Saviors and Survivors

From Amazon.com:

Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (Hardcover)
by Mahmood Mamdani
List Price: $26.95

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Amazon.com Review
Book Description

From the author of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim comes an important book, unlike any other, that looks at the crisis in Darfur within the context of the history of Sudan and examines the world’s response to that crisis.

In Saviors and Survivors, Mahmood Mamdani explains how the conflict in Darfur began as a civil war (1987—89) between nomadic and peasant tribes over fertile land in the south, triggered by a severe drought that had expanded the Sahara Desert by more than sixty miles in forty years; how British colonial officials had artificially tribalized Darfur, dividing its population into “native” and “settler” tribes and creating homelands for the former at the expense of the latter; how the war intensified in the 1990s when the Sudanese government tried unsuccessfully to address the problem by creating homelands for tribes without any. The involvement of opposition parties gave rise in 2003 to two rebel movements, leading to a brutal insurgency and a horrific counterinsurgency–but not to genocide, as the West has declared.

Mamdani also explains how the Cold War exacerbated the twenty-year civil war in neighboring Chad, creating a confrontation between Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi (with Soviet support) and the Reagan administration (allied with France and Israel) that spilled over into Darfur and militarized the fighting. By 2003, the war involved national, regional, and global forces, including the powerful Western lobby, who now saw it as part of the War on Terror and called for a military invasion dressed up as “humanitarian intervention.”

Incisive and authoritative, Saviors and Survivors will radically alter our understanding of the crisis in Darfur.

Saviors and Survivors invites the reader to rethink the lesson of Rwanda in light of Darfur. It is a warning to those who would act first and understand later.

Part One discusses the nature of Save Darfur advocacy. Like the War on Terror from which it has borrowed its assumptions and coordinates, Save Darfur has turned into a lavishly funded and massive ad campaign spreading and sustaining a lethal illusion, consistently exaggerating the level of mortality and racializing the reasons for it. Why has Save Darfur not lost credibility even though its information is increasingly divorced from reality? A part of the answer lies in its ability to turn activism around Darfur into a domestic "feel good" issue while obscuring the context of the violence in Darfur.

Part Two of the book explains this context, starting with correcting the widely-held assumption that Arab tribes of Sudan are settlers from the Middle East, when they actually comprise local tribes that adopted the Arabic language and identity in the course of forming local states. The book locates the roots of the current conflict in colonialism, ecology, and the Cold War: colonialism introduced into Darfur a system of local discrimination based on tribal identity; an ongoing ecological crisis has led to the expansion of the Sahara by a hundred kilometers in four decades, igniting a conflict between nomadic and peasant tribes over fertile land in the mountains of the south; and, finally, the Cold War confrontation in Chad between Gaddafi (with Soviet support) and the Reagan administration (allied with France and Israel) spilled over into Darfur and militarized the conflict.

Part Three explains the Darfur crisis. Rather than a willful attempt by the government to eliminate particular groups--genocide--the present phase of the conflict stems from a land-based ecological confrontation at the local level and a struggle for power at the central level, exacerbated by the ongoing War on Terror. The urgent need today is not to punish those responsible for the mass killings of 2003-04 but to arrive at a political solution that will reform the land system in Darfur and political power in Sudan.

From Publishers Weekly

Mamdani (Good Muslim, Bad Muslim) continues to challenge political and intellectual orthodoxies in his latest book, a bold, near brilliant re-examination of the conflict in Darfur. While acknowledging the horrendous violence committed in the region, Mamdani contends that Darfur is not the site of genocide but rather a site where the language of genocide has been used as an instrument. The author believes that the war on terror provided an international political context in which the perpetrators of violence in Darfur could be categorized as Arabs seeking to eradicate black Africans in the region. Challenging these racial distinctions, Mamdani traces the history of Sudan and the origins of the current conflict back past the 10th century to demonstrate how the divide between Arab and non-Arab ethnic groups is political rather than racial in nature. The author persuasively argues that the conflict in Darfur is a political problem, with a historical basis, requiring a political solution—facilitated not by the U.N. or a global community but rather by the African Union and other African states. The book's introductory and closing chapters are essential reading for those interested in the topic.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

If the nations of the world waited too long to react to the genocide in Rwanda, they have been too hasty in reacting to declarations of genocide in Darfur, according to Mamdani, scholar and author of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim (2004). Exploring the moral dilemma of not wanting to be “good Germans” who ignore evil, Mamdani argues for the need to investigate and gain the knowledge necessary to bring about real and lasting peace in the region. He begins with a historical analysis of Sudan and the Darfur region, focusing on traditions, tribes, race, and locality and how assumptions from earlier eras continue to influence current geopolitical viewpoints. He also examines how the cold war and the current war on terror have affected Western viewpoints on the ethnic divisions and politics within Sudan, arguing that the seeming conflict between native and settler tribes is far more complex and requires an approach similar to the South African model of reconciliation after atrocity to bring about lasting peace. By providing broader context, Mamdani brings fresh perspective to conflict in this troubled region. --Vanessa Bush

Reviews

“Mamdani traces the path to the Darfur tragedy through its historical and colonial roots to the current situation, where drought and desertification have led to conflict over land among local tribes, rebellion, and finally to the brutal involvement of the forces of the state and to the efforts of the United Nations and others to help the victims and stop the violence. His radical reevaluation of the Darfur problem is a major contribution to understanding and, it is to be hoped, to ending a shocking human disaster.”
–Sir Brian Urquhart, former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations

“An incisive and challenging analysis. Framing both Darfur’s war and the ‘Save Darfur’ movement within the paradigm of the West’s historic colonial encounter with Africa, Mahmood Mamdani challenges the reader to reconsider whether Darfur’s crisis is ‘genocide’ warranting foreign military intervention.”
–Alex de Waal, Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and author of War in Darfur

“Mahmood Mamdani has turned his fearless independence of mind on Darfur, Sudan, and the so-called ‘War on Terror,’ producing a book that is as passionate and well-informed as it is intelligent and (for those used only to surface orthodoxies) challenging.”
–Conor Gearty, Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics

“A brilliantly argued and profoundly challenging critique of liberal support for humanitarian intervention in Darfur. Beyond this, Mamdani sets forth an alternative approach to such catastrophic situations. This book should be required reading for the Obama foreign policy team.”
–Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur and Professor Emeritus, Princeton University

“A bold, near brilliant re-examination of the conflict in Darfur . . . Essential reading for those interested in the topic.”
–Publishers Weekly

“A necessary contribution to the literature surrounding both humanitarian aid and African geopolitics.”
–Kirkus Reviews

“By providing broader context, Mamdani brings fresh perspective to conflict in this troubled region.”
–Booklist

About the Author

Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and a member of the departments of anthropology; political science; and Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His previous books include Good Muslim, Bad Muslim; Citizen and Subject; and When Victims Become Killers. Originally from Uganda, he now divides his time between Kampala and New York, where he lives with his wife and son.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION

The Save Darfur movement claims to have learned from Rwanda. But what is the lesson of Rwanda? For many of those mobilized to save Darfur, the lesson is to rescue before it is too late, to act before seeking to understand. Though it is never explicitly stated, Rwanda is recalled as a time when we thought we needed to know more; we waited to find out, to learn the difference between Tutsi and Hutu, and why one was killing the other, but it was too late. Needing to know turned into an excuse for doing nothing. What is new about Darfur, human rights interventionists will tell you, is the realization that sometimes we must respond ethically and not wait. That time is when genocide is occurring.

But how do we know it is genocide? Because we are told it is. This is why the battle for naming turns out to be all- important: Once Darfur is named as the site of genocide, people recognize something they have already seen elsewhere and conclude that what they know is enough to call for action. They need to know no more in order to act. But killing is not what defines genocide. Killing happens in war, in insurgency and counterinsurgency. It is killing with intent to eliminate an entire group—a race, for example—that is genocide.

Those who prioritize knowing over doing assume that genocide is the name of a consequence, and not its context or cause. But how do we decipher “intent” except by focusing on both context and consequence? The connection between the two is the only clue to naming an action. We shall see that the violence in Darfur was driven by two issues: one local, the other national. The local grievance focused on land and had a double background; its deep background was a colonial legacy of parceling Darfur between tribes, with some given homelands and others not; its immediate background was a four-decades-long process of drought and desertification that exacerbated the conflict between tribes with land and thosewithout.The national contextwas a rebellion that brought the state into an ongoing civil (tribal) war.

The conflict in Darfur began as a localized civil war (1987–89) and turned into a rebellion (beginning in 2003). That Darfur was the site of genocide was the view of one side in the civil war—the tribes with land whosought to keep out landless or land-poor tribes fleeing the advancing drought and desert. As early as the 1989 reconciliation conference in Darfur, that side was already using the language of “genocide”—and indeed “holocaust.” But that charge was made against the coalition of tribes they fought, and not against the government of Sudan. In spite of this important difference, that language has come to inform the view of those who blew the whistle—genocide—at theU.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2004 and was translated into a unanimous resolution of both houses of theU.S.Congress that year.

Observers noted the exceptional brutality with which both sides fought the civil war. This derived in part from the zero-sum nature of the conflict: the land conflict was about group survival. If the stakes were already high, the lethal means to wage this bitter conflict were provided by external powers. In the opening phase, these deadly weapons came from adversaries in the Cold War over Chad: Colonel Muammar al-Quaddafi of Libya and the anti-Libyan triad (Reaganite America, France, and Israel); with the onset of rebellion, the government of Sudan stepped in to wage a brutal counterinsurgency, just as the managers of the War on Terror set about framing the government as genocidaire while shielding the insurgents in the name of justice.

There have been two international reports on the post-2003 violence in Darfur. The first was by the U.N. Commission on Darfur (2005) and the second from the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (2008). Neither paid attention to the land question that has fueled the two-decades-long civil war in Darfur. Instead, they focused on those who had contributed to further militarizing the conflict. But even that focus was partial, limited to the government of Sudan; it was silent about the role of regional and international powers in exacerbating and militarizing the conflict over the Cold War and the subsequent War on Terror.

The U.N. Commission concluded “that the Government of Sudan has not pursued a policy of genocide,” for the element of “genocidal intent” was missing. It derived the government’s lack of genocidal intent from the context of the violence: “it would seem that those who planned and organized attacks on villages pursued the intent to drive the victims from their homes, primarily for purposes of counter-insurgency warfare.”1 In contrast, when the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court charged the president of Sudan, Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir, with genocide, he focused on the consequences of the violence, not its context.

Let us compare deaths related to violence in two places: Darfur and Iraq. The Darfur insurgency began in 2003, the same year as the United States invaded Iraq. I discuss estimates of the number of “excess deaths” (that is, deaths beyond what would ordinarily be expected) in Darfur in chapter 1, but, briefly, the estimates for the period during which the violence was horrendous (2003–4) range from 70,000 to 400,000. Compare this with three available estimates of excess deaths in Iraq following the U.S. invasion in 2003.* The lowest comprehensive estimate, from the Iraqi Health Ministry survey, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, is of 400,000 Iraqi deaths, of which 151,000 are said to be “violent deaths.” A middling estimate is from the British medical journal The Lancet: an estimated 654,965 excess deaths, of which 601,027 are said to be violent. The highest estimate comes from a survey by Opinion Research Business, an independent polling agency located in London: 1,033,000 violent deaths as a result of the conflict. The first two estimates cover the period from the 2003 invasion to June 2006. The third survey extends to August 2007.2

Not only are the figures for Iraq far higher than those for Darfur, ranging from a low of 400,000 to a high of 1,033,000, but the proportion of violent deaths in relation to the total excess mortality is also far higher in Iraq than in Darfur: 38 percent to nearly 92 percent in Iraq, but 20 to 30 percent in Darfur. So why do we call the killing in Darfur genocide but not that in Iraq? Is it because, despite the wide disparity in the number of excess deaths, whether violence- related or violent, victims and perpetrators belong to different races in Darfur but not in Iraq? That is what many assume, but the facts do not bear this out.

Those who blew the whistle on Darfur in 2004 have continued to argue, for almost four years, that the violence in Darfur is racially motivated, perpetrated by “light- skinned Arabs” on “black Africans.” In the chapters that follow, I suggest that this kind of framing of the violence continues the error that came out of the colonial tradition of racializing the peoples of Sudan.

This book invites the reader to rethink Rwanda in light of Darfur. Rather than a call to act in the face of moral certainty, it is an argument against those who substitute moral certainty for knowledge, and who feel virtuous even when acting on the basis of total ignorance.

Indeed, the lesson of Darfur is a warning to those who would act first and understand later. Only those possessed of disproportionate power can afford to assume that knowing is irrelevant, thereby caring little about the consequences of their actions. Not only is this mind-set the driving force behind the War on Terror, it also provides the selfindulgent motto of the human rights interventionist recruited into the ranks of the terror warriors. This feel-good imperative can be summed up as follows: as long as I feel good, nothing else matters. It is this shared mind-set that has turned the movement to Save Darfur into the humanitarian face of the War on Terror.

In contrast to those who suggest that we act the minute the whistle blows, I suggest that, even before the whistle blows, we ceaselessly try to know the world in which we live—and act. Even if we must act on imperfect knowledge, we must never act as if knowing is no longer relevant.

Save Darfur activists combine a contemptuous attitude toward knowing with an imperative to act. Trying hard not to be “good Germans,” they employ techniques of protest politics against their own government—and now the government of China—and turn a deaf ear to experts who they claim only complicate the story with so many details as to miss the main point. Instead, they rely on the evidence of their eyes and avoid any discussion of context. But by letting pictures and interviews do the talking, they have opened an entire movement to “the CNN effect.” If “good Germans” were taught to trust their leaders first and ask questions later, the good souls mobilized to save Darfur are taught to trust pictures above all else and ask questions later. Above all, they strip Darfur—and the violence in Darfur—of context.

Product Details

Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Pantheon (March 17, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307377237
ISBN-13: 978-0307377234

Ten Reasons Why "Save Darfur" is a PR Scam

http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/ten-reasons-why-save-darfur-pr-scam-justify-next-us-oil-and-resource-wars-africa

Ten Reasons Why "Save Darfur" is a PR Scam to Justify the Next US Oil and Resource Wars in Africa
Tue, 11/27/2007

The star-studded hue and cry to "Save Darfur" and "stop the genocide" has gained enormous traction in U.S. media along with bipartisan support in Congress and the White House. But the Congo, with ten to twenty times as many African dead over the same period is not called a "genocide" and passes almost unnoticed. Sudan sits atop lakes of oil. It has large supplies of uranium, and other minerals, significant water resources, and a strategic location near still more African oil and resources. The unasked question is whether the nation's Republican and Democratic foreign policy elite are using claims of genocide, and appeals for "humanitarian intervention" to grease the way for the next oil and resource wars on the African continent.

"Out of Iraq - Into Darfur" cartoon by Mike Flugennock. Find more of his work at www.sinkers.org

Top Ten Reasons to Suspect "Save Darfur" is a PR Scam to Justify US Military Intervention in African

by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon

The regular manufacture and the constant maintenance of false realities in the service of American empire is a core function of the public relations profession and the corporate news media. Whether it's fake news stories about wonder drugs and how toxic chemicals are good for you, bribed commentators and journalists discoursing on the benefits of No Child Left Behind, Hollywood stars advocating military intervention to save African orphans, or slick propaganda campaigns employing viral marketing techniques to reach out to college students, bloggers, churches and ordinary citizens, it pays to take a close look behind the facade.

Among the latest false realities being pushed upon the American people are the simplistic pictures of Black vs. Arab genocide in Darfur, and the proposed solution: a robust US-backed or US-led military intervention in Western Sudan. Increasing scrutiny is being focused upon the "Save Darfur" lobby and the Save Darfur Coalition; upon its founders, its finances, its methods and motivations and its truthfulness. In the spirit of furthering that examination we here present ten reasons to suspect that the "Save Darfur" campaign is a PR scam to justify US intervention in Africa.

1. It wouldn't be the first Big Lie our government and media elite told us to justify a war.

Elders among us can recall the Tonkin Gulf Incident, which the US government deliberately provoked to justify initiation of the war in Vietnam. This rationale was quickly succeeded by the need to help the struggling infant "democracy" in South Vietnam, and the still useful "fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here" nonsense. More recently the bombings, invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have been variously explained by people on the public payroll as necessary to "get Bin Laden" as revenge for 9-11, as measures to take "the world's most dangerous weapons" from the hands of "the world's most dangerous regimes", as measures to enable the struggling Iraqi "democracy" stand on its own two feet, and necessary because it's still better to "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here".

2. It wouldn't even be the first time the U.S. government and media elite employed "genocide prevention" as a rationale for military intervention in an oil-rich region.

The 1995 US and NATO military intervention in the former Yugoslavia was supposedly a "peacekeeping" operation to stop a genocide. The lasting result of that campaign is Camp Bondsteel, one of the largest military bases on the planet. The U.S. is practically the only country in the world that maintains military bases outside its own borders. At just under a thousand acres, Camp Bondsteel offers the US military the ability to pre-position large quantities of equipment and supplies within striking distance of Caspian oil fields, pipeline routes and relevant sea lanes. It is also widely believed to be the site of one of the US's secret prison and torture facilities.

3. If stopping genocide in Africa really was on the agenda, why the focus on Sudan with 200,000 to 400,000 dead rather than Congo with five million dead?

"The notion that a quarter million Darfuri dead are a genocide and five million dead Congolese are not is vicious and absurd," according to Congolese activist Nita Evele. "What's happened and what is still happening in Congo is not a tribal conflict and it's not a civil war. It is an invasion. It is a genocide with a death toll of five million, twenty times that of Darfur, conducted for the purpose of plundering Congolese mineral and natural resources."

More than anything else, the selective and cynical application of the term "genocide" to Sudan, rather than to the Congo where ten to twenty times as many Africans have been murdered reveals the depth of hypocrisy around the "Save Darfur" movement. In the Congo, where local gangsters, mercenaries and warlords along with invading armies from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola engage in slaughter, mass rape and regional depopulation on a scale that dwarfs anything happening in Sudan, all the players eagerly compete to guarantee that the extraction of vital coltan for Western computers and cell phones, the export of uranium for Western reactors and nukes, along with diamonds, gold, copper, timber and other Congolese resources continue undisturbed.

Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young and George H.W. Bush both serve on the board of Barrcik Gold, one of the largest and most active mining concerns in war-torn Congo. Evidently, with profits from the brutal extraction of Congolese wealth flowing to the West, there can be no Congolese "genocide" worth noting, much less interfering with. For their purposes, U.S. strategic planners may regard their Congolese model as the ideal means of capturing African wealth at minimal cost without the bother of official U.S. boots on the ground.

4. It's all about Sudanese oil.

Sudan, and the Darfur region in particular, sit atop a lake of oil. But Sudanese oil fields are not being developed and drilled by Exxon or Chevron or British Petroleum. Chinese banks, oil and construction firms are making the loans, drilling the wells, laying the pipelines to take Sudanese oil where they intend it to go, calling far too many shots for a twenty-first century in which the U.S. aspires to control the planet's energy supplies. A U.S. and NATO military intervention will solve that problem for U.S. planners.

5. It's all about Sudanese uranium, gum arabic and other natural resources.

Uranium is vital to the nuclear weapons industry and an essential fuel for nuclear reactors. Sudan possesses high quality deposits of uranium. Gum arabic is an essential ingredient in pharmaceuticals, candies and beverages like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and Sudanese exports of this commodity are 80% of the world's supply. When comprehensive U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese regime were being considered in 1997, industry lobbyists stepped up and secured an exemption in the sanctions bill to guarantee their supplies of this valuable Sudanese commodity. But an in-country U.S. and NATO military presence is a more secure guarantee that the extraction of Sudanese resources, like those of the Congo, flow westward to the U.S. and the European Union.

6. It's all about Sudan's strategic location

Sudan sits opposite Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, where a large fraction of the world's easily extracted oil will be for a few more years. Darfur borders on Libya and Chad, with their own vast oil resources, is within striking distance of West and Central Africa, and is a likely pipeline route. The Nile River flows through Sudan before reaching Egypt, and Southern Sudan has water resources of regional significance too. With the creation of AFRICOM, the new Pentagon command for the African continent, the U.S. has made open and explicit its intention to plant a strategic footprint on the African continent. From permanent Sudanese bases, the U.S. military could influence the politics and ecocomies of Africa for a generation to come.

7. The backers and founders of the "Save Darfur" movement are the well-connected and well-funded U.S. foreign policy elite.
According to a copyrighted Washington Post story this summer

"The "Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned about genocide in the African country - the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum...

"The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal year...

"Save Darfur will not say exactly how much it has spent on its ads, which this week have attempted to shame China, host of the 2008 Olympics, into easing its support for Sudan. But a coalition spokeswoman said the amount is in the millions of dollars."

Though the "Save Darfur" PR campaign employs viral marketing techniques, reaching out to college students, even to black bloggers, it is not a grassroots affair, as were the movement against apartheid and in support of African liberation movements in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique a generation ago. Top heavy with evangelical Christians who preach the coming war for the end of the world, and with elements known for their uncritical support of Israeli rejectionism in the Middle East, the Save Darfur movement is clearly an establishment affair, a propaganda campaign that spends millions of dollars each month to manfacture consent for US military intervention in Africa under the cloak of stopping or preventing genocide.

8. None of the funds raised by the "Save Darfur Coalition", the flagship of the "Save Darfur Movement" go to help needy Africans on the ground in Darfur, according to stories in both the Washington Post and the New York Times.

"None of the money collected by Save Darfur goes to help the victims and their families. Instead, the coalition pours its proceeds into advocacy efforts that are primarily designed to persuade governments to act."

9. "Save Darfur" partisans in the U.S. are not interested in political negotiations to end the conflict in Darfur
President Bush has openly and repeatedly attempted to throw monkey wrenches at peace negotiations to end the war in Darfur. Even pro-intervention scholars and humanitarian organizations active on the ground have criticized the U.S. for endangering humanitarian relief workers, and for effectively urging rebel parties in Darfur to refuse peace talks and hold out for U.S. and NATO intervention on their behalf.

The slick, well financed and nearly seamless PR campaign simplistically depicts the conflict as strictly a racial affair, in which Arabs, generally despised in the US media anyway, are exterminating the black population of Sudan. In the make-believe world it creates, there is no room for negotiation. But in fact, many of Sudan's 'Arabs", even the Janjiweed, are also black. In any case, they were armed and unleashed by a government which has the power to disarm them if it chooses, and can also negotiate in good faith if it chooses. Negotiations are never a gurantee of anything, but refusal to particpate in negotiations, as the U.S. appears to be urging the rebels in Darfur to do, and as the "Save Darfur" PR campaign justifies, avoids any path to a political settlement among Sudanese, leaving open only the road of U.S and NATO military intervention.

10. Blackwater and other U.S. mercenary contractors, the unofficial armed wings of the Republican party and the Pentagon are eagerly pitching their services as part of the solution to the Darfur crisis.

"Chris Taylor, head of strategy for Blackwater, says his company has a database of thousands of former police and military officers for security assignments. He says Blackwater personnel could set up perimeters and guard Darfurian villages and refugee camp in support of the U.N. Blackwater officials say it would not take many men to fend off the Janjaweed, a militia that is supported by the Sudanese government and attacks villages on camelback."

Apparently Blackwater doesn't need to come to the Congo, where hunger and malnutrition, depopulation, mass rape and the disappearance of schools, hospitals and civil society into vast law free zones ruled by an ever-changing cast of African proxies (like the son of the late and unlamented Idi Amin), all under a veil of complicit media silence already constitute the perfect business-friendly environment for siphoning off the vast wealth of that country at minimal cost.

Look for the adoption of the Congolese model across the wide areas of Africa that U.S. strategic planners call "ungoverned spaces". Just don't expect to see details on the evening news, or hear about them from Oprah, George Clooney or Angelina Jolie.

Darfur “Genocide” Lies Unraveling

http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/darfur-%E2%80%9Cgenocide%E2%80%9D-lies-unraveling-%E2%80%93-only-1500-darfuris-died-2008-says-african-union

Darfur “Genocide” Lies Unraveling – Only 1,500 Darfuris Died in 2008, Says African Union
Wed, 06/24/2009

For more than five years, the Save Darfur Coalition has used a slick and star-studded multimillion dollar ad campaign to paint a horrific vision of 400,000 dead in a black vs Arab war of extermination. No historic or political causes are offered for this scenario; it's genocide a case of good vs. evil demanding our attention and action. But the big lies underpinning the Save Darfur campaign are coming undone. Reporters, scholars and even US envoys are returning from the region affirming that if there ever was a genocide in Darfur, and there may not have been, there isn't one now. The British government has even ruled that Save Darfur cannot, in that country, use the figure of 400,000 dead which it throws around in all its US advertisements, cause it just ain't true.

Darfur “Genocide” Lies Unraveling – Only 1,500 Darfuris Died in 2008, Says African Union

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

A hundred years ago, in the Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois observed that “...the country's appetite for facts on the Negro question has been spoiled by sweets.” If he was around today, DuBois could say the same for America's appetite for facts on Darfur, Sudan, the rest of Africa, Iraq, and most of the world. Facts are messy things. Facts come with historical contexts and uncertain consequences. Eternal truths, like good vs. evil are sweet like candy, simple and comforting.

Since its founding in 2004, the Save Darfur Coalition has spent tens of millions on a state of the art advertising campaign to paint us a picture that is exactly that. Sweet and simple, easy to understand, and most of all, we get to be the good guys. Darfur is, to use Samantha Power's phrase, “a problem from hell,” a piece of pure, unambiguous evil in which the global power of the US can be put to use constructively, because stopping a genocide calls for action, not for politics. Stopping genocide, we are told, is above politics. The lesson of genocide is that great powers must act, people of conscience and good will must intervene.

There are several problems with this, both as a general proposition, and specifically as it applies to Darfur. In the first place genocide is defined as the attempt to wipe out a nation or a people. There is so little evidence that mass killings on the scale necessary to be called genocide have occurred in Darfur that back in 2007, Save Darfur's UK operation was prohibited from using the figure of 400,000 dead that routinely appears in its advertisements in the US. Britain has a government truth-in-advertising agency called the Advertisement Standards Authority. They looked at Save Darfur's massive death toll. They took into account a 2006 US GAO report in which GAO assembled a number of death and casualty estimates, high and low for Darfur, and summoned a panel of experts to determine which were accurate.

The GAO study found the low estimates of 50 to 70 thousand dead from a variety of causes including disease and starvation due to desertification on all sides of the conflict to be more accurate than the high estimates of 200 to 400 thousand by direct armed violence on one side alone claimed by Save Darfur. The GAO report maintained that the peak death toll occurred in 2004 and early 2005 and had been trending downward since. This was compelling enough evidence for Britain to ban the inflammatory claims that Save Darfur still makes with impunity in the US, which has no truth in advertising laws.

African scholar Mahmood Mamdani has traveled extensively for many weeks in Sudan and Darfur as part of the African Union's Dialog for Darfur project, interviewing officials, activists and ordinary people on all sides of the conflict. In a talk at Howard University on March 20, 2009 he reported that only days before, the general in charge of the African Union's peacekeeping forces in Darfur pegged the death toll for the entire year in and around the refugee camps at a mere 1,500. While the deaths of 50 to 70 thousand people several years ago on multiple sides of an armed conflict are a grievous matter, not to be minimized or brushed aside, they don't count as the ongoing genocide of helpless civilians.

Around the same time that several members of Congress got themselves arrested at the Sudanese embassy in Washington, Afshin Rattansi, a reporter and broadcaster for Al Jazzera, CNN, The Guardian, Bloomberg News and other outlets toured Sudan, speaking to Africans as well as the representatives of western womens organizations in the country who attested that they were able to travel and speak freely and had seen “no evidence” of genocide.

Even USAF General Scott Gration, traveling in the region as US special envoy returned to Washington last week saying that the situation in Darfur was at worst “the remnants of genocide,” clearly implying that the worst violence had been over for some time. Gration's remarks may have exposed a divide in the administration, since UN ambassador Susan Rice stoutly maintained only two days before that genocide was “ongoing” in Darfur. Clearly, the genocide story is becoming less and less tenable.

But Save Darfur is all about advertising, and in the US, advertisers are under no obligation to tell the truth. Save Darfur is in fact, not a mass movement, but an advertising campaign, headed by the CEO of a PR company that boasts such clients as Dupont, the company responsible for murdering tens of thousands when one of its chemical plants exploded at Bhopal, India , and sent a cloud of poison gas rolling downhill into a city.

As BAR revealed in a 2007 story, Ten Reasons Why Save Darfur Is A PR Scam to Justify Oil and Resource Wars In Africa

According to a copyrighted Washington Post story this summer (in 2007)

"The "Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned about genocide in the African country - the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum...

"The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal year...

"Save Darfur will not say exactly how much it has spent on its ads, which this week have attempted to shame China, host of the 2008 Olympics, into easing its support for Sudan. But a coalition spokeswoman said the amount is in the millions of dollars."

Though the "Save Darfur" PR campaign employs viral marketing techniques, reaching out to college students, even to black bloggers, it is not a grassroots affair, as were the movement against apartheid and in support of African liberation movements in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique a generation ago. Top heavy with evangelical Christians who preach the coming war for the end of the world, and with elements known for their uncritical support of Israeli rejectionism in the Middle East, the Save Darfur movement is clearly an establishment affair, a propaganda campaign that spends millions of dollars each month to manfacture consent for US military intervention in Africa under the cloak of stopping or preventing genocide.

The construct of genocides, “problems from hell” popping up around the world in which the US is obliged to intervene is a very useful one. It appears to be the successor to the so-called “war on terror” as the justification for American military adventures around the world. Hear it from the lips of UN Ambassador Susan Rice herself;

The Responsibility to Protect or, as it has come to be known, R2P represents an important step forward in the long historical struggle to save lives and guard the wellbeing of people endangered by conflict. It holds that states have responsibilities as well as interests and that states have particularly vital duties to shield their own populations from the depraved and the murderous. This approach is bold. It is important. And the United States welcomes it...

The Responsibility to Protect is rooted in the principle that states have a fundamental responsibility to protect their populations from such atrocities as genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. It holds that other states, in turn, have a corollary responsibility to assist, if a state cannot meet its fundamental responsibility to its citizens or to take collective action, if a state will not meet that fundamental responsibility...

Like the war on terror, stopping genocides real or imagined is above politics. It's a cause that absolves Americans of any responsibility to understand either their own history or that of the countries they intervene in.

The real Darfur is a complicated place with complicated politics that Save Darfur does not help us understand. What Save Darfur doesn't tell us is that there is a many-sided civil confict of insurgency and counterinsurgency, not a one-sided slaughter in progress. Save Darfur never mentions how the area was flooded with arms by the US, France and Israel on one side, and by Libya and the Soviet Union during Chad's decade of civil war. And in volumes of briefing papers and advertising copy, Save Darfur invariably forgets to tell us that the lines between which Darfuris are “black” and which are “Arab” have been fluid for centuries, and as Mahmood Mamdani in his book Saviors and Survivors explains, have more to do with culture and status than with “race” in Western terms.

The stark and horrific picture painted by the Save Darfur Coalition in fact prolongs the civil conflict in that unhappy country, encouraging one faction or another to avoid negotations for a settlement in the hope that Western intervention will put them on top. The “right to protect” doctrine espoused by Ambassador Rice ensures that regardless of the facts, Save Darfur will have the ear of policymakers for some time to come, as they look to sweeten the public excuses to intervene in other countries, and to spoil America's appetites for unpleasant truths in which it is not always the good guy.

Gathafi blames Israel for Darfur unrest

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=30622

2009-02-25
Gathafi: We have proof Darfur unrest was fomented by foreign forces
Gathafi blames Israel for Darfur unrest
Libyan leader charges key Darfur rebel leaders have opened offices in Tel Aviv, meet frequently with Israeli army.

TRIPOLI - Libyan leader Moamer Gathafi demanded Tuesday that any international legal proceedings against Omar al-Beshir be halted immediately, charging that it was Israel and not the Sudanese president who was to blame for the Darfur conflict.

"It'll be no surprise to anyone when we say that we have found inequivocable proof that the Darfur problem was fomented by foreign forces," Gathafi said in a speech carried by the independent Al-Libya television channel.

"Key rebel leaders have opened offices in Tel Aviv and meet frequently with the (Israeli) army," he charged.

"If Tel Aviv among others is behind the events in Darfur, why then call Beshir or the Sudanese government to account," said Gathafi, who was speaking at an African conference organised by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.

The International Criminal Court said on Monday that it will rule next week on whether to issue a warrant for the arrest of Beshir on charges of war crimes, including genocide, in Darfur.

The court's chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo requested the warrant last July.

"The ICC, the United Nations and the international community must turn their attentions towards the guilty party in this dramatic conflict... the party which turned this banal dispute between tribes over camels into an international crisis," Gathafi said.

In the past, Libya has played a major role in efforts to broker a peace deal between the Khartoum government and the rebels. It hosted the last major UN-mediated peace talks in summer 2007.

The Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003, when rebels took up arms against the government in Khartoum and its allies.

Over the last six years, the rebels have fractured into multiple movements and the war has widened into overlapping tribal conflicts.

The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died from the combined effects of war, famine and disease and more than 2.2 million fled their homes.

E.U. weighs Olympic boycott over Tibet

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0327/p04s01-woeu.html

from the March 27, 2008 edition
E.U. weighs Olympic boycott over Tibet
The European Union meets Friday to discuss ties to China after the unrest in Tibet.
By Robert Marquand Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Paris

If the government of China hopes the world will go for its line on Tibet and the nefarious Dalai Lama and his purported "clique" – Europe isn't buying it.

The response to the Tibetan crisis in London, Paris, and Berlin, rather, is a call for "dialogue" between China and the exiled Tibetan leader, and"restraint" by Beijing.

A boycott of the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games is being discussed as a leverage point in Austria, Belgium, Britain, and France – to be determined by how China handles the frustrations of its Tibetan minority.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has "left open the option" of boycotting the ceremony, Germany has blocked talks with China on economic development, and Britain's foreign secretary, David Miliband, says that Tibet demonstrations will be authorized as the Olympic torch is carried through London on April 6.

Prince Charles, a friend of the Dalai Lama, had already decided in January not to attend the opening ceremony, he said, in a letter to a human rights group.

Europeans have long had a fascination with and sympathy for the Himalayan region and its Buddhist spiritual traditions – and the Dalai Lama is a frequent visitor to the Continent.

This Friday, Europe's foreign ministers meet in Slovenia, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU, to adopt a common position on relations with Beijing and "the suffering of Tibet," as French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner describes it.

The question in Slovenia is how to balance appreciation for the progress China has made with concern about the heavy handed tactics of an unelected government that has long eschewed any dialogue with those disagreeing with it. Most European states also have significant business interests in China.

While no European Union state is preparing to boycott the 2008 Games – "Let's not be more Tibetan than the Dalai Lama," who did not advocate boycott, says Mr. Kouchner – there is a general revulsion at the scenes out of Tibet, and at what is seen as an overheated Chinese propaganda effort to demonize the Dalai Lama and hold him responsible for violence.

In a clear rebuke to the Chinese position on Dalai Lama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown plans to meet the spiritual leader in May, and the Dalai Lama was invited to speak at a conference in Nantes, France, during the games in August.

As the British Foreign Office issued a human rights report critical of China this week, Mr. Miliband said, "There needs to be mutual respect between all communities and sustained dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese authorities."

On May 22, the Dalai Lama will give a speech at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

On Wednesday Robert Menard, general secretary of Reporters Sans Frontières in Paris, the journalistic watchdog group, stated that Mr. Sarkozy should boycott the opening if China does not release 30 political prisoners who are on the lists of nearly every human rights group, and if foreign correspondents are continued to be banned from working in Tibet.

Mr. Menard's group raced to unfurl a Tibetan flag at the opening ceremony of the games in Athens this week while a Chinese official was speaking – an act widely criticized in the journalistic community, which has depended on RSF to report on press violations.

Prior to the China-Tibet dissatisfaction in Europe, many protest groups here demanded that China stop its support of the Sudanese government, widely regarded as a main culprit in the starvation and chaos in Darfur. The phrase "Genocide Olympics" has been used in Europe among human rights groups to describe the twinning of the Games with China's policy toward Sudan.

Sudan Agrees to Darfur Peace Talks

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/07/world/africa/07nations.html

September 7, 2007
Sudan Agrees to Darfur Peace Talks
By WARREN HOGE

KHARTOUM, Sudan, Sept. 6 — The United Nations and Sudan announced Thursday that rebel leaders from Darfur would hold peace negotiations with the government next month to seek an end to a conflict that many in the world contend constitutes genocide.

The talks, under the auspices of the United Nations and the African Union, will begin on Oct. 27 in Tripoli, the capital of Libya.

In a joint statement, the government of Sudan pledged “to contribute positively to secure the environment for the negotiations, fulfilling its commitment to a full cessation of hostilities in Darfur and agreed upon cease-fire.”

Sudan also promised to “facilitate the timely deployment” of the new 26,000-member African Union United Nations peacekeeping force, which it had long resisted but then agreed to this summer under intense international pressure.

The announcement came on the fourth day of an African trip devoted to Darfur by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who declared on taking office in January that ending the killing and pillaging in the war- ravaged area of western Sudan state was his top international priority.

“We have taken a big step toward our shared goal of bringing peace to Darfur and long term development in Sudan,” Mr. Ban said.

Rebel groups and the government have held peace talks before, and a peace agreement was reached with one faction last year. But that has hardly stopped the violence in Darfur, where there are many armed factions of rebels, Arab militias and bandits.

Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, joined him on stage at the outset of the announcement ceremony in Friendship Hall but then left with no comment before Mr. Ban and Lama Akol, the Sudanese foreign minister, formally presented the agreement.

An announcer said that Mr. Bashir’s departure was prearranged so he could go greet an unnamed visiting president

Mr. Ban has been pressing for wide ranging political talks to precede the arrival of the new peacekeeping troops, arguing that “there must be a peace to keep.”. Officials said he had been on the phone with political figures and leaders of neighboring countries in recent days during trips to Juba in southern Sudan and El Fasher in North Darfur.

They said the suggestion of Libya as a venue for the talks came from Mr. Bashir, the Sudanese president, in a private dinner with Mr. Ban Monday night at the presidential guest house in Khartoum.

“We were thrown by the choice at first,” said a United Nations official who said he was not authorized to discuss internal decision-making by name. “But the more we thought about it, the more it made sense as a way to convince the Africans that they would maintain possession of the process.”

He added that Sudan was concerned about rebel arms coming across the Libyan border and saw involving Tripoli as a way of getting it to curb the flow.

Mr. Ban leaves Friday for Chad and is scheduled to see Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, on Saturday in Tripoli.

Mr. Ban said the talks would be supervised by Jan Eliasson, his special representative for Darfur, and Salim A. Salim, the Darfur envoy of the African Union.

The two men have been traveling extensively in the region in recent weeks, trying to bring the fragmented Sudanese rebel movement together so that the groups could take advantage of what the United Nations believes is a new willingness in Khartoum to talk.

A key test of Thursday’s joint proposal will be how many people from the rebel side show up, but Mr. Eliasson said the time was right for taking the initiative.

“The common denominator was that all sides have realized now that there is no military solution,” he said.

Mr. Eliasson noted that Libya had helped in two meetings, in April and July, to convince reluctant rebel leaders, some of whom are based in Tripoli, of the need to seek a political solution. Libya also had the advantages of being close to Sudan, thereby cutting travel costs and assuring a better turnout, he said.

The bloodletting in Darfur began four years ago when ethnic African fighters took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government, accusing Khartoum of hoarding resources and neglecting their area. Khartoum retaliated by unleashing militias in an ethnic cleansing campaign that has ended up costing more than 200,000 lives and leaving 2.5 million villagers homeless.

Washington has called the scorched earth policy genocide. Sudan has denied the accusations and puts the death toll at 9,000.

Mr. Ban said his visit to Darfur Wednesday had “made my resolve stronger and firmer to work for peace and security.”

“I was so shocked and humbled when I visited the I.D.P. camp,” he said. The United Nations calls refugees in their own country internally displaced people.

Several Sudanese questioners Thursday challenged Mr. Ban’s motives in coming here and asked whether he wasn’t taking sides against the government. “The United Nations is not interested in interfering in any way in any internal matters in Sudan,” he said.

Mr. Ban also said that among the invited would be Abdel Wahid al-Nur, an influential rebel leader who is now based in exile in Paris and refused to attend a meeting run by Mr. Eliasson and Mr. Salim last month in Arusha, Tanzania where seven other major rebel figures drew up a framework for sharing power and wealth in any ultimate settlement with the government.

Mr. Akol, the foreign minister, was asked if he wanted to see Mr. al-Nur, a government opponent with a wide following, at the talks. “Great leaders in history are the ones who know when to take the right decision at the right time,” he said.

Instant Karma

http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/676

Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur. A Tribute to John Lennon. (2-CDs)
Top Artists Doing Lennon Covers
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

An online reviewer glows about this "Save Darfur" album of John Lennon covers:

""Instant Karma, the Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur" is a good set of John Lennon covers. I believe John would have been proud of this effort to use his music to draw attention & bring relief to the people of this area. In musical terms, it's more successful than the "Working Class Hero" covers compilation that came out some years ago. Of the tracks, I have two favorites from each of the discs. Corinne Bailey Rae brings a new feel to "I'm Losing You" with a more piano-based arrangement in a live recording. Her powerhouse vocals are distinctive, "Here in the valley of indecision; I don't know what to do; I feel you slipping away." Jakob Dylan featuring Dhani Harrison do a great job on "Gimme Some Truth" with Harrison's guitar bleeding during the instrumental break & Jakob's voice sounding world weary, "No short haired yellow bellied son of Tricky Dicky is going to Mother Hubbard soft soap me with just a pocket full of hope." On the second disc my favorites include the whimsical Postal Service's version of "Grow Old with Me," "Face the setting sun when the day is done, God bless our love." Jack's Mannequin featuring Mick Fleetwood does a great job on Lennon's "God," not the easiest track to cover with its complex lyric, "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." Other tracks on the disc are also excellent. I like R.E.M.'s "#9 Dream," Jackson Brown's take on "Oh, My Love," Green Day's "Working Class Hero" & Jack Johnson's simplified "Imagine." Only two tracks have me want to move along on the disc: Lenny Kravitz's take on "Cold Turkey" & the Flaming Lips' "(Just Like) Starting Over." This is a strong set with some excellent standouts. It's nice to hear John's music echoing forward on behalf of an important cause. Enjoy!"

The album is a 2 Disc Set:

Disc: 1
1. Instant Karma -- U2
2. #9 Dream -- R.E.M.
3. Mother -- Christina Aguilera
4. Give Peace A Chance -- Aerosmith with Sierra Leone Refuge All-Stars
5. Cold Turkey -- Lenny Kravitz
6. Whatever Gets You Through the Night -- Los Lonely Boys
7. I'm Losing You -- Corinne Bailey Rae
8. Gimme Some Truth -- Jakob Dylan Feat. Dhani Harrison
9. Oh, My Love -- Jackson Browne
10. Imagine -- Avril Lavigne
Plus 2 more tracks

Disc: 2
1. Working Class Hero -- Green Day
2. Power to the People -- Black Eyed Peas
3. Imagine -- Jack Johnson
4. Beautiful Boy -- Ben Harper
5. Isolation -- Snow Patrol
6. Watching the Wheels -- Matisyahu
7. Grow Old With Me -- Postal Service
8. Gimme Me Some Truth -- Jaguares
9. (Just Like) Starting Over -- The Flaming Lips
10. God -- Jack's Mannequin feat. Mick Fleetwood
Plus 1 more track

From Amnesty International:

"Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur," the new global "Make Some Noise" project from Amnesty International, seeks to mobilize millions around the urgent catastrophe in Darfur, Sudan. It combines the power of John Lennon's music recorded by some of the world's best-known artists, together with cutting-edge forms of instant activism enabled by Internet and mobile technologies.

The project will call attention to the urgent situation in Darfur where between 2 and 400,000 have died, 2.5 million have been displaced from their homes, and 4.5 million people in Darfur and hundreds of thousands in the neighboring countries of Chad and Central African Republic are at risk of starvation, disease, and further attacks. Yoko Ono generously granted rights to John Lennon’s entire solo songbook to Amnesty International, the world’s largest grassroots human rights organization, to use as the centerpiece of this project and to inspire and invigorate a new generation of human rights activists.

Musical artists, including U2,Christina Aguilera, Lenny Kravitz, Green Day, Ben Harper, and Aerosmith, have joined this international effort that combines John Lennon music, technology, and human rights activism. The CD, "Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur," will be released by Warner Brothers Records and arrive in stores the week of June 12th. Additional singles from the album will be released leading up to the full album, along with special product offers coupled with opportunities to take action. Proceeds derived from the entire campaign will go directly to support Amnesty International’s urgent work on Darfur and other human rights crises worldwide.

Immediately following the March 12 release of the first single from the album, Amnesty International initiated a new series of events in its long-term advocacy on Darfur. More than 3,000 Amnesty International groups took part in the organization’s ninth annual National Week of Student Action March 23 – 30; Amnesty International organized rallies and protests on March 30 outside the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, and at Chinese consulates nationwide, in an effort to press the Chinese government to use its considerable influence with the Sudanese government to admit United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur in a joint mission with the African Union; a national call-in week to Congress took place the week of April 9- 13 at the same time as Amnesty International delegations conducted lobby meetings in Washington DC and Congressional districts across the country. Amnesty International also marked April 29th, by joining coalition partners in the third Global Day for Darfur.