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Kristof’s Darfur “Arabs”
The NYT’s Nicholas Kristof has written dozens of columns about genocide in Sudan. Yesterday he added another mixture of limited personal observations, unscrutinized rumors and calls for U.S. bombing of Darfur: Driving Up the Price of Blood (liberated version).
In his current column Kristof uses the word "tribe" nine times, the word "African" seven times and the word "black" four times. None of these words in connection with the "enemy" – which is "Arab."
This is, as he says, "systematic slaughter of […] members of black African tribes." The enemy of these "black African tribes" are Arabs like in "Arab attackers routinely shouted racial epithets against blacks."
There is no mentioning of the skin color of such "Arabs" (it is black), nor mentioning of the social structures of Arab communities in Sudan (it is tribal) and no mentioning of their continental heritage (it is African).
Kristof does not know of "black Arab tribes." There are only "black African tribes" who somehow miracuously get "slaughtered" by "Arabs." That is the scheme that is running through each of his columns – it’s always "black African tribesmen" against "Arabs."
But now, suddenly, after only three years of reporting and some 63 pieces in the NYT by him on Darfur as well as countless other media appearences, Mr. Kristof has learned something new:
Perhaps the most surprising thing about President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan isn’t that he has presided over the systematic slaughter of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who are members of black African tribes.
It is that President Bashir’s own family appears to come from an African tribe.
Wow – what a sensation – that took him a while – and there goes his general storyline. The nice and simple tale of "black African tribes" slaughtered by "Arabs" somehow, suddenly seems to have a big hole in it.
If President Bashir is indeed a "black African tribesman" is he committing genocide to his own bethren? Will he have to commit suicide to be successful in committing genocide? Doesn’t this all streches the definition of genocide a bit to much?
Not that Kristoff will answer such questions. He will certainly not leave his much simplified, convinient storyline either. Here is the mind-twisting argument he found to rescue himself:
Mr. Bashir’s father and grandmother moved to Hash Banaga in the Arab north. Mr. Bashir grew up speaking Arabic, so in that sense he is Arab
Mr. Bashir is by birth and heritage a "black African tribesman" who by chance and migration somehow also speaks Arabic, (Arabic is by the way the overwhelming mainstream and only official of the 100 or so languages spoken in Sudan,) thereby he is "Arab."
That is Kristof’s conviction. There are people from a "black African tribe" who speak whatever language and there are some other people from another or even the same "black African tribe," who somehow speak Arabic. They are fighting over water, grazing ground, economic control of possible oil deposits or whatever. To him we simply have "black African tribes" slaughtered by "Arabs."
Such reasoning qualifies to be a columnist, or maybe a racist.
In related news, coincidental to the National Days of Remembrance of the Holocaust, the United Nations Panel of Experts on the Sudan released, as ordered, its latest report today. The NYT received it coincidental a bit earlier:
It was made available by a diplomat from one of the 15 Council nations, which believes that the findings ought to be made public.
But it wasn’t Kristof reporting and so the writer included this:
But while the report focuses much of its attention on the government, it says that rebel groups were also guilty of violating Council resolutions, peace treaty agreements and humanitarian standards.
Also incidentally during a visit at a Holocaust museum today Bush Threatens New Sanctions on Sudan Over Darfur
When the president arrived at the museum, several dozen demonstrators were outside pleading for more urgent action to resolve the crisis in Darfur, where thousands of people are dying each month from a lack of food, water, health care and shelter in the desert.
Before Bush spoke, he viewed an exhibit on anti-Semitism and one titled ”Genocide Emergency Darfur: Who will survive today?” He looked at photographs of refugees and victims from the region and saw satellite imagery of the region on a computer.
If the veritable Holocaust Industry thinks about expending its business scope into a general genocide venture, Nick Kristof will certainly be a veritable, reliable spokesman. As sponsors, Boeing and Exxon might well be interested.
Yes, maybe I am a bit late recognizing such working relations.
it’s a reporters sans frontières special report, so take that into consideration, but here’s more confirmation that things in sudan aren’t as they’re portrayed in the western media.
Darfur : An investigation into a tragedy’s forgotten actors
After a fact-finding visit to Sudan from 17 to 22 March, Reporters Without Borders today issued a report entitled “Darfur: An investigation into a tragedy’s forgotten actors,” in which the press freedom organisation tries to contribute new elements to the international debate about the tragedy which the peoples of western Sudan have been enduring.
The Reporters Without Borders team found that the Sudanese press, like the country’s society as a whole, is both active and diverse. Even in Darfur, the team was able to talk to members of a very real civil society, one that is aware of the unfolding tragedy and the challenges it must face. The newspapers published in Khartoum are also very diverse and reflect the voices of Sudanese human rights activists, university researchers and other civil society actors, voices that find it hard to make themselves heard outside Sudan.
Contrary to the prevailing media image, Reporters Without Borders found that Sudan is not “a land of massacres, a terra incognita in which the 21st century’s first genocide is unfolding in Darfur, out of sight, without foreigners reporting what is happening, without any Sudanese voicing criticism.” The reality is much more complicated and often contradictory.
Like many wars around the world, Darfur’s crisis poses complex coverage problems for both the national and international media. The intrinsic problems – the large number of armed factions, the absence of a “front line,” the hostile nature of the terrain and lack of a distinction between combatants and civilians – are deliberately compounded by the “bureaucratic fence” which the government in Khartoum has erected around the war zone to try to “regulate”and influence the work of the press (which the report describes).
These difficulties explain why Sudan is seen as a country closed to the world, one where every possible kind of massacre could take place in secrecy.
The international media react to these obstructions by approaching their coverage of Darfur in a spirit of “resistence” to a government perceived as “hostile,” the report concludes. When reporting the worst atrocities, foreign journalists may sometimes offer a stereotyped image of Sudan focused solely on the suffering in Darfur, without taking account of the historical causes of the crisis or the solutions proposed by Sudanese civil society, whose very existence, diversity and commitment seem unknown to many of them.
the report, while making clear that there is a continually-improving democratic media flourishing in sudan w/ a robust freedom of the press, describes how the khartoum govt denies visas for foreign media organizations & journalists that it feels are driven by other agendum. this is not anything unique to the govt of sudan, though it has contributed to some of the problems w/ international coverage.
Many journalists who are denied entry to Sudan or access to Darfur (which requires a special travel permit) cover the crisis in western Sudan from refugee camps in neighbouring Chad or illegally enter Sudan across the border, risking arrest and trial.
Anticipating the difficulties of getting a visa and travel permit, foreign journalists have often taken the easier option of “covering” Darfur’s tragedy from eastern Chad, solely on the basis of what refugees there tell them.
Whatever the reasons for this, any report on Darfur from refugee camps in Chad is inevitably incomplete. It can even misrepresent the reality if, for example, refugees who fled at the height of the atrocities in 2003-2004 describe a situation that has evolved since their forced departure. (The violence has spent itself in a land razed and emptied of its inhabitants, while the two initial rebel movements have split into many factions and, since the peace accord some of them signed with the government in May 2006 in Abuja, are fighting among themselves and are also carrying out atrocities on the civilian population.)
but the problematic reporting is not solely limited to those who bypass or are denied visas.
…some foreign reporters have a limited grasp of local reality. “Foreign journalists come here for just two days and are insistent on going to one of the camps for displaced persons surrounding the city,” said Mohammed Badawi, the North Darfur director of the Amel Centre, a local NGO that concerns itself with torture victims. “Getting all the permits entails lots of problems,” adds this young Darfurian, who often functions as a guide or fixer for foreign journalists in their relations with the authorities and displaced persons. A foreign correspondent complained: “Some arrive in Sudan, and ask to see the rebels without really knowing who they are talking about. And then they leave.”
…
The editors that Reporters Without Borders met spoke with a great deal of freedom about the war that has emptied Darfur of at least a third of its inhabitants.
Everyone – Arabic speakers, English speakers, journalists and academics – agrees in their analysis of the background to the tragedy. Erwa of Al-Sudani said: “When the clashes began in El-Fasher in 2003, the government made the mistake of not taking the Darfur question seriously. It opted for a purely security and military approach to the problem and disparaged the political aspect. The international community, for its part, uses the mistakes and the crimes for its own purposes and not to help us, the Sudanese, to put an end to this war.” Al-Sahafa’s Elbaz said: “Major crimes have been committed in Darfur by an irresponsible government. But the international community, obsessed by the terrifying image of the janjaweed, has not understood the crisis either and, as a result, proposes unrealistic solutions.” Al-Ayam’s Salih added: “The foreign press is blinded and forgets the environmental and economic aspects of the Darfur question.”
There is one criticism of the international community and its news media that is repeatedly heard from Sudanese journalists and academics – that their take on Sudan’s crises is superficial. “The crisis in Darfur has its origin above all in a serious deterioration in the region’s environment that encompasses the entire Sahel strip,” said Khartoum university’s Ateya. “Successive droughts and the growing shortage of water and pastures, combined with a demographic explosion that has doubled the region’s population in 20 years has transformed a range of tribal conflicts into a political and ethnic confrontation,” Ateya continued.
…
“The current situation is creating major problems in the south, while implementation of the peace accord has ground to a halt,” said the Sudan Tribune’s Ezechiel, whose newspaper’s motto is “CPA and the unity of Sudan.” The war in Darfur is not a forgotten war, despite what the western press may sometimes say, he said. “If the international community continues to focus solely on the Darfur tragedy, without taking account of the Sudan problem in its entirety, we are heading for failure in the south and the west,” Ezechiel added. El-Fasher university’s Yousif said: “Bearing in mind, too, the extreme fragmentation of the rebel groups, any solution to the Darfur conflict that is not based on the prior unification of the rebel groups is completely unrealistic and counterproductive.” Khartoum university’s Ateya asked: “An international force would come and position itself between which groups, and to ensure implementation of what?”
Posted by: b real | Apr 23 2007 2:54 utc | 20
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