Antony Loewenstein

The following review of my newly released book is written by Robert J. Burrowes and appears in The Lahore Times:

In his just-released book, ‘Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing out of Catastrophe‘, Antony Loewenstein offers us a superb description of the diminishing power of national governments and international organisations to exercise power in the modern world as multinational corporations consolidate their control over the political and economic life of the planet.

While ostensibly a book about how national governments increasingly abrogate their duty to provide ‘public’ services to their domestic constituencies by paying corporations to provide a privatized version of the same service – which is invariably inferior and exploitative, and often explicitly violent as well – the book’s subtext is easy to read: in order to maximize corporate profits, major corporations are engaged in a struggle to wrest all power from ordinary people and those institutions that supposedly represent them. And the cost to ordinary people (including their own corporate employees) and the environment is irrelevant, from the corporate perspective.

Loewenstein spent five years researching this book so that he could report ‘the ways in which our world is being sold to the highest bidder without public consent’. In my view, he does this job admirably.

Taking as his starting point the observation of famed future studies and limits to growth expert Professor Jørgen Randers that ‘It is profitable to let the world go to hell’, Loewenstein set out to describe precisely how this is happening. He went to Pakistan and Afghanistan to explore the world of ‘private military companies’, Greece to listen to refugees imprisoned in ‘brutal’ privatized detention centres, Haiti to investigate its ‘occupation’ by the United Nations and ‘aid’ organizations following the earthquake in 2010, and Bougainville to understand the dilemma faced by those who want progress without the price of further corporate environmental vandalism (for which they have paid heavily already).

Loewenstein also checked out the ‘outsourced incarceration’ that now ensures that the US rate of imprisonment far exceeds that in all other countries, the privatized asylum seeker detention centres in the UK which are the end product of ‘a system that demonizes the vulnerable’, and the equivalent centres in Australia which ‘warehouse’ many asylum seekers in appalling privatized detention centres, including those located on offshore islands.

It is easy and appropriate to be outraged by some of the details Loewenstein provides, like the ‘three strike’ laws in the United States ‘that put people behind bars for life for stealing a chocolate bar’, but it is obviously important to comprehend the nature of the systemic crisis in which we are being enveloped by ‘disaster capitalism’ if we are to have any chance of resisting it effectively. So what are it’s key features?

In essence, predatory corporations (which usually keep a low profile) are financed by government money (that is, your taxes), supported by tax concessions and insulated from genuine accountability, political criticism and media scrutiny while being given enormous power to provide the infrastructure and labor to conduct a function, domestically or internationally, which has previously been performed by a government or international organization. If this happens at the expense of a nation truly exercising its independence, then too bad.

Moreover, because the corporate function is being performed ‘solely to benefit international shareholders’ which means that maximum profit is the primary aim, both the people who are supposedly being served by the corporation (citizens, refugees, prisoners…) and the corporation’s own employees are invariably subjected to far greater levels of abuse, exploitation, violence and/or corruption than they would have experienced under a public service equivalent.

Loewenstein provides the evidence to demonstrate this fact in one case after another. The ones that I found most interesting are the use of mercenaries in Afghanistan which provided further evidence that US policy, and even its military strategy and tactics ‘on the ground’, is being progressively taken over by corporations, and the ‘occupation’ of Haiti, post-earthquake in 2010, by the UN and NGO ‘aid’ agencies which forced locals into the perpetual victimhood of corporate-skewed ‘development’.

The use of private military companies (jargon for government-contracted companies that hire and deploy mercenary soldiers, ‘intelligence’ personnel, private security staff, construction teams, training personnel and provide base services such as food, laundry and maintenance) in Afghanistan has meant that there are far more US contractors than US soldiers in Afghanistan and ‘troop withdrawal’ means just that: troops not contractors. The occupation is far from over, Loewenstein notes.

Moreover, he asserts, the US mission in Afghanistan is ‘intimately tied to these unaccountable forces’. As many of us have been observing for considerable time, with control of US government policy now largely in the hands of the US elite (a select group compared with the military-industrial complex of which departing president Eisenhower warned us in 1961), its controlling tentacles reach ever more deeply into US actions at all levels. This is reflected in the way that military tactics are often designed in response to the development of weapons (such as drones) rather than, as should be the case, policy and strategy determining the nature of the tactics and weapons (if any) designed and used. It’s not so much that the corporate ‘tail’ is now wagging the government ‘dog’: the ‘tail’ is now bigger and more powerful than the ‘dog’ itself. In essence, the ‘US government interest’ means the ‘US corporate interest’.

Unfortunately, Afghanistan is not the only ‘horror story’ in Loewenstein’s book. I was particularly pained by his account of the multi-faceted violence that has been inflicted on Haiti since the devastating earthquake on 12 January 2010 that affected three million Haitians, killing more than 300,000. On 1 February 2010, US Ambassador Kenneth Merton headlined his cable ‘The Gold Rush Is On’ and went on to explain his excitement: ‘As Haiti digs out from the earthquake, different companies are moving in to sell their concepts, products and services.’ Merton’s lack of compassion for those killed, injured or left homeless by the earthquake is breathtaking.

Tragically, it isn’t just corporate exploitation of Haitians that exacerbated the adverse impact of the earthquake. The United Nations was horrific too. The evidence clearly pointed to its responsibility for a cholera epidemic shortly after the earthquake, which affected more than 700,000 people, killing 9,000. And given the responsibility of UN troops, allegedly present to enhance safety, for previous violence against Haitians, most Haitians simply regarded the presence of UN troops as ‘another occupation’ following the French colonization, which they overthrew in 1794, and the US occupation which led to the Duvalier dictatorships, that were resisted until their defeat in 1986.

But whatever damage the UN has done, it is the governments of the US, France and Canada, whose aid dollars via many corporations never reach those in need, NGOs like the Clinton Foundation, and the predatory corporations that truly know how to exploit a country. This is why the civil infrastructure in Port-au-Prince remains unrepaired nearly six years after the earthquake and the average city resident still lives in ‘rubbish, filth, and squalor’. Somehow, the corporations that were given the aid money to rebuild Haiti or provide other services were able to absorb billions of dollars without doing much at all. Although, it should be noted, company profits have been healthy. Are they held accountable? Of course not. Disaster capitalism at its best.

So can we predict the outcome for Nepal following its earthquakes earlier this year? We certainly can. The corrupt diversion of aid funds to corporate bank accounts. And ordinary Nepalese will continue to suffer.

I could go on but you will be better off checking out the book yourself. Loewenstein writes well and he has fascinating material with which to hold your interest. By the way, his personal website if you want to keep track of his journalism is here. He has recently been doing research in South Sudan.

So is there anything I didn’t like? Well, given my own passion for analysis and strategy, I would have liked to read more about Loewenstein’s thoughts on why, precisely, this all happens and how we can get out of this mess. He is an astute observer of reality and hopefully, in future, he will be more forthcoming in making suggestions.

In the meantime, if you are interested in understanding why many individuals have a dysfunctional compulsion to make profits at the expense of human and environmental needs, my own analysis is briefly outlined in this article: ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War‘. But there is much more detail explaining the psychological origins of violent and exploitative behaviours in ‘Why Violence?‘

And if you are someone who does not outsource your own responsibility to play a role in ending the elite-driven violence and exploitation in our world, you might like to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World‘. The Nonviolence Charter references other documents for action if you are so inclined.

Anyway, apart from this observation, the main reason why I think this is such a good book is because it gave me much new and carefully researched information that got me thinking, more deeply, about issues that I often ponder. There is a good chance that it will enlighten you too.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

My article in Foreign Policy:

In the middle of a hot, clear day on Aug. 21, roughly 2,000 people packed around the John Garang Mausoleum in downtown Juba to shout down the latest deal to end South Sudan’s nearly two-year-long war. Organized by the government, it was an event for true believers, those somehow insulated from the economic ravages of the war: young boys and girls in school uniform, men in suits, and women in colorful dresses. As a DJ sang over pre-recorded music blaring on massive speakers, praising South Sudan and its president, Salva Kiir, participants held large signs written in English declaring “one army, not two” and “no regime change through violence.”

For regime loyalists in the crowd, the nation’s success or failure was connected inextricably to Kiir, seen by them as the liberating hero who brought independence to South Sudan. On Aug. 19, a letter was distributed on the letterhead of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the ruling party, calling on the government not to sign any peace agreement with the opposition. It opposed the “recolonization” of South Sudan by foreign powers, Sudan, the U.N., or the African Union — a fear expressed by many locals.

It did not come as a surprise then that the cease-fire penned in the last days of August has failed, and did so almost as soon as it began. Despite both government and rebel forces agreeing to stop fighting from midnight on Aug. 29, days after Kiir signed a peace agreement with rebel leader Riek Machar to stop the 20-month conflict in the country, little has changed on the ground. Clashes in Unity State are ongoing with the government and opposition both accusing the other of breaking the peace. In late August, a town in Payinjiar County was allegedly shelled by government troops trying to wrestle it back from the rebels.

Both Kiir and Machar have maintained that they are still committed to the deal — Kiir is set to present the agreement to the national legislature for ratification on Tuesday, and Machar has promised approval on a similar timeline — blaming the other for breaking the peace. But there is ample reason to doubt their commitment: If the deal fully falls apart, it will be at least the seventh to collapse just after being signed. And the West, so far, has appeared powerless to stop the carnage. On Friday, the U.N. Security Council met to discuss an arms embargo and sanctions against leaders who have thwarted the latest attempt at peace.

One of the most daunting impediments to a sustainable peace in the country is the people who run it — for the moment, the elites only stand to lose, both financially and politically, from a settlement. And the international community has struggled to address that ugly fact. Though the U.N. has threatened new sanctions, few would change the country’s dysfunctional patronage system. There has yet to be a concerted attempt to focus on vested interests, including asset freezes in outside countries. Although NGOs, such as the Enough Project’s recently launched endeavor The Sentry, have begun to target the financing of Africa’s worst conflicts, state efforts have lagged behind.

Even as he signed the latest cease-fire agreement, President Kiir made it clear that he was deeply suspicious of the deal pushed by African nations, the United Nations, and United States. “The current peace we are signing today has so many things we have to reject,” he said. “Such reservations, if ignored, would not be in the interests of just and lasting peace.” During the signing of the peace agreement, Kiir even attached a list of amendments, rejected by the Obama administration, outlining his concerns.

Components of the deal include demilitarizing the capital Juba, cessation of hostilities, reinstalling Machar as vice president, sharing oil fields, and improving humanitarian access for civilians. It also calls for a transitional government to take power in 90 days.

Arguably, Kiir only signed because Washington and the U.N. threatened an arms embargo and new sanctions designations against senior military and government figures; it’s a stalling tactic he has used before. On Sept. 1, the United States reiterated that threat: State Department spokesman Mark Toner reminded the warring parties that “anyone acting to spoil the peace agreement implementation will face consequences.” The State Department declined to comment further on the chances of the United States imposing sanctions if the conflict persisted.

South Sudan won its independence from Sudan in 2011, but the country collapsed into war in December 2013 as Kiir and Machar, his former deputy, fought over power sharing and access to copious oil reserves. Although reliable figures are hard to find, the International Crisis Group has publicly stated that the death toll could be at least 100,000. Hundreds of thousands of children are living without education, and 2.2 million — more than one-sixth of the country’s population — have been forced from their homes, with almost 200,000 taking shelter at U.N. bases. At least 40 percent of the population is severely hungry, and levels of brutality are extreme.

So what can the West do?

Humanitarian leaders have called for action that better targets the elites perpetuating the war. After the recent signing of the peace agreement, international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Enough Project, and Oxfam, continued advocating for tough measures against leaders and military heads who willfully caused civilian suffering. They also called for effective mechanisms to implement justice for victims and perpetrators. There is still no road map toward establishing a robust court capable of hearing cases of war crimes or genocide; a proposal in the peace agreement calls for a court with South Sudanese and Africans overseeing violations of international law. Meaningful sanctions with bite remain an option for America if war continues, though Washington’s engagement is likely to be minimal as the Obama administration is consumed with troubles in the Middle East.

Alex de Waal, director of the World Peace Foundation, recently wrote, “Political survival [in South Sudan] is determined by the iron laws of the marketplace: The politician needs a political budget sufficient to secure the loyalty of subordinates and to compete with rivals.” Kiir’s hesitation to agree to peace, de Waal explains, was “because he has a limited and shrinking political budget, the price of loyalty has not decreased, and the number of claimants on those funds is increasing. In the current political marketplace system, he cannot make peace without more money.” More pointedly, fighting will continue as long as the current patronage system for dividing wealth survives. Sanctions can’t fix it, but targeting assets is an important first step toward ultimately replacing the corrupt political system.

The U.N. and the United States, however, have so far been unable or unwilling to do so. Justine Fleischner, the Sudan and South Sudan policy analyst with the Enough Project, told me that her organization wants a court to “prosecute economic and atrocity crimes, including pillaging and grand corruption.” The U.S. Department of Justice’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, she said, “is another tool that may be deployed to support efforts to prosecute economic crimes,” but the political will to pursue those committing the crimes is absent.

An arms embargo, which was reportedly discussed at the U.N. on Friday, is “notoriously difficult to implement, and any effective arms embargo on South Sudan would have to be regionally and globally enforced,” she said. Weapons are coming from countries such as Uganda, China, Israel, and Sudan. Even with the peace agreement signed and the most serious sanctions taken off the table, Fleischner believes that the difficulties of enforcement aren’t a reason to avoid an arms embargo. “It would allow the U.N. Panel of Experts to more closely monitor arms flows. It would also provide a basis for secondary sanctions and public exposure directed at any state or entity facilitating arms deals.”

It’s a position shared by Human Rights Watch. Jehanne Henry, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch’s Africa division, told me, “No matter what happens with this peace deal, we think the U.N. should be taking steps to impose an arms embargo, widen and implement sanctions [on] individuals responsible for serious crimes against civilians, and take concrete steps to plan a justice mechanism.”

While the U.N. contemplates updating the remit of its peacekeepers to help implement an already faltering peace agreement, the people of South Sudan are no closer to experiencing a peaceful present and future. Rhetorical battles over peace deals mean nothing for the millions of civilians caught in the crossfire. If the U.N. and Washington are serious about ending the endemic violence and corruption in South Sudan, a radical new strategy must be adopted, targeting the key players behind the violence. Unless this happens soon, the already bad situation can only get worse.

My following article appears in Al Jazeera America:

“Envy isn’t a rational response to the upcoming 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina,” Chicago Tribune editorial board member Kristen McQueary wrote in a recent column, referring to the monster storm that nearly wiped out the city of New Orleans in 2005. “Hurricane Katrina gave a great American city a rebirth.”

McQueary wished for a storm to wipe away Chicago’s corruption, slash the city’s budget and introduce private education. However, she did not mention how African-Americans in New Orleans were disproportionately affected by the disaster or how race became a determining factor in what was rebuilt, how and where.

A decade on, much remains unfinished. New Orleans still has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country, though a recent study by the Data Center found a 67 percent drop in the city’s prison population since Katrina. The private prison industry appears pleased with its successes, contracting many facilities with troubled records. At least a quarter of New Orleans’ population gets by at or below the national poverty line. Illiteracy is rife. But not everyone agrees: According to a new study by Louisiana State University, a majority of white residents in New Orleans said they believe that the city has mostly recovered, while black residents reported the opposite.

McQueary’s column received a deluge of criticism. “I wrote what I did not out of lack of empathy or racism but out of long-standing frustration with Chicago’s poorly managed finances,” she explained in a follow-up post the next day. But it was too late: No amount of call for “revolutionary change” in Chicago and an end to “borrowing our way into bankruptcy” would repair the damage.

None of this should have been surprising. McQueary was being honest about a phenomenon that Canadian writer Naomi Klein termed disaster capitalism, which profits from vulnerable people’s misery. McQueary was tone deaf to the human cost of her preferred policies. For example, she endorsed dismissing labor contracts and teacher unions,calling for “a free-market education” model and “a school system with the flexibility of an entrepreneur.”

In practice, this means deregulating and privatizing companies and services with lower pay for employees, fewer unions and inflexible working hours. The prevailing neoliberal economic order ensures that the profit motive is built into the delivery of services. This is why avoiding another Katrina requires examining what Klein refers to as “the reality of an economic order built on white supremacy.”

Politicians and commentators the world over see disaster capitalism as rational and necessary after a natural or man-made crisis. This is good for you, we’re told; better housing, schooling and infrastructure will follow. In reality, however, the much-vaunted austerity — sold as an answer to economic woes in Greece, Puerto Rico and cities across the United States that lack a secure safety net for the poor — simply doesn’t work. But it lines the pockets of corporations that see the crisis as a financial opportunity.

Since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, many myths have developed around the crisis and its aftermath. The news isn’t uniformly negative. Studies show that New Orleans residents are more able to deal with stress and express great pride in their city’s culture in the last decade. In addition, black residents now have better choices of fresh food at grocery stores than they did before the disaster hit. Yet this shift wasn’t a result of multinational corporations opening stores in the neighborhoods but an outcome of the Fresh Food Retailer’s Initiative, a cooperative plan that offers low-interest loans for grocers to get started or rebuild in troubled areas of New Orleans.

Privatization advocates contend that Katrina brought essential reforms to Louisiana’s education system. But the facts tell a different story. “A key part of the New Orleans narrative is that firing the unionized, mostly black teachers after Katrina cleared the way for young, idealistic (mostly white) educators who are willing to work 12 to 14 hour days,” wrote Andrea Gabor, a professor of journalism at Baruch College, in a detailed story in The New York Times last week. “For outsiders, the biggest lesson of New Orleans is this: It is wiser to invest in improving existing education systems than start from scratch. Privatization may improve outcomes for some students, but it also hurt the most disadvantaged pupils.”

Similarly, public housing in New Orleans remain a mess, with the state increasing rents for residents in areas that many say lack a cohesive community spirit. There is a long waiting list for subsidized housing.

To be clear, poor quality structures were blights on the city even before Katrina. But the United States’ slow economic recovery has emboldened officials in Louisiana and elsewhere who argue that privatized services are far preferable to a well-financed public system. The flood of corporate donations to politicians augments these arguments.

Disaster capitalism is a readily exportable commodity. New Orleans still pulses to a resilient rhythm, but those pushing for more private housing, schools and infrastructure are rarely held to account. Without accountability for the abuses of corporate-backed privatization policies, its advocates will simply move on to another city or country to maximize their profits at the expense of poor and marginalized citizens.

Countless companies are already cashing in as the climate crisis takes hold across the United States. For example, many New Yorkers fear that hurricane precautions are excluding the city’s poorest residents while protecting the richest homeowners. The billion-dollar disaster rescue industry, allowing wealthy customers to pay companies to, say, rescue them from a flood or fight fires during a wildfire, is thriving; this is the privatization of humanitarian aid. Corrupt politicians are making a fortune from rebuilding New Orleans and New York after hurricanes.

The most vulnerable in our society deserve to be treated as human beings and not as an experiment in social engineering. Disaster capitalism distorts democracy by elevating the voices of a few wealthy people above the desires of the majority. Even 10 years after Katrina, McQueary can still write blindly about radical change through privatization while ignoring the great determinant of public access in the United States: race.

Yesterday I appeared on the Al Jazeera English program, The Stream (thankfully the poor internet here in South Sudan came through):

Deadly floodwaters caused one of the biggest evacuations in US history when Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, Louisiana. Ten years on, the city still hasn’t fully recovered. New economic, educational and housing models are in play, but critics say they’re hurting the longtime residents who need help most. On Tuesday at 19:30 GMT, The Stream asks New Orleans residents how “disaster capitalism” has affected them, and explores how the city’s growing pains are similar to disaster zones around the world.

In this episode of The Stream, we speak with:
Antony Loewenstein @antloewenstein
Journalist and author (forthcoming) ‘Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing out of Catastrophe‘
antonyloewenstein.com
Raynard Sanders @NOLAEQUITY
Educational consultant
theneworleansimperative.org
Erika McConduit-Diggs @ulgno
President & CEO of Urban League greater New Orleans
urbanleagueneworleans.org
Terri Coleman @TFSColeman
New Orleans resident

My comments appear at 15:13, 23:30, 25:22, 35:02, 40:30:

My piece in The National:

A woman in a black and white dress stood with a huge pot on her head. She had walked for days, with her two young children also carrying goods, to reach the camp for internally displaced persons in Bentiu, South Sudan. They were all exhausted by the time they registered with the International Organisation for Migration at the facility that then housed 100,000 men, women and children.

Six months before I visited in July, there were fewer than half that number. Today, there are more than 124,000. About 200 people arrive each day, fleeing a civil war that has engulfed the world’s newest nation since 2013.

Tens of thousands are dead and many more have suffered sexual abuse and torture after an ethnic and power conflict between president Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar unleashed a brutal war.

The economy has collapsed. Millions are dependent on aid groups for food and water. Hundreds of thousands of children are on the verge of starvation. Only 10 per cent of boys and girls are in primary school and most of the teachers are untrained. Infrastructure, already in a parlous state during the 2011 independence celebrations, remains unfinished and broken.

It’s the civilians in South Sudan who are paying the highest price for this man-made humanitarian disaster. When I visited Bentiu, I saw suffering on an enormous scale.

It’s the rainy season, so rivers of mud flowed through makeshift huts and shops. Women who had left their husbands behind in remote villages to escape the marauding troops said they faced the risk of rape while searching for firewood.

The UN is overwhelmed by the surge of people seeking its protection.

A senior UN official in the capital Juba told me that he feared South Sudanese officials could kick out his organisation entirely, as happened in Eritrea, leaving millions of civilians homeless. “But I think the authorities still want international support,” he said.

“There’s no evidence yet, but if Al Shabaab or Boko Haram start operating here, the conflict will change and massive amounts of counter-terrorism money will start flowing to support the government.”

August 17, the deadline set by African and US negotiators for a peace agreement to be reached between the warring parties, has been and gone with no settlement. On the day itself, Juba was eerily quiet. One woman told me that she feared for the safety of her young daughter, so they both stayed at home.

The streets of Juba are a dusty, jumbled mess. Barely any roads are paved and thousands of people live in tin-sheds along the main streets. The airport will be closed every weekend until April 2016, while construction work funded by the Chinese government is undertaken. This essentially cuts the country off from the outside world for two days every week.

Empty water bottles and other rubbish are strewn around the city. Clean drinking water is difficult to find – leading to the current cholera outbreak – and hope is in short supply.

Although I haven’t met any locals who regret South Sudan’s break from Sudan in 2011, they despair at the inability and unwillingness of their country’s leadership to care for their people who they constantly praise as heroes of the liberation struggle. These are noble words with a bitter sting.

Canon Clement Janda, a former member of parliament and lead government negotiator in the peace talks, told me in the southern town of Yei that the international community had an “overemphasis on accountability over resolution”. He continued: “I need a solution first and then we can set up an accountability mechanism” to address alleged war crimes.

This is not a view shared by global human rights groups.

Mr Janda argued, as many do across Africa, that the International Criminal Court is a flawed body that is “always after the vanquished, never the victors”.

However, many civilians in Bentiu and elsewhere told me that their patience for delaying justice was over and they wanted military officers and leaders to be held to account now for abuses against them and their families.

The inability to rescue a failed state reveals the great limitations and interests of 21st century diplomacy. International media attention is rightly focused on the disasters in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and yet this implicitly frames South Sudan as just another typical, African mess, featuring tribal violence without meaning.

Civilians in South Sudan know better. First the guns must fall silent, then health and education services must be built and sustained. Integrating South Sudan’s economy into greater Africa – right now, the country barely exports anything and hardly attracts revenue from its copious oil reserves – will require patience and long-term commitment.

This may be impossible until a younger generation of leaders emerges.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist in South Sudan and author of the forthcoming book, Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe

Eitay Mack is an Israeli lawyer who campaigns publicly against his country’s weapon’s industry. In recent times he’s focused on South Sudan and its use and abuse of Israeli arms. The connection between Israel and South Sudan is shown in this recent photo during South Sudan’s 4th anniversary “celebration” in Israel. This story in Haaretz (use Google Translate) explains the moral vacuum in which this relationship operates. 

Today Mack sent the following letter to South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir:

August 9 2015

Mr. Salva Kiir

President of South Sudan

Re: Israeli defense exports to South Sudan

Greetings

1. I am a human rights advocate working to increase the transparency and public oversight of Israel’s defense export.
2. In May of this year, Knesset Member Tamar Zandberg of the Meretz party wrote to the Minister of Defense demanding that permits for the Israeli defense export to south Sudan be cancelled or frozen, for fear that it would be used in or abet the perpetration of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the civil war in your country. A legal opinion which I wrote was attached to Ms. Zandberg’s letter. Documents cited in that opinion make it unambiguously clear that actors in the civil war, including your government, are committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and grave violations of human rights.
3. Recently, a new round of conciliation talks has begun in Addis Ababa under the auspices of IGAD. Previous attempts to achieve peace have failed, because of the vain belief of both your government and the leaders of the opposition that the struggle can be won on the battlefield. These beliefs have failed to prove themselves during the 19 months of ongoing, bloody warfare. Frustration over the inability to achieve victory on the battlefield has led both your government and the leaders of the opposition to adopt an alternative strategy of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against civilians identified with the enemy side.
4. The international community has set August 17 2015 as the deadline for the attainment of a political compromise. Much is at stake in the current round of talks: The future of South Sudan, which is on the brink of reaching the point of no return in the descent into becoming a failed state; the future of millions of suffering citizens whose tribulations are a matter of indifference to their leaders; the famine spread with the onset of the rainy season; the sanctions that can be expected to be imposed on South Sudan if the talks fail.
5. As is known, Israel is among the few states that have continued to extend military aid to your government, despite the crimes it is committing against its citizens. There are reasons for the lack of transparency in Israel’s involvement in South Sudan, and why it does not boast about it: It is clear to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu that the exposure of its role would cause Israel a great deal of embarrassment and elicit condemnation from its closest allies. This is especially so in the light of the embargo imposed by the European Union and the cessation of American military assistance to your government.
6. As an Israeli citizen, I am hereby warning your government that it will not be worth its while to rely on the continued supply of military exports from Israel. Despite the efforts of the Netanyahu government to silence the public discussion of the matter in Israel, the majority of the Israeli public is opposed to the export of weapons during a civil war to a government that is perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity. Since Israel is a democracy, and the continued supply of arms to your government goes against the will of the Israeli citizenry, the future of that supply is now in doubt, and will presumably come to an end sooner or later. The demonstrations that Israeli citizens have held outside the home of your government’s ambassador and outside the arms exhibit in Tel Aviv at which a South Sudanese military delegation was invited, were only the preliminaries to public and political pressure that is likely to increase against the continued supply of Israeli military exports to your government.
7. In view of the above, allow me to suggest that as part of your considerations over whether to reach a political compromise in the Addis Ababa talks, that you should take into account that your government cannot rely anymore on the continued supply of military exports from Israel.
8. It is clear to all that the only possible solution to the civil war in South Sudan is negotiation, and that continuing the fighting will not give the young nation any hope for its future. Of course, any political solution will have to include prosecution with the full force of the law of those responsible for the crimes committed by both of the warring sides, as well as those countries and actors who abetted the crimes by supplying military exports to your government and the opposition forces.

Sincerely,

Eitay Mack, Advocate.

CC.: Ms. Tsippi Hotobely, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs

Lt.-Gen. (Res.) Moshe Ayalon, Minister of Defense

I was recently interviewed by the ANU Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in Australia on the Israel/Palestine conflict and the Middle East. It’s been published by the ANU Arabic and Middle Eastern Society (an anonymous, Zionist troll has posted a response with Israeli talking points):

The ‘Arab-Israeli/Israeli-Palestinian conflict’ has spanned for over half a century and been the repeated object of failed peace-processes and unsuccessful diplomacy. Students for Justice in Palestine are in conversation with independent journalist Antony Loewenstein to explore the growing criticism that diplomatic attempts to understand and resolve the conflict ignore human rights in a way that greatly impedes the attainment of a ‘just peace’ and a solution to the conflict.

SJP: Why are human rights important to the attainment of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

AL: Human rights are central to resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict. Supporters of Israel claim the situation is complicated when in fact this masks the brutal reality of a nearly 50 year Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and around 600,000 illegal Jewish settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Condemned by countless UN resolutions and virtually every nation in the world (except, it must be noted, Australia and the US, placing them as outliers in the international community), Israeli behaviour, the daily indignities of check-points across Palestinian territory, restrictions on Palestinian work and marriage, regular raids into Palestinian communities by the Israeli army and the detention and torture of Palestinian children and a constant lack of Palestinian stability, is condemned around the world, leading to the growth of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, a non-violent and legitimate tactic akin to the successful campaign against apartheid South Africa. The comparisons are apt, a point stressed by many black South Africans who suffered under apartheid and have witnessed today’s Israel. Desmond Tutu is just one notable figure who concurs.

SJP: What is your perspective on the labelling of individuals and organisations that discuss the Israeli government’s human rights abuses, as ‘anti-Semites’?

AL: The “anti-Semitic” smear used against critics of Israel is a tired and desperate ploy to both silence and control debate. It cheapens real anti-Semitism, a worrying trend worsened by Israeli violence, and intimidates people keen to honestly debate Israel/Palestine. Being against the Israeli occupation is an increasingly mainstream position, and Israel’s Netanyahu government, right-wing, inflammatory and with no intention of ending the occupation, is the best argument against blind Western support for Israel imaginable. Arguing for a two-state solution, the default and tired view echoed by governments and liberal Zionists the world over, is removed from reality on the ground in Palestine, where Palestinians are being daily pushed off their land by Israeli-state backed colonists. I have seen this with my own eyes during my many visits to Palestine.

SJP: There are student groups throughout the United States, United Kingdom and Ireland who have a strong focus on raising awareness around Palestinian human rights. In comparison, Australian students seem less engaged with this issue. Why do you think this is?

AL: Student activism on Palestine is growing globally, and many universities are now seriously discussing pressuring their administration to divest from companies who are directly profiting from the Israeli occupation. I hope this movement grows in Australia, though it’s undeniably difficult when both Labor and the Liberals blindly support Israel. This isn’t about principle or knowledge but a deluded belief that Australia aligning itself with the US and the US-Australia alliance requires offering uncritical backing for Israel. This places Australia on the extreme end of Zionist extremism.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist, Guardian columnist, documentary filmmaker and author of many books including ‘My Israel Question’ and the forthcoming ‘Disaster Capitalism’. 

ANU Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is a group of ANU students and staff dedicated to increasing awareness of issues in Israel-Palestine on ANU campus.

 

Israel sells weapons to some of the most repressive nations on earth, a policy that has existed for decades. Itay Mack, a Jerusalem-based human rights lawyer and activist, tells Haaretz about his campaign to bring more transparency to the process. The Jewish state’s relationship with South Sudan is particularly murky. Mack explains:

According to reports of international organizations and human rights activists, Israel has violated the embargo and sold arms during the civil war. There are reports that the security forces are armed with Galil and Tavor rifles. We know about South Sudan forces who are trained by Israelis, both there and in Israel, and about a defense mission from South Sudan that visited Israel about half a year ago. We know that Israel built and is operating a surveillance system in South Sudan and is cooperating with the local secret service.
I find this appalling. It recalls Chile during the Pinochet period. Chile was a democracy and didn’t have a secret service when the coup took place, and according to reports Israel trained and prepared the Chilean secret service, which conducted the most brutal torture. Again we see ties with an organization in a country that commits crimes against its citizens.

Read the whole interview but this section is especially relevant:

Since 2008, Israeli military exports have soared, from $3 billion to somewhere between $7 billion and $8 billion.
Yes, that’s the average since Operation Cast Lead, in Gaza.
Israel, then, can sell battle-proven weapons.
Yes. There are some who maintain that Israel carries out certain operations in order to test weapons. That’s my opinion, too, though there is no proof for it. If I’m asked how I have the gall to think that Israel is conducting weapons tests in the territories, I reply that the allegation is not that Israel initiates wars to test weapons, but that the industries ‘hitch a ride’ on them and profit – it’s the arms exporters who market the weapons as battle-proven. That’s what they tell people at the international fairs. I heard it with my own ears: “It’s Cast Lead battle-proven,” “It’s Defensive Shield battle-proven.”
The leap in sales after Cast Lead was also due to the cynicism of the international community, which first condemned the operation and then came here to learn how Israel conducted it. [Maj. Gen. (res.)] Yoav Galant, who was then the head of Southern Command [and now housing minister] made an amazing remark in this connection: “They came to see how we turn blood into money.”
Every such war is utilized for a massive introduction of new technologies. In the West Bank, too, in the regular areas of demonstrations – Bil’in, Kadoum, Qalandiyah – we constantly see new or upgraded weapons and means of crowd dispersal. The military industries also exploit Israel’s activity in the territories, especially in the Gaza Strip, to promote sales.
How, for example?
There were reports about the use of the Tamuz missile [a long-range anti-personnel and antitank weapon] against Syrian positions. Complete technological specifications were made available. Reporters noted that such information is usually censored. But a few months later, a report noted that Israel was going to display the Tamuz at the Paris Air Show. Sometimes the information is in the background of an article about Israeli and Palestinian casualties – they report on what types of shells were used – and there are also articles that are pure promotion.
Does the Defense Ministry “sell” marketing content to journalists?
The Defense Ministry makes information available to journalists, who are happy to get it and aren’t aware of the damage. Something else I’ve noticed concerns the humanitarian missions. It’s a bit like Naomi Klein’s “shock doctrine.” They send [people out on] a mission, and suddenly there are foreign reports about arms deals. That was the case in the Philippines, for example [after the monsoons in 2013].

My story in the Guardian:

We don’t know whether the Australian military has killed or injured civilians in Iraq, and if so, how many. Since Canberra joined the US-led mission against the Islamic State (Isis) on 8 October 2014, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has provided barely any information about its operations.

So the new report by Airwars, a British organisation comprised of journalists and researchers, is welcome. It aims to demystify the war against Isis and document how many civilians are dying in Iraq and Syria.

Airwars has found at least 459 non-combatant deaths, including 100 children, from 52 airstrikes. Over 5,700 airstrikes have been launched since 2014.

Yet the US military central command cites the deaths of only two civilians. The discrepancy between these figures – two deaths, or 459 – should be startling. The US State Department pledged to “review its findings” after Airwars issued its report, with a spokesman saying “That’s why we’re looking into them and trying to see where the – what the right number is, to be frank.”

Recall how it wasn’t until Wikileaks released the Afghan War Logs and Iraq War Logs in 2010 that the world discovered the extent of death, abuse and cover-up caused by the US in both states.

Australia’s role in the anti-Isis coalition is shrouded in secrecy. Operation Okra is described as “conducting air combat and support operations in Iraq and is operating within a US-led international coalition assembled to disrupt and degrade ISIL.”

The ADF issues very sparse monthly reports on how it is going about this mission. Australian jets are spending thousands of hours in the air, and have completed over 100 airstrikes, dropping more than 400 bombs and missiles, yet we are told only about the jets’ capabilities, and given pretty pictures of them in action.

I asked the ADF a number of questions, including why the public wasn’t being told more, whether Australia was aware of its actions causing harm or death to civilians, and whether its “rules of engagement” aimed to minimise civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure. My questions were largely ignored. I was told:

For operational security reasons, the ADF will not provide mission-specific details on individual engagements against Daesh. The ADF will not release information that could be distorted and used against Australia in Daesh propaganda. Australia’s Rules of Engagement are designed to avoid civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure.

A spokesperson for the Minister for Defence, Kevin Andrews, added that, “the Abbott government has every confidence in the professionalism of the Australian Defence Force to act in accordance with Australia’s Rules of Engagement, which are designed to avoid civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure”.

When Airwars questioned Australia’s lack of information sharing – unlike, say, Canada, which releases information on a timely basis – it received the same, pro-forma response from the ADF.

Airwars project leader Chris Woods, a British journalist and author of “Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars”, told me that Australia’s lack of transparency was worrying.

“Of the 12 nations in the Coalition which have bombed Daesh in Iraq and Syria over the past year, Australia is pretty much near the bottom in terms of transparency and accountability”, he said.

“The Saudis and the Belgians are worse, though not by much. Once a month we get a chart saying how many bombs have been dropped – and that’s it. No details of locations struck. No word of the dates on which strikes occurred.”

Woods condemns Canberra’s reason for secrecy as inappropriate for a democracy.

“The excuse for this paucity of information is that Daesh might use any improved reporting ‘for propaganda purposes’. That’s absurd, of course. Canada, the UK, France and others all report happily on where and when they strike,” he says.

“And transparency really does matter. The Coalition tells us that each member nation is individually liable for the civilians it kills. If Australia refuses to say anything about its strikes, how can there be any justice for those affected on the ground if something goes wrong?”

This ADF obsession with secrecy and obsessively trying to control the message is nothing new. Remember that in 2013, the ADF tried and failed to isolate Fairfax reporters Paul McGeough and Kate Geraghty during their time in Afghanistan. As McGeough put it, they were “effectively denying our right as journalists to cover any of the story”.

Successive Australian governments have long demanded secrecy in matters of war, immigration and trade. It’s an attitude that presumes the public either doesn’t really care about what governments do; or that enough journalists are willing to swallow spin in exchange for access, embeds with Australian troops or spurious “exclusives” with the military and strategists.

Australia’s current war against Isis has continued this tradition of secrecy. As former army intelligence officer James Brown wrote recently in The Saturday Paper, “how much progress is Australia making against Daesh? It’s painfully hard to tell.” Yet there is no demand for the ADF to open up.

Paul Barratt, former secretary of the Department of Defence and president of the campaign for an Iraq War inquiry, says that the Abbott government’s attitude “reflects both its habits of secretiveness and the lack of a coherent strategy – more policy on the run.

“What started out as humanitarian relief using existing assets in the Middle East was rapidly transformed into boots on the ground in a training role, and aircraft both flying combat missions and refuelling other coalition aircraft for combat missions in Syria. There is little sign that this has been thought through or that it is heading in the direction of an achievable goal.”

I’ve long argued that reporters and media organisations should collectively push back against restrictive ADF methods by refusing to be embedded without greater freedom in the field. Apart from visiting the troops for state-managed photo ops, independent reporting of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan is preferable because it’s civilians who bear the brunt of the conflict.

Journalists should also ignore “exclusives” from the ADF until it recognises it’s creating an unacceptable mystery around actions undertaken with taxpayer dollars. Would the ADF loosen its rules? I’m confident it would, not least of all because it craves publicity.

If it doesn’t, we would at least have the spectacle of the ADF defending its tenuous position on disclosure.

My feature in Foreign Policy:

BENTIU, South Sudan — Every day, some 200 people stream into Bentiu, the site of South Sudan’s largest camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs). Women trudge past armed U.N. peacekeepers while carrying large pots and bags on their heads and tiny children in their arms. They sit on the cracked brown earth in the blistering sun and heat, sometimes for hours, waiting to be fingerprinted. Camp workers photograph children for identification purposes, while the World Health Organization and other medical groups vaccinate them against measles and cholera. Nearby, hundreds of camp residents gather as World Food Programme workers distribute basic food rations such as sorghum and oil.

Bentiu, in Unity state near the border with Sudan, sits at the center of South Sudan’s never-ending storm. The United Nations established the camp in December 2013 after a violent power struggle broke out between President Salva Kiir’s ethnic Dinka forces and Nuer-majority rebels under the command of Riek Machar, his former deputy. More than 43,000 lived in the camp at the end of 2014, according to U.N. figures. Its population has now ballooned to 100,000, while 60,000 more live in similar, smaller facilities around the country.

Ruon David Kuol, a tall, 33-year-old man sporting a pressed purple- and white-striped shirt, arrived at the Bentiu camp from nearby Bentiu town in January 2014 with his wife and four children. But after five months, his family set off on foot for the Sudanese capital of Khartoum — some 580 miles away — leaving him behind. They did not feel safe at Bentiu, a place where women are often raped and killed by soldiers when they leave the camp for firewood and charcoal, Kuol said. It’s a problem across South Sudan. On July 21, Human Rights Watch issued a report implicating soldiers of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), South Sudan’s military, and militias in mass rape, looting, the burning of homes, and spreading widespread destruction across Unity.

“Living here is not like home. But my house was burned down by government troops. I cannot leave the camp, even [for] Bentiu town [just] down the road. I’m too scared,” said Kuol, who now serves as a liaison between his community and the camp authorities and who wants the “war crimes” being committed in his country to stop. “The guilty must be held accountable,” he said.

Such justice seems a dim prospect here, a country of 11 million where tens of thousands have died in the fighting between Kiir and Machar. Already dilapidated infrastructure, schools, and medical facilities have collapsed, and the economy is in free-fall, as some 7.8 million suffer from food insecurity; this year, South Sudan topped the Fund for Peace’s Fragile States Index. According to U.N. figures from this July, there are now some 1.6 million IDPs in South Sudan, and nearly 608,000 South Sudanese refugees live in neighboring countries. Currently, some 11,500 overstretched U.N. peacekeepers are stationed across South Sudan.

With the government and international community both unable or unwilling to broker peace, the desperate plight of IDPs like Kuol and his family will grow only more dire. “The country is different shades of shit,” one senior U.N. official in the capital, Juba, said.

Flying this month into Bentiu on a U.N. helicopter, one could see abandoned, burned-out buildings, as well as tens of thousands of cattle gathered near the center of town. The heavy rains had left behind lush, green fields.

The International Organization for Migration says it has registered 6,000 civilians in the area, but the government claims there are 15,000 people in Bentiu town, mostly IDPs. The discrepancy is hard to explain. But the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), an independent humanitarian organization tasked with camp management in Bentiu, said that government officials could be exaggerating numbers to receive more supplies for their own men — a pervasive but tough-to-prove allegation heard across South Sudan. “It should be the job of the government to help its own people,” DRC’s Gilbert Ogeto said.

Nature also seems to be conspiring against those in the camp. When the rain pours in Bentiu, it’s like a torrent of gray and red mud turns everything into porridge. Shopkeepers selling cell phones, flip-flops, sugar, clothes, and other basics navigate the onslaught.

During the rainy season in 2014, thousands of people lived in makeshift shelters in Bentiu’s U.N. camp, where they waded through waters reaching to their waists. Conditions were abominable, with the camp flooding and children drowning in their own homes. Roughly four children under age 5 were dying every day due to disease and malnutrition.

Determined not to face a repeat of this situation in 2015, U.N. officials used the dry months to begin raising land and installing water channels. In 2015, the U.N. and the International Organization for Migration oversaw the expansion of the camp to accommodate the influx of civilians. The new, stronger houses, built from bamboo and plastic sheets, are more resistant to the natural elements. Many IDPs are excited about living in these structures, though weary of war and uncertain when they’ll be able to return home.

But few observers expected the surge of IDPs at Bentiu, a surge largely due to the increased fighting in surrounding areas, Ogeto said. “There were plans to expand the facility in early 2015 for an additional 40,000 people. Now there are over 100,000, and we [are] planning for 120,000,” he added. A U.N. official also said that the facility couldn’t manage the “projected” IDP numbers, and many NGOs worry about being able to fund their activities if the numbers greatly exceed 100,000.

 

While officials are impressed with improvements to the camp, they know that ensuring its total security is impossible. Gunmen, allegedly SPLA troops, have sneaked into the Bentiu camp this year and killed residents. Armed government soldiers stalk its periphery, whose protective barriers and fences are easily breached. Barbed wire to fully secure the expanded areas is also in short supply. “Secure means different things to different people,” one U.N. security consultant remarked, acknowledging the impossibility of completely securing a site with over 100,000 people.

James Madut Ruei, a 50-year-old community elder, has lived in the Bentiu camp for 18 months and has witnessed the worst of the atrocities — including those by the SPLA. In April, government forces began an 18-month campaign against the rebels in Unity. On June 30, the U.N. issued a report alleging that the SPLA has engaged in major human rights abuses. Ruei spoke of a particularly grisly incident, also detailed in the report, of soldiers, reportedly fueled by ethnic hatred, raping women and girls before pushing some of them into huts and burning them alive. “It’s too much. It’s genocide. Only God knows when things will improve,” Ruei said. He often feels helpless in the face of the conflict, he said, and wants the international community, especially the United States, to pressure South Sudanese leaders to broker peace.

None of the horrors of Bentiu were inevitable. They rose, instead, only after the United States and the rest of the international community turned its back on South Sudan.

For decades, Christians in the United States had championed the cause of Christian-majority South Sudan in the region’s bloody fight with Muslim neighbors to the north. They found a strong backer in then-President George W. Bush, whose administration pushed for the peace talks that led to South Sudan’s secession from Sudan. In 2011, President Barack Obama welcomed a newly independent South Sudan as a strategic asset against a resurgent China in Africa. But when the conflict between Kiir and Machar exploded in 2013, Washington was distracted by other things, like the rise of the Islamic State and the war in Syria. Key U.S. posts, including ambassador and special envoy to South Sudan, sat empty for many months as weapons and support flowed to both sides of the conflict from China, Uganda, Sudan, and Israel.

In the years leading up to South Sudan’s independence, through media appearances and meetings with U.S. and U.N. officials, high-profile Westerners like actor George Clooney and John Prendergast, founding director of the Enough Project, campaigned vigorously for South Sudan’s independence, with seemingly little thought for the bloody consequences to come. Fortunately, Clooney and Prendergast are now demanding that the United States, South Sudan, and its neighbors pursue a new peace process, one with “biting consequences for those South Sudanese government and rebel leaders who continue to fan the flames of war and who are completely insulated from the suffering of their people,” as they wrote with a colleague in a recent article. Clooney and Prendergast have also launched a campaign to target the money fueling Africa’s worst conflicts. “With billions in oil revenues missing from state coffers, hundreds of acres of land bartered away for pennies on the dollar, and currency speculation running rampant, South Sudan was hijacked by violent kleptocrats long before it became an independent state,” said Akshaya Kumar, Sudan and South Sudan policy analyst with the Enough Project, in congressional testimony on July 10.

In an interview earlier this year with Foreign Policy, Princeton Lyman, Obama’s special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan in 2010 and 2011, said that Washington’s use of contractors instead of the U.S. military to work alongside South Sudan’s military was a key failing. He argued that the split between Kiir and Machar might have been avoided with deeper U.S. military engagement. “We would have seen the cracks that occurred in December 2013. We might have been able to anticipate it more and do something more about it,” he said.

As the months wore on through 2014 and into this year, Juba felt forgotten by Washington and the international community. The government’s relationship with U.N. officials, in particular, deteriorated sharply, imperiling those at the Bentiu camp and others like it. Speaking off the record, countless U.N. officials at the camp said that Kiir’s government has grown less tolerant of public criticism of its actions. Toby Lanzer, the former top U.N. official in the country, was kicked out in June by the government for being overtly critical of the regime, and other U.N. officials have been threatened with expulsion for placing blame for the endless fighting and abuses on the military and government. South Sudan’s government is also currently blocking passage of a U.N. food barge on the Nile, the latest restriction on civilians getting much needed supplies in rebel-controlled areas. As a result of the growing acrimony, U.N. sources say, the organization now rarely publicly challenges official actions by South Sudan’s government. The U.N. also stands accused of turning a blind eye to a Canadian aid worker who was raped in 2015 at its Bentiu camp.

The U.N.’s patience with the South Sudanese government is wearing thin. While there is no indication that the U.N. will leave South Sudan or be kicked out anytime soon, a senior U.N. official in Bentiu was exasperated with the war’s escalation and the apparent lack of urgency by the government to end it. “Even if the U.N. leaves tomorrow,” he said, “civilians would flee to Sudan, and the South Sudanese government still wouldn’t feed its own people.”

South Sudan seems to be mimicking Sudan’s fraught relationship with the U.N., but “they’re not as clever,” one senior U.N. official said in Juba, “but getting better. They believe they can militarily defeat the rebels or its leader, Machar, will die or be killed. I don’t think the government will yet kick out the U.N. entirely because they still crave international support and legitimacy.”

U.S. policymakers are finally signaling a shift toward accepting reality. On July 9, the four-year anniversary of South Sudan’s independence, U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice, criticized by many Africa watchers as being too close to the continent’s dictators, issued a statement congratulating South Sudan on its independence, while ripping into Kiir and Machar “and their cronies [who] are personally responsible for this new war and self-inflicted disaster.” She promised that the United States, “along with the international community, will punish those determined to drive South Sudan into the abyss.”

Calls from activists in the United States and Africa for Obama to strongly engage the South Sudan issue during his visit to Africa were strong. On July 27, the president and regional officials met to discuss the creation of a regional intervention force and the potential for harsher sanctions against South Sudanese leaders. He condemned both Kiir and Machar during his speech to the African Union in Ethiopia. The International Crisis Group released a report on July 27 that argued that a regional solution to the war is “the best — if imperfect — chance to end the conflict and prevent further regionalisation.”

Things in Bentiu, meanwhile, are unlikely to change anytime soon. Nyamai Marko Liah, 27, and Nyawai Puot Chuol, 30, arrived in Bentiu in early July, each with four children. They wore clean, colorful dresses. They’re both married to the same man, Nyak Nong, who escaped to Sudan at the outbreak of the conflict. They haven’t seen him since, but occasionally speak to him via satellite phone. “If I could meet President Kiir and rebel leader Machar,” Liah told me, “I’d ask them to negotiate.… But we don’t see any sign of peace in this country.”

This week the Guardian published my story on the role of Australian and foreign mining companies in Africa. One of the companies I identity is Australian firm Danakali, currently operating in Eritrea. 10 days before publication I emailed questions to the corporation seeking answers. No response. A few days later I emailed again and called its Perth office. Again, nothing. Now, a few days after my story was released, the company’s CEO and Managing Director Paul Donaldson has emailed me some answers. He’s unhappy with my article and its lack of “objectivity”. I’ll let readers decide whether a company operating in one of the world’s most repressive regimes has questions to answer about its behaviour. The following are my original questions and Donaldson’s answers:

Operating in Africa can be a challenging regulatory environment. How does your company operate in a country such as Eritrea?
We are a small company in the feasibility study stage. We have a group of local geologists, safety, environmental and administrative personnel based in our Asmara office. They are all our employees and are on annual salaries. We have safety and travel protocols for commuting between office and site, have introduced risk assessment processes before conducting any site work and do monthly safety inspections at site.

Requirements for mining are outlined in the Eritrean Mining proclamation which identify the need for a bankable feasibility study with an accompanying social, environmental impact assessment and environmental management plan before a mining license can be granted. We work closely with the ministry of land and environment and the ministry of energy and mines to ensure that we meet/exceed these requirements.

A look at our asx announcements will demonstrate to you that our SEIA is being done to the equator principles, and that we have been conducting environmental baseline assessments to support the environmental impact assessment. The work is also being conducted by a Perth based environmental group who have been engaged to ensure this work is done to meet the equator principles, which is of the highest standard and underpins the social and environmental management plan.

In conducting this work, and again with reference to our published information, this includes stakeholder engagement and is particularly relevant to communities in close proximity to the resource.

Eritrea has been accused by the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for its human rights abuses. How does your company ensure that human rights abuses aren’t being breached during its operations?

Firstly you should already be aware that we are not actually in operation. We are in feasibility study stage. All of our study work is conducted by paid personnel – both nationals and where appropriate expats. Secondly, the joint venture company is currently working through its operating policy’s which will be adopted when the project is further advanced. This includes corporate, social responsibility that ensures that human rights abuses do not occur. The existing Bisha operation which is a joint venture between the Eritrean National Mining company and Nevsun have led the way in this respect (I note there is no mention of them in your article).

What kind of relationship does your company have with the Eritrean government?
As per our company presentations – we have a good working relationship with the government. We meet regularly with the Ministry of Energy and Mines and the Ministry of Land and Environment. The Eritrean National Mining company is our joint venture partner.

Do you think that Australian companies, operating outside Australian borders, should have to abide by any basic operating standards, regulations etc and should this be enforced by the Australian government?

Publicaly listed Australian companies do have to abide by standards of good corporate governance. It is a condition. Safety, environmental, training performance all form part of public company reporting protocols when in operation.
Having said that, my views are as follows:
1. The first priority is to comply to the local regulations, which most African countries have, albeit at different levels of maturity

2. After that foreign companies should be working with the regulators within the relevant jurisdiction to continually lift the bar on standards

3. Companies should always be self and third party auditing to ensure compliance to their own policy and standards

4. It is not appropriate for the Australian government to enforce regulations in another country. However, it is important to foster information sharing between emerging and developed mining jurisdictions.

The reality of international and Australian mining corporations in Africa can be grim for local civilians. My latest Guardian investigation examines these issues. I interview a journalist from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Will Fitzgibbon, about his organisation’s recent work on the subject and the following is the full interview extracted in the Guardian:

What’s been the overall response to your recent report?

There has been a very positive response to the ICIJ project Fatal Extraction. Australian politicians, civil society and lawyers involved in business and human rights and concerned by the social and environmental impacts of mining see this as what it is – the most detailed investigation into Australia’s corporate mining footprint in Africa.

There are some very engaged actors in this sector, including Oxfam and the Human Rights Law Centre. But there is also a sense that Australia’s debate on corporate impacts and alleged violations overseas is much more limited than elsewhere. In Canada, for example, there have been lengthy parliamentary debates and deep media analyses of comparable allegations in a way that is yet to happen in Australia.

Should companies have to abide by strict regulatory laws?

The jury is still out on whether new laws are the most pressing response to this problem. Many argue that there’s a lot that can also be done in terms of company reporting to investors and of promoting voluntary and transparent application of international principles of business and human rights.

How should the Australian government tackle the problem?

What struck me most was successive governments’ incuriousness about the impacts that mining companies could be having overseas. The first step is awareness, which can then feed in to decisions relating to aid funding of mining-related projects, investment decisions by government bodies and diplomatic support. I hope that ICIJ’s work is a a contribution to that raising of awareness.

Given the size of Australia’s overseas resource presence, there would seem to be a case for more Australian leadership on implementing and championing global business and human rights principles. Time and time again, experts inside and outside Australia told me they wish there was more interest from within Australia.

One constant refrain I heard from victims, lawyers and even politicians from Senegal to South Africa was that they wanted their grievances to be heard in Australia. Even for well-resourced civil society organizations, it is difficult to find avenues of redress or complaint within Australia. Legal barriers are high and costly while non-judicial systems supposed to assist  those impacted by Australian multinationals, such as the OECD National Contact Point based inside the Treasury, are underfunded and almost forgotten by Australia’s decision-makers. Advocates in Africa also complain about how difficult it is to grab the attention of Australian investors and shareholders in companies accused of wrongdoing or implicated in scandal.

Other countries, such as Canada and France, have experimented with monetary fines for companies found guilty of gross human rights abuses or revoking potential government export support. Canada even introduced an ombudsman with a specific mandate to receive and investigate allegations of corporate abuses by Canadian extractive industry companies operating overseas.

Why are the problems so ignored?

Part of it is ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ There is a huge imbalance between Australia’s diplomatic and business interests in Africa.  We still have one of the lowest numbers of embassies and high commissions in Africa among our peers yet we have mining companies, sometimes literally flying the Australian flag, in places like Burkina Faso, Niger, Madagascar and Zambia.

Mining operations often happen in remote corners of countries that few Australians know of.

What’s more, language barriers, especially in Francophone Africa, limit the spread of news back home that relates to Australian companies.

Reporting in Africa requires a lot of costly footwork. It is hard to get information without spending days searching through filing cabinets in regional bureaucratic offices. Interviews with those who have suffered can take months to organize. Lots of media don’t have the capacity to invest in these kinds of stories. That’s part of what ICIJ does – the leg work and data analysis that traditional, for profit media cannot often do.

What’s been the response in Africa?

This project by ICIJ is perhaps the largest ever Africa-based collaboration of journalists. With ICIJ working together with journalists on the ground, we were able to help produce some great examples of investigations that countries with more difficult media environments, like Mali, have rarely seen.

Bringing together the behaviour of Australian companies as a corporate entity across an entire region rather than just one-off stories has helped draw attention to the issue for decision-makers in Africa. Ultimately, these are the men and women who sign off on deals with companies and make the choice between firms from Australia, Canada, China, Brazil or elsewhere.