  Sound-bite slogans, name-calling and negative campaigning are the strategies of choice over thoughtful dialogue seeking solutions that bridge our differences and serve higher community values.  If they are successful, as they have been for several years, they will win and we will all continue to lose.

How can we find our way again?  How can we find a path that embraces our best values? 

In complex societies, it is rare that a single leader can stand up and rally most of the people.  In a society as purposefully divided as ours, it is practically impossible.  We need to stop waiting and hoping for our Moses, our Jesus, our Muhammed, our Gandhi – even our Martin Luther King, Jr.  We need to bring to voice the Spirit given to each of us, and to us collectively, to shape the vision grounded in our best values that can guide our voting, our policies and our public life.

We, at the Center of Concern, hope this forum is one way to bring together diverse voices in a discussion on finding a new path toward a fair and prosperous future.  Please share your thoughts on current issues confronting our country.  We have some ideas on pressing issues, and those will be addressed in future postings, but we also want to hear your thoughts and ideas.  Together we can find our way.

Posted by Jim Hug, SJ - President, Center of Concern