8-27-05, 10:59 am

Remorseless ethnically-targeted human destruction in Darfur now garners only slim and diminishing news coverage. Perversely, this is true even as accounts from various international actors---especially the UN political leadership---become more deeply mired in disingenuousness and self-exculpatory pronouncements. A few voices speak with honesty and deeply informed conviction; but they are too few and have too little chance of changing the ghastly default 'policy' that currently substitutes for a morally intelligible international response to ongoing genocide.

Largely obscured in accounts of the Darfur crisis is a clear macroeconomic view of the financial, commercial, and investment realities that sustain genocide. While considerable attention has been devoted to growing regional competition for the scarce natural resources in Darfur (chiefly arable land and water), and to the impact of widening desertification throughout the Sahel and the consequences of drought, very little attention has been paid to those economic realities that explain Khartoum's ability to conduct serial genocide in Sudan. The jihad against the people of the Nuba Mountains, beginning in 1992; the scorched-earth clearances directed against the indigenous (largely Nuer) populations of the oil regions in southern Sudan and border areas, beginning in 1997; and the current genocide in Darfur, beginning in 2003: all were financed by Khartoum's National Islamic Front (NIF) at the economic expense of Sudan's marginalized peoples.

The NIF is insulated from the consequences of its gross mismanagement of the Sudanese economy---including responsibility for an external debt that is one of the world's very largest on a per capita basis---by oil revenues, by a lack of meaningful international oversight, and by ongoing commercial investments in the Khartoum region from a wide range of European and Asian companies (see below).

But current financing of genocide in Sudan derives chiefly from oil revenues that officially began to flow in August 1999. These revenues now exceed $2 billion per year, according to the estimate of a well-informed Sudan oil analyst. What is not sufficiently recognized is that for several years before the first export shipment of crude oil left Port Sudan, Khartoum had been engaged in substantial in-kind trading with China: future oil and anticipated oil revenues in exchange for Chinese arms, especially tanks, but also combat aircraft, armored personnel carriers, and substantial medium-sized weaponry; China was also Khartoum's primary supplier of small arms. Chinese arms continue to be used by Khartoum's military forces, not only in Darfur (by both the regular army and the paramilitary Janjaweed) but by the NIF's military proxies in southern Sudan, grouped loosely under the banner of the 'South Sudan Defense Forces.' A number of these militias continue to be heavily armed by Khartoum, and recent reports from well-placed observers suggest that serious violence may be impending in the Malakal area of Upper Nile Province (the province in which the oil reserves are concentrated). Fighting has been heavy at times since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA; January 9, 2005), which calls for the disarming of these militias within the first year.

But far from disarming the militias, the NIF appears intent on retaining them as military proxies, and the potentially explosive fighting in the Malakal area pits militia forces loyal to the NIF against those militias that are attempting to join the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (one of the options guaranteed under the CPA). The involvement of the NIF's Military Intelligence in new militia deployments is extremely ominous.

Additionally, Chinese arms design and engineering assistance have allowed the NIF over the past six years to become largely self-sufficient in the production of small- and medium-sized weaponry. Military production at such locations as the vast GIAD industrial complex outside Khartoum (with both commercial and military production capabilities) is now enormous, though we have little way of ascertaining just how great a percentage of national wealth is consumed by arms manufacture.

THE IMF: NO SERIOUS ECONOMIC SUPERVISION

Here the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is exemplary in revealing just how little serious attention has been devoted to the relationship between Sudan's economic realities and the NIF's ability to conduct genocide.

Because of Sudan's staggering external debt (see below), the NIF has been forced to accept bi-annual IMF reviews, which are suitably published in lengthy PDF documents, with abundant graphs and charts, and written in dispassionate 'bureaucratese.' But a careful reading of these documents suggests that for all their high-toned production values, they are hollow at the core---refusing to speak to the issues of most significance. An historical example here is suggestive.

A very lengthy (and confidential) IMF report tabled on November 20, 2000 manages to devote to the issue of military expenditures (and their impact on the economy the IMF purports to analyze) precisely one line-item in one chart (Table 2, page 9). But even this single line-item is enormously revealing. In the course of offering an overview of the NIF regime's budget for the years 1998 to 2000, the IMF (under the heading 'Memorandum items') offers a summary of specifically 'Military expenditures' (sources are given as 'Sudanese authorities and IMF staff estimates').

The figure for 1998 is 42.8 billion dinars, or roughly $170 million at the time; for 1999 the figure is 62.2 billion dinars, or roughly $250 million; and for 2000, the Government of Sudan figure indicated is 84.1 billion dollars, or roughly $340 million dollars. The military budget doubled in the time between the year before oil revenues began to flow and the year following the start of oil-revenue income. (1998 is also of note because it represents the year in which Canada's Talisman Energy became a 25% partner in the southern oil-producing consortium, providing shameful Canadian moral cover for savagely rapacious activities and continuing scorched-earth clearances in the region.)

The cause/effect relationship between oil revenues and the military instruments of genocidal destruction could not be clearer. Moreover, the IMF made no effort to gather a full account of NIF military expenditures. There was no inclusion of the well-documented 'in-kind' trading (weapons for oil/anticipated oil revenues) between China and Sudan. And the IMF figure for military expenditures did not include the enormous fuel bill for military activities, or dual-use (military/commercial) construction and manufacturing, or the financial deals made with the militias to keep ethnic animosities in southern Sudan at their most destructive in the oil regions. Nor did 'military expenditures' include the 'payment' to the muraheleen, or Arabized militia, that came in the form of looted cattle and human slaves.

There was and is a great deal that doesn't show up in the sanitized bookkeeping of the IMF, which is most comfortable in a 'see no evil, hear no evil' assessment posture. But the picture is all too clear: oil revenues sustained genocidal destruction in southern oil fields (and continue to fund the brutal militias of the 'South Sudan Defense Forces'), and they now provide the military hardware and military/militia salaries that sustain genocide in Darfur.

This writer was harshly critical of the November 2000 IMF 'Second Review' report. The response of the IMF to such criticism? By June 2002 IMF reports had unconscionably censored all data on military expenditures: not a single line-item, in another 60-page report, was given over to the role of such expenditures in the overall Sudanese economy ('Sudan: Final Review Under the Medium-Term Staff-Monitored Program and the 2002 Program,' June 4, 2002). The same was true of the October 2003 IMF report, which despite dozens of pages of graphs and charts had not a single reference or number attached to military expenditures ('Staff Report for the 2003 Article IV Consultation,' October 20, 2003). This occurred even as the IMF projected yet greater increases in Sudan's external debt (from $20 billion in 2000, to $24.2 billion for 2003, to $25.1 billion for 2004; Table 3, 'Selected Economic, Financial Indicators, 2000-04,' Staff Report for the 2003 Article IV Consultations, October 20, 2003).

Such whitewashing is utterly disgraceful, and the perfect example of how the international community refuses to acknowledge the role between macroeconomic realities, including unsustainable external debt, and genocidal ambitions.

Even so, the mismanagement of the Sudanese economy by the NIF (which is responsible for the vast majority of the country's massive external debt) is evident from other parts of IMF reports. The November 2000 'Second Review' was unusually frank in speaking about a critical failure to capitalize adequately the agricultural sector. Here it is important to understand that Sudan is a huge land mass, with vast tracts of arable land; some have argued the country could become the 'breadbasket of Africa.'

But as the IMF noted, 'in 2000 [there was] an increasingly critical shortfall in credit to the agricultural sector during the key planting season' [page 13]. A regime that was at the time receiving---with the spike in oil prices---roughly $500 million in new oil revenues annually failed to capitalize adequately its agricultural sector.

When we survey the current massive international effort to provide food for 3.5 million people in Darfur, and when we look honestly at rapidly deteriorating food security in Bahr el-Ghazal and Upper Nile Provinces in southern Sudan, we should be asking forcefully about the failure of the NIF to provide food for its own civilians, and the grotesque substitution of military purchases for investment in agricultural production. As the UN World Food Program recently warned:

'At the height of the annual 'hunger gap' and rainy season, the UN World Food Program is particularly concerned about the chronically impoverished regions of Bahr El Ghazal in the South, and the Kordofans in central Sudan and Red Sea State and Kassala in the East. Inter-agency rapid needs assessment missions earlier this year confirmed that food security was poor in many parts of southern, central and eastern Sudan. Nutrition survey results are consistently reported [NB] above the threshold indicating an emergency.'

'In Upper Nile State, preliminary result of a nutrition survey in June [ ] showed global acute malnutrition among children under five was 39.3%, while severe acute malnutrition was 5.9%.' (UN WFP press release, August 12, 2005)

The same NIF regime that has left its agricultural sector badly undercapitalized, and makes virtually no effort to provide food for starving Sudanese children, is currently using oil revenues to purchase---most profligately---highly advanced MiG-29 combat aircraft from Russia. Of course there are many other obscenely profligate military purchases by the NIF, including a considerable number of the HIND helicopter gunships that are implicated in so much of the human destruction both in the oil regions of southern Sudan and in Darfur.

If the IMF is to fulfill its responsibilities in any meaningful way, these issues should be foremost in any assessment of the Sudanese economy. Instead, we find only bureaucratic indifference and a clear bowing to NIF pressure. What else could possibly account for the deletion of all references to military expenditures in the June 2002 and October 2003 reports?

[Though the World Bank has no active lending portfolio in Sudan because of Khartoum's continuing default on it financial obligations to the Bank, there is certainly room for further restriction. But recent accounts suggest instead an accelerating rapprochement between the World Bank and the NIF, and Khartoum clearly holds out hopes for debt relief. Even participation in the World Trade Organization (WTO) is now clearly within reach, the NIF feels.]

NEAR-TERM PROSPECTS FOR A NEGOTIATED PEACE: EXCEEDINGLY SLIM

All this occurs with ongoing genocide in Darfur as backdrop. And there is no prospect for an end to conflict that sustains the genocidal destruction. Peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria were delayed from August 24 to September 15 to accommodate the disarray of the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement, far and away the larger of the two primary insurgency movements. But the SLA/M is wracked by growing internal division and breakdowns in chains-of-command. Moreover, there has been no substantive progress to date: a 'declaration of principles' signed at the last session of negotiations, now almost two months ago, was far too vague (and was signed only under duress according to a spokesman for the smaller Justice and Equality Movement). The extraordinarily difficult issues of substance---security, power-sharing, wealth-sharing---all remain outstanding.

Ominously, the NIF, which dominates Sudan's incipient 'Government of National Unity,' faces no significant internal pressure to negotiate expeditiously and justly in reaching a settlement for Darfur. This is one reason that Kofi Annan is obliged in his most recent (August) report to the UN Security Council to again 'demand that [Khartoum] stop using planes in offensive military operations' in Darfur (Associated Press, August 16, 2005). Such aerial military restraint has repeatedly been demanded of the NIF, which had appeared to accede; but this reneging on a clear commitment suggests a brazen disregard for diplomatic efforts by the international community and augurs poorly for success in Abuja.

The death of John Garang, and his replacement as First Vice-President by Salva Kiir, ensures the loss of whatever moral leverage and political skills might have been brought internally to bear on the NIF over Darfur. And Kiir, politically much less skilled and experienced than Garang, faces daunting challenges in the south: the new Government of South Sudan (GOSS) has still not been formed; the oil revenues that are to go to the south cannot be released until the GOSS has been formed; moreover, highly informed sources indicate that oil revenues put in escrow by the NIF are far short of what has been expected by the SPLM, suggesting the possibility of dangerously contentious disputes over the north/south boundary in the oil regions. The oil sector has always been excessively opaque in Sudan, another major failure of IMF auditing and another challenge for the new GOSS. Militia confrontations in Upper Nile (especially in the Malakal area; see above) pose the most immediate challenge. Darfur will receive only token assistance from the new First Vice-President.

DARFUR IN KHARTOUM'S FISCAL CALCULUS

The full perversity of the NIF's stranglehold on the Sudanese national economy continues to be most destructively on display in Darfur. Far from contributing meaningfully to the international aid effort, running to many hundreds of millions of dollars, the NIF continues to arm, train, and pay the very Janjaweed militias that are creating intolerable levels of security---the single greatest obstacle to increased humanitarian reach and efficacy. The NIF devotes only token amounts of food aid to Darfur, even as the international community struggles with the overwhelming burden of providing the 60,000 metric tons per month of food and critical non-food items necessary for more than 3.5 million conflict-affected civilians.

To date, the greatest monthly dispatch falls far short of meeting these human needs. One small measure of the shortfall in food is the steady rise in admissions of children to Supplementary Feeding Centers: the rate has increased sharply and steadily from January of this year (approximately 6,000 admissions) to the most recent reporting month of June (almost 20,000) (Darfur Humanitarian Profile No. 16, reporting data as of July 1, 2005; page 7, Chart 6). Children are perversely good indicators of nutritional shortfalls. Another indicator is the number of camps for displaced persons with Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rates in excess of 15%, the threshold for a humanitarian emergency: in Darfur many of the largest camps and locations fall into this emergency category, including El Geneina (17% GAM), El Fasher town (the capital of North Darfur, 18% GAM), Kutum (18% GAM), Zam Zam camp (23% GAM), Ed Daein (25% GAM), and Abu Shouk camp (26% GAM) (Darfur Humanitarian Profile No. 16 [DHP 16], 'Rates of Global Acute Malnutrition in Greater Darfur, January-June 2005,' page 7).

As DHP 16 also notes, 'the deterioration in the nutritional status of vulnerable populations continues and is expected to remain fragile through the seasonal hunger gap' [i.e., through October] (page 7). Just as significant is the warning that there are 'increasing signs of food shortages among the general population. After the failure of the 2004/05 harvest season, agricultural perspectives for 2005/06 look bleak. Cultivation possibilities for Internally Displaced Persons are barely existent, with almost no land or resources at hand' (DHP 16, page 5). Affected populations have 'exhausted [their] coping mechanisms' (page 3), even as the NIF (as well as the insurgents) 'harass humanitarian organizations and workers,' deny 'access to affected areas and IDP camps,' and in the case of Khartoum, impose 'stifling travel requirements' (page 4).

While DHP 16 notes important progress in some areas, the shortfalls are in many respects more significant: 45% of the 3.2 million conflict-affected persons (the UN figure as of July 1---two months ago) still do not have access to clean water; 37% have no access to primary health care; and 28% are without adequate food (DHP 16, Chart 4, page 6)---this more than two and a half years into the crisis.

Despite heroic efforts by humanitarian organizations on the ground in Darfur--the UN World Food Program and the International Committee of the Red Cross delivered 41,000 metric tons of food to 2.3 million recipients in June---it is clear that August and September (the two heaviest months of the rainy season), as well as October, will see significant attenuation of relief efforts. Much can be attributed to adverse weather conditions and consequent logistical difficulties; for example, the very large Abu Shouk camp in North Darfur and the Ardamata camp in West Darfur are only two that have recently experienced serious damage during the season's heaviest rains, with further displacement of many IDPs. A scandalous lack of international funding leaves many organizations scrambling for resources, further exacerbating the problem of inadequate humanitarian capacity.

But the primary constraint on humanitarian delivery remains the intense insecurity throughout Darfur. The NIF continues to foster this insecurity, devoting substantial economic resources to the effort. Certainly the humanitarian officials of the UN recognize the central issue:

''There is one overriding problem that needs to be resolved---that of armed militias [the Janjaweed],' Niels Scott, head of the Darfur unit of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Khartoum, added. 'We are receiving reports of banditry and armed attacks on a daily basis and these people need to be neutralised,' he said.' (UN IRIN, August 9, 2005)

But the NIF has no intention of disarming the military proxies that are working to constrain humanitarian relief. On the contrary, as Kofi Annan is obliged to note in his July report to the Security Council, more than a year after the UN had secured from Khartoum a promise to disarm the Janjaweed, and more than a year after the Security Council 'demanded' that Khartoum disarm the Janjaweed---

'there is little evidence of any serious efforts by the Government [of Sudan] to disarm the Janjaweed and other armed, outlawed groups. [ ] Despite [its previous commitments], Government of Sudan officials have recently made it known that the disarming of the militias will commence only after a political settlement is reached. In so doing, the Government has unilaterally introduced a conditionality on future compliance that contravenes its obligations and sets back efforts to provide safety and security for civilians.'

Most disturbing is the clear commitment of national financial resources to genocide in Darfur:

'The Sudanese government, after promising a parade of foreign leaders over the past year to rein in the violence in Darfur, is still paying regular salaries to leaders of militias there that continue to attack and kill civilians, say American officials and aid workers stationed in Sudan. [ ] State Department officials say because government-financed militias and others have been so successful at intimidating or killing civilian residents, now almost everyone who might have been a target is either dead or living in a refugee camp.'

'Yet the militias remain armed and poised in the western provinces, American government officials say. The militias also continue to train and arm recruits. At a recent ceremony for 400 recruits, senior Sudanese military officers applauded the graduates, African peacekeepers who saw it told aid workers.' (New York Times [dateline: Khartoum], July 21, 2005)

Beyond deliberately sustaining the insecurity that preserve a genocidal status quo in Darfur, the NIF actively obstructs, harasses, and denies humanitarian assistance (see detailed account by this writer, 'Genocidal Choke-hold in Darfur: Khartoum's continuing restriction of humanitarian aid,' August 17, 2005, at: http://www.sudanreeves.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid...). In short, the NIF uses Sudan's national resources, human and material, to obstruct humanitarian relief from saving the lives of Sudanese civilians.

THE ECONOMICS OF FORCIBLE DISPLACEMENT

One of the most vicious features of economic 'development' in the Khartoum region, amply funded by many European and Asian companies conducting 'business as usual' with the NIF, is the continuing forced displacement of already displaced persons, many of them from southern Sudan or from Darfur. For years the NIF has been steadily pushing these most vulnerable civilians away from the main urban areas of Khartoum, including Omdurman. This has deprived people of not only the opportunity for employment (the distances are simply too great to allow for affordable transportation), but basic services. Civilians from Sudan's marginalized regions are treated as human refuse, to be pushed further and further from viable centers of economic and investment activity.

These cruel efforts have accelerated in recent months, and especially in the wake of riots in Khartoum occasioned by the death of John Garang (according to many reports, significant violence against non-Arab populations in Khartoum continues). Amnesty International provides a compelling account of one especially telling series of events:

'Amnesty International condemns the forced mass relocation of the entire Shikan Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp, which took place on 17 August 2005.'

'At 4 am in the morning of 17 August 2005, armed police surrounded the Shikan IDP camp, located in Omdurman, Khartoum. National security forces had notified some members of the camp leadership the previous day that they would be checking the camp for stolen property, following the recent riots marking First Vice-President John Garang's death. National security forces arrived with lorries, emptying the entire camp of its residents. 500 families were moved to Thawra camp, 170 families were relocated to Al-Fatah III, and 371 families will be allotted places to return to in Shikan.'

'Al Fatah III and Thawra are locations lacking the most basic means of survival. Thawra, located 55 kilometres north of Khartoum, was previously a garbage dump, and lacks all essential services. Water, healthcare, and educational facilities are non-existent as the location is no more than a patch of desert. Al Fatah III is better only in that it possesses one water pump.'

'The actions of the authorities violated the fundamental rights of these individuals to freedom of movement and freedom to choose one's residence, as enshrined in international human rights law---including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Sudan is a State party.' (Amnesty International, Public Statement, August 23, 2005)

This forced displacement of 500 families to the site of a garbage dump, with no essential services or even water, provides an appropriate context in which to judge the significance of a statement made very recently (August 24, 2005) in Darfur by Antonio Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees:

''[To residents of Riyad Camp:] Nobody will force you to return,'[Guterres assured the leaders of displaced people who told him rape and burning of villages are still occurring in Darfur. 'The UN is independent from the government [in Khartoum],' Guterres added, 'so nobody can force you to return.'' (Public statement, Office of the UN High Commission for Refugees, August 24, 2005)

And just why should the residents of Riyad camp in Darfur feel secure in hearing Guterres' words, given what has relentlessly occurred over the years in Khartoum itself? given the fate of the people living in Shikan camp a week ago? And what of the very considerable evidence that forced, coerced, and inappropriately induced movements of civilians continue to occur in Darfur itself, even as Guterres utters his bland assurances? (See discussion of this evidence in section on 'Forced Displacement' in 'Genocidal Choke-hold in Darfur,' August 17, 2005, URL above). Despite UN assurances from Guterres and Kofi Annan's special representative Jan Pronk, forced 'returns' of IDPs remains NIF policy in Darfur, this as a means of 'resolving' the humanitarian crisis and obviating the need for an international humanitarian presence.

ECONOMIC AND MORAL INCOHERENCE

In his most recent (August 2005) report to the Security Council, Annan is obliged to warn that despite some improvements in Darfur, 'living conditions are steadily deteriorating' (Associated Press, August 16, 2005). This deterioration in living conditions, more severe and consequential than Annan suggests, will continue until security in Darfur improves significantly. And yet as Annan again reports:

'The Government [of Sudan] still shows no intention of disarming the Janjaweed or other militias, 'and is yet to hold a significant number of them accountable for the atrocities of earlier months.''

The protection of civilians in camps for displaced persons consists not in the easy words of Kofi Annan, Jan Pronk, or Antonio Guterres, even when they are not marred by disingenuousness. Nor does it consist in the abilities of an African Union force that operates without sufficient manpower, equipment, logistics, or a meaningful mandate for civilian protection. Civilians will be protected in Darfur, livelihoods restored, and meaningful security afforded in rural areas only with the deployment of international forces much greater and more capable than the current (or contemplated) AU mission. This seems highly unlikely.

On the other hand, significant economic pressure on the National Islamic Front, and its brutal commandeering of the Sudanese national economy, may help to free Darfur and other marginalized regions of Sudan from the ongoing threat of genocidal tyranny. For certainly so long as the NIF pays no price for exorbitant military purchases while Sudan's children starve, there will be no true peace in this tortured land. So long as oil revenues are largely controlled by this coterie of ruthless survivalists, there will be no rational economic order or general prosperity in Sudan.

So long as the IMF produces white-washing reports that refuse to examine or even refer to military expenditures, and that are content to refer to genocide in Darfur as a 'deteriorating security situation in Western Sudan' (Staff Report, October 20, 2003), the NIF will understand that it confronts no meaningful international economic supervision. Warming relations with the World Bank, signals that WTO membership is possible, and massive commercial investments by European and Asian companies---all work to convince Khartoum's genocidaires that it will feel no economic penalty for its crimes and profligacy.

The current divestment campaign in the United States, presently organized at the level of state legislatures and college and university campuses, is one of the few hopeful signs in this bleak picture. If companies such as Germany's Siemens, France's Alcatel, Switzerland's ABB Ltd, China's PeteroChina and Sinopec can be successfully targeted for divestment, and forced to suspend their commercial operations pending a halt to genocidal destruction in Darfur, real economic leverage will have been achieved. These and many other companies supporting Khartoum have equity market exposure in the US (i.e., they trade shares on the New York Stock Exchange) and are held in many endowments and investment funds. If these hundreds of billions of dollars are screened for companies doing business as usual in the midst of genocide in Darfur, their share prices can be badly damaged, forcing a reconsideration of the business wisdom of continuing operations and investments in Sudan (significantly, Switzerland's ABB Ltd. has already announced it is undertaking such a 'reconsideration' in light of the divestment campaign).

The states of Illinois and New Jersey have already divested, passing binding legislation that forces the sale of all shares in companies supporting Khartoum's genocide in Darfur. Harvard and Stanford Universities have begun the process of formal divestment (both universities have, for example, already divested fully from China's PetroChina; China, while highly unlikely to suspend operations, can be forced to use helpfully its enormous diplomatic leverage with Khartoum).

Divestment certainly doesn't generate pressure with sufficient urgency or rapidity; but if we look at the long history of NIF genocides---reaching back at least to the jihad against the people of the Nuba Mountains in 1992---then we must realize that not to act because results are slow is morally incoherent.

Care should certainly be exercised to ensure that divestment does not inadvertently harm investment in southern Sudan and marginalized regions of Sudan. But there is currently so little such investment that the danger must be rated as very low indeed.

The international community has fully demonstrated that it has no intention of confronting the NIF diplomatically---or even backing up previous diplomatic 'demands' (such as the Security Council 'demand' of July 30, 2004 that the NIF disarm the Janjaweed). Nor is there any willingness within the international community to move beyond the default policy of relying on the AU to protect victims of ongoing genocide. Humanitarian assistance is the primary substantive response to ethnically-targeted human destruction in Darfur.

Economic pressure on a cynical, brutal, and callously destructive security cabal---all that the NIF finally is at its core---will, even if slow to develop, at least not be hollow.

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