FOCUS – Why US Sudanese don’t show at Darfur events

By Hana Baba

Sept 26, 2006 (SAN FRANCISCO) — The humanitarian crisis in the Western Sudanese region of Darfur has attracted much of the world’s attention, sympathy, and fundraising. Years of violent conflict left over 2 million without homes. The UN estimates between 180 -400 thousand are dead. Here in the US, universities are stopping investment in Sudan to protest. Nationwide rallies were recently held from New York to San Francisco calling for an end to what some are calling genocide. But one group of people is largely missing from these US events- the Sudanese who live here.

Sunday September 17th was the Global “Day for Darfur”, and it drew hundreds of thousands of people to rallies in cities around the world. The one in San Francisco featured an African choir and Sudanese reggae singer Emmanuel Kembe. A crowd of about 400 filled Justin Herman Plaza where Market Street meets the Embarcadero. They were mostly white, mostly college students.

Saadia Alkhalifa is an activist who lives in Oakland. Originally from Northern Sudan, she looks out into the crowd and says she sees very few of her country people. Embarrassed by her community’s absence on this day, she says “I feel very isolated and even I don’t want to say I am Sudanese because I feel just left behind, alone, and that’s very sad for me.”

Aside from the rally’s main organizer and his relatives, only 10 Sudanese showed up from an estimated 2 thousand who live in the San Francisco Bay Area. The same goes for other cities. Across the country in New York City, 20-30 thousand people rallied in Central Park, but only a small fraction of that number were Sudanese.

Estimates as to exactly how many Sudanese there are in the US vary, but they range from 300-700 thousand by 2004, according to refugee agencies and the USCIS. And to the Americans who frequent the Darfur rallies, the Sudanese expatriate absence is a mystery.

But many Sudanese aren’t surprised. Dr. Ali Dinar of the University of Pennsylvania is from a prominent Darfur family. But Dinar says most Sudanese living in the US are not FROM Darfur. They’re from villages and towns thousands of miles away in Northern and Central Sudan. Dinar says in Africa’s largest country, what happens in one region often holds little interest for people in another. And that plays out in the Sudanese diaspora in the US. Dinar says, “If there is an issue that affects or caters to Southern Sudan most of the people who are there you’ll find them from Southern Sudan. If there’s a demonstration something that has to do with Darfur most of the majority of people you’ll find from Darfur.”

Sudan’s history further complicates things. Trade brought Muslim nomads from the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century. They blended with the indigenous black population forming over three hundred tribes. People in the south and west including Darfur are mostly black Africans. Those in the north, center, and east, are lighter-skinned Arabs, who often look down on darker-skinned Sudanese. Dinar says years of divisive government policies and misconceptions about the various tribes have pitted one group against another.

“You have to consider how big the Sudan is,” Dinar says, “You have to consider lack of communication, lack of transportation, lack of people meeting ‘the other’ and exchanging ideas and exchanging views.”

Dinar says there’s another thing that may keep Sudanese away from Darfur rallies. “This is also connected with the fear of some people they just don’t want to be identified with any political party in opposition to the regime.”

At the same time, Sudanese have great national pride, and many don’t trust the West. There’s the memory of British colonization, and recent clashes with the U.S. over whether Sudan supports terrorism. The 1998 US bombing of what turned out to be a legitimate pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum is also fresh in Sudanese memories.

So when Americans lead rallies calling for sanctions against Sudan, many Sudanese feel the protests are unpatriotic. Babiker Banaga says he’d never be seen at a protest. The 35-year-old Boston taxi driver has been living in the U-S for 6 years. He states, “How can I as a Sudanese go out to protest when I know its all lies and defaming my country?!”

Banaga comes from an Arab village near Khartoum. He says Americans are clueless about what’s really going on in Darfur. He blames western media and the US government for exaggerating the crisis. The US has declared the conflict genocide perpetrated by Arabs against Africans. That makes him and fellow cabbie Awad Abrahim furious. Abrahim is from Khartoum. He doesn’t deny the violence in Darfur between rebels and government militia, and says he feels sad for the civilians caught in the middle.

But it deeply offends him that anyone would think he and other Northern Sudanese Arabs are capable of genocide.

“We are human too!” he says, “If something like this was really happening, of course we would support the people of Darfur! If there is really a genocide going on, we are still human beings. We would support them if it was true, but it’s not.”

But there has been proof enough of genocide in Darfur to draw many Jewish groups to the cause. It reminds them of the Holocaust. This also bothers people like Abrahim. He echoes a point made repeatedly by Sudan’s President Omar Albashir – that the Western outcry over Darfur and the push for UN peacekeepers there is driven by an American Jewish conspiracy.

Southern Sudanese have their own reasons for not getting involved. Thousands of Darfuri men were part of the Sudanese army which fought rebels in the south for over two decades. Panther Alier was one of the so called “lost boys” who fled the civil war. The University of Mass graduate wears a “Save Darfur” bracelet. He says he feels for the people of Darfur and he’s quick to attend rallies on their behalf. But he can’t say the same for other Southerners. “People who have suffered the most”, he says, “and people who have lost their loved ones – they think maybe Darfurians don’t deserve our sympathy- they actually were the tool used to wipe the southern Sudanese out.”

But at the San Francisco rally, Haram Saeed, who’s from central Sudan, wishes her fellow Sudanese would just put these things behind them. To her, they are just excuses.

“We are all one people from one country,” she states. “If there’s a problem in the south, west, or east, it affects us all. We should be standing up MORE than the foreigners, and be less passive in dealing with our problems.”

*Hana Baba is a Sudanese-American public radio journalist based in San Francisco, USA.