Darfur's war of definitions
by Ramzy Baroud
[ opinion - august 04 ]
Finally, the conflict in Darfur in western Sudan has become a focal point for international diplomacy and media attention. This is the bare minimum which might have been expected after the bloody campaign of murder, rape and - dare I say it - ethnic cleansing which started as early as February 2003.
Almost all the parties which have discovered the existence of Sudan's western region, an area roughly the size of France, are engaged in a war of words; propaganda, if you wish. Even the Muslims and Arabs who - because of their cultural, political and historic proximity - should be most concerned about the fate of the Sudanese, are taking part in this war of definitions.
One can understand - to an extent - why Arab sensibility is injured when the term "Arab militias" is used to refer to the Janjaweed gangs which have murdered, raped and expelled thousands in Darfur. It is used indiscriminately, as if to implicate one group and vindicate another.
Referring to some Sudanese tribes as 'Arab' is not a media invention. Some African Sudanese are called 'Arab' because they speak a dialect derived from - or, heavily influenced by - the Arabic language. The term's validity was strengthened by the fact that the paramilitary Janjaweed have been consistently used by Sudan's central government to quell two major rebel groups, Sudan's Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which claim that the Khartoum government has deliberately neglected Darfur's worsening plight.
And since the Sudanese government is trademarked 'Arab' (as opposed to the rest of the non-Arab non-Muslim country), Darfur emerges as a perfect "us vs. them" conflict which can be exploited by media and politicians. (Those who remember the first few days' intense coverage of the Darfur crisis might recall how some journalists, who now lament the plight of the 'Africans', couldn't pronounce the area's name or locate it on a map.)
Alex de Waal is not one of those journalists, but a recognized authority on Sudan. He wrote in the Observer (25 July): "Characterizing the Darfur war as 'Arabs' versus 'Africans' obscures the reality. Darfur's Arabs are black, indigenous, African Muslims - just like Darfur's non-Arabs."
Unfortunately, a story about African Muslims engaged in a conflict rooted in disagreements between nomadic tribes is neither newsworthy nor as exploitable by politicians, and so a war of hidden definitions, rhetoric and sub-meanings had to be unleashed. The 1.2 million Sudanese refugees are the least important component.
Darfur is a godsend for a besieged and discredited US government. It draws attention away from the US's own indiscretions, and draws it back on the 'Arabs' who are brutalizing 'Africans' in a civil war that the House of Representatives, in a 22 July resolution, unanimously dubbed "genocide".
That term, too, introduced another skirmish between definitions and counter-definitions: "What is happening in western Sudan is not the same as Kosovo or Rwanda, nor is it, strictly speaking a genocide," wrote Adrian Hamilton in the Independent. "It is the kind of messy local, triblized tragedy bred on deprivation and lack of resources, and fuelled by outside interference."
For the US government, there is more to Sudan's misfortunes than a distraction from its own blunders. The US has for many years helped feed the civil war that has ravaged the country. In 1998, Clinton ordered the bombing of Sudan's largest, if not only, pharmaceutical plant, alleging that it manufactured agents which could be used to produce WMD. It took only a few months of investigations before the claim was declared a farce.
The US government acted as it often does in such crises: it drafted, pushed for and passed a UN Security Council resolution on 31 July threatening sanctions and other "punitive measures" if the Sudanese government failed to rein in the Janjaweed 'Arab' militias within 30 days. The resolution is a sentence served on Sudan and perhaps an initial justification for a military intervention in a country which is already swarming with militants and scarred by war.
If the crisis in Darfur escalates, then the fate that awaits Sudan is sanctions, a senseless bombing campaign, and further cultural animosity and division between those who gullibly identified with the 'Africans' and those who rashly sided with the 'Arabs'.
None of these remedies will help the "abandoned, starved and desperate refugees" of Darfur, one of whom is Aziza Mahmoud, who had an encounter with one of the Janjaweed 'Arab' militias. Now she is in a refugee camp sheltering with her children in a five feet high tent made of twisted branches and leaves, torn clothes and cardboard.
She told Kim Sengutpa from the Independent, "My sister had dragged my children away. But I could not move. I was standing there crying when he turned and shot me. He did not say anything. He just fired. I dragged myself behind my home and lay there. My neighbours carried me away with my husbands' [dead] body. I have five children who have no father. I cannot work because if I just walk a little my foot hurts. I cannot even stand at the roadside begging for too long without hurting."
The late Palestinian professor Edward Said once wrote that human rights are not "cultural or grammatical things, and when they are violated, they are as real as anything we can encounter." His words are as true in Darfur as they have been in Palestine for generations. The burnt villages vary in name, but the definitions for anguish, brutality and indifference are unchanging.
