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Darfur, Myanmar and Masturbation
In comments here I have often highlighted news on Sudan that questions the perfunctory black and white picture the ‘Safe Darfur’ crowd is painting.
They don’t touch the reason for the conflict (local climate change), all the parties involved (farmers versus stock-breeding nomads, various criminal freelancers, a tribal government) and they only achieve to make the mess bigger than it already is.
Ken Silverstein points to a good essay by Brendan O’Neill of spiked who gets to basic motives of the ‘movement’.
Darfur: pornography for the chattering classes
Western agitation for action in Darfur, .. , is divorced from real events in Darfur or Sudan. This is not really surprising, since ‘Save Darfur’ activism – from Hollywood celebs calling for Western military action to the growth of campaigning commentary on the conflict – has not really been about Darfur. Rather, it has been about creating a new moralistic and simplistic generational mission for campaigners and journalists in America and Europe.
The Save Darfur brigade has effectively transformed Darfur into a morality tale, in which it plays the role of a pure and virtuous warrior force against what a columnist for the UK Daily Telegraph hysterically describes as a warzone ‘comparable to the death camps in Nazi Germany’. And as with all morality tales, facts are less important than feelings, and the truth comes a poor second to creating a childishly simplistic framework of ‘good’ and ‘evil’.
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Increasingly, commentary on Darfur is not intended to clarify what is happening there but rather to indulge and flatter readers’ sense of self-serving anger. In deed, campaigners and writers have demanded Western military action to end a conflict that has actually been in decline since 2005 (although there have been renewed outbursts in recent months); and now they have got what they wanted, in the shape of the 26,000-strong UN force. Every bit as cynically as the Bush administration’s intervention in Iraq, these activists have sought to turn someone else’s country and conflict into outlets for their own moral self-gratification.
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In Africa, Western do-gooding can prove deadly indeed. Save Darfur activism is one kind of porn that really has given rise to violence in the real world.
The same process is visual with the outrage about the protests in Myanmar. Again people don’t know the cause (a price hike for gasoline, expensive food), nor do they know about the parties involved. Every monk in some saffron coat is thought of as peaceful (these people should read up on Lozang Gyatso, the fifth Dalai Lama). Every police action against the demonstrators is regarded as brutal and no thought is given on what could happen if the police would not interfere.
Unfounded rumors about brutalities are constructed as news -pornography of violence- and used for selfsatisfying ‘calls for action’. Sanctions are demanded and, if there are possible hydrocarbon profits involved, ‘western’ politicians will duly implement them. The plight of the people, but not of their rulers, will increase.
The only way to break this is through more and better information. But that’s a difficult, laborious and thankless task. Doing such one is immediately accused of downplaying the issue and via the black and white mechanism branded as helping the perceived perpetrator of the issue at hand.
People just hate to interrupt their masturbation.
o’neill is correct to point out mamdani’s criticism of the savedarfurians for exploiting the anger & empathy of student & civil activists, bleeding off the bleeding hearts from the very real genocide underway in iraq for the benefit of the very same westerners & israelis who decry the khartoum regime for killing innocent africans.
and the parallel w/ the situation in myanmar is apt. emaciated pacifist asian monks are hardly threatening in the same way those stereotyped muslims in the resistance in iraq are, surely an easier underdog to root for. what would it take for the same level of concern for the iraqi people? a change of wardrobe? not likely, stereotypes are powerful obstacles. meanwhile, the bodies continue to pile up in iraq & afghanistan.
jimmy carter’s been taking some heat from the savedarfurians — eric reeves went into conniption — and the indoctrinated media for his (not-really)controversial stmts over the w/e in sudan
Mr. Carter, who singled out the United States government for its use of the term “genocide” to describe the Sundanese conflict. Reuters reports that Carter called Washington’s use of the term “genocide” was both legally inaccurate and “unhelpful.”
“There is a legal definition of genocide and Darfur does not meet that legal standard. The atrocities were horrible but I don’t think it qualifies to be called genocide,” he said. Washington is almost alone in branding the 4 1/2 years of violence in Darfur genocide. Khartoum rejects the term, European governments are reluctant to use it and a U.N.-appointed commission of inquiry found no genocide, but that some individuals may have acted with genocidal intent. Carter, whose charitable foundation, the Carter Center, worked to establish the International Criminal Court (ICC), 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.” [link]
that no groups have yet claimed responsibility for the 29 sept attacks on the AMIS troops still leaves it open to speculation. cui bono?
mamdani’s latest LRB essay on outsider efforts to undermine AU autonomy reprinted here
Blue-Hatting Darfur
Significant changes are currently taking place on the ground in Darfur. The peacekeeping forces of the African Union (AU) are being replaced by a hybrid AU-UN force under overall UN control. The assumption is that the change will be for the better, but this is questionable. The balance between the military and political dimensions of peacekeeping is crucial. Once it had overcome its teething problems – and before it ran into major funding difficulties – the AU got this relationship right: it privileged the politics, where the UN has tended to privilege the military dimension, which is why the UN-controlled hybrid force runs the risk of becoming an occupation force.
also worth re-linking, from vijay prashad
The U.N. called the Sudan situation a “crime against humanity”, while the U.S., uncharacteristically, labeled it genocide. For a while the African Union was able to stabilize the situation, although it did not succeed in crafting a political solution to the problem. The African Union, created in 1999, has neither the financial ability to pay its troops nor the logistical capacity to do the job. The European Union, which paid the troops’ salaries, began to withhold funds on grounds of accountability, and this gradually killed off the peacekeeping operations.
Professor Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University (one of the world’s leading experts on contemporary Africa), says of this: “There is a concerted attempt being made to shift the political control of any intervention force inside Darfur from inside Africa to outside Africa”. In other words, the U.S. and Europe are eager to control the dynamics of what happens in Africa and not allow an indigenous, inter-state agency to gain either the experience this would provide or the respect it would gain if it succeeds. The African Union has been undermined so that only the U.S. can appear as the savior of the beleaguered people of Darfur, and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, it suits the U.S. that the campaigns to save the people of Darfur concentrate on the role of China and on what is often framed as an “Arab” assault on “Africans.” The Save Darfur Coalition in the U.S., for instance, has a report on the “Deadly Partnership” between Sudan and China but says nothing of the role of the U.S. in undermining the African Union’s attempts. The Coalition is more sophisticated than can fit into the Arab-African stereotypes, but its members include groups that are less careful (the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, for instance, is an organizational member; it has not yet tried to distance itself from its parent organization’s role in the Gujarat pogroms).
The Save Darfur Coalition, which is the largest U.S. umbrella organization, was formed in 2004 through the work of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Jewish World Service. People who have been motivated by the efforts of the group are aware of what is happening in Darfur. This is a worthwhile goal, particularly if it is able to bring a ceasefire and an eventual peace settlement in Darfur. But, the movement seems to have no viable strategy to do this beyond putting pressure on China and pleading with the U.S. government to take “tough” stands against Khartoum. The complexity on the ground is irrelevant.
The heads of the Save Darfur Coalition and the Genocide Intervention Network (set up by the Center for American Progress) are all liberal Democrats who played some kind of a role in the Bill Clinton administration. The Darfur campaign enables them to distance themselves from the excesses of the Bush regime and yet preserve an essential element of the Clinton foreign policy arsenal, “humanitarian intervention” (as in the Kosovo war of 1999). For that reason, these groups have begun to offer the slogan, “Out of Iraq and Into Darfur”.
seen any “out of iraq and into myanmar” placards yet?
Posted by: b real | Oct 10 2007 5:14 utc | 6
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