Carter’s shamefully ignorant statement on Darfur

By Eric Reeves, The New Republic online

October 8, 2007 — Last week, Jimmy Carter toured Sudan as part of a group of
international celebrities who are calling themselves “the Elders.”
Founded by Nelson Mandela, the Elders aim–in the modest words of one
member, British billionaire Richard Branson–to address “problems in the
world that need a group of people who are maybe…beyond politics,
beyond ego, and who have got great wisdom.”

Great wisdom? Let’s just say the group is off to a rocky start. That’s
because Carter took the opportunity of his visit to Sudan to criticize
the United States for labeling the killing and destruction in Darfur
genocide. “There is a legal definition of genocide and Darfur does not
meet that legal standard,” Carter lectured. “The atrocities were
horrible but I don’t think it qualifies to be called genocide.” He also
said, “If you read the law textbooks…you’ll see very clearly that it’s
not genocide and to call it genocide falsely just to exaggerate a
horrible situation–I don’t think it helps.”

Carter got one thing right–that there is a legal definition of
genocide, embodied in the 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide–but that’s it. The “atrocities”
Carter refers to have included, over the past four and a half years, the
deliberate, ethnically targeted destruction of not only African tribal
populations, but their villages, homes, food- and seed-stocks,
agricultural implements, and water sources. People die now in Darfur
primarily because of this antecedent violence, directed against not only
lives but livelihoods. Here, the Genocide Convention is explicit: You
can commit genocide not only by “[k]illing members of [a] group” but
also by “[d]eliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The destruction in Darfur clearly meets that test.

Then there is the use of rape as a weapon of war by Arab militias in
Darfur. The racial component of rape in Darfur has been well-documented
at this point. In a typical example, here is what three Fur women–the
Fur are the largest African tribal group in Darfur–told Doctors Without
Borders: “We saw five Arab men who came to us and asked where our
husbands were. Then they told us that we should have sex with them. We
said no. So they beat and raped us. After they abused us, they told us
that now we would have Arab babies; and if they would find any Fur, they
would rape them again to change the color of their children.” Racist
epithets are typically hurled at women and girls, who are often
gang-raped and then scarred to mark them as rape victims–a terrible
burden in Darfur’s conservative Muslim ethos. Can there be any denying
that such ethnically targeted rapes fall under the Genocide Convention’s
admonition that “[c]ausing serious bodily or mental harm to members of
the group” constitutes genocide? Moreover, because of the stigma that
attaches to raped women, marriage and thus child-bearing becomes
impossible for many. And, for some victims, especially younger girls,
ensuing medical complications make child-bearing physically impossible.
Which means that these rapes clearly meet yet another definition of
genocide contained in the U.N. convention: “[i]mposing measures intended
to prevent births within the group.”

In addition, children, as well as women, are continually abducted by
the Janjaweed. This, too, is a genocidal act under the convention, which
prohibits “[f]orcibly transferring children of the group to another
group.”

None of this should be controversial at this late date. Numerous human
rights organizations have, over the past four years, collected
unambiguous evidence of genocide. The examples could fill books. A young
African man who had lost many family members in an attack heard the
gunmen say, “You blacks, we’re going to exterminate you.” Speaking of
Khartoum’s relentless aggression, an African tribal leader told a U.N.
news service, “I believe this is an elimination of the black race.” A
refugee reported these words as coming from his attackers: “You are
opponents to the regime, we must crush you. As you are black, you are
like slaves. Then the entire Darfur region will be in the hands of the
Arabs.” Another African tribal chief declared, “The Arabs and the
government forces…said they wanted to conquer the whole territory and
that the blacks did not have a right to remain in the region.” And Musa
Hilal, the most powerful Janjaweed leader, declared his objective in
simple terms back in 2004: “Change the demography of Darfur and empty it
of African tribes.”

As for the complicity of the Sudanese government officials whom Carter
clearly imagines he can charm with his criticism of the genocide label:
The air attacks mounted by Khartoum, often in conjunction with Arab
Janjaweed ground forces, have been directed exclusively at African
villages, primarily those of the Fur, Massalit, and Zaghawa–the
perceived civilian base of support for Darfur’s rebels. The
hand-in-glove operations of Khartoum’s regular military forces and the
Janjaweed have been authoritatively documented by Human Rights Watch.

In short, it seems doubtful that Carter has read the textbooks he
claims to have read, or the vast body of human rights literature on
Darfur–or even the Genocide Convention itself. If he had done any of
these things, he would not speak so ignorantly.

But Carter isn’t just wrong on the facts. His prescriptive point–that
it is unhelpful to label Darfur a genocide–is foolish as well. No doubt
Carter’s statement was the quid in some ghastly quid pro quo he hopes to
arrange with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. But Sudan’s leaders are
realists, and our only hope of changing their behavior is to credibly
threaten them. The calculus is simple: If they believe the west–the
United States, Europe, human-rights activists–now see the Darfur
conflict as a chaotic civil war, not a genocide, they will feel less
threatened. Which means they are more likely to dig in their heels on
the diplomatic front–refusing to negotiate a political solution to the
crisis–while waiting for the final cleansing of Darfur to run its
course. The upshot is that Carter, a man who is so fond of lecturing
others about the need for diplomacy, has managed to make a diplomatic
solution to Darfur’s bloodletting less likely. Great wisdom, indeed.

* Eric Reeves is author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide. He can be reached at [email protected]. www.sudanreeves.org