It is thoroughly disgusting that Portside has chosen to circulate Eric Margolis' tendentious, deeply erroneous and potentially life-threatening column on the emergent genocide in the Darfur region of the Sudan. Portside should be ashamed.
Portside readers should know that the main progressive Africa advocacy groups in the U.S., with strong histories of opposing imperialistic U.S. policies in both the political and economic dimensions, take views that starkly contradict those presented by Margolis.
For an alternative view from Africa Action, see their website at <http://www.africaaction.org>, which includes ways to take action.
Other resources: AfricaFocus bulletin, < http://www.africafocus.org> has an archive of reports
from many sources about Africa issues. Sudan archive is <http://www.africafocus.org/country/sudan.php>. Their most recent bulletin on Darfur, dated July 22, 2004, includes items from Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, and Africa Justice.
A terrific article by Alex de Waal in the _London Review of Books_: < http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n15/waal01_.html>
Human Rights Watch repor _Sudan, Oil and Human Rights_: <http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/sudan1103/>
An important Africa human rights activist also recommends the article by John Ryle in the current _New York Review of Books_, which I have not read. (Thanks to Sean Jacobs and Bronwen Manby on the H- Africa list for the last three references.) ---------------
For those with time, a critique of Margolis' piece:
A good place to start is that despite Margolis' purported anti-imperialist stance, his position on whether or not there is genocide in Darfur is exactly the same at that of the U.S. government: a humanitarian crisis, but no genocide. The policy and lackadaisical attitude he advocates is exactly the one being pursued by the Bush administration.
Margolis places a great deal of emphasis on U.S. interest in oil, in Chad and in the Sudan. This sort of oil-determinist reductionism in analyzing U.S. policies blocks development of any effective progressive analysis or politics. U.S. "interest" and intervention in Chad long predates relatively recent oil aspects. The CIA intervened in several phases of Chadian civil war in the 1980s, as part of U.S. geopolitical struggles against Libya. None of the armed forces involved then or now is simply an American creation or cat's paw. On the politics of Sudanese oil in U.S. policy, see Human Rights Watch report cited above.
Far from seeking to destabilize the Khartoum regime, since the September 2001 terrorist attacks the Bush administration has eased up on it, following Sudanese government acquiescence to the U.S. ultimatum that it cooperate on intelligence against Al Qaeda or face attack. The U.S. has worked to push a settlement in the southern Sudan, culminating in an agreement, at least on paper, in May 2004. Where Margolis' generak views and lauding of that settlement would lead us expect U.S. policy opposed it, in fact it was brokered by former Republican senator John Danforth acting for the administration. There is considerable contrast to the Clinton policy, which included bombing Khartoum as part of Clinton's response to the Al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Margolis' key passage on the emergent genocide is composed of miscontextualized truth about the nature of the Darfurian rebellions against Khartoum, and sheer despicable lies regarding the nature of attacks suffered by Darfurian civilians:
> Last year the Darfur insurgents launched wide-scale >
attacks on government garrisons after receiving new >
arms and supplies from abroad, gravely threatening >
Khartoum's hold on Darfur. Sudan, whose army is weak, >
raised local militias in Darfur to fight the rebels. >
Civilians were caught in the crossfire.
The only context Margolis provides for the rebellion is that of alleged CIA intervention. Longer term local relationships between the region and Khartoum do not figure for Margolis. Articles cited above provide more context.
Margolis himself notes that the death toll *from fighting* in Darfur is estimated at 35,000. What Margolis does not say is that the overwhelming number of those deaths have been of civilians whose villages and towns have been systematically attacked by the Janjawiid, sometimes in concert with Khartoum government forces. Structures have been destroyed or looted, livestock and other stores stolen, women raped as a matter of deliberate terrorizing tactics, with the surviving populations driven away.
Civilians were not caught in the crossfire, but in the crosshairs. The aim was not simply to defeat the rebels. It was to drive out the local populations, targetted on an ethnic or racial basis, by depriving them of means of living. That constitutes genocide under international anti-genocide conventions.
It is the displacement of the population, and the destruction and theft of their means of livelihood, that makes the genocidal actions so massive in their not-yet-fully-realized potential for death- dealing. As Margolis says, that potential is a humanitarian disaster. But it is also one with genocidal political causes.
While whatever food, public health and other medical aid can be got to the refugees in Chad and internally in the Sudan will mitigate the effects, getting that aid there has been obstructed by the Khartoum government, on top of other obstacles posed by geography and unwillingness by wealthy country governments to contribute requisite logistical resources.
Margolis then further distorts the truth with respect to the role of Arab vs. non-Arab identities by playing to U.S. obsessions with skin color, since "all concerned are dark-skinned Sudanese Muslims." The Sudanese do not treat "Arabness" as a matter of skin color, and the Janjawiid operate explicitly in terms of Arab vs. non-Arab identities as they define them (Alex de Waal is very good on the shifting dynamics of identities in Darfur). Likewise Margolis plays to western prejudices about Africans by evoking stereotypes of timeless conflict among "tribes and clans."
The final grotesquely sickening insult in Margolis' piece is to say "the worst of Darfur's crisis appears over."
On the contrary, nothing like the needed aid to meet the humanitarian crisis has even begun to reach the region.
Margolis' insouciance implying otherwise raises serious questions as to whether he has any concern for the humanitarian crisis he identifies, other than as a political tool for denying genocide.
Supposing enough does reach there to prevent some of the deaths projected potentially to reach 300,000, the question of what happens to the more than a million internal and external refugees will remain. Margolis says Khartoum does not and cannot control the Janjawiid. Others with different views and prescriptions than his agree.
Will the refugees simply be allowed by those who have attacked them to return home? If not, will they be returned with protective force? Or will their displacers be allowed to keep the fruits of their violence? Margolis says the Janjawiid should be punished (though apparently for banditry, not crimes against humanity). How is that to be accomplished?
The humanitarian crisis in Chad and the Sudan is just beginning to enter into its potentially worst phase. Progressive pressure to ensure adequate U.S. response as well as the eventual repatriation of the refugees to their homes is needed.
Again, Portside should be ashamed for circulating Margolis' canard.
Chris Lowe Portland, Oregon (independent scholar, Ph.D. African history, Yale University)
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Dear Portside,
I was profoundly disturbed to read Eric Margolis's column in today's Portside. While I share Mr. Margolis's distrust of American imperialism, this is one case where the call for intervention is NOT a mask for expansionism. On the contrary, those of us who are calling for humanitarian assistance to the people of Darfur are genuinely concerned about the potential for that region become to another Rwanda, another Bosnia, perhaps even another Hitlerian Holocaust. Already, between 50,000 and 100,000 civilians have perished at the hands of the marauding Janjaweed, a group of bandit militiamen similar to the anti-Semitic Black Hundred in the late Russian Empire or the Ku Klux Klan in the United States. The potential for mass death as the rainy season now approaches is in the millions. Shall we sit back and let this happen once again, and self- righteously cry "Never Again!" only after the butchery is complete and the mass graves are uncovered? Or shall we urge the United Nations to send peace-keepers to rescue the innocent from what is potentially the gravest civilian massacre since World War II? I would hope that people of good will would agree that the latter action is the truly just and merciful one to follow.
Mr. Margolis's use of history is an unfortunate distortion of the facts. Firstly, Darfur is not the area from whence the well-known Dervishes originated; they came from Ottoman Turkey. Yes, the Mahdist rising of the 1880s was a reaction to western imperialism, and the British response to it was monstrous. On the other hand, Mr. Margolis's seems to imply that those of us who are trying to defend the victims of bloodshed in Darfur are apologists for a new chapter in colonialism. This is simply not the case. This is not about oil; it is about mass murder. True, there is oil in Sudan, but it is not under the Darfur region. Margolis's characterization of the Khartoum government as "weak" is also not supported by the facts; the Bashir regime has been engaged in constant warfare against its rivals for decades and has already committed documented atrocities in other areas of Sudan. These are hardly the actions of a supine nation state. Margolis tries to portray the Sudanese government as a victim of Bush/CIA machinations. That may have been true before 2001 when Khartoum was allied with Al Qaeda, although how "weak" they really were is questionable. Since 9-11, Bashir has switched sides and has become a gleeful comrade of the George Bush in his so-called War on Terror. So much for the victimhood of the Sudanese state.
Margolis is clever in playing to a progressive audience. He dismisses those of us defending the people of Darfur as creatures of the "Christian right." As a matter of fact, some outspoken advocates for relief have been conservative Christians. Yet not all Christians are ipso facto disciples of the conservative, reactionary agenda. There are just as many Christians on the left, and many of us are just as active in the struggle to save Darfur. We are joined by a chorus of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Unitarian- Universalists, non-believers, and various other groups. I shall supply below a list of supporters of SaveDarfur.org. I believe that will convince people that we are not a shield for George Bush's Imperialist Crusade for Oil. This is not a replay of the Iraq war; we do not advocate a march on Khartoum the way the imperialists screamed for a march on Baghdad. What we want is for the world community to live up to its responsibility to save those who can be saved before it is too late.
So, while I share Eric Margolis's anxiety about the creeping American Empire, the Darfur crisis does not fit into his reductionist, historically inaccurate paradigm. I encourage my fellow-progressives, and indeed all people, to contact their representatives in Congress, to contact the White House, and to contact the United Nations and to demand humanitarian action to help our friends in Darfur. Please do it now!
Sincerely,
Jeffrey R. Ryan, Ph.D., Department of History, Reading Memorial High School Reading, Massachusetts
-- Michael Pugliese
-- Michael Pugliese
-- Michael Pugliese