Why the internet means “you cannot have Rwanda again”. Apparently.

In an interview with The Guardian, Gordon Brown muses on why the internet means the end of genocide:

“The changes throughout the world, whether you talk about the environment, or the nature of jobs, are dramatic. For centuries, individuals have been learning how to live with their neighbours. Now, uniquely, we’re having to learn to live with people who we don’t know. People have now got the ability to speak to each other across continents, to join with communities that are based not on territory, but on networks; and you’ve got the possibility of people building alliances right across the world. That flow of information means that foreign policy can never be the same again. You cannot have Rwanda again because information would come out far more quickly and public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken. Foreign policy can no longer be the province of just a few elites.“

It’s a nice thought, but as Darfur activists would point out we’re not short of information on what happened there and very little of the action which Brown talks about has taken place. [Let’s leave aside for now the issue of whether it’s a genocide or not]

Here’s the problem. There is no direct correlation between us knowing about a tragedy and us doing something about it. Make Poverty History was one of the most popular grassroots campaigns in Europe since the anti-apartheid movement, but that hasn’t stopped countries backsliding on their commitments. [Again, let’s leave for another time the debate on whether the aid actually works]

Journalists often try to convince people to talk by telling them it will help their cause. If you talk to me about how your village was razed to the ground by the Janjiweed or the FDLR or the Ethiopian army then the world will know and someone will do something to stop it. I’ve never felt comfortable giving that line because it’s just not true.

“You’re either with us or against us”

The debate in the West over Bashir’s arrest warrant has been heated and, up to a point, relatively cordial. Or at least it was. This, from the US-based Darfur advocacy group, the Enough Project, is ridiculous. In a post headlined “Bashir’s Best Buddies”, Enough’s executive director, John Norris writes:

“Somewhat sadly, Bashir’s most enduring loyalists may prove to be the arm chair analysts in New York and Washington who have made a cottage industry out of being critical of international justice, activism, or any forward leaning efforts to actually end a crisis rather than simply managing its consequences.”

Whatever the difference between the two schools of thought, this takes it way, way too far. Enough is essentially branding those who opposes the arrest warrant as “Bashir’s most enduring loyalists”. This is dangerously close to the smearing of liberal critics of the Iraq War as “pro-Saddam”. Or, as George W Bush might put it, “Either you are with us, or you are with Bashir.”

[Just to show that the debate can be civilised, here’s Alex de Waal and Human Rights Watch’s Richard Dicker arguing nicely over at Democracy Now. Although Dicker perhaps goes slightly over the top, praising De Waal’s views on no less than five occasions (“I think Alex is correct”, “as Alex is rightly suggesting”, etc…)]

 

 

The G word

Tomorrow is D-day, the moment Omar al-Bashir finds out if the International Criminal Court will issue a warrant for his arrest. The chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has charged him on 10 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide but the three pre-trial judges only need to believe he has a case to answer on one of those charges to issue the warrant.

The genocide charges remain controversial. As I wrote in a piece at the weekend, some of the ICC’s own investigators who helped put the case together have privately voiced concern that genocide cannot be proven. The charges have also been questioned by Moreno-Ocampo’s former senior legal counsel, Andrew Cayley. “It is difficult to cry government-led genocide in one breath,” he wrote, “and then explain in the next why 2 million Darfuris have sought refuge around the principal army garrisons of their province.”

Regardless of what happens tomorrow one thing is sure: the genocide debate will go on.

Save Darfur appear to be laying the ground for the judges to drop the genocide charges. Jerry Fowler, the organisation’s president, reminded Voice of America that Moreno-Ocampo was:

“…operating under very difficult circumstance. He could not go to Darfur to do his investigation. So it is somewhat difficult to put together a case when you can’t visit the crime scene.”

The Stop Genocide blogger, Michelle, also gets in a pre-emptive strike just in case the judges drop the genocide charges. In a post which asks the question “Is Darfur a genocide?” she takes me to task for suggesting it’s not. In her defence, she cites Colin Powell and the 2004 US State Department investigation which made the case that genocide was taking place.

There are two separate debates here.

One: was it genocide and, if so, can legal responsibility be placed on Bashir’s shoulders?

That’s a question for sharper legal minds than mine. These minds (here and here) seems sharp enough.

Two: Is it a genocide now and, either way, what should be done?

Here’s where I disagree with Michelle and other Darfur activists. I do not believe that what is happening in Darfur right now is genocide, a position that I know most activists do not share. My views though, are fairly similar to a large number of aid workers, diplomats and analysts who work in Sudan.

The issue of timing, though it sounds petty, is important. If a genocide is taking place then it makes sense to argue that the genocidal government needs to be overthrown. But if what is happening now is actually a messy war with many players then simply overthrowing Bashir is not going to solve Darfur’s problems. It could form part of a more complicated, multi-layered solution. Alternatively, it could make a bad situation a whole lot worse.

It all depends on what you see as a result. Is it peace for those living in Darfur now or justice for the victims? Finding both isn’t easy. Michael Kleinmann, who helped to stoke the flames of this row in the first place, puts it like this:

“Sometimes advocating for conflict resolution endangers not just humanitarian operations, but also the very helpless civilians that such measures are meant to protect.”

Rob Crilly, a journalist mate here in Nairobi who has covered Darfur extensively, argues for “messy, contradictory, imperfect solutions”:

“They may not tackle the deep-seated injustices and may just be storing up problems for the future. They might not resolve the big issues, but it stops people dying.”

It can be difficult to have a nuanced debate in such a fevered environment. People on both sides can get heated. Arguing that there is no “ongoing genocide”, as Moreno-Ocampo describes it, can be seen as somehow diminishing the suffering of the victims or questioning the seriousness of the crimes. I’m doing neither of these.

Part of the problem is the way our understanding of the word ‘genocide’ has evolved. The popular understanding of the word is very different from its true legal meaning. Legally speaking hundreds of people can be killed and it’s genocide. Likewise, hundreds of thousands can die and it’s not. Genocide is about motive, not numbers of dead.

But to many people genocide has become something else. It is the worst atrocity that can be committed. It’s the Holocaust, it’s Rwanda, it’s Cambodia. It’s rows of skulls and gas chambers. Hundred of thousands, possibly millions dead. Therefore to argue that something is not genocide is to argue that it’s not as important.

This debate is about far more than semantics. It’s about what sort of solutions are imposed. As I said in my last post on this subject it is a complex problem which requires a complex solution. If we describe it in simple terms we will continue to come up with simple solutions.

 

 

 

 

Not Saving Darfur

The ‘is Save Darfur really saving Darfur’ debate rumbles on.

Wronging Rights asks the question no-one really wants to ask: is the only way this can end if one side wins?

“We put our trust in talismans of advocacy -bans of diamond imports, a no-fly zone over Darfur, more peacekeeping troops- and in the belief that if only people knew, if only they were aware, then the atrocities would stop. If only enough righteous anger could be summoned, enough people clapping their hands and exclaiming “I DO believe in genocide!” then everything would be okay.
“That advocacy story, however, fails to acknowledge that behind nearly every mass atrocity is a power struggle that won’t go away just because the international community is giving it mean looks. And it certainly fails to acknowledge that the easiest way to resolve power struggles is to let the stronger party win, even if they’re war crime committing jerks; and come to think of it, the weaker party probably isn’t such great guys either.”

And in a piece from El Fasher, the Guardian’s Simon Tisdall quotes an anonymous aid worker who also bashes the activists:

“They push this simplistic idea that there is a genocide by Arabs against Africans – which is not the case and never was… There’s a tendency to simplify and spin. Darfur’s so much more complicated than that. There are so many different tribal groups, so many interests involved. It’s unfortunate because it gives the government ammunition to say it’s all a conspiracy against Sudan and it’s all made up.”

By the way, while we’ve been engaged in an albeit rather interesting ‘is-it-really-a-genocide-and-even-if-it-isn’t-how-do-we-stop-the-killings’ debate, the Sudanese army has taken the town of Muhajiriya. Didn’t Bashir announce a ceasefire not so long ago?

 

Save Darfur versus John Holmes

My Newsweek interview with John Holmes, (the UN’s humanitarian chief not the porn star) has caused a bit of a ruckus. In it, Holmes talks about Save Darfur, the US advocacy group, in less than glowing terms:

“There is a very powerful lobby in the U.S.: ‘stop the genocide’. That’s not a description I subscribe to myself.”

Does it do more harm than good?
“I do agree with that. When I moved to New York I remember seeing a poster in the subway which read: ‘Save Darfur—tens of thousands are dying each month’. That’s just not true. They are a bit misplaced but they do create a political context and that can be helpful.”

On the Change.org website, two bloggers Michael Kleinman, who focuses on humanitarian issues, and Michelle, who writes about genocide, debated the rights and wrongs of Save Darfur’s tactics.

Kleinman, who I know from his Nairobi days, wrote:

“I think Holmes goes too far with his rather sweeping condemnation – Save Darfur does play an important advocacy role.  That said, I’m also not convinced they’ve always fully understood the situation on the ground.”

In response, Michelle describes Holmes’ comments as:

“…a huge slap in the face to thousands of dedicated activists, boiling down their efforts to an ill-conceived slogan, and tossing them aside like last week’s garbage.”

This misses the point. Holmes is not basing his belief that Save Darfur do more harm than good on a single poster, he is using that poster as an example of how they can sometimes go too far – something which one of Michelle’s commenters freely admits:

“for some people, an even more vivid, albeit grotesque, picture must be painted for them to really realize how horrible the situation is. Whatever exaggerations there were were made as an appeal to those people who would otherwise be indifferent to the issue.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard someone admit this. I once had a long – and sadly off-the-record – chat with one of the leading Darfur campaigners in the UK. Why, I asked, did he insist on calling the crisis a ‘genocide’? After a bit of back and forth, he admitted that it wasn’t really a genocide now. But, he added, “what you’ve got to understand Steve is that we only get 30 seconds on the Today programme.”

My problem with describing it as a genocide is that genocides have have simple solutions. You stop the genocidaires. The Holocaust would have ended if Hitler had been overthrown. The Rwandan gencoide would have come to a halt if the Hutu militias had been disarmed. But the crisis in Darfur won’t stop if the janjaweed and Bashir’s armed forces are forcibly disarmed or if the Khartoum government is overthrown. It is a nasty, messy war with many players.

In short, it is a complex problem which requires a complex solution. If we describe it in simple terms we will continue to come up with simple solutions.

Update:

The debate rumbles on…

In a post headlined ‘Save Darfur can’t Save Darfur’, Michael Kleinman goes further in his criticisms of Save Darfur:

“…if you don’t understand the facts, even the most basic facts, it’s hard to offer useful recommendations on how to end the slaughter.”

Over at the Enough project, David Sullivan hits back:

“…if activists don’t keep trying to save Darfur, no one else will, and from South Africa to the American civil rights movement, we have seen again and again that activists can accomplish things that once seemed impossible.”

 

“If I go on holiday they’ll think I’m a spy”

Sometime in the next few weeks – maybe tomorrow, maybe at the end of February – the three pre-trial judges at the International Criminal Court will decide whether or not to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir.

The court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has charged Bashir on 10 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. No one knows what the judges will decide or when they will decide it.

(My money, for what it’s worth, is on the judges dropping the genocide charges and concentrating on mere war crimes and crimes against humanity).

For the 80 or so aid agencies and UN organisations working in Khartoum and Darfur the most immediate question is how safe it will be for them to continue their work if the arrest warrant is issued. John Holmes, the UN’s humanitarian chief, recently told me he feared everyone could get thrown out:

“We’ve told them ‘we expect you to leave our operation alone’ but I honestly don’t know what they will do. They will feel obliged to lash out in some way. Some of them are saying ‘give the bastards a good kicking’.”

Various influential figures within the Sudanese regime have made vague-ish threats about security. They’re usually somewhere along the lines of ‘well, we’d hate it if something really bad happened to you, but y’know, some people might be pretty angry’.

The latest came last week from intelligence chief Salah Gosh:

“The reactions of unruly persons cannot be predicted who may target some foreigners”

Aid groups and UN agencies have long been accused of acting as spies for the ICC and the US. Emails have been hacked into, computers confiscated, offices ransacked. So the last thing you want to do if you’re a foreigner in Sudan is start acting all suspicious around the time of the arrest warrant. In Khartoum even something as innocuous as going on holiday at the wrong time can seem suspicious.

Which is why some aid workers are considering cancelling much-needed holidays until the warrant is (or isn’t) issued. As one aid worker I spoke to over the weekend put it:

“If I go on holiday they’ll think I’m a spy.”

 

Hyperbole and ignorance

Andrew Mitchell, the man who will be in charge of Britain’s international development budget if the Tories gain power, had this to say about Congo:

The terrible images beamed into our living rooms from the Democratic Republic of Congo last week are eerily similar to those from Rwanda in 1994

Yes Andrew, eerily similar. Let’s count the similarities:

1. They’re black

2. They’re African

3. Er, it’s in Africa

4. That’s it

Mitchell, sadly, is not alone.

Here’s Gordon Brown:

We must not allow Congo to become another Rwanda

And here’s France’s foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, trying to outdo them all:

This is a massacre such as Africa has probably never seen, which is taking place virtually before our eyes

Congo is not Rwanda. It is a terrible, nasty war that has gone on (and off and on again) for more than a decade. An estimated 5.4m people have died, mostly from war-related diseases. “Something” needs to be done.

But making crass comparisons to a genocide because you know it will make a good soundbite is not just dumb – it’s dangerous. A genocide has a single bad guy. Stop the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, the Hutu militias and the genocide ends. Tell me Andrew, Gordon, Bernard, who is the genocidaire in Congo? Nkunda? The FDLR? The Congolese army? The Congolese government? Monuc? Rwanda? They all share the blame, some more than others, but trying to make it simple does not do anyone any favours.

We have been here before. The public debate on what to do about Darfur is based on the false premise that a genocide is ongoing. In an essay published in the Spectator earlier this year, Justin Marozzi wrote about the celebrities and activist groups campaigning for action to stop the genocide.

No one appears to have told any of these people that the genocide is over. What remains is a highly complicated, extremely brutal, low-intensity civil war.

 Complex problems require complex solutions.

The cause of Congo’s problems: vampires

Congo is, once again, on fire. Tens of thousands have fled south to the city of Goma as rebels have advanced. The Congolese army has also fled and is now doing what Congolese soldiers do best – raping, killing and looting.

The roots of the conflict are complex going back (at the very least) to the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

At least, I thought it was complex. Then I read this. According to John Prendergast and Javier Bardam (you know, that well renowned Congo expert best known for playing a killer in No Country for Old Men), it’s all very simple. It’s all about the vampires.

Vampires take many forms in Congo. They are the militia leaders who control the mines, and who use mass rape as a means of intimidating local populations and driving people away from areas they want to control.

Vampires also include some of the middlemen based in neighboring countries who arrange for the purchase and resale of Congo’s resources to international business interests, run by people who are often accomplices.

Really, where do you start with something like this? I know it’s Halloween, but still.

This ‘vampires’ nonsense, quite apart from doing nothing to really explain what’s going on in Congo, only serves to reinforce the notion that somehow the country is a dark, strange land. Somewhere deep in the heart of Africa, maybe the dark heart of Africa. Maybe we could call it the Heart of Darkness.

(By the way, Things Seen and Heard is going to be on 24/7 ‘Heart of Darkness’ alert, bringing you up-to-date info on all the worst Congo cliche offenders.)

If you’ve got the time (and it really is worth taking the time) have a look at Wronging Rights’ guide to Congo: “How to Become an Expert on the Congo in Just Five Minutes a Day”

It comes in four parts (one, two, three and four) but don’t let that put you off.

(Although if you’re one of these people that likes to take things very seriously indeed – and we are talking about a series of wars which has killed around 5.4m people – you might be put off by the tone. Sample: “The IRC releases report in December 2004 pointing out that “seriously guys, everyone in the Congo is totally dying.” World community nods solemnly, goes back to searching for internet porn.”)

Don’t be. It’s a great read.