Saving
Darfur Or Salvation Delusion?
By Steve Fake &
Kevin Funk
21 June, 2007
Fpif.org
The
United States has substantial ties with the Sudanese government. However,
buoyed by a large grassroots movement to “Save Darfur,”
Washington has also strongly condemned Khartoum for the crisis in the
beleaguered region. The contradiction is striking – on one hand,
the United States highly prizes Khartoum for its key role in intelligence-sharing
in the supposed “War on Terror,” yet simultaneously Washington
has taken the lead in declaring (for domestic political reasons) that
the Sudanese government is carrying out “genocide” in Darfur.
Adding fuel to the fire, Sudan is an area of great strategic interest
to the United States, as it seeks to both prevent the consolidation
of Chinese influence in Africa and gain control over Sudan’s substantial
oil reserves.
It is within this framework
of contradictory posturing and less than humanitarian U.S. geopolitical
motives that the activist movement addressing Darfur operates. Spearheaded
by the “Save Darfur Coalition,” a collection of high-profile
human rights and civil society groups, much activism has been dedicated
to prodding Washington into action, generally through supporting the
deployment of UN “peacekeeping forces”; some commentators
have called directly for “humanitarian intervention” in
Darfur. Yet given the strategic and hegemonic interests at stake for
the United States in Sudan, salient questions arise about how activists
can circumvent Washington’s machinations and pursue a truly humanitarian
agenda.
Concerns about the
Coalition
For its part, the Save Darfur
Coalition has often legitimated concerns that it is patently unaware
or even supportive of Washington’s plans for the region, and ignorant
of fundamental issues of the conflict. Most prominently, the Coalition
has at times been guilty of sidetracking Darfurian and Muslim activists,
describing the conflict in harshly oversimplified ethnic terms, receiving
official sanction from and doling out praise to the Bush administration,
and failing to consider Washington’s potential interest in a UN
deployment or “humanitarian intervention” – or the
potentially dangerous outcomes of such actions. The very size and prominence
of the movement is a reflection of its political harmony with centers
of power in the United States. Accordingly, while doing much to propel
this humanitarian catastrophe onto the national radar, the movement
as a whole has demonstrated considerable myopia in both its actions
and rhetoric.
This is not to say, however,
as suggested by the tone in some left-wing commentary, that just because
many Darfur activists have a naïve credence in U.S. benevolence
and fail to recognize that Washington clearly has ulterior motives at
stake, that the question of aiding Darfurians should be tossed aside.
As the commentator Justin Podur summarizes,
The real world demands not
allowing genuine concern for victims of atrocities to be transmuted
by interventionist hypocrites into apologetics for an imperialism that
will ultimately produce more victims of more atrocities. But those same
victims deserve better than mere denunciations of intervention and its
apologists as hypocrites and warmongers.
There are several measures that can be taken with minimal danger of
promoting U.S. foreign policy objectives.The extent to which these steps
have not been pursued is itself a clear indication of how much substance
lays behind Washington’s fiery rhetoric on Darfur.
To take but the most elementary
point of departure, one would expect that if actually concerned with
Darfur, the United States and the rest of the West more generally would
shower humanitarian funds onto the aid organizations operating in the
region. This, of course, is consonant with the wishes of Darfur activist
groups, and is the bare minimum that could be expected of the munificent
leaders of Western Civilization, renowned as they are throughout commercial
media and our intellectual culture as committed to alleviating suffering
around the globe. Returning to Planet Earth, one finds the relief agencies
in a similar situation to the Darfurian people – teetering on
the edge of collapse. Due to insufficient financial support, services
to displaced victims such as health care have been restricted, “Feeding
centers have had to be closed, food cannot be distributed, staff are
being reduced, [and] teachers in camps are no longer being paid.”
At one point, the World Food Program was forced to cut its food rations
in Sudan by half, due to funding shortages – especially serious
since the UN estimates that there are some four million Darfurians “in
need of aid to survive.”
Impasse Over Peacekeepers
As frequently recounted in
the press, the UN and the West, led by the United States, are at an
impasse with Khartoum over its refusal to allow in a force of around
20,000 UN peacekeepers. (Though the latest news is that Sudan has assented
to a joint UN-AU force of 17,000-19,000 troops, Khartoum's repeated
history of obstructing the implementation of agreements warrants considerable
skepticism of this development) Tellingly, less noted has been the West’s
position towards the African Union (AU) forces already on the ground
in Darfur. Again, if the heated rhetoric from Western capitals contained
any meaningful shreds of reality, the AU troops shouldS enjoy boundless
support–especially from those declaring “genocide”
in the region.
Yet instead of being met
with jubilation and generosity by Western leaders, the AU’s own
call for its forces to be increased to 21,000 have been greeted by silence,
beyond empty moral platitudes, a demonstration of how seriously Darfurian
lives are taken in the West. Further exposing the hypocrisy, the former
UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Sudan, Jan Pronk,
has made the common sense request for the international community to
use the funds that would be spent on a UN force – he estimates
between $1 billion and $1.5 billion to aid the AU peacekeepers. Again,
such proposals are studiously ignored, once more demonstrating Washington’s
unwillingness to actually aid Darfurians.
For its part, the larger
Save Darfur movement has generally failed to emphasize this issue of
fully funding the AU, demanding more prominently a UN deployment, or,
as some have urged, a “humanitarian intervention.” Yet such
advocacy fails to account for several key realities, even beyond the
stark implausibility of the United States supporting international action
for non-selfish motives.
Even if well-intentioned,
it is entirely possible that an intervening force would cause more harm
than it could potentially alleviate, especially given Khartoum’s
disapproval of its deployment, and the possibility of an insurgent movement
rising against it. Crowds of Sudanese have demonstrated against a UN
presence, and the contention that UN forces would turn Sudan into “another
Iraq” resonates strongly in the region for reasons that should
be clear, with Pronk noting that many in Khartoum fear that al-Qaida
would be drawn into the country.
Ground Invasion Nightmare
Indeed, disaster scenarios
are not difficult to imagine. Gareth Evans, president and chief executive
of the International Crisis Group, observes that “On all available
evidence, a ground invasion would not only be a nightmare to effectively
implement, but would lead to the collapse of the extremely fragile north-south
CPA [Comprehensive Peace Agreement], and make impossible the work of
the humanitarian agencies in Darfur”–an outcome with potentially
catastrophic consequences.
This conception of a UN presence
in Sudan also ignores a fundamental element in this, or any “humanitarian”
mission–that sending in troops might stabilize the situation,
but without a working political agreement to enforce it will not necessarily
lead to any sort of just, long-term outcome to the underlying issues.
For example, Pronk, who was ordered to leave the country by Khartoum
in October 2006, rightly comments that a “Military presence in
order to keep the peace is a condition, not a solution in itself.”
Aside from the Darfur Peace
Agreement (DPA), which was heavily backed by the United States and deeply
unpopular amongst Darfurians, remarkably little interest has been shown
in developing a political solution by the United States, nor the Save
Darfur movement, which has instead latched onto its cure-all of UN troops.
Commenting that those seeking an intervention “are suffering from
a salvation delusion,” Alex de Waal, a fellow of the Global Equity
Initiative at Harvard and a director of Justice Africa, London, criticizes
the framing of the entire debate about Darfur, arguing that: “A
political settlement has been completely overlooked or downplayed by
the U.S…The whole debate has gone off on a red herring—UN
troops.”
Darfurians deserve better
than a potentially ill-conceived UN intervention, which may plunge the
region into further chaos and serve as a vehicle for U.S. geopolitical
interests. Their suffering also merits more than the crocodile tears
being shed by Washington, or an activist movement which has done much
to bring attention to Darfur but has largely failed to realize that
a Western-backed force would not be equivalent to “the armed wing
of Amnesty International.”
Other Paths to Pursue
In addition to funding relief
organizations, which is evidently of less importance to Washington than
saber rattling, there are other paths to pursue, if one cares to seek
them. Activists must push the West to support negotiations between Khartoum
and Darfurian rebel groups, instead of advocating an agreement such
as the DPA that does not reflect popular demands.
Pressure should be applied
on rich countries to compel them to grant asylum to Darfurian refugees.
Washington should be obliged to pay reparations to the people of Sudan
for bombing the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in 1998, an attack which
killed perhaps “several tens of thousands,” and supporting
Khartoum in the 1980s as it waged a bloody civil war that would claim
over two million lives.
Finally, the West cannot
be allowed to continue hampering the AU forces in Darfur; these troops
require full funding, a broadened mandate, and a proper opportunity
to halt the violence in the region – not to be completely sidelined
for the “red herring” of UN troops. The fact that these
steps have not been taken is sufficient to understand Washington’s
true position vis-à-vis Sudan–a reality that should not
be lost on Darfur activists.
Steve Fake and Kevin Funk are social justice activists who are currently
writing a book about Darfur. They maintain a blog with their commentary
at http://confrontingempire.blogspot.com/.
They are contributors to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org).
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