Click here to send a prewritten message urging President Obama to deny legitimacy to President Bashir of Sudan in that country’s upcoming elections, which would “justify” the genocide. You can also edit the message for a more personal message.

Zeinab Eyega was courageous. The word itself is weak and overdone by now. Zeinab Eyega has advanced herself by advancing the cause of women refugees in and from Sudan, Darfur and all over Africa. A former refugee herself, she escaped the terrible life and immigrated to the U.S. where she founded the Sauti Yetu Center for African women in NYC., serving African immigrant women with programs such as “family violence prevention, education, reproductive health and women’s rights*.”

*As the terms "Reproductive health" and "women's rights" cover birth control and contraception education and
provision, and frequently abortion assistance, the author of this blog, while supporting Eyega and her cause,
does not personally advocate those particular services of Sauti Yetu

Encourage U.S. senators to help stop the flow of weapons to Sudan by sending this electronic letter here. This is hosted by Save Darfur.

According to Save Darfur:

Nearly two years after United Nations peacekeepers were deployed to Darfur, the Government of Sudan works at every turn to block their efforts to protect civilians.

Recently, the United Nations Panel of Experts responsible for monitoring the warring parties in Sudan issued a report confirming what we all already know: Bashir’s regime continues to defy the United Nations arms embargo as well as international humanitarian and human rights law.

In response, Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and John McCain (R-AZ) drafted a letter to Ambassador Susan Rice, the Obama administration’s representative to the United Nations. Their letter asks her to speak out publicly about these violations and ensure that troops and arms movements and additional sanctions are carefully reviewed by the Security Council.

Nearly two years after United Nations peacekeepers were deployed to Darfur, the Government of Sudan works at every turn to block their efforts to protect civilians.

Recently, the United Nations Panel of Experts responsible for monitoring the warring parties in Sudan issued a report confirming what we all already know: Bashir’s regime continues to defy the United Nations arms embargo as well as international humanitarian and human rights law.

In response, Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and John McCain (R-AZ) drafted a letter to Ambassador Susan Rice, the Obama administration’s representative to the United Nations. Their letter asks her to speak out publicly about these violations and ensure that troops and arms movements and additional sanctions are carefully reviewed by the Security Council.

*

The author of the blog is not affiliated with the mentioned organization and has only mentioned it for the
humanitarian purposes of her blog.

As International citizens we all remember the atrocities of World War II and the lessons to be learned. However, its events like those which are vital to keep in our minds to prevent such injustices from occurring again. Which is exactly why the United Nations created Human Rights Day on December 10th. Human Rights Day has been recognized since 1950 to mark the anniversary of all participating nations in Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Although, this day is often overshadowed by December holidays, it is of grave importance to our world and should be recognized.

Sadly the world has not quite learned the lessons from World War II. Violations of human rights still exist in many parts of the world today. Unfortunately, there are still people involved in genocide, slave labor, human trafficking, sexual slavery, and torture. These are alarming acts that should not even exist in this world, yet sadly for many in the world they are a harsh reality. Its days like December 10th that we should look somber upon but also let it inspire us to take action.

How does one get involved? Well you can start with acknowledging the events are existing and to commemorate December 10th. But if you want to attend an event for Human Rights Day, check out the panel discussion Race, Poverty, and Power at the UN headquarters in New York. However, if New York is out of the question, consider volunteering or donating to a number of different Human Rights Organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, Amnesty International, MADRE, Save Darfur, and  Not For Sale. Lastly, stay informed! Do your research and pay attention to world events going on.

Most holidays call for celebration but not Human Rights Day. Because the world is still seeing extreme violations of human rights, there just isn’t much to celebrate. Here’s where you and I and the international community have to step in. We can not continue to stand by while these atrocities occur. After all, we are all in this together.

SaveDarfur’s 16 Days of Activism for Darfur campaign recently released a powerful video from and about Darfuri women refugees, with testimony, evidence of their hardship, and up-close-and-personal looks into their lives. It’s short but riveting. Watch it. Please.

Gender violence is one of the greatest threats in the horrible Darfur saga–women are raped and mistreated as they try to go about their normal, daily lives. Fortunately, “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence” , a campaign created by Save Darfur, features a page full of personal testimonies and information about gender violence against women in Sudan/Darfur. There’s even a link so you can stay informed.

I pray for all women who have gone through the trauma of rape, for their healing—but I pray, because Darfur is my mission and passion–especially that this may end.

The author is not affiliated with the featured charity and receives no personal or financial benefit. The
charity and its associated campaigns and interests are mentioned for personal education only.

Yesterday, Special Envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration and National Security Council Director, Samantha Power sat down with Jerry Fowler of the Save Darfur Coalition and Layla Amjadi of STAND.  They discussed a wide range of topics regarding the recently released policy by the Obama Administration.

Click here to watch the complete webcast.

Gration:  We don’t have yet all the monitoring mechanisms that we need.  When the NGOs were expelled, we lost some very valuable NGOs that we have not gotten back in yet…  And the fact is that while we’ve been able to compensate for food and water and healthcare and sanitation, some of the protection NGOs have not been able to get back in…

For us to objectively verify, we’re going to have to have different types of NGOs on the ground and more of those NGOs on the ground. And we’re going to have UNAMID with more freedom of movement and the ability to monitor better what’s happening on the ground, so that we can take action.  And those are the things we’re working on right now.

Other highlights that stuck out at me in this illuminating conference include:

• Samantha Power mentioned that  everytime President Obama has sat down with Chinese President, Hu Jintao,  “this issue has been discussed”.
• And Scott Gration mentioned that “a major impediment to [Darfuri] people returning home is the ‘pschological stuff’.”

I’m glad senior officials in the Administration recognize the deep impact of such trauma and how that affects peacemaking.

Artikel “‘Schwarz-Weiß-Schema’ eines Konflikts”, veröffentlich auf Qantara (Auszug):

Einer der schärfsten Kritiker von Save Darfur ist Mahmoud Mamdani von der Columbia University in New York. Der gebürtige Ugander, einer der führenden afrikanischen Intellektuellen in den USA, urteilte gegenüber der New York Times: “Ich bin gegen die, die genaue Kenntnis durch moralische Gewissheit ersetzen und sich als tugendhaft gerieren, selbst wenn sie auf der Basis totaler Ignoranz handeln.”

In seinem neuesten Buch “Saviors and Survivors, Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror” wirft Mamdani der Save Darfur Coalition vor, das Schema des Krieges im Südsudan einfach auf die Situation in Darfur zu übertragen. Im langjährigen Bürgerkrieg im Süden des größten afrikanischen Flächenstaats verliefen die Konfliktlinien zwischen der muslimisch-arabischen Regierung im Norden und einem christlich-animistisch geprägten schwarzafrikanischen Süden.

Doch in Darfur greife das Schema Araber gegen Afrikaner nicht, betont Mamdani, denn die Janjaweed rekrutieren sich sowohl aus arabischen als auch nicht-arabischen Nomaden.

Gleichzeitig ist die Bevölkerung fast durchgehend muslimisch, die religiöse Komponente als Ursache fällt weg. Die Ursache des Konflikts liege vielmehr in der tief greifenden Krise des Nomadentums, das sich seit der großen Dürre im Sahel vor vier Jahrzehnten nie recht erholen konnte.

Arabische Opfer bleiben unberücksichtigt

Auch die britische Journalistin Julie Flint und der Wissenschaftler Alex de Waal vom Social Science Research Council, beide langjährige Kenner des Sudan, bezweifeln den Nutzen von Save Darfur angesichts einer immer verfahreneren Situation im Westen des Sudan. (…)

“Die Kampagne lässt völlig außer acht, dass es auch arabische Opfer des Konflikts gibt”, monieren die Autoren. So seien die ersten Berichte über arabische Opfer des Konflikts erst seit 2006 in den Medien zu finden. Hilfsorganisationen hätten die arabischen Opfer nicht im Blick gehabt.

Darfurs Rebellen, die seit 2003 in immer weitere Fraktionen und Splittergruppen zerfallen sind, haben ihrerseits Menschenrechtsverletzungen begangen und sind nicht unschuldig daran, dass es zu keiner politischen Lösung für Darfur kommt.

Mit ihrer vereinfachten Darstellung des Konflikts schaffe Save Darfur für die Militärregierung in Khartum den Vorwand, die Arbeit der Hilfsorganisationen in der Region zu behindern. (…)

Alex de Waal schreibt treffend in seinem Blog: “Es ist der große Irrtum der Save-Darfur-Kampagne, dass eine Lösung durch Eingreifen von außen kommen soll. Wenn es eine Lösung für Darfur geben soll, dann wird sie aus dem Sudan selber kommen und eine politische Lösung sein, die die strukturellen politischen Herausforderungen im Sudan angeht.“

(Gesamten Artikel lesen)

The Onion lampoons US-based Darfur-focused pressure groups.

One question to the panel: How can the people of Darfur thank Americans? Best response: “I would like a clay pot.”

It is a region of Africa’s largest country. It is roughly the size of Texas. Its crisis is much larger. The people of Darfur, Sudan need our help! As I hope you all know, right this very second, the Sudanese region of Darfur is being subjected to a devastating genocide not unlike the Holocaust. Everyday, people are being raped, tortured, and killed and it needs to stop. Here’s an excerpt from SaveDarfur.org’s Darfur Primer explaining the genocide and how it started:

Sudan is Africa’s largest country, located just south of Egypt on the eastern edge of the Sahara desert. The Darfur region is a drought-prone area of western Sudan. By area, Darfur is roughly the size of Texas and is divided into three states that had a collective population of approximately 6 million people before the crisis in Darfur began in 2003. Darfurians exist largely on subsistence farming or nomadic herding. There are between 40 and 80 ethnic groups in Darfur. Most villages are multi-ethnic and, despite ethnic differences, there is a history of peaceful coexistence. Local languages include Arabic, Fur and Massalit.

The conflict in Darfur began in the spring of 2003 when two Darfuri rebel movements – the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) – launched attacks against government military installations as part of a campaign to fight against the historic political and economic marginalization of Darfur. The Sudanese government, at the time engaged in tense negotiations with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) to end a three decades long civil war between North and South Sudan, responded swiftly and viciously to extinguish the insurgency. Through coordinated military raids with government-armed militia (collectively known as the janjaweed), the Sudanese military specifically targeted ethnic groups from which the rebels received much of their support. The civilian casualties were immense. Over 400 villages were completely destroyed and millions of civilians were forced to flee their homes.

An immense humanitarian crisis resulted from the mass displacement of these civilians. From direct attacks and the deterioration of living conditions, many experts estimate that as many as 300,000 people lost their lives between 2003 and 2005. In September 2004, President George W. Bush declared the crisis in Darfur a “genocide” – the first time a sitting American president had made such a declaration regarding an ongoing conflict. Despite the world’s growing outcry, the violence continued in Darfur and the number of dead and displaced increased considerably.

On Episode 7 of Smart Mouths, one of the hosts, Elysa Montfort, came up with her Top Ten Ways to End Genocide in Darfur. I sent an email to her asking permission to include the list here on The Way It Is and she replied saying “Absolutely – feel free to use that Top Ten list on your blog, and whatever else from the show you might find useful. And thank you for taking such interest in the cause. When Laura initially approached me about doing Smart Mouths, the thought that really motivated me to say yes was, “it could be a great venue for raising awareness about Darfur.” So thanks for playing a part in the realization of that dream, and for trying to give a voice to the voiceless. =)” So here’s the list with paraphrased explanations and I apologise for such a long post, but this is an important issue and people need to be informed.

1. Know what you’re talking about. It doesn’t take long to quickly read up on this subject and it’s very important to at least know the basics since you’re going to get asked a lot of questions. For me, one of the biggest problems here is a lack of knowledge about what it actually going on. Even reading Wikipedia is better than nothing. We both recommend going to SaveDarfur.org for most if not all of your information and resources.

2. Start a “Save Darfur” chapter at your school or university. This a great way to get others involved in the cause. What you can also do with this is participate in “Dollars for Darfur”, and you can raise money across your campus to donate to the cause. Absolutely all of the proceeds will go to raising awareness about the genocide and also to help bring refugees from Darfur and Chad back to the United States.

3. Host a film screening of a documentary to raise awareness in you community. This is one of Elysa’s personal favourites and she did this at her community college. Just host a free screening of a documentary and you’ll be surprised how many people show up to get informend. Two very good documentaries are Darfur Diaries, and Darfur Now. The Darfur Diaries web site will even help you organise a screening. You can purchase other documentaries at SaveDarfur.org. Most venues like school auditoriums can be accessed for free, especially ones at community colleges since those are funded by the taxpayers.

4. Attend a local rally or awareness event. SaveDarfur.org has a feature that allows you to search for events in your area. If there isn’t one going on anytime soon and you want to get people informed, talk with your school, town or city officials and organise one yourself.

5. Write to your congressman/government representative and your president/prime minister/etc. The government has to listen to the public voice and if you make a big enough deal about this and write to your government officials, they’ll have to listen to you, too. The Smart Mouths web site has included a link to send a letter to President Obama. Google your government’s web site and search for contact information since I can’t post it for every country. Smart Mouths is an American podcast so that’s why there’s only a link provided to contact Obama.

6. Donate to your non-profit organisation of choice. Three of Elysa’s favourite’s are Save Darfur (obviously), Doctors Without Borders, and Unicef. All three of these organisations are doing amazing work in Darfur, trying to save and treat these victims. Your donations are vital to their efforts and success. Even $5 or $10 is good enough (I know our economy isn’t exactly in the best shape of its life). Every little bit counts!

7. Purchase Save Darfur gear. Make this separate from making a donation because when you purchase things like hats and shirts and whatnot, people will see you trying to spread awareness and may even stop you and ask you what’s going on in Darfur. So it’s definitely a great way to make a statement.

8. Write a letter to the editor of you local newspaper explaining why you think this cause is so crucial. Chances are, you’ll get it published, especially if you’re young, say under 25. Newspapers absolutely love when younger generations are willing to get involved in activism and they just eat it up. It makes them look good, they can help make a difference, and you can get the word out quickly and effectively.

9. Sign the Save Darfur petition. Please add your name to this to show your support for this cause. After you’ve signed, you can send a message to up to six people asking them to do the same. Click here to learn how to start your own petition as well.

10. Pass out brochures and flyers at your school, library, and local events. You can print out free, pre-made brochures and such and then you can pass them around town. If you don’t feel comfortable handing things out to strangers, just leave a pile at the library or somewhere else. Just make sure you get permission first.

So there you have it: 10 ways you can contribute to the Save Darfur cause. There are other resources from SaveDarfur.org as well. I’d also like to add something: if you have your own blog or web site, please post some information on Darfur and post links to resources. The Internet is an amazing place to spread awareness about things like this so do your part and get involved.

- Opus (feat. Elysa from Smart Mouths—her ideas, anyway)

Al Jazeera English reported a few days ago that “a group of former Sudanese activists” had called a press conference to admit that they had exaggerated their claims of deaths and violence in the Darfur war.

A group of former Sudanese activists says some of the figures of those reported dead and displaced in the conflict in Sudan’s western Darfur region were exaggerated. The former Darfur rebel activists told Al Jazeera that they increased tolls and gave false evidence during investigations conducted by delegates from foreign organisations into the conflict.

“We used to exaggerate the numbers of murders and rapes,” Salah al Din Mansour, a former translator with World NGOs in Darfur, said

“Darfur groups ‘padded’ death tolls, Al Jazeera English, September 10, 2009

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have frequently criticized the distortions of the Save Darfur Coalition, which has sloppily exaggerated or misconstrued the scope, causes and duration of the conflict, not to mention advocating a military solution that I disagree with.

However, this “confession” by an obscure group of Darfurians looks really suspicious to me. It far too neatly conforms to the Sudanese government’s line on Darfur, as well as its death estimates, which are as vastly underestimated as SDC’s are inflated.

It all points to the degree to which hyperbole, political grandstanding*, egos**, power-hungry rebel and government factions (all of whom have shown a stunning lack of concern for the welfare of displaced people) have turned the Darfur dialogue into a big mess. Fanatical positions have drowned out voices of reason, the peace process hardly seems to be any more on track than it was three years ago, and activists won’t give President Obama’s envoy to Sudan, former Major General Scott Gration, the space to do the work he needs to do. Meanwhile millions of refugees are languishing. I’m not convinced at all that the Save Darfur movement’s good effect (which is that everyone knows about Darfur) has outweighed its ill ones.

Anyway, if anyone has any more insight into this group of confessing former activists (am I right that it looks very stage managed? who are they?), I would love to hear them.

*John Lewis is an American civil rights luminary whom I greatly respect. However, this particular act of civil disobedience struck me as the perfect example of how Save Darfur has become a platform for hollow gestures. The mushy objectives of the protest included urging President Bashir to let aid groups back into Darfur (he kicked them out after the ICC issued his arrest warrant, another boondoggle). But two weeks before the protest, Gration had already secured a commitment from the Sudanese government to allow aid back into Darfur.

**There are a few bloggers and activists I could think of linking to here, but I am trying not to personalize this debate. However, take a look at the earnestness and self-appointed-savior postures of some of the people who have taken up Darfur as a cause, and I think you’ll feel, as I have, that this is often more about narcissism than it is about the refugees. That wouldn’t necessarily discount the cause that someone stood for, but combined with the inaccuracies and the fact that U.S. political figures have adopted “Save Darfur” as a formless slogan, it makes for an unflattering picture of SDC.

In February, when I was in Kigali, a Rwandan friend came over for dinner, and he was surprised that I was eating. He was earlier at a home where a woman turned down a Fanta and some food. “You’re a good eater,” he told her, confused. “What’s going on?” She told him she was partaking of a ritual that, though it’s spread to Rwanda, has its roots right here in the USA: Fasting for Darfur.

After a nod to her good (and strong) will, and to the gravity of things in Darfur, my friend ate his dinner, and I mine. I finished off my plate in a very American 3.2 seconds. It took him about 45 minutes. I, at least, did not think much about Darfur as I ate, nor did I have time to.

Which is when it occured to me. Fasting? Not so much my strength. But…eating fast? Now we’re onto something.

So this year, as Americans get it all wrong and advocate fasting for Darfur on Eid, I say, let’s Americanize this a bit (after we check the calendar, so we’re well passed Muslim, Jewish and any other ill-suited holy days).

On September 21, I say we (Eat) Fast for Darfur. Because if the great nation of America is going to try to employ a symbol as useless as the amount of food its big-hearted citizens consume in order to send a signal to the universe (or the Security Council) about Sudan, then we might as well give up the illusion of sacrifice and invest our moral energies in something we as a people are really good at, which is stuffing our faces with impressive speed.

We could show even more solidarity if we can make this into one of our nation’s best past times, which is to say, a contest. We could compete, perhaps, by how many pounds we gain from said stuffing. Those of us with lusciously full thighs have a running start! And then, of course, we can make a reality show out of losing all that weight, called “Run Fast (As A Refugee) for Darfur,” and donate all the ad revenue to…well, now we’re getting political, aren’t we? But this face-stuffing event is a purely humanitarian initiative, so I’ll leave the moral brunt of it all to someone else and just pass the pie.

Eat up, Mia Farrow, or lose big.

Save Darfur is a coalition raising awareness of the ongoing genocide in Darfur. The Sudanese government is still fighting two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM-Minni Minawi) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). An estimated 300,000 people have died and around 300,000 Darfuri refugees live across the Sudanese border in Chad. The UN estimates that roughly 4.7 million people in Darfur (out of a total population of roughly 6 million) are still affected by the conflict. Building peace costs less—in lives and in dollars—than picking up the pieces after a humanitarian crisis. Remember Darfur.

Join them for the Pledge2Protect conference, November 6–9.

Anti-genocide activists from across the country will come together in Washington, D.C., for the first ever movement-wide activist conference. At Pledge2Protect, over one-thousand students and adults will meet to build relationships with fellow activists, learn about conflict areas worldwide and develop outreach skills. For more information click here.

As an eighth-grader learning about American slavery, I had a fantasy. I imagined that some elite Marines and I could outfit ourselves in the latest combat gear and travel back in time to the year 1820. Once we arrived in the heart of the slavery era, we’d storm the plantations with superior weaponry and free the slaves. Problem solved. It would be awesome, and I’d be a hero.

Of course, as I learned in later study, the abolition of one of history’s most monstrous atrocities was not such a simple matter. Dismantling slavery meant the splitting of a nation, a civil war that sacrificed 600,000 lives, and a burning of the South that – while possibly justified – entailed extreme and morally repugnant violence. And of course, war was only part of the solution. There were the complex political negotiations, the recalibration of society that, 150 years later, is still incomplete.

I kept thinking of these episodes in my education as I read Richard Just’s August 27 take-down of Mahmood Mamdani in The New Republic. The article – a review of Mamdani’s Saviors and Survivors and Gareth Evans’s The Responsibility to Protect – concludes that Mamdani’s book is a paranoid failure, but that Evans proposes a refreshing idealism (though Just finds that the R2P proponent is a little too conservative in promoting his doctrine).

The review is one of the stronger all-out criticisms of Saviors and Survivors I’ve read. (I haven’t read Evans’s book yet, so I’ll limit my reflections to Just’s comments on Mamdani’s, which are the bulk of the review.) Just convincingly argues that the Save Darfur Coalition is not monolithically aligned with the architects of the Global War on Terror, and the links between SDC’s motives, the ideological milieu in which it blossomed, and the movement’s actual effects are not as cut and dry as some passages in Saviors seem to suggest.

But Just takes his criticism of Mamdani much further, practically dismissing his entire book as a misguided tirade, “chilling” and lacking in “humanity.” His allowances for the value of Saviors are miniscule. Just writes with apparent disdain that Mamdani’s emphasis on the importance of context – it “becomes something of a fetish” – has obscured the real issue of immediate violence in Darfur. He posits that an invasion of Sudan in 2004 would have stopped the deaths and killing.

It’s that last point that makes me think of my childhood fantasy of salvation. Just is right that the raw ideals of protecting those in danger are noble ones; I believe that, too. But context – not least, history – complicates things, in extreme and important ways. It is the political, economic and social context of my fantasy slave revolt (notwithstanding the pesky lack of time travel) that would have made my ninja assault on Southern plantations foolhardy. The people of 1860s United States had to solve the problem themselves.

The idea of solving Darfur through military intervention strikes me as being nearly as fantastic as my slavery-ending daydream. While I understand that for some people, the idea comes from a noble impulse, that in no way warrants the belittling of attempts to understand the context of what is going on. It sounds defensive, and it smacks of an unwillingness to consider any serious criticism of the SDC (and affiliate) position.

The Darfur conflict is a toxic and incredibly complicated brew of land disputes, power grabs, environmental catastrophe, ethnicized political rivalries and decades-long militarization. Rebels were not even fighting for the same goals; they had no unifying ideology. War and drought amplified historical injustices that spun out of control. All sides committed atrocities – though vastly more were by government-backed forces. It’s a war whose every cease-fire and ultimate resolution have screamed out for the need to address context, and this is one of Mamdani’s main points.

So the open hostility and then dismissal of all aspects of Mamdani’s arguments – which I’ve found characteristic of SDC hardliners in the blogosphere and at public events – is a posture I can’t reconcile. I get that people grate at the tone of the debate. I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of zingers like Mamdani’s “child soldiers” of Save Darfur remark, either. And in a media atmosphere saturated with lurid descriptions of Darfur’s ultraviolence, I also get how some readers might take a relative lack of focus on those aspects as flippancy.

In Just’s hostility, though – like a lot of other Save Darfur supporters who have reviewed Saviors and Survivors – he misses important points, and a chance for some meaningful self-reflection. Save Darfur’s misapprehension of the context of the Darfur tragedy is now well-documented and has had real consequences. A political affairs official with the U.N. Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), who asked not to be identified because she is not authorized to speak to the media, told me that rebels knew that advocates had helped stack the deck against their adversaries in the Sudanese government — skewing the peace process.  “Being a rebel became a favorite pastime in Darfur,” because it meant “wining and dining” by international organizations, the official said.

Based on tidbits like this, it seems to me like activists’ dismissal of context may have actually prolonged the conflict.

It all makes me wonder: even if you’re not willing to dismiss the movement outright, why not seek to improve it by fixing things that are wrong with it? The refusal to seriously engage with criticism makes SDC look more and more like the caricature lampooned on the Save Darfur Accountability Project blog.

Now, it’s not to the credit of Saviors and Survivors that its tone has apparently failed to get SDC and the most hawkish R2P advocates to listen. But even more so, the lack of a thoughtful reaction to the book’s most convincing criticisms is an indictment of the activists.

There are crucial questions that intellectual leaders of the Save Darfur movement have evaded, lost in the din of their more violent objections to Mamdani. The conflict is still frequently described in the less-well-managed sections of the movement and the media (including in Just’s review) as one between “Africans and Arabs,” obscuring its direct, material causes, not to mention using two categories that are not logically comparable. (SDC has attempted to reign in that description, but I’ve seen it persist everywhere.) Meanwhile, the objectives of the movement grow blurrier by the day.

More deeply, though, there is a broad, glaring and abiding issue about the application of R2P in Darfur, and one good thing about Just’s article is that he acknowledges that this is one huge question at stake. From the Belgian Congo to late-colonial Kenya, saving locals from themselves has been an excuse for imperialist invasion and exploitation in Africa. In the era of the Global War on Terror, and of the hypocrisy in the United State’s policies in the Middle East, why shouldn’t anti-imperialists be deeply suspicious of ever more rights-based arguments for war, emanating from the world’s biggest military power?

Even when intervention has been directed at truly odious regimes, the result is poisoned by the context of imperialism in which it occurs. All liberals thought the Taliban was terrible, and Saddam, too; our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have not brought us any closer to long-term solutions for those countries. Haven’t they – especially in Iraq – created more death and oppression?

Indeed, in a half-century that included Vietnam and Laos and Fallujah and Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, shouldn’t American activists be looking at different ways to help? Or, when we propose running to get our guns, should the world take our earnest professions of idealism and good intentions at face value?

During my daily perusing of the Save Darfur Accountability Project (a funny, irreverent and important blog that I urge you to add to your RSS feeds), I saw this graphic of the top world aid donors and recipients. SDAP’s post is intended to show that, contrary to Save Darfur’s arguments that the United States is neglecting Sudan, Washington actually gives more aid to Sudan than any country besides Iraq and Afghanistan. Here’s the image, originally from visualeconomics.com:

Point well taken. But what also caught my eye is that peaceful and stable Tanzania receives, according to this graphic, more development aid than any at-peace country in the world.

Without discounting the basic lacks that lie behind the build up in aid, I have to wonder what that does to an economy and to a society. (Why do I keep having images of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s “First of the Month” video, about minute 2:30, flash through my head?) I also have to wonder how much of that money goes to buy these NGO-logo-emblazoned Landcruisers tooling around Dar es Salaam and depositing people at fancy hotels for overpriced drinks.

Anyone know where I can get copies of Dead Aid and The White Man’s Burden in TZ?

By now I’m sure you’ve all heard of Harvard scholar Mahmood Mamdani’s new book, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror, which criticizes the immensely popular “Save Darfur” campaign that has spread throughout North America, taking billboards, bus-sides and campuses by storm. It appears that I had been living in a whole until recently, blissfully unaware of  any sort of controversy about this campaign. While not actively involved in any Save Darfurism throughout my university career, I knew of many fellow students who were vehement that the U.S., Canada and Europe must “do something” about the atrocities occurring in the southern part of Sudan. What this something was was never fully expressed–send money and aid, send in troops, hold tribunals; all were offered as possible interventions to the conflict. I never gave most of these discussions a second thought, as I was mostly just relieved and happy to hear my fellow classmates have a discussion about African politics.

But in speaking to some Sudanese friends in Cape Town recently, I realised that such discussions were not necessarily about Africa, but rather just about how American and Canadian citizens felt about their country’s role in the Africa. In essence, these friends argue, the campaign is a way for Americans and Canadians to feel better about themselves, and specifically to absolve themselves of their involvement in other nasty conflicts worldwide. Most egregiously, the campaign allows for a complex problem to be reduced to rhetoric about the “poor Africans” who “need” outside intervention in order to save themselves. It’s the White Man’s Burden all over again, and smacks of missionary-style imperialism.

My first reaction to such criticism was to bite back. I was sure that, however ignorant or ill-advised my classmate Save Darfurers were, they were not purposefully or blatantly imperialist or patronising, and that their concern was genuine. But over the last few weeks I’ve thought about their perhaps somewhat unfounded attacks with more clarity, and despite the fact that I continue to think that many people involved in this campaign within North America do so with the best of intentions, the campaign itself–and specifically Western government’s reactions to the campaign–is certainly over-simplified and perhaps, if it does only perpetuate notions of African tribalism and the need for outside intervention to save the “dark continent,” then it needs to be seriously re-thought, and perhaps even withdrawn.