The NYT reported today that the UN Security Council yesterday voted to impose personalized sanctions on four named individuals suspected of involvement in the atrocities in Darfur.
Interestingly, the four persons sanctioned comprise two leaders affiliated with the Khartoum government: “Maj. Gen. Gaffar Mohamed Elhassan, a Sudanese Air Force officer accused of helping the government-backed janjaweed militias commit atrocities; [and] Sheik Musa Hilal, chief of an Arab tribe and a janjaweed leader”– along with two leaders with the anti-government forces: “Adam Yacub Shant, a commander of Sudanese Liberation Army forces that broke a cease-fire to attack government troops; and Gabril Abdul Kareem Badri, the commander of another rebel force, which kidnapped and threatened African Union troops.”
Is the Security Council (and perhaps also the ICC, with which it has been working on the Darfur atrocities) perhaps getting something right this time, in terms of the political “balance” of these sanctions?
The Council’s position stands in notable contrast to that adopted by nearly all the mainstream media and political activists here in the US, who have stayed almost completely silent about the atrocities reportedly committed by the anti-government militias– the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement– while hyping up those committed by pro-government forces.
In a report on BBC t.v. the other day, I saw even the estimable Orla Guerin fall into that trap. She spoke breathlessly about refugees “streaming away” from a government-attacked village– while in the frame behind her all you could see was a bedraggled group of around six people making their way mournfully from one side of the screen to the other. She also stated– incorrectly– that the African Union troops in Darfur “have no mandate to protect civilians”. And at a point when a group of armed anti-government fighters were visible in a Jeep quite close behind her she made no mention of their presence or of the well-documented accusations that the anti-government forces are also accused of atrocities.
I note that many Jewish-American organizations are among those that have joined the (increasingly politicized, anti-Khartoum) US campaign to “Save Darfur” that was launched recently by Elie Wiesel and that is organizing a big march in DC this Sunday. If you go to the campaign’s Unity Statement, you will see descriptions of atrocities committed by government and pro-government forces, but no mention at all of violence by anti-government forces.
Here’s what it says:
- The emergency in Sudan’s western region of Darfur presents the starkest challenge to the world since the Rwanda genocide in 1994. A government-backed Arab militia known as Janjaweed has been engaging in campaigns to displace and wipe out communities of African tribal farmers.
Villages have been razed, women and girls are systematically raped and branded, men and boys murdered, and food and water supplies targeted and destroyed. Government aerial bombardments support the Janjaweed by hurling explosives as well as barrels of nails, car chassis and old appliances from planes to crush people and property. Tens of thousands have died. Well over a million people have been driven from their homes, and only in the past few weeks have humanitarian agencies gained limited access to some of the affected region…
What a problematic statement. Firstly, it completely ignores the horrendous conflict-related suffering in eastern DRC, where more than four million people have already died in the past eight years, as a result of conflict stirred up largely by the Rwandan (post-genocide) government or by the west’s poster-boy in Uganda, Pres. Museveni.
… And the last sentence I quoted from the statement is now quite out of date and should be updated or dropped.
… Note, too, the way in which the “Unity Statement” tries to make the conflict seem quite simply to be one between “Arabs” and “Africans”, and thereby to whip up the anti-Arab sentiment that lies very close to the surface of much US discourse; whereas, as best I understand it, the Darfur conflict is much, much more complex than that.
… And finally, the statement makes no mention at all of what the signatories believe should be done in response to the violence and suffering in Darfur. This is presumably because the signatory groups failed to agree on this? Some people here in the US have been urging the intervention of NATO forces “to save the Darfuris”– a military campaign on the model of Kosovo, which would similarly weaken the central government involved, i.e., Khartoum. Others urge a more pacific, multilateral approach. But by waving the bloodied garments of the victims of pro-government violence, while making no mention of the victims of anti-government violence, this campaign will surely serve only to whip up anti-Khartoum feeling.
My own prescription for what should be done? Support peace efforts in these three troubled provinces of Sudan to the greatest degree possible.
Atrocities like genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes always (or nearly always) occur in the context of an ongoing armed conflict. The situation in Darfur is certainly no exception to that rule.
I share the angst of all those in the global rights community who are appalled at the grotesque, man-inflicted suffering in Darfur. But the way to bring those atrocities to a lasting end is to bring to a lasting end the conflict that has spawned them. By contrast, engaging in a campaign of one-sided, blame-hurling accusations against only one party to the conflict seems like a sure recipe for keeping the situation inflamed.
That’s why I’m really heartened by the even-handed approach adopted by the Security Council.
By the way, the ICC– to which the Security Council last April made a formal referral of the situation in Darfur– has not yet named its own list of indictees, as you can see if you check the documents available through this ICC web portal on the topic. But I wonder if the prosecutor there consulted with the Security Council members on who should be the targets of these sanctions?
Helena now mentions Sudan. Amazing that she finds time away from criticizing the Israelis to say a few words about a country which, unlike Israel, has caused the deaths of millions of people.
Her interpretation of the Sudan dispute is another matter. For that, she finds time to criticize those very few – and there really are very few such people – who would shine the light of day onto a terrible dispute – a dispute infinitely worse in every conceivable way than the disputes, such as the Arab Israeli dispute, she normally finds time to discuss in depth as if far worse horrors were involved -. I wonder why that is.
And, evidently she notices that those who might help shine that light on Sudan are Jewish although, perhaps, her point is to suggest that such is problematic. Otherwise, why the gratuitous comment? In any event, Helena seems to have the Jews on her mind. Bernard Lewis’ comment that things involving Jews are controversial is an apt observation here.
Now, Helena would evidently forget the past history of the Sudanese Islamists – now the government. But, frankly, that is not an acceptable formula. In fact, her formulation is a whitewash. It amounts to covering up the genocide that occured from 1983 to 2000, in which roughly 2 million people, mostly Christians and animists, died due to the behavior of the Islamists who attempted to force their ideas of Islam on the country’s non-Muslims and, to some extent, Muslims.
And, lest anyone forget: the Islamists in Sudan reinstituted slavery (i.e. literally the buying and selling of slaves – and the slaves have been sold all over the Arab regions and the Islamist leaders have justified slavery as being permitted by Shari’a law), used food as a weapon to force Christians and animists to convert to Islam, hacked entire villages to death, created famines in order force its will on villages, took children from their parents and forced the children to convert to Islam. Not surprisingly, the Christians and animists resisted, as do those who resist the government today.
Such are Islamists in power. So, anyone who shines the light on them does humanity – all of it, not just the non-Muslim portion – a favor. Helena would whitewash the Islamist government’s behavior away as if the past did not matter. That’s 2 million people, victims of Islamism.
Frankly to dole out blame today without reference to the very immediate past is, Helena, hypocrisy of the worst kind. And, frankly, seeing the dispute in its context – rather than noting that people now fight – is horrendous.
That’s my view.
Neal, in case you failed to notice, none of the above post is about the tragic situation in Southern Sudan– an area where there is, thank G-d, a peace process of some vitality.
What “formulation” of mine are you excoriating here? The part where I noted that in the period since the end of the Rwandan genocide some 4 million people have died in DRC (thus disproving the judgment asserted in SD’s statement there)?
Yes, what the Khartoum government did in the south was terrible, terrible. And what it and its proxy forces are doing in Darfur is terrible. But they are not the only ones to violate the laws of war in Darfur. (Also, not the only ones in South Sudan.) All of these actions are rightly to be comdemned.
But then, what do we do about it? Pray to God not more escalatory, divisive rhetoric and escalatory actions by outsiders.
Helena, I’ll respond in more detail later, but you may be interested in knowing that the AU presented a draft peace accord today for consideration by the Sudanese government and the rebel movements.
Neal: I disagree with some of what Helena said in the main post, but one thing she’s absolutely correct about is that the Darfur conflict can’t be described in reductionist terms. Before you make any conclusions about the role of Islamism in Darfur, for instance, you might want to consider which side Hassan el-Turabi and the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood have taken in that conflict.
How can we allow any UN or US troops into Sudan after Iraq? Sudanese people were already holding up “no imperialist crusader” protest signs a week ago. non muslims can’t go into muslim countries or they’ll get attacked. No way are any UN or US troops going in there. let someone elses troops gte suicide bombed.
Helena,
Rwanda? The issue is here Sudan, a country in which 2.5 million people have died since 1983. Most of the deaths have – not too surprisingly (and, you might try saying it as it is the truth) – the work of Islamists – today’s version of the brown shirts, albeit doing what they think is Allah’s work, not the work of the great Aryan nation.
You write: Yes, what the Khartoum government did in the south was terrible, terrible. And what it and its proxy forces are doing in Darfur is terrible. But they are not the only ones to violate the laws of war in Darfur. (Also, not the only ones in South Sudan.) All of these actions are rightly to be comdemned.
No, Helena, what the Islamists did in the south is not terrible. It is unspeakable. They are the enemies of humanity. The crimes of those fighting the Islamists were mostly penny ante stuff. There is no serious comparison except in fantasy land. In short, what you write is outrageous.
Jonathan, I was not describing Darfur so much as noting that the Islamist government should be described the way the Nazi governments are. They deserve no sympathy at all.
[Helena now mentions Sudan. Amazing that she finds time away from criticizing the Israelis to say a few words about a country which, unlike Israel, has caused the deaths of millions of people…
And, lest anyone forget: the Islamists in Sudan reinstituted slavery (i.e. literally the buying and selling of slaves – and the slaves have been sold all over the Arab regions and the Islamist leaders have justified slavery as being permitted by Shari’a law), used food as a weapon to force Christians and animists to convert to Islam, hacked entire villages to death, created famines in order force its will on villages, took children from their parents and forced the children to convert to Islam. Not surprisingly, the Christians and animists resisted, as do those who resist the government today.]
So, the solution is de-Islamization of Sudan, right? Maybe this is the real problem with Russia and China – they are not enthusiastic about this ingenious solution?
Russia, China Oppose UN Sanctions Against Sudan
Henry James,
I oppose the effort to force a religion onto unwilling people. If you investigate Sudan’s history carefully, you will find that the country is a disaster, largely due to the Islamists. You might read this article: http://www.meforum.org/article/383
2006-04-25 How “fighting xenophobia” works
Jonathan, thanks so much for that very valuable news link. I wish I had more time to spend researching this issue…
“Bernard Lewis’ comment that things involving Jews are controversial is an apt observation here.”
Someone visiting from Planet Mars would be at a loss to understand why a people that constitute 1/5 of 1% of Planet Earth’s population has drawn the obsessive ire the past 75 years of Nazis, Islamists and even a Quaker or two.
“..drawn the obsessive ire …”
Your statement is too general. The Islamist ire is a reponse to zionism and is not a mystery. Israel has committed historic crimes. These have produced much anger. Israel’s defenders try to ignore its crimes.
Doesn’t it all come down to the Third Reich wishing to make Europe Judenfrei and the Islamists (not to mention the President of Iran) wishing to make the Holy Land Judenfrei?…and a string of amen corner fellow travelers with their own private agendas for castigating a group that in total forms roughly .002% of the world population under the guise of various conspiracy theories…such as the “connivance” by the AIPAC-controlled American government to have the University of Texas confer Emeritus status to Professor Ne’eman.
All right, here are my thoughts on the main post:
Nevertheless, the racial factor does exist. The distinction between “Arabs” and “Africans” in Darfur may be more a matter of self-identification than anything else, but they do identify as such – and more to the point, racial rhetoric has played a significant part in escalating the conflict. There are many documented instances of janjaweed militias using racialized rhetoric to justify their actions or taunting their victims in racial terms during attacks. In addition, it’s undeniable that the Nimeiry and Bashir governments have engaged in a program of Arabizing the hinterlands, which has reinforced the local tendency to see the conflict as a racial one.
At this point it’s hard to say whether racism is a cause or an effect of the conflict. As you are well aware, long-term conflicts frequently result in racism and demonization of the other side, and given that the pastoralists and farmers in Darfur have been at odds since at least the 1950s, there has been plenty of time for this to occur. But regardless of whether (construction of) race is a cause of the conflict, an effect or both, it’s one of the key factors in turning a simmering low-level conflict into an arguable genocide. It isn’t dishonest to discuss the Arab-African element of the Darfur conflict; indeed, any description of the conflict that doesn’t analyze that element would be incomplete.
Don’t get me wrong – I entirely agree with this strategy and I believe that the distribution of sanctions is a wise one. The whole point of targeted sanctions is to induce the parties to end the conflict. Such sanctions are remedial rather than punitive, and where all the parties have proven recalcitrant during two years of peace talks, it’s necessary to spread the sanctions around in order to close the deal. But for precisely this reason, the distribution is not by itself a reliable measure of responsibility for atrocities.
And while I agree that the Save Darfur statement contains factual errors, you noted yourself that these errors in perception are shared by most of the West. Is it really surprising that American Jews, who are getting involved in Darfur causes largely for emotional reasons rather than exhaustive knowledge of the conflict, would understand that conflict in the way most Americans do? The wording of the Save Darfur statement is nothing more than evidence of popular misconceptions about the conflict, and is certainly not evidence of a politicized anti-Arab campaign as you suggest. I think you are being unfair to many sincere and dedicated people.
At any rate, sorry to run on at such length. I hope this will provide a basis for discussion.
Jonathan,
You are too kind in your analysis. The moving feature of the Islamist government is their vision of Islam. It is the driving force of genocide, just as it was against the Christians and animists in the South of Sudan.
Neal, all the parties in the Darfur conflict are Muslim, and from what I understand, they all follow the Hanafi school. There is thus no religious issue and no natural side for Islamists to take in that conflict. For instance, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood supports the Sudanese government while the ikhwan in Sudan is connected to the JEM, both for political rather than religious reasons.
You may possibly be confusing the Darfur conflict with the north-south civil war, in which religion did play a part.
Jonathan Edelstein,
That is a misunderstanding on your part. Yes, they are all Muslim. But, not all Muslims are as extreme as the Islamists of Sudan would like. And religion is central to the dispute.
Then why are there Islamists on both sides? I mentioned Hassan el-Turabi in my prior comment – he’s one of Sudan’s most prominent Islamist political leaders (albeit out of power at the moment), and also one of the harshest domestic critics of the government’s Darfur policy. The Justice and Equality Movement, which was one of the major rebel groups in Darfur before it merged into a larger alliance, has an Islamist ideology. There are pro-government Islamists and anti-government Islamists in this conflict (as well as pro- and anti-government secular factions).
Jonathan,
I guess I see the matter differently than you. I do not think the dispute can be understood apart from the Islamist component. I might add that Eric Reeves, who has made Sudan his project – as you surely know – says basically the same thing.
http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=11445
As he says: The National Islamic Front (which has attempted to rename itself innocuously as the “National Congress Party”) is essentially unchanged since it seized power from a democratically elected government in a 1989 military coup, deliberately aborting Sudan’s most promising peace process since independence in 1956. With the exception of Islamist ideologue Hassan El-Turabi-the mastermind of the 1989 coup who split with his former allies and is no longer part of the government-the same brutal men still control the NIF 16 years after it seized power. Field Marshal Omer El-Beshir retains the presidency, and Ali Osman Taha-arguably the most powerful man in Sudan-serves as vice president and controls the terrifyingly efficient security services. Nafie Ali Nafie, Gutbi Al-Mahdi, and other longtime members of the NIF serve in various advisory capacities. And Major General Saleh Abdallah Gosh, recently flown to Washington by the CIA, retains control of the Mukhabarat (Sudan’s intelligence and security service) even as he is among those members of the NIF indicted at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity in Darfur.
These are the men who settled on a genocidal response to the insurgency movements that emerged in Darfur in early 2003. But the NIF’S history of genocide goes back much further than the current catastrophe in Darfur. Animated by a radical Islamism and sense of Arab racial superiority, the movement engaged in genocide almost from the time it seized power. A year ago, seasoned Sudan watcher Alex de Waal of the British group Justice Africa wrote for the London Review of Books what remains one of the best overviews of the Darfur crisis. In the piece, he observed that genocide in Darfur is not the genocidal campaign of a government at the height of its ideological hubris, as the 1992 jihad in the Nuba Mountains was, or coldly determined to secure natural resources, as when it sought to clear the oilfields of southern Sudan of their troublesome inhabitants. This is the routine cruelty of a security cabal, its humanity withered by years in power; it is genocide by force of habit. As part of a ghastly jihad, the NIF conducted relentless military assaults on civilians and enforced a humanitarian aid embargo that lasted more than a decade.
The same men ordered the scorched-earth clearances of the oil regions in southern Sudan to provide security for the operations of international oil companies. The actions of oil companies from Canada, Sweden, Austria, China, Malaysia, and India-directly supporting the NIF regime-constitute one of the most shameful episodes in the long and terrible history of resource extraction in Africa.
Notice that Reeves contrasts the Sudanese government’s policy in Darfur, which he describes as “the routine cruelty of a security cabal, its humanity withered by years in power,” with the campaign of cultural eradication that it pursued in the south. The war in the south, where the government forces were pitted against a mostly animist and Christian population and where slavery and kidnapping were used as a means of cultural genocide, was qualitatively different from Darfur.
It’s undeniable that religion was a major factor in the southern conflict. The Sudanese government’s policy in Darfur, on the other hand, could have been enacted by any sufficiently ruthless regime that inflamed ethnic rivalries for its own purposes. The Darfur conflict is the Gukurahundi writ large.
Jonathan,
I read the article carefully.
It is the same government. The same people with the same view of life. To say that Islamism is not central to the matter is, frankly, nuts.
Jonathan, thanks for all your comments here– as thoughtful as usual.
I accept your criticism that in the post I implicitly impugned the motives of Jewish organizations and individuals involved in the “Save Darfur” campaign, and I apologize for doing that. I had gotten the idea that the SD campaign had been largely whipped up by the “big”, politically powerful American Jewish organizations and had assumed that was quite likely being done with some kind of “political” motivation; and I’d failed both to give enough recognition to the breadth of support it has won from numerous non-Jewish organizations and individuals, and to reflect deeply enough on the motivations of many Jewish individuals (and perhaps organizations) in their enthusiasm for it.
I still find the content of the campgin’s “Unity Statement” troubling, as noted in the main post. But in light of what you wrote, perhaps it was the focus of opposing genocides as such– rather than opposing all forms of mass violence, including those that cannot clearly be described as genocide– that had led the statement’s drafters to completely ignore the massive, conflict-related human suffering in eastern DRC, which of course occurred more recently than 1994.
This once again underlines the reservations I have about people focusing too tightly on genocide as such, while not paying enough attention to other gross infractions of international humanitarian law.
But anyway, as I said, I apologize about implicitly impugning the motives of many supporters of the Save Darfur campaign. I wish them a good turnout at Sunday’s rally and note that, of course, I absolutely share the goal of saving the people of Darfur and (perhaps more importantly) rebuilding all the communities inside those three provinces as vibrant, hope-filled, and above all safe places for all their people.
Helena,
You write: “had assumed that was quite likely being done with some kind of “political” motivation…”
But it is being done for political reasons, namley, to combat genocide. That is a profound political cause.
This once again underlines the reservations I have about people focusing too tightly on genocide as such, while not paying enough attention to other gross infractions of international humanitarian law.
I remember discussing this issue when the UN commission ruled that Darfur didn’t meet the legal criteria for genocide. My reaction was “even if the atrocities taking place are ‘only’ crimes against humanity, does that make the matter any less urgent?”
There is something special about genocide. A genocide is more than the sum of its parts – it isn’t merely destruction of people but destruction of a people, and its impact isn’t simply a matter of counting the dead. The fact that genocide has a special psychological and cultural impact, however, isn’t determinative of whether it requires special action. I agree that any form of mass violence – indeed, any form of avoidable mass death – requires urgent remedial measures whether or not it qualifies as genocide, and that it’s a damned shame that people pay so little attention to the DRC.
Why are my posts being blocked?
Jonathan, re your, There __is__ something special about genocide. A genocide is more than the sum of its parts – it isn’t merely destruction of people but destruction of __a__ people, and its impact isn’t simply a matter of counting the dead.
Yes, I agree that the destruction (attempted or completed) of an entire people is something of a different order than the destruction of perhaps even the same number of human beings… I remember having this discussion with the French scholar of Rwanda, Gerard Prunier, a few years ago… and what I came away from that discussion with was a profound sense that the destruction of an entire people involves the loss, obviously, of an entire culture– and in addition, of anything that might be the vehicle for that group’s legacy to future generations (execept scriptures and other cultural artefacts which would significantly lose their vitality and relevance if there is no living community to continue to imbue them with meaning.)
However, the technical definition of genocide involves not only the group-exterminatory effect but also the group-exterminatory intent, and it is in this regard that I find it most problematic. Human cultures get destroyed through the agency of members of other human groups, and usually through the application of direct physical violence, under many different circumstances. As someone who’s a citizen of both Britain and the US, I would have to say that, for me, colonialism and the transatlantic form of slavery seem just as bad in the group-exterminatory effects they have had in many places around the world, but crucially in Africa, North America, and Australia, as any more purely “intentional” form of group extermination like the recognized genocides. How many entire cultures (as well as the actual individual women, men, and children who were bearers of those cultures) have been wiped out on various continents through those activities?
Carla del Ponte once described genocide to me as “the crime of crimes”. I don’t entirely buy that. Clearly we need to discuss this more. (Maybe in a discussion on a revived Transitional Justice Forum?)
Helena,
You make a good point. However, your point is only self-critical, not universal. There is also a universal point.
Take slavery. Slavery was not merely the endeavor of Europeans and Americans. It was also an endeavor of Africans. And – to use your terminology – crucially, since the institution has been re-invigorated, in places like Sudan, as a “legitimate” institution in the eyes of the almighty, it is now an institution again among Muslim Arabs in such part of the world.
So, if you want to examine the world from the perspective of slavery, what is going on in Sudan is exactly the sort of problem which has upset you about the West. Is it, however, a problem which upsets you? Have you written about it? From what I can discern, you are conspicuously nuetral about events in Sudan when, in fact, a person against slavery must be opposed to the government as among the most despicable on Earth.
Now, consider colonialism. Again, if you oppose it, you must oppose it universally. Yet, colonialism is the thing by which human society spread. Consider that the ancient Greeks established colonies. Was that a bad thing? Alexader the Great then planted Greek colonies far and wide. Was that a bad thing? Later, the Roman Empire spread itself far and wide, establishing colonies all over the West. Was that bad? The Arabs then conquered much of the Roman Empire, among other places, and established colonies. Was that bad? I could go on but you, I hope, see a pattern.
The point here is that it is not at all clear that you can form a rational belief system out of anti-colonialism. I do not think it to be a remotely coherent point of view unless you can employ the theory universally. And, frankly, it is not really possible to do so because colonialism is among the main topics of history, not just European expansionism.
Consider the case of the Arabs. They expanded rapidly and effectly altered the culture of those they colonialized. Hence, North Africa, which was largely Christian and, to a lesser extent Jewish and pagan, was Islamized and, to some extent, Arabized. And those who stood in the way were put to the sword and those who refused to convert, became tributaries to the Arabs.
I might add, so that the matter is more clearly understood, that the same occurred in Spain, yet there was a counter-attack over the course of centuries so that eventually the Islamic influence was driven out. So, was it right for the Berbers and Arabs to conquer Spain? Was it right for the vanguished to fight back? I do not know but I might note that your theory could only provide ad hoc answers. And that makes me think it a form of self-hatred.
Many thanks to Helena and Jonathan for the very illuminating discussion on this subject. This is stuff you can’t get from the MSM, and the reason I keep coming back to JWN.
However, the technical definition of genocide involves not only the group-exterminatory effect but also the group-exterminatory intent, and it is in this regard that I find it most problematic.
I think part of the problem here is that the conventional formulation defines genocide as a crime, and the perpetrator’s intent is relevant to determining criminal liability. Indeed, the very title of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide makes clear that its key purpose is to assign criminal responsibility. This focus likely exists because the treaty was drafted soon after WW2 and the drafters had the Nazis’ organized genocidal campaign very much in mind.
If genocide is looked at in preventive terms, however, intent isn’t nearly as material. It’s possible for a culture to be wiped out unintentionally, just as an individual human life can be taken without intent to kill, and cultures in danger of unintentional destruction are equally worth saving. The DRC conflict may not call for the same level of criminal liability as Rwanda or Darfur, but it is equally deserving of preventive and remedial action. Maybe we need distinct terms for “genocide as a crime” and “genocide as an effect,” with each calling for appropriate remedies under international humanitarian law.
Rabbi Marla Feldman on why Jews should care about Darfur.
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