Genocide in Sudan
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Women in Darfur drawing water from a well. [David Haberlah / Flickr]
Nicholas Kristof, op-ed columnist for the New York Times, encapsulated it in the title of one of his recent columns on Sudan: Never Again, Again? He was referring, of course, to the post-Holocaust vow of “never again,” and although genocide is always a controversial label, there’s no doubt that the horrific massacres of several hundred thousand Sudanese in the western region of Darfur over the last two-and-a-half years is one of the world’s very worst humanitarian disasters. Which the rest of the world is basically tuning out in a way that’s frighteningly reminiscent of Rwanda.
Two million Darfur residents are now displaced. The 7000 African Union troops currently in Sudan have helped stabilize Darfur to a point, but they’re esentially a bandaid on a gaping wound; and Europe and the US have recently decided to cut back AU funding. Peace talks are in their seventh round, but no one thinks they have a serious chance of success. It’s hard (or perhaps all too easy) to imagine what comes next.
The mission for this hour is to understand what’s at the root of this complicated inter-Muslim ethnic conflict and to try to figure out how the world community — and specifically the United States — can live up to the promise of “never again.” Our own American track record on humanitarian intervention during genocides is questionable at best — what do you think we should do in Darfur? And what would you like to know in order to make that part of the world more understandable and immediate?
When we went through the show suggestions in our story meeting today, I realized that yesterday, in a mad rush to get this show post up in time, I completely forgot to link to Somerville’s Darfur idea — thanks for the suggestion and my apologies!
Nicholas Kristof
- Op-ed columnist, the New York Times.
Simon Deng
- Sudanese refugee and activist.
Eric Reeves
- Professor of English at Smith College and passionate Sudan expert.
- Extra-Credit Reading
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Nicholas Kristof’s columns on Darfur in the New York Times.
Samantha Power on Darfur in the New Yorker last week and a year ago.
A BBC primer on the conflict in Darfur.
Sudan blogs on Global Voices.
Mortart, Darfur: Where is the American black outrage?, Octogenarian.
Eric Reeves just recommended Darfur: A short history of a long war
December 1st, 2005 at 5:55 pm
I am so glad to see this topic come up! I have read Kristof’s columns this year. I am, perhaps rather naively, surprised that the world community has been a stuck basically doing what I do -reading news reports. Has intervention failed/non existent because of a fundamental lack of understanding of the politics on the African continent? Fear of political backlash for the funding of intervening actions obviously has been an obstruction. But how can we accept the status quo? Why hasn’t the world -UN/EU/USA/China?? pressed for a humane solution?!
If anything demands the attention of American foreign policy experts it is senseless, methodical killing on an already crippled continent. Isn’t (wasn’t?!?!) this an opportunity for America to gain some credibility abroad? We could demonstrate our ability to work together with foreign governments without stepping on (too many) toes. We want the world to believe we really do want free governments that respect and protect the rights of their citizens. By gathering a real international coalition to deal with the violence, America practices what it preaches. As it stands, we say one thing (‘free Iraq’) and do another. I believe a number of senators and perhaps Colin Powell have an inkling of how important international integrity is to accomplishing our national goals. Either the Whitehouse doesn’t understand this idea or they do not care.
December 1st, 2005 at 6:24 pm
Hey Brendan and co. you may think that I took a liking to the whole Darfur thing but I was turned onto it by a boy in the eigth grade at Milton Academy. His name is Brennan (not Brendan) Robbins and his talk to the school was about the genocide in Sudan and what the conditions are like and how there is much contreversity and confusion in the UN. Brennan felt that he should take a stand and help the people of Darfur. To make his stand he has decided that to do so he asked the entire middle school to send letters to our representetives in Washington to help. Now as I type mine and many other letters from Milton Academy are traveling to Washington to make a stand against this injustness.
December 1st, 2005 at 7:19 pm
Open Source (Katherine) posted:
“Our own American track record on humanitarian intervention during genocides is questionable at best — what do you think we should do in Darfur? And what would you like to know in order to make that part of the world more understandable and immediate?”
What can we send? Food? Well, they’re hungry, sending food would make sense, it would seem. Actually, to quote Zevon, sending lawyers, guns, and money would make more sense, they could more easily grow food where they are if they had that.
We might want to ask first though why the world — not just the US, and not black people in particular — is so slow to respond. What do the refugees lack that we’d want to try to save? Culture? A religious faith, perhaps, that we feel a special debt to try to protect? C’mon, the world is slow, reluctant, full of excuses why it’s not intervening, with humanitarian aid more difficult to reach the refugees than Janjaweed milita war criminals not because the people have attributes that prejudice others against them than because they’re dirt (sand?) poor and the land they’re occupying is neither theirs nor worth much of anything to anyone, or so it seems, anyway.
I’ll suppose that most of the people reading this blog and listening to this show have been to college (or are planning to go), so let me rephrase the question posted by the show host, and see if this might better address the concerns at hand. What would most motivate another country, if not the UN itself to step in with troops and medical aid? If we could sucessfully convert the refugees to Christianity or Judiasm, or if oil was discovered under their refugee camp?
December 7th, 2005 at 2:15 am
Just heard the podcast; thank you. I think one important thing we need is pictures, we need more pictures of the atrocities. We live in a visual age, if a news anchor had come on the air and just told us that a guy named Rodney king had been beaten by police, we would have said wow! That’s terrible. If someone had just told us that many people had lost their homes and their lives from Katrina, we would have said - that is so unfortunate. The fact that we saw the beating with our own eyes, the fact that we saw these desperate Americans helplessly waiving flags, made us feel real empathy - something we are totally lacking in this situation. There is a disconnect here and part of it has to do with the lack of clarity as to the origins of the conflict - I’m still not even 100% sure what the hell is going on. I bet you could ask 100 students at Harvard what was going on and you would get 100 different answers. What ever the particulars or grievances may have been at the beginning is moot now, things have spiraled into chaos - into GENOCIDE. We need to point our big American finger at the goverment and say YOU ARE ACCOUNTABLE for this! If we can get more cameras on the ground it will go a long way towards holding a light up to the perpetrators of this violence. As Mr. Kristof said, the government is not proud of what they are doing. A big spotlight will be as powerful as 10,000 soldiers.