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------Original message------ From: Eric Reeves <[email protected]> To: "Eric Reeves" <[email protected]> Date: Thursday, January 26, 2012 4:13:55 PM GMT-0500 Subject: "Evil and Ignorance: The Case of Darfur," Dissent Magazine, January 26, 2012 from Dissent Magazine, January 26, 2012 "Evil and Ignorance: The Caseof Darfur" Eric Reeves, January26, 2012 http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=577 What is the role of ignorance inallowing evil to thrive? Can ignorance be a form of acquiescence? When doesignorance of evil become culpable in itself? These are large questions, butones worth asking of public intellectuals who presume to speak about the natureof evil, and on this basis particular instances of evil. In his much-reviewed new book Political Evil, political scientistAlan Wolfe attempts to diagnose various forms of political naïveté among thoseattempting to respond to political evil (as opposed to the evil ofindividuals). If evil will always be with us, and will always be in some senseincomprehensible, Wolfe wants to argue---in the tradition of Orwell, Arendt,Niebuhr, and others---that we can speak seriously about the meaning ofpolitical evil, and work to halt the use of evil for political or ideologicalgain. He is contemptuous of those who look to international courts of justiceor to misguided liberal human rights agendas, and of those who indulge in"indiscriminate" characterizations of atrocity crimes. He isparticularly contemptuous of American-led advocacy efforts to respond tolarge-scale human destruction in Darfur. Indeed, Darfur is his test case for aprincipled realism, which allows us to diagnose and respond to events inmaximally effective fashion. At the heart of Wolfe's claims is theargument that what occurred in Darfur beginning in early 2003 was not genocidebut civil war, an insurgency that prompted a predictable counter-insurgency bythe Khartoum regime. Wolfe acknowledged in a roundtablediscussion at the New Republic (March 2009)---in which I and othersparticipated---that he "was not an expert on Darfur," but thisconfession has not prevented him from picking and choosing among historical andsociological facts and opinions in order to make the case that genocide had notoccurred. Comparisons to Rwanda are wholly inappropriate, Wolfe argues in hisnew book and elsewhere,and responses of the sort required in Rwanda are correspondingly ill-consideredwhen it comes to Darfur. Wolfe gives no evidence ofunderstanding in any meaningful detail the history of Darfur, or the regime inKhartoum that responded so brutally to the insurgency that had long been in themaking. He gives no sense of understanding the nature of the National IslamicFront/National Congress Party, which seized power by military coup in 1989---deliberatelyaborting the most promising chance for a negotiated peace to end the civil warthat raged for twenty-two years, from 1983 - 2005. This longest civil conflict on theAfrican continent resulted in the deaths of more than two million people,overwhelmingly African civilians in the South and in border regions, anddisproportionately women and children. A signature feature of the NIF/NCPconduct during the war was the denial of humanitarian aid to huge conflictareas, including all the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan (in what is now NorthSudan). Virtually all students of Sudan agree that this aid embargo in the1990s, along with a campaign of displacement and extermination against the Nubapeople, was genocide. I can think of no authoritative voice arguing otherwise.In his discussion of the question of genocide in Darfur, and the regime that orchestratedthe violence there (including widespread,indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilian targets), Wolfe neglects tomention this clear precedent for genocidal destruction directed against Africanethnic groups. Wolfe also dismisses as simplisticfoolishness the distinction between Arab and non-Arab, or "African,"tribes in Darfur. The distinction between the two broad groupings is not alwaysclear, for reasons of history, intermarriage, as well as political and economiccircumstances. But to deny that there are people who identify primarily as Fur,or Massalit, or Zaghawa---andspecifical ly as non-Arabs---is to reveal a deep ignorance of the Darfur region,as well as eastern Chad. Moreover, since Arab tribal groups have long beenfavored by the Khartoum regime (as a tactic for retaining power), the riftbetween Arab and non-Arab ethnic groups had been growing more intense,especially since what is generally known as the Fur-Arab war of 1987–89. Ethnicanimosities were deliberately stoked by Khartoum, and as a result non-Arabsincreasingly identified themselves as "African"---and were identifiedas such by Arab militias. Yet Wolfehas written that "the conflict [in Darfur] has never taken the form ofArabs killing Africans and has not been accompanied by the hate speechassociated with Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia.”"Every single human rightsinvestigation of Darfur, whatever its ultimate conclusions about genocide, hasfound massive evidence of "Arabs killing Africans," and thewidespread use of racial hate speech has been continually and authoritativelyreported for more than eight years. Wolfe acknowledges almost none of thesewell-established facts, nor does he seem aware of the sheer number oforganizations that have declared the realities of Darfur to be genocidal:Physicians for Human Rights, Human Rights First, Justice Africa, the UnitedStates Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience, Yad Vashem inJerusalem, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, and even the U.S.Congress in 2004. Scores of genocide scholars, international human rightlawyers, and other researchers, along with the last two U.S. presidents, havemade the same designation. (Although the two largest human rights groups---HumanRights Watch and Amnesty International---have hesitated to use the word“genocide,” opinion has been fiercely divided over the issue within theseorganizations. Jennifer Trahan, a lawyer formerly with Human Rights Watch, has written masterfullyon why the very evidence that HRW itself has assembled constitutes overwhelmingevidence of genocide.) Wolfe contends that the conflict inDarfur was a civil war. The conflict indeed began in civil war, and after theill-conceived Darfur Peace Agreement of May 2006 violence did not always fallalong Arab-African lines. But April 2003 was a turning point. That month, astring of rebel victories in western Sudan culminated with a successful attackon el-Fasher air base in North Darfur, the most important military installationin all of Darfur. Following this humiliating loss---of equipment, of aircraftdestroyed on the ground, and the capture of the commanding air force general---theNIF/NCP regime unleashed an avalanche of violence, by its regular and Arabmilitia forces. This violence was not directed againstthe rebels, but rather against the essentially defenseless African civiliansand villages (primarily those of the Massalit, Fur, and Zaghawa) that wereperceived as the rebels' base of support. Ultimately, hundreds of thousandswere killed or died as a result of violence. Millions more were violentlydisplaced---an estimated 2.7 million people, according to the biggest figureoffered by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Thisfigure did not include the almost 300,000 who have fled to eastern Chad, orthose displaced but not in refugee camps. Wolfe nowhere mentions this,nor that Khartoum denied humanitarian assistance to these acutely needycivilians. The scale of destruction is also acritical issue for Wolfe, yet he is uninformed about the number of civiliandead in Darfur. Hecites without qualification, for example, a figure that had been profferedby Alex de Waal---150 dead per month---andconcludes that this scale of human destruction cannot possibly constitutegenocide. But that figure of 150 dead per month was based solely on the violentdeaths physically confirmed---at the time (2009)---by the incompetent andenormously constrained UN/African Union Mission in Darfur, which had verylittle access to where fighting was actually occurring. The number does notinclude those who died from causes directly related to viodeaths fromdisease and malnutrition consequent upon violent displacement in this harshland. It is a worthless figure. Wolfe gives no evidence whatsoever ofhaving confronted the vast body of evidence and literature that addresses thequestion of human mortality to date in Darfur. The minimum credible figure,which omits a great deal of early deaths from violence, comes from a studypublished two years ago by researchers from Belgium's Center for Research inthe Epidemiology of Disasters (The Lancet, January 2010):approximately 300,000. Myown assessment, based on a survey of all extant evidence, suggests that thefigure is closer to 500,000. Either figure suggests that it cannot be on thebasis of numbers that we discount the possibility that genocide has occurred inDarfur. Beyond arguing that genocide did notoccur in Darfur, Wolfe attacks the Darfur advocacy movement---as inconsistent,ignorant, unrealistic, and simply wrong in its conclusions. He argues that itwas actually counterproductiveinsofar as it encouraged the rebel groups to continue fighting in the hopes ofWestern intervention. Wolfe offers no evidence for this conclusion, becausethere is none. By the time of the Darfur Peace Agreement the rebels realizedthat the West would offer nothing more than expedient, deadline-drivendiplomacy. Calls for Western humanitarianintervention had indeed been made, though much earlier than Wolfe acknowledges,and at a time when countless thousands of lives might have been saved. OnFebruary 25, 2004 in the Washington Post,I concluded a piece by arguing: "The international community has been slow to react to Darfur'scatastrophe and has yet to move with sufficient urgency and commitment. Acredible peace forum must be rapidly created. Immediate plans for humanitarianintervention should begin. The alternative is to allow tens of thousands of civiliansto die in the weeks and months ahead in what will be continuing genocidaldestruction." There was no such humanitarianintervention, and over the past eight years several hundreds of thousands havedied. The dying continues, but we don't know the full extent of it because mortalityand malnutrition data and reports are suppressed by the UN at the behest ofthe Khartoum regime. Wolfe would have us believe that byincorrectly characterizing a "civil war" as a genocide, the U.S.human rights advocacy community made appropriate action impossible. Wolfe citesin his New Republic piece comments byAlex de Waal---certainly a Darfur expert---as authority for denying thatgenocide exists. While true of de Waal’s professed beliefs now, de Waal himselfhas offered no cogent explanation of why he abandoned his politicallyunconstrained assessmentof Darfur from August 2004: "This [counter-insurgency campaign in Darfur by Khartoum] is notthe genocidal campaign of a government at the height of its ideological hubris,as the 1992 jihad against the Nuba Mountains was, or coldly determined tosecure natural resources, as when it sought to clear the oilfields of southernSudan of their troublesome inhabitants. This is the routine cruelty of asecurity cabal, its humanity withered by years in power: it is genocide byforce of habit." Furthermore, de Waal and his coauthorJulie Flint found compelling evidence of genocidal intent in their 2005 book, Darfur: A Short History of a Long War: "The ultimate objective in Darfur is spelled out in an August 2004directive from [Janjaweed paramountleader Musa] Hilal's headquarters: 'change the demography' of Darfur and 'emptyit of African tribes.' Confirming the control of [Khartoum's] MilitaryIntelligence over the Darfur file, the directive is addressed to no fewer thanthree intelligence services---the Intelligence and Security Department,Military Intelligence and National Security, and the ultra-secret 'ConstructiveSecurity,' or Amn al Ijabi." Hilal, the most notorious of the Arabmilitia leaders, would be as good as his word, and was present at many"demography-changing" attacks. Here is one as described by the UN'sIntegrated Regional Information Networks in early 2004: "In an attack on 27 February 2004 in the Tawilah area of northernDarfur, 30 villages were burned to the ground, over 200 people killed and over200 girls and women raped---some by up to 14 assailants and in front of theirfathers who were later killed. A further 150 women and 200 children wereabducted." All the attackers were Arabs; all thevictims were non-Arab or Africans. This attack occurred two days after mywarning in the Post. It is one ofthousands of examples. It seems pointless to create a greatercompendium of Wolfe's ignorance, his dismaying factual errors, and his finallysuperficial pronouncements about one of the greatest mass atrocities of thepast century---and one that continues to this day in the form of a grim "genocideby attrition." Well over two million Darfuris---overwhelminglyAfricans---remain displaced, and humanitarian conditions are extremelyprecarious. At least one highly informed UN official believes thatinternational humanitarian organizations are permitted to operate only becausetheir potential expulsion offers leverage to the regime, particularly inforestalling international action in the border regions of Blue Nile and SouthKordofan, where many hundreds of thousands of people have been recently displaced---anddenied all humanitarian assistance by Khartoum. Again, virtually all thevictims are Africans. In a recentinterview with the Chronicle of HigherEducation, Wolfe spoke of my writings, in this space and elsewhere, as"arrogant to the point of contempt." I won't presume to characterizemy passion in writing about Darfur, but I certainly feel contempt for Wolfe'sfacile and destructive claims about Darfur. Whatever power his analyticframework in Political Evil has isvitiated by the ignorance demonstrated in his account of Darfur. Wolfe declares sententiously that"When confronted with political evil, we are better off responding to the'political' rather than to the 'evil.'" Whatever one thinks of thispeculiar bifurcation, it implies our obligation to accept that "moralprecision is a precondition for political precision," as onereviewer has remarked. It is precisely this moral precisionthat escapes Wolfe. For if what has occurred in Darfur is not genocide but"only" massive crimes against humanity---as all human rightsorganizations and inquiries of consequence agree---then Wolfe believes anentirely different response is required. A genocide occurred in Rwanda, andthus intervention was warranted, and genocide has not occurred in Darfur, andthus intervention is not warranted. This logic avoids the discriminatingpolitical assessment Wolfe believes is necessary in guiding an internationalresponse to political evil. One reason that Human Rights Watch has hesitated todescribe the Darfur conflict as genocide is precisely that it resists the crudenotion that genocide is the only appropriate threshold for robust internationalaction. Wolfe, in a grim irony, ends up personifying the ignorance thatprevents appropriate political responses to evil. [EricReeves has worked as a Sudan researcher, analyst, and advocate formore than thirteen years. He is author of ALong Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide (2007)] _____________________________ Eric Reeves Smith College Northampton, MA 01063 [email protected] 413-585-3326 Skype: ReevesSudan www.sudanreeves.org -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "South Sudan Info - The Kob" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/SouthSudanKob?hl=en.
