Darfur in Detail

In one way of thinking, Darfur amounts to just another entry on seemingly limitless list of African tragedies and disasters - it fills the gap between Rwanda and Libya (or to be more precise, between Congo I and Congo II). The scale of the violence was remarkable, yes, and the level of human suffering very great indeed, but the brutal reality is that suffering is commonplace in the world, and nowhere more so than in Africa, that most tragic of continents, the graveyard of good intentions and the place hope goes to die. If we accept this, then re-examining Darfur is a fruitless, masochistic exercise, one which will drag down our spirits at an unusually bleak period for world events, and yield few insights beyond, "yes, it is terrible when bad things happen."

I do not accept this position. While disasters are common enough, Darfur had its own characteristics, and it took place in a very specific context, one favorable to intervention. Most obviously, this was a man-made catastrophe, one with clear perpetrators, even villains, which could be confronted and stopped in order to abate the suffering (one human rights activist described the janjaweed as "a cross between the mafia and the Ku Klux Klan").

Further, those responsible for the violence and atrocities, unlike Arab dictators further north, were declared enemies of the West and especially of the United States. The government of Sudan was - still is - an official state sponsor of terror, and an unofficial posterboy for repressive and evil government even among the right-thinking international elite. Khartoum was not a key regional ally, and the oil they sold they sold to the Chinese, so their leverage over the West was minimal. Stepping back from geopolitics, the internal politics in the West were also uniquely favorable. The United States especially had gone through painful soul-searching about the failure to prevent the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, culminating in public lamentations by responsible figures, "never again" studies of genocide, and an increased sense of moral responsibility. When news broke of the devastation taking place in Darfur - remember, the violence consisted primarily of horse- and camel-mounted janjaweed irregulars storming into defenseless villages, raping the women, killing everything and then burning what was left - public opinion was primed for outrage, and activists responded with commitment, energy and imagination. The outrage was only fanned further by the odious justification for the violence - janjaweed figures claimed racial superiority as Arabs over the Africans they persecuted, which justified any action to clear the area of its traditional inhabitants. On top of the usual celebrity interventions (notable for the high-wattage of the stars involved), new media were exploited to the maximum, with awareness-raising flash games, facebook groups and internet-savvy NGOs. Old media was invested as well - I personally remember watching MTVU at the gym in 2006/2007, and seeing Darfur-related programming in heavy rotation, several times an hour. This exposure had an effect - campus mobilization was real, and ubiquitous. Darfur became a cause celebre, which had not happened with Rwanda, the Congo or any other African crisis since Apartheid in South Africa.

It was perhaps all the more demoralizing then when all of that effort yielded paltry results. Western governments did more or less nothing - there was a great deal of hand-wringing, pressure on African states to send peacekeepers, and ultimately an International Criminal Court indictment against Sudanese leaders, including President Omar al-Bashir. The effect on events on the ground was - and is - negligible. As a sop to foreign pressure, the Khartoum government entered into a peace process with rebel groups inside Darfur in 2007, a process which has dragged on to this day with no improvement in the behavior of the central government. While the level of violence has decline since its peak in 2007/2008 (though recently the situation is worsening again), analysts argue that this is an indication of the efficacy of the ethnic cleansing - few villages remain to pillage, with survivors huddling in refugee camps. These camps themselves are not fully secure, but since they are nominally guaranteed by the central government (whose agents likely shakedown refugees and siphon off food and aid materials) they are generally avoided by the janjaweed, who prefer easier pickings. The most damning development of all is perhaps the permanence of the refugee camps - the refugees unwillingness to return to their former lands speaks volumes about their perception of the dangers outside.

So there you have it - the mobilization against the genocide in Darfur was the largest and most media savvy in decades, and it failed to motivate foreign intervention or change Sudanese government behavior. And if the international community failed in Darfur, how can we expect it to succeed anywhere else?