The genocide goes on in Darfur – but has it become passe for politicians as the issue du jour?
By RICK MERCIER
We seem to be just about at the point where we can file the people of Darfur, Sudan, in the “Where are they now?” category.
You may remember them as the victims of a genocide perpetrated by their government and its militia allies. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000 of them have died, 2.5 million have been made homeless and countless numbers of women and girls have been systematically raped.
But we haven’t heard much about Darfur lately. The agenda-setting media in the United States have pretty much stopped reporting on the situation in western Sudan, deciding that the food emergency in Niger is the Africa catastrophe du jour. (You don’t expect them to devote significant time and resources to more than one big Africa story at a time, do you?)
The Bush administration, meanwhile, displays more interest in cementing an intelligence-sharing relationship with the Sudanese government than with ending the genocide in Darfur. How else to interpret the CIA’s decision to fly one of the suspected architects of the Darfur genocide–Sudanese intelligence chief Salah Abdallah Gosh–to Washington to chew the fat about al-Qaida?
This Gosh is thought to be so bad that some Justice Department officials considered having him arrested when he set foot in this country, according to The Los Angeles Times. Even conservative Republican Rep. Frank Wolf, whose 10th District includes part of Fauquier County, protested Gosh’s visit, saying it sent the wrong message to the Sudanese government.
But the Bush administration has introduced nuance into its foreign policy, and at least some evildoers may now be embraced.
In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” Samantha Power reports that President Bush received a memo describing President Clinton’s shameful inaction during the Rwanda genocide and wrote on the margin of the document: “Not on my watch.”
But now a genocide has happened on his watch, and although Bush has done more than any other Western leader to try to stop it, he hasn’t done enough.
He certainly hasn’t made Darfur a priority, even though he has stated that the violence in the region amounts to genocide.
The situation in western Sudan has been called “Rwanda in slow motion,” and now that the dying has tapered off a bit–down from 10,000 people a month to about 6,000–it’s tempting to forget about the crisis and focus on other matters.
Some people representing the U.S. government are even prepared to declare the international response to Darfur a success. Michael Smith, a State Department official working with the African Union, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last month that he’s been “overwhelmed” by world reaction to the 21 century’s first genocide.
“I think we shined the light on Darfur and we have forestalled a much greater loss of life than we would otherwise have had,” he said.
Of course, that rosy assessment obscures one important thing: The genocide continues. John Prendergast, a leading Sudan expert who travels frequently to Darfur, thinks Smith is way off the mark. As he explained in an e-mail: “The standard as to whether or not the situation is improving in Darfur must not be mortality or malnutrition rates, but rather whether the two and a half million displaced people feel safe enough to return home. Not one of them does. The situation remains urgent.”
Prendergast’s organization, the International Crisis Group, has been advocating a more robust response to the genocide. The group has put forth these recommendations:
A stronger mandate for the AU forces on the ground in Darfur, to enable them to undertake any measures necessary to prevent attacks or threats to civilians and relief workers. The existing mandate does not allow AU soldiers to intervene to stop attacks, or launch offensive operations to ensure security in the region.
A rapid reinforcement of AU troops, with adequate support from the West, to boost the number of personnel to more than 12,000 in 60 days. The current AU plan calls for about 7,500 troops on the ground by next month and 12,300 by next spring. The ICG believes the latter is the minimal number of troops needed to provide security for an area about the size of Texas.
A NATO “bridging force” for Darfur if the AU cannot quickly increase troop numbers to an adequate level.
Experts can debate whether these proposals are the best ones we can come up with, but it’s deeply troubling that there appears to be no real debate at all in Washington these days about Darfur. The administration, having declared the violence in Darfur to be genocide, now seems to have checked off the crisis on its to-do list and moved on to other things.
Potential genocide perpetrators in other parts of the world must be comforted by our response to Darfur. They’ve learned that even when we have the temerity to use the dreaded g-word, we won’t really act forcefully to end the crimes against humanity. We’ll simply hope that the killing and raping are managed in such a way that they’re not so in-our-face.
Would-be authors of genocide have also seen that the CIA will offer them VIP treatment if they can tantalize the agency with tidbits of information about America’s enemies.
Meanwhile, there’s our “Where are they now?” candidates, the people of Darfur. They continue to be trapped in de facto concentration camps or under trees and in valleys, wondering if they’ll ever have a normal life again–or whether they’ll continue having a life at all.
RICK MERCIER is a writer and news editor for The Free Lance-Star. His news articles and columns on Darfur recently earned finalist honors in the Associated Press Managing Editors 2005 International Perspective Award competition.