From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Wed Aug 19 2009 - 15:35:47 EDT
The 'genocide' in Darfur isn't what it seems Activist hype, though
well-intentioned may have misdirected funds that could have saved lives. *By
Marc Gustafson* from the August 19, 2009 edition
Oxford, England - The "Save Darfur" movement is one of the largest American
activist movements in recent history.
It emerged in the summer of 2004 in reaction to an issue that had little
impact on the lives of average Americans: a year-old civil war in Darfur.
Horrific stories of rape, murder, and genocide began to appear in US
newspapers and define Darfur. Millions were moved by these accounts and
organized a movement to stop the violence.
In the next five years, however, the war in Darfur became one of the most
misunderstood conflicts in recent history.
That's because the activist campaigns mischaracterized and sensationalized
it in order to grow the movement. Such distortion helped the PR effort, but
it arguably hurt the very people who needed help.
Activists inflated casualty rates, often claiming that hundreds of thousands
of Darfurians have been "killed." What they tended to leave out was that the
majority of the casualties occurred as a result of disease and malnutrition
( stemming from war).
Differentiating between those may seem insignificant in the shadow of the
horrific acts of war crimes in Darfur, but ignoring these categorizations
has led many activists to put pressure on the US government to fund
violence-prevention plans and international peacekeeping troops, often in
lieu of providing humanitarian aid and funds for peacemaking.
The Save Darfur Coalition has been particularly effective in using its
scores of followers to pressure policymakers. They have hired lobbyists in
Washington to draft legislation and pressure politicians to focus their
efforts on violence prevention and UN troop deployment.
Before these lobbyists were hired, the US had sent a total of $1.01 billion
dollars to Darfur. Of this, $839 million (83 percent) was allocated to
refugee camps and humanitarian assistance, while $175 million (17 percent)
was directed to fund peacekeeping activities. These numbers show that
Washington was initially more focused on providing humanitarian aid than
peacekeeping.
>From 2006 until 2008, when the Save Darfur Coalition and many other groups
began to pressure the government, the allocation of US funds shifted
dramatically from humanitarian aid to peacekeeping, presumably due to the
influence of the lobbyists and public pressure campaigns.
Of the $2.01 billion that was spent, $1.03 billion (51.3 percent) was spent
on humanitarian aid, while $980 million (48.7 percent) was spent on funding
peacekeeping missions, a significant shift toward peacekeeping.
In the end, these proportional changes were problematic because, as many
casualty surveys show, the number of people who were "killed" in Darfur
declined significantly after the April 8 cease-fire of 2004, while the rate
of those who were dying of disease and malnutrition remained high.
Had the Darfur activists not advocated for a reallocation of funds, more
lives would probably have been saved.
Many activists have also mischaracterized the nature of the violence in
Darfur, intimating that the government of Sudan and rogue Arab tribes have
been responsible for most, if not all, of the bloodshed. "Save Darfur"
advertisements, newsletters, and websites frequently use the term "ongoing
genocide" to describe the conflict.
The term "genocide" was originally used to provide a sense of gravity so
that international governments and institutions would respond more rapidly
to the conflict.
Despite the good intentions of activists, the popularity of the word
"genocide" posed many unanticipated problems and it distorted the balance of
culpability and innocence.
Using the term "genocide" implies that there is a unidirectional crime
taking place. To be clear, horrible crimes have been committed, but the
perpetrators aren't as clear-cut as the term would make it seem.
The government of Sudan has killed many people and is responsible for war
crimes in Darfur, but the rebel insurgents bear some responsibility, too.
When the United Nations conducted its International Commission of Inquiry on
Darfur, it found that many of the rebel groups engaged in "serious
violations of human rights and humanitarian law."
By using the word "genocide," and attaching the term to only one side of the
conflict, the opposite side is easily ignored.
In Darfur, the use of the term "genocide" has allowed the rebel groups to
slip under the radar and commit crimes against humanity without the rest of
the world taking notice. Had "genocide" not been the focus, activist
campaigns might have challenged the rebel groups and checked their criminal
acts.
For example, Eritrea, Chad, and the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement were
the principal funders of the rebel groups in Darfur. They were and are also
allies and aid recipients of the US government, which means they could have
easily been pressured to cut their lifelines to the rebel groups.
Today, the situation in Darfur continues to be mischaracterized. Most of the
ongoing violence can be attributed to banditry, lawlessness, and fighting
between rebel groups. According to the latest United Nations-African Union
Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) report, 16 fatalities were recorded for the month
of June and none of them was linked to the conflict between Sudanese forces
and the rebel groups.
The conflict in Darfur has not met the 1,000 casualties per year threshold
that most political scientists consider necessary for a conflict to be
categorized as a "civil war" since last year.
Despite these changes, many continue to argue that the government of Sudan
is waging a large-scale assault on Darfur. The terms "ongoing genocide" and
"war in Darfur" are still used frequently in activist literature and
advertisements, which has left the American people believing that not much
has changed in Darfur.
President Obama himself has recently used the word "genocide" to refer to
the current situation. Similarly, the State Department and the US ambassador
to the UN distanced themselves from the US presidential envoy to Sudan,
Scott Gration, who dared to suggest that the genocide in Darfur was over.
If they wish to help ameliorate the conflict, officials in Washington and
activists alike must recognize that there have been big changes in the scale
and nature of the violence in Darfur.
Instead of focusing on military intervention or the punishment of only one
participant in the conflict (the Sudanese government), efforts should be
directed toward funding the peacemaking process and the safe return of more
than 2 million displaced refugees.
*Marc Gustafson is a Marshall Scholar and doctoral candidate at the
University of Oxford. He is currently writing his dissertation on political
trends in Sudan*.
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