An admission before I go on: as an activist who has worked to end the all-too-real Darfur Genocide for about 4 years, it is both painful and shocking to suddenly see my peers and fellow activists claiming that I have, unbeknownst to me, been part of a government conspiracy to commit corrupt and unjust acts. I have great respect for the radical community; I have worked alongside them on issues of global justice, and I hope to continue to do so.
So I must disclose, for the sake of full journalistic disclosure, that this feels like a betrayal--not by any individual, but by radical ideals that I had a lot of hope and faith invested in.
Yet the more I've seen this conspiracy theory in zines, newsletters and blogs, the more I've realized that I need to write my thoughts--and, most importantly, the facts-- in plain English, and in the public (blogo)sphere, as an act of faith that my peers have the ability to discern propaganda from principle on both sides of this new, emerging debate, and determine the truth on Darfur for themselves.
So here it goes.
To paraphrase, the articles I've read claim that the crisis in Darfur is a lot more complex and a lot less black-and-white than the Western media portrays, in its typically anti-Arab propaganda. The radical media says the Darfur Conflict is not necessarily a genocide; it is a complex clash between diverse groups who do not need to be "saved" at all.
Furthermore,radicals point out (correctly) that the largest Darfur advocacy group, the Save Darfur Coalition, is not donating directly to Darfur, and that it has on its board of directors former diplomats, who have worked for the US government--which has proven many times that their interest in gaining control of an oil-rich Arab state comes before their respect for human rights. Radicals believe the Save Darfur Coalition is advocating military intervention for the corrupt purpose of gaining Arab oil and overthrowing another Islamic regime. Most notably, they believe the movement to "save" Darfur is actually a government conspiracy to justify another act of US military intervention in an Arab-Islamic state. They use the fact that President Bush has even shown unprecedented support for the Darfur movement to drive the point home: If Bush supports the Save Darfur Movement, how could it possibly be anything more than a scheme to steal oil, money, and power from the Arab world?
That’s basically the argument I’ve read a lot these past few weeks. Here is my response, as one Darfur activist, who can’t claim to speak for the entire movement, but has a lot to say:
I strongly agree that the Darfur conflict must be viewed in its rightful historical and political context of the colonial legacy, global inequality, the exploitation of environmental resources, etc. And I agree that the media tends to ignore these facts because black-and-white ploblems make for better sound bites, and perhaps also because the real context in Darfur implicates the West in the genocide:
We, as affluent world citizens, are responsible for the global warming that dried the wells in Darfur, and made competition for resources harder. We are political allies with Britain, who colonized Sudan over a century ago, and appointed Arabs from its other colony, Egypt, as Sudan's ruling elite--establishing an unjust racial hierarchy that has remained intact, to this day. We, as westerners, are even responsible for consuming the oil that gives despots like Sudan’s president, Bashir, money and power on the world stage.
And it’s sadly true that the Save Darfur movement has left these facts out of some of its press-releases and public statements. But this void is not unique to Darfur; it’s hard to find complex back-story on the front lines of any social movement, (even though it's there in the larger analysis)...simply because it’s hard to rally strong support behind a complicated cause. It is always easier for people to support simple, black-and-white issues that don’t require a history degree to grasp. That said,
I firmly believe that we, as a movement, must work harder to ensure the complexities--that do implicate the West in causing genocide--make it into the media sound bites and Washington rallies. And I believe we’re getting there.
Furthermore, Darfur may have complex causes, but it is still a genocide. This is not simply propaganda. If you don’t want to trust me, or UN statistics, trust the many people I have met who have been on the ground in Darfur and Chad, people like Brian Steidle and John Heffernan who have documented the atrocities there, people like the nuns who go to the church a few miles from my house and have visited refugee camps; but most of all, trust the Darfurian refugees I’m honored to have met in my own community, who have brought with them to this country tears of righteous anger and pain for their families, who were buried under fire, in the Darfuri desert . I have heard their stories. If you don’t want to believe me, please believe these stories, because they are not hard to find, and they are not myths invented by President Bush.
Like so many other activists, I want the people of Darfur to have autonomy; but the way to restore their autonomy is not to leave them to fend off a genocide completely alone. This was not the way to give the Rwandans or the Bosnians their autonomy. Radicals often emphasize global solidarity in social movements, such as the Zapatista movement; we must have this same solidarity with the Darfuri people, in defeating genocide. The fact is that the Darfur genocide exists because autonomy has been stolen from the Darfuri people—much like it has stolen from powerless people everywhere—by their own government, and by the world’s governments.
This is how the genocide started: In 2003, black African rebel groups, calling for racial equality, attempted to stage a coup against the powerful, Arab-lead government (an act radicals should respect). The corrupt, racist government responded bribing Arabs to decimate Native African populations in the region. Without this obviously heinous act the genocide wouldn’t exist. Ever since then, the Sudanese government has continued to use their own military as well as this Arab proxy-militia, called the Janjaweed, to painstakingly raid and burn Darfur’s villages. Militias also rape Darfuri women, to impregnate them with Arab children, and thereby destroy the Native African race. This military campaign, (like other corrupt military campaigns in recent history) has been waged against civilians, and has been funded by oil revenues.
So who is buying Sudan’s oil and funding this genocide? It’s actually not the United States, who has an embargo against Sudan. It's Russia and China who purchase the majority of Sudanese oil....and pay for it in blood money: not only do Sudan's military revenues directly fund innocent deaths in Darfur; but Russia and China also look the other way when the genocide comes up in the UN security counsel, and veto any bills calling for action.
To me, this--not some conspiracy-- is the story of oil-hungry first-world countries persecuting Africa. For such a story, radicals need look no further than the truth.
But that’s not to say the United States in innocent in Darfur. Because all along, The US has had the power to break Russia and China’s silence; yet we have refused to use economic threats to push them to action, and have neglected the diplomatic tools in our substantial arsenal.
Speaking of arsenals...the proposition of unilateral US military intervention in Darfur really is just a myth. I say that because I know the activists I've worked alongside for years would never allow it to become more than that. Save Darfur—along with every other prominent NGO who’s spoken out on Darfur—advocates AGAINST US military intervention in the region. I can say with very little doubt that if president Bush announced tomorrow that he wanted to invade Darfur, he would face rallies and letter-writing campaigns from the millions of people who have used the same tactics to beg him to do something in Darfur for so long. That’s because we have been advocating for something specific, (and it's not more military attacks): a UN peacekeeping force endowed with the power to protect the homeless, hungry civilians who are being targeted by their own government.
It’s true that Save Darfur has Washington Big Wigs like John Prendergast in its ranks, but it wasn’t always that way. Save Darfur began as a grassroots organization. But as its numbers grew, so did its need for lobbying power and expertise. So, like all prominent NGO’s, it began to recruit people who know their way around Washington DC better than a bunch of activists...because the sad truth is that a bunch of activists calling for justice aren’t necessarily going to get anywhere in Washington DC (even if one of them is Elie Weisel). Save Darfur doesn't give directly to aid..but plenty of other prominent organizations do, like the Genocide Intervention Network, (or GI-Net) which actually funds the grossly out-numbered, poorly-funded African Union peacekeepers on the ground in Darfur. GI-Net is also a prominent member organization of the Save Darfur Coalition.
The coalition is so widely supported because Save Darfur has affirmed a great truth in US politics: that a bunch of activists, working with a bunch of famous politicians, publishing a bunch of ads in the New York Times can actually make some progress. That’s the real reason why President Bush has spoken out in favor of Darfur: Because millions of people (some of them famous) have begged him to do so for years. (... people who probably wouldn't have known about the genocide if not for Save Darfur's ad campaigns.)
If even that seems too benevolent for our president, consider this: Bush has only very recently taken small steps to end the genocide, but he talked about Darfur for years before he did anything about it. Since 2003, Bush was just being another corrupt politician: He didn’t want the legacy and publicity of a genocide hanging over his head, in the face of a growing movement to end it; but he still wasn’t ready to truly confront the power of China head-on. And so, like any politician, he remained a hypocrite, matching moral words with immoral inaction because he was too afraid of the repercussions of real bravery.
So finally, four years into the genocide, and four years into my activism to end it, Bush’s rhetoric FINALLY begins to become reality. And what happens? The radical community—reactionary, and skeptical of anything the US government supports—decides my movement’s first real success is just a conspiracy.
The Sudanese Communist party agrees with most of what I--and the Save Darfur Coalition-- has said about how to end the Darfur Genocide.
So maybe Western radicals--so eager to give the people of Sudan their autonomy-- should start listening to them, in stead of their own propaganda.
It seems to me that it would be a tragic irony if, after everything else they've endured, the civilians of Darfur became casualties in an unnecessary activist war.
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