11:53AM
Strategic victimhood in Sudan
By 
Issandr El Amrani | Sudan
Issandr El Amrani | Sudan
A very unusual op-ed in the NYT slams Darfur activists and the media for not giving a better picture of the real situation in Darfur and Sudan conflict in general. This is not a topic I know much about -- although I've known for a while, from very-well informed diplomatic sources, that the situation is a lot more complicated than it appears -- but the arguments presented are thought-provoking, not only about Sudan but about the media's role in presenting conflicts:
Darfur was never the simplistic morality tale purveyed by the news media and humanitarian organizations. The region's blacks, painted as long-suffering victims, actually were the oppressors less than two decades ago — denying Arab nomads access to grazing areas essential to their survival. Violence was initiated not by Arab militias but by the black rebels who in 2003 attacked police and military installations. The most extreme Islamists are not in the government but in a faction of the rebels sponsored by former Deputy Prime Minister Hassan al-Turabi, after he was expelled from the regime. Cease-fires often have been violated first by the rebels, not the government, which has pledged repeatedly to admit international peacekeepers if the rebels halt their attacks.You really have to read the whole (short) thing to get the point, especially as all of this has been very much under-reported.
This reality has been obscured by Sudan's criminally irresponsible reaction to the rebellion: arming militias to carry out a scorched-earth counterinsurgency. These Arab forces, who already resented the black tribes over past land disputes and recent attacks, were only too happy to rape and pillage any village suspected of supporting the rebels.
In light of janjaweed atrocities, it is natural to romanticize the other side as freedom fighters. But Darfur's rebels do not deserve that title. They took up arms not to stop genocide — which erupted only after they rebelled — but to gain tribal domination.
Reader Comments (7)
Good article, but http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/05/24/chad13444.htm" rel="nofollow">unfortunate timing.
...And Kuperman's suggestion that security in Darfur be handed over to the Sudanese Army, provided they promise not to commit any more war crimes, is astonishing. The army armed the janjaweed because it didn't have the capacity to put down the rebellion on its own. It arrived at the scene of the slaughter with the janjaweed. It provided air cover for the janjaweed attacks. Turning the security of the Darfuri people over the Sudanese Army is like turning the security of the sheep over to the wolves.
These are excellent points, Elijah. I didn't mean to endorse the column as much as bring attention to some of the information it revealed, probably for the first time in a prominent US newspaper.
I had dinner a few months ago with a former ambassador to Sudan from an important Western country. The stuff he was saying was also all new to a casual follower of Sudan from the mainstream media -- he was especially focused on southern militia involvement in the Darfur affair.
I was quite surprised to read that piece too, especially as Nicholas Kristof of the NYT has been championing the Darfur cause with so much energy on the same pages. There had been some reporting in the last few months about how it was more a problem of land than of clear religious or ethnic fault lines, but nothing near this level of equivalence. The Darfur issue has become a new "never again" campaign for many American student groups and church groups as well as Jewish congregations, so you can understand how they would be reluctant to problematize it, just as people were reluctant to recognize that the KLA were not angels in the Kosovo conflict. But I very much agree with Elijah that it's one thing to recognize the rebels are not angels and quite another to conclude that one should therefore leave things as they are.
I'm not sure this changes much.
Stopping the genocide is still the first priority. And the Sudanese government has already squandered any and all claims to legitimacy by engaging in genocide.
Grazing rights? In the face of genocide, excuse me, but who cares?
"The rebels, much weaker than the government, would logically have sued for peace long ago. Because of the Save Darfur movement, however, the rebels believe that the longer they provoke genocidal retaliation, the more the West will pressure Sudan to hand them control of the region."
I don't believe him.
From the UN monitors all I hear is that the victims are hopeless, not that they're gamblers, taking advantage of the west, sure that intervention will come.
I have to say, I come away from this article with the worst possible impression of Kuperman. He's painting the victims of genocide as the aggressors, even as they are slaughtered. There's a long and shameful history of commentors like him - every genocide has them.
Amen, Josh.
Though there is a grain of truth to this... People who worked on the successive peace deals were complaining that the rebels had developed unrealistic expectations because of the international pressure at least 18 months ago. And reports of rebel abuses were coming back longer ago than that. The rebels aren't saints, but Kuperman's a sinner.