A few weeks ago, Congress cut $50 million in funding for the African Union Mission in Sudan. This bill was originally unanimously approved by the Senate from the final foreign operations appropriations bill. Some members of Congress are pushing to restore the funding in the final stages of the military appropriations bill while it currently sits in conference committee.
Fifty million dollars is pocket change to the United States. But what are the implications of the cut in this funding for the African Union (AU), but more specifically for the conflict in Darfur? The answer, surprisingly, is minimal.
The AU, though a great concept in terms of international organization, has been completely ineffectual at resolving the crisis in Darfur. The civil war and unofficial genocide has already claimed more then 400,000 lives, and displaced another two million, in the last two years. The numbers are continuing to grow. The only role the AU has played has been to enable the West, via the United Nations and the United States, to claim that it is taking action in Darfur. In reality, the AU is acting as an observer rather than a real peacekeeper. The AU not only absolves us from the crisis but is a good answer to anyone who claims that Africans' problems are those of Africa.
The fact is that Africa simply does not matter in western countries, except when it comes to forcing reductions in tariffs and removal of export quotas in the name of free trade. Then we become all about involvement for the sake of democracy and free markets. All of our privatization, price and market reforms are based on economic models of perfect competition and information, which are a far cry from the reality of any developing country. The result is that world market prices are reduced for the consumer (mainly Americans and Europeans) while the profit is sucked up in intermediaries and corrupt bureaucracies. The poor farmer on the bottom is left with the same price as before while we as consumers can buy those cashews from Mozambique for a few dollars cheaper.
The AU cannot possibly be enough to prevent the mass genocide in Sudan. We should continue to support it for what it is - an observer mission, but understand that that is where its role ends. The AU mission cannot be placed under the UN - as some have suggested - because it will only further feed into our absolution from the crisis.
The problem is far too complex and has too many different issues feeding into the conflict for a simple solution. We know we cannot just send in troops. Darfur is the size of France and those troops will simply be swallowed up. Also, we hopefully have learned from both Afghanistan and Iraq that military action of that sort is perhaps not the best solution. So do we continue to hold conferences with the rebel groups in the hopes of compromise or perhaps invest in the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (another pseudo-construct of the United States)? The UN has held seven of those conferences already and the SPLA can not even agree on a set of demands on its own.
The solution - just like the crisis - has to be multi-faceted. It has to come from all angles, including population growth concerns, health, economics, politics and people-to-people help. As consumers we need to put pressure on firms and organizations to divest from companies involved in Sudan. Politically, we need to understand that the cultural differences are not as simple as textbook descriptions of tribal life in the wilds of Africa but still significant in negotiations. Traditional leaders within the Sudanese community which exert enough power so that people as far as Ethiopia come to consult with them, while we certainly do not take them into consideration when analyzing how to go about addressing the conflict.
The problem needs to be worked on from the bottom up. Education costs are minimal in African nations. It takes very little to put a student through basic schooling. A few improvements in infrastructure - including better roads or even putting in roads - can make a huge difference in terms of trade and communication between villages. Market failures - including lack of credit can be addressed with micro-finance NGOs and small not-for-profit loan operations so that the small businesses and farmers we claim to help with free markets actually have the capital and the means to be competitive.
This is why the understaffed and under-resourced AU is not a solution to the genocide in Darfur. It is a feel good exercise that is not there to stop the killing but rather just to watch and report. And it is even failing as an observer mission - the AU Web site has not been updated since late November of the previous year. So, sure, we can give them $50 million so that they can purchase better transportation, toilet paper for their offices, and clean water on the observer missions, and perhaps a few new computers so that their Web site will at least be up-to-date. But who will read it, and will those few that do care? Not only do we have to care but there has to be a fundamental reordering of economic and political priority.
Anastasia Marshak is a senior majoring in quantitative economics.
