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Hypocrisy of Genocide
The LA Times had sent staff reporter Edmund Sanders to report from Sudan. Unlike the usual black and white media installments his reports catch some of the complexities of the conflict.
Some of the latest are:
Search for oil raises the stakes in Darfur, Rebels pose a new threat to Darfur’s displaced and In Darfur, gritted teeth behind smiles.
Today LAT publishes Sanders’ latest – Darfur’s less-known victims:
Arabs in the western Sudanese region of Darfur are usually depicted as the aggressors in a conflict with black African ethnic groups, but many Arabs now find themselves caught up in the violence, forced into camps by intertribal fighting and cut off from traditional migration routes they’ve relied upon for centuries to survive.
…
The recent clashes are raising the broader question of what will happen to the more than 2 million Arab nomads, people who have lived in Darfur for centuries. Arab leaders here say only a fraction of the Arab population, from 10% to 20%, has participated in the government-led attacks. Most Arabs have remained neutral and some have even sided with Darfur’s rebels, the leaders say.
The typical picture painted by Save Darfur libruls are "Islamist Arab government thugs are killing innocent peaceful Africans." But the conflict is neither Arab versus African, nor Muslim against non-Muslim – all these characteristics are utterly mixed and indistinguishable in Darfur.
The conflict started over arable land after drought diminished the available resources used by farmers as well as nomads. From the point of view of the Sudanese government a rebellion in the
far western part of the country threatened the national unity and sovereignty.
The possibly rich oil and uranium deposits there are of national
importance. The government sent some troops and hired local thugs security contractors to tame the rebellion. Then various interests tried to use and expand the conflict to further their specific purpose.
No non-local intervention force will ever have the language capabilities and understanding of the complex tribal societies involved to be able to find and implement a lasting solution. As sad as it may be for some – such conflicts are not solvable by enlightened peacekeepers but only by the involved people themselves. Could Chinese peacekeepers have prevented the American civil war?
The conflict in Darfur is not a genocide. That concept is well defined in international law by a United Nations convention. The legal premise for genocide is "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Only if such were to happen, and according to various UN commisions such did not happen in Darfur nor is it likely, international intervention in a national conflict would be legally justified.
If Sudan had oil contracts with major western companies, the conflict would be a welcome and underreported "anti-terrorist security operation." As Sudan has oil contracts with China, the conflict is labeled by the U.S. as a genocide.
This hypocrisy is well captured in a recommendable piece by Professor Mahmood Mamdani in the London Review of Books: The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency
The history of colonialism should teach us that every major intervention has been justified as humanitarian, a ‘civilising mission’. […] Now, as then, imperial interventions claim to have a dual purpose: on the one hand, to rescue minority victims of ongoing barbarities and, on the other, to quarantine majority perpetrators with the stated aim of civilising them. Iraq should act as a warning on this score. The worst thing in Darfur would be an Iraq-style intervention. That would almost certainly spread the civil war to other parts of Sudan, unravelling the peace process in the east and south and dragging the whole country into the global War on Terror.
chemmett –
things aren’t so great in western province either, economically-speaking, but the people are proud and not ready to let outsiders buy up all the businesses
i’ll try to respond to some of what you bring up, b/c i think it may help bring us all closer to the truth
I don’t at all follow how the government land grab was somehow Britain’s fault though. I have no doubt some reorganization did need to take place, but it’s something that should have been done gradually and without a racial bias. And I really don’t see how Britain could have helped.
zim’s independence was won in 1980. the land confiscation did not begin until 2000, twenty years after waiting for britain to uphold its agreement to help facilitate a solution to the land ownership issue, wherein the minority white settlers who owned the majority of the best and largest tracts would return properties stolen at the end of the 19th century from the ndebele and shona peoples, and blacks in general — who outnumbered the whites some 4,000,000 to ~250,000 — would finally have their own pieces of land. twenty years! how long should mugabe have continued to wait? another generation? two?
i’m not sure what qualifies as a gradual transition, but it does take two to tango & colonial/imperial powers aren’t famous for keeping their end of treaties & promises.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but for the most part, these were not foreign land owners. They were legal citizens of Zimbabwe who lived and worked there. They just weren’t natives, and yeah, in a number of cases probably acquired the land through colonial rule. They were still a good chunk of the foundation for the country’s economy though, and the money they made stayed in Zimbabwe, it wasn’t going back to Europe or to a foreign corporation.
let’s not erase the past now, b/c context is very important. and non-industialized societies tend to have longer memories than thier industrialized counterparts. the whites in zimbabwe were settler colonialists who took that land in conquest.
from the book africa since 1800 by roland oliver & anthony atmore
In Southern and Northern Rhodesia settlement was promoted by the British South Africa Company. This was done for two reasons. First, the idea agreed with the ideals of Cecil Rhodes, that the highlands of Central Africa would make an excellent home for English-speaking farmers. The second was that land grants were a means of rewarding the occupiers, who would otherwise have had to be paid out of company funds. [p.137]
and they didn’t just happen upon a virgin wilderness
The early years of the colonists’ settlement in Southern Rhodesia were a time of constant fighting. There were unofficial wars between the settlers and the Portuguese on the Mozambique border. The settlers had to conquer the Ndebele, who soon became thoroughly resentful of their presence in neighboring Mashonaland. It is not pleasant to read how the colonists deliberately provoked the conflict with the Ndebele, but the war was probably an inevitable consequence of the European settlement. … The seizure of land and cattle by the victorious settlers provoked both the Ndebele and the Mashona to make a last attempt to drive them out in 1896, when the Africans’ will to resist the white man was finally broken by the machine-gun. [pp.119-23]
so the ndebele and mashona were “driven off the land they had previously grazed or farmed, and herded roughly into ‘reserves'” where “they had to start life afresh, often without their cattle, often without even the support of their old social groupings, which had been broken up as a result of warfare and flight.” [p.144]
they ended up, of course, being colonized and forced to work in the fields and mines that the europeans took over. when it comes to colonialism, there’s usually two distinct sides to the story, depending on which one is doing the telling.
as the british historian (lord) robert blake wrote in his book, a history of rhodesia, on the view from the conquerors
Whatever ideas had actuated the settlement after the rebellion, integration was not one of them. It was a later concept produced by the logic of the economic situation confronting the Company. The original settlement was intended to be one of separation between the two races, with all power in the hands of the victorious one. This did not mean ruthless exploitation of the vanquished. On the contrary, most of the victors genuinely believed that the Blacks would now be happier and more prosperous than they had been under their old rulers. But the settlers could justifiably argue that, although maltreatment of the natives should be deplored and prevented, a policy leading however distantly to racial integration, as in Brazil or the West Indies, was not a part of their bargain. Separation, execpt in so far as labour on a temporary basis was required for mines, farms and domestic service, was the only safe system if a twentieth century white minority ruling class was to dwell in the same land as a conquered black majority barely emerged from the Iron Age. [p.157]
initially, what the colonists did produce, stepping up the resource extraction that the locals had been engaged in for a long time prior to the arrival of the europeans, intensifying monocrops of maize, wheat and cotton, cattle ranching, etc, did serve the industrial nations. for this to be profitable, it was necessary to have a large supply of cheap labor.
as walter rodney wrote in his book, how europe underdeveloped africa,
The absolute limit of brutal exploitation was found in the southern parts of the continent; and in Southern Rhodesia, for example, agricultural laborers rarely received more than 15 shillings per month. Workers in mines got a little more if they were semi-skilled, but they also had more intolerable working conditions. … In Southern Rhodesia in 1949, Africans employed in municipal areas were awarded minimum wages of 35 to 75 shillings per month. That was a considerable improvement over previous years, but white workers (on the job for 8 hours per day compared to the African’s 10 or 14 hours) received a minimum wage of 20 shillings per day plus free quarter and other benefits.
The Rhodesians offered a miniature version of South Africa’s aparthied. [pp.153-3]
now i’ve ignored the post-independence period in setting up this historical context, but i would be interested in seeing the comparable figures. zim was a powerhouse for some time, yes. of the money that was staying in zimbabwe though, how was it distributed & who did it benefit?
Just confiscating their land without compensation and shutting down their farms was not the way to handle it… besides the direct damage to the economy, I would imagine it discouraged foreign investments quite a bit as well.
i’ll agree w/ you on these points, for the most part. after a few generations of living on the land, is it fair to make someone pay the consequences for something their grandparents did? tough call. the ndebele and shona who lost everything didn’t get any compensation. and they certainly fared a lot worse than white rhodesians have. i haven’t read of any settler getting confined to a reservation, treated like a subspecies & forced into labor.
but in some cases there probably was a better way to reclaim the land. and the impact on the existing economic infrastructure from the weak knowledge transfer when doing so certainly had its costs.
re the foreign investors angle, i’m not up-to-date on what the govts plans have been. i do know that mugabe was never popular w/ the west in the first place, as he was a marxist revolutionary (though not beholden to the soviet bloc), avoided getting entangled w/ the west’s neoliberal/neocolonial institutions, and cut the figure of a fine black nationalist leader. his ongoing relations w/ china have also earned him the enmity of the western bloc. and, of course, there’s the land thing. everything always comes down the land issue. on this, mugabe has stood his ground.
Personally, I also wouldn’t regard Kaunda as a very reputable source. This was the socialist president who plunged Zambia heavily into debt to the IMF, blew a lot of the money on expensive, impressive looking, but largely useless building projects, and created an attitude of governmental dependence in the people that they’re still struggling to recover from.
large buildings in zambia? where? i think your dismissal of kaunda is too simple. yea, he had his own little waco-like incident at the start of his presidency, and he didn’t do everything in the best possible manner (and what first-generation independence figure did?), but to lay all the responsibility for the IMF debts on his shoulders is a bit unreasonable. that’s what the IMF does, and many a country has been stung. kaunda did not allow the privatization of zambia, which the country is hurting from now. at independence he was faced w/ the reality of inheriting a nation that was nearly entirely owned by foreigners & he worked to nationalize it. to foster a sense of nationalization & what they termed african socialism. a lot of what happened to zambia’s economy was beyond kaunda’s control. he couldn’t set the international price for copper, for instance. and, like i said, the IMF vampires, well, once you invite them in your house, they’ll SAP you dry.
as far as this dependence that kaunda supposedly left his country, i don’t see it being laid at his feet. what about the effects from all those years of colonial rule? tell me, how many wars has zambia had? did not free education benefit the people? is it kaunda’s fault that a large part of the generation that benefited from his educational programs b/c part of the diaspora, the “brain drain”, as it is called? it’s not a problem endemic to zambia, you know.
these are not simple issues to solve, no doubt. i do think that the hysteria surrounding mugabe these days is largely manufactured and that kaunda’s words make sense. kaunda stepped down when the people asked him to. will mugabe do the same in a legitimate election? hard to say. i certainly can understand why he’d be hesitant to, from a historical perspective. to fight so long to keep the country from being recolonized by private, foreign interests & then see that happen as soon as he relinquishes power, well, i’m sure kaunda can relate after what chiluba did to zambia. i’m not a ‘great man’ type of person, don’t get me wrong here. but i do prefer history over hysteria, and find the facts much more interesting than the myths. if someone does deserve vilification, i’ll consider them a villian. in this case, though, i find the critics much more suspect based on their omissions.
(didn’t get that call through last night. i’ll follow-up though.)
Posted by: b real | Mar 29 2007 4:14 utc | 38
this letter to the editor of a paper in ghana does a decent job of making clear the hypocrisy, and which i mentioned sometime earlier, wrt all of the msm focus on mugabe in zimbabwe while a true dictatorship in ethiopia commits much worse, very real crimes
Zimbabwe and Ethiopia: Any double standards?
Almost all media in England carry Zimbabwe’s human rights abuses. They have stories about the brutal dictator and the world’s response to the recent violence. Morgan Tsvagari has been lionized in the media.
Since the violence, the BBC has opened most of its news with Zimbabwe, its top correspondent Orla Guerin reporting from South Africa. Other European media outlets have also extensively covered the story in hostile ways to Mugabe. The man has to go. He is a classic African dictator who has no regard for the wishes of the citizenry he is supposed to serve. He is corrupt and brutal.
Yet the same scrutiny which is accorded this liberation hero is not given to another dictator a few thousand miles north of Zimbabwe. Meles’ government has killed many people in recent years. His soldiers and policemen have tortured opposition activists.
He has imprisoned opponents. While in Zimbabwe, the opposition MDC has its offices all over the country, the main opposition in Ethiopia is unofficially outlawed. Mugabe’s three months ban on demonstrations was received with abhorrence by the west. In Ethiopia, demonstrations have been prohibited since May 2005.
Two striking issues differentiate Ethiopia from Zimbabwe. While Mugabe told the west to “go hang” long time ago, Meles has chosen to be the pawn in their hands. Mugabe’s defiance was met by sanctions from the furious West. Meles, an equally fierce dictator, is being showered with financial gifts from the World Bank and the West.
More importantly, there is “the white factor” which has made Europeans and Americans to act differently in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia. Meles government killed its own people. Mugabe’s dictatorship started to become unacceptable when he confiscated white-owned farms. When Mugabe murdered thousands of people in Ndebele in the 1980s, the opposition from the West was largely muted. The very least one could say about the reaction to Mugabe is hypocrisy.
When Ghana and Ghanaians under the able leadership of John Kufuor, are enjoying the rule of law, freedom of speech, respect for human rights and all other goodies that come with democracy after a long struggle, their brothers and sisters in Ethiopia are suffering under the firm grips of a tyrant, who is terrorizing, intimidating and torturing them.
In Ethiopia today, there is only one television station – government owned, no free press, no private radio stations (no phone-ins). Even family members are afraid of each other. The country is full of paid informants. In short, Ethiopia is a police state.
If you are defending the defenceless, and if you are the voice of the voiceless through the power of the pen, please reproduce the above and let the world know what is going on in far away Ethiopia. Thanking you for the cooperation and hoping to see the article in your next issue.
@chemmett- the rhodesian front was a very racist govt. they resisted attempts from int’l govts (and their brit sponsors) to work toward an integrated society. even after independence, resistance among white settlers was very strong. the british govt agreed to pay those settlers who were willing to sell their lands. see the land reform link in #31 above for details. they reneged on the agreement under blair’s admin, claiming that its colonial rule was in the past & it no longer had any obligations re colonial responsibilities. part of this decision was due to the strong opposition by the white settlers still retaining land.
it wasn’t a matter of mugabe making the decision to stir up hatred from the colonial period,’ as the colonial period was still felt there, so far as land ownership was concerned. i personally don’t know any white settlers from zimbabwe, but from everything i have read, collectively their political position has been based entirely on racial considerations. and the efforts, including terrorist campaigns, of the rhodesian front worked to keep that hatred stirred up. and this is not from some long ago era. it’s ongoing. so i don’t think it’s very reasonable to only quote-unquote blame the victim.
i cannot agree w/ calling mugabe a dictator or associating him w/ kim jong il or that he has an “irrational hatred of foreigners,” for that sounds like political hyperbole. not saying that guy’s a saint now…
here is a collection of articles that may help broaden the prospective
Zimbabwe Watch
This website is NOT owned or operated by any political party, group or nationals from Zimbabwe. We are responding to the overwhelming Eurocentric campaign to demonize President Robert Mugabe over the land reclamation exercise.
and since i posted the gowans-bond volleys earlier, here is gowans’ followup
Zimbabwe’s Lonely Fight for Justice
Ever since veterans of the guerrilla war against apartheid Rhodesia violently seized white-owned farms in Zimbabwe, the country’s president, Robert Mugabe, has been demonized by politicians, human rights organizations and the media in the West. His crimes, according to right-wing sources, are numerous: human rights abuses, election rigging, repression of political opponents, corruption, and mismanagement of the economy. Leftist detractors say Mugabe talks left and walks right, and that his anti-imperialist rhetoric is pure demagogy.
I’m going to argue that the basis for Mugabe’s demonization is the desire of Western powers to change the economic and land redistribution policies Mugabe’s government has pursued; that his lapses from liberal democratic rectitude are, in themselves, of little moment to decision makers in Washington and London; and that the ultimate aim of regime change is to replace Mugabe with someone who can be counted on to reliably look after Western interests, and particularly British investments, in Zimbabwe.
I am also going to argue that the Zanu-PF government’s abridgment of formal liberties (including freedom of assembly and freedom to travel outside the country) are warranted restraints, justified by the need to protect the political program of the elected government from hostile outside interference. In making this argument I am challenging a widely held, and often unexamined, view that civil and political liberties are senior to all other liberties, including rights related to economic sovereignty and freedom from oppression and exploitation.
Posted by: b real | Apr 1 2007 5:10 utc | 41
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