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November 29, 2004
Sudan and Activism
In the comments section of my entry on the situation in the Sudan, there have been some discussion about what to do. I obviously don't have the perfect, complete and ready-to-implement answer. So here are a few thoughts.
It's hard for a blog to produce one-size-fits-all recommendations about becoming involved. It depends on who you are, where you are, and what you are willing and able to do. It's about your choices and your opportunities and the intersection of those options with what's politically useful and beneficial -- which isn't always easy to see in advance, so there's certainly an argument to try whatever you are moved to do. Who knows what will work in this climate of apathy and callousness?
And the basics --writing letters to elected representatives, newspapers, holding demonstrations, leaflets-- many not sound glamorous or innovative, but they are the requisites for any political campaign. Without some level of buzz and pressure on the media and the politicians nothing will get off the ground, and all our bright and smart ideas will not have the ground upon which they can stand.
As for groups that have been working politically on this issue, I can name Trans Africa Forum and Africa Action as good places to start. There are others, of course, and please do feel free to chime in with comments about your experience and your ideas about what to do. Also, the humanitarian organization Conscience International has just sent a delegation to Darfur and they have first hand stories of a very grim situation. Conscience International's web page doesn't yet have an update of this trip -- that's partly because they are a low-budget operation. CI's president Jim Jennings, who was on that trip to Darfur, can be reached at jimjennings (at) earthlink.net.
Now, there is some real political thorny issues around the question of calling fro military intervention. As we all witnessed, humanitarian disguises have been repeatedly used to justify good ol' military interventions, most recently in Iraq.
The thorniness of the issues should not make us ignore it. We must confront this question because humanitarian tragedies sometimes do require some form of peacekeeping / military intervention and our justified resistance to imperialism should not mean we are going to ignore real victims to grave crimes against humanity.
And there are many options short of military intervention that haven't been tried and our focus should first be there. That's another political trap that I think the anti-war movement has largely failed to avoid. The establishment points at a real tragedy, say Saddam Hussein's tyranny, and manages to frame large scale military intervention as the only possible intervention. While we end up justly arguing against the military intervention, we are unable advance any arguments about what should actually be done because, well, they've corrupted and dismantled all the other options and because we too have been largely ignoring the issue until the rulers pushed it on the agenda.
For example, running up to the Iraq war, the United States dismantled efforts to bring in Iraq under a chemical weapons convention, and further random, independent inspections, because it would have taken away an excuse to go to war -- they even fired Jose Bustani, director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, because he was so successful and determined to try to help eliminate a whole category of weapons of mass destruction. Then they turned around and ran a successful propaganda campaign claiming that there were no other solution to problems of WMD proliferation besides regime change implemented by the U.S. armed forces.
But, I digress. I think, in the case of the Sudan, what's necessary is political pressure, first and foremost on the central government and perhaps at some of the rebel groups to provide an environment that aid groups can operate in. A global campaign, a pouring of resources, a concentrated political, diplomatic and material aid campaign... In a sane world, these would be the issues that dominate the news every morning and every night.
We need to work on this issue now, and not just frantically try to respond when they decide it's time for them to pick it up and use it as an excuse to invade, distract or otherwise mislead. For one thing, that's a recipe for political defeat. And more importantly, there are hundreds of thousands of people who may well be dead by then.
Posted by zeynep at November 29, 2004 10:18 PM
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Comments
A forum "to promote a more informed debate about the emerging doctrine of humanitarian intervention":
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030714&s=forum
Posted by: sk at November 30, 2004 09:42 PM