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Darfur's War of Definitions
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Sudanese militiamen
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Finally,
the conflict in Darfur in western Sudan has become a focal point
in international diplomacy and media attention. This is the
least to expect after the months of violent campaigns that
started as early as February 2003.
Almost
all parties that have recently discovered the existence of
Sudan's western region, an area that compares to the size of
France, are engaged in a war of words, propaganda if you wish.
Even Muslims and Arabs, who should be the most concerned with
the fate of the Sudanese by virtue of their cultural, political,
and historic proximity, are partaking in this war of
definitions.
One
can justify – to an extent - why Arab sensibility is injured
by the use of the word "Arab militias" when referring
to the Janjaweed gangs that have murdered and expelled thousands
of innocents in Darfur. The term is unceremoniously used as if
the intention is simply to implicate one group and vindicate
another.
Of
course, referring to certain Sudanese tribes as “Arab” is
not a media invention. Some African Sudanese are called
“Arab” for speaking a dialect derived from or heavily
influenced by the Arabic language. Moreover, the authenticity of
the term was further validated by the fact that the Janjaweed
have been consistently abated by Sudan's central government,
which used the militia to quell two major rebel groups, Sudan's
Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) and the Justice and Equality
Movement (JEM). The two groups claim that the Khartoum
government has deliberately neglected Darfur's worsening plight.
And
since the Sudanese government is trademarked “Arab” –
designated as such for the sake of making a disturbing contrast
with the rest of the non-Arab non-Muslim country - Darfur
emerges as the perfect manifestation of an “us vs. them”
conflict that can be touted by the media and exploited by
politicians. (Some might recall the first few days of intense
coverage of the Darfur crisis and how journalists who now lament
the plight of the “Africans” failed to recall basic
information about the region, how to pronounce its name
correctly, or how to locate it on a map.)
Darfur
is perfect for being touted by the media and exploited by
politicians. |
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Alex
de Waal is not one of those journalists. He is recognized in
Western media circles as a leading authority on Sudan. He wrote
in the Observer (July 25): "Characterizing the Darfur war
as 'Arabs' versus 'Africans' obscures the reality. Darfur's
Arabs are black, indigenous, African Muslims – just like
Darfur's non-Arabs."
Unfortunately,
a story about African Muslims engaged in a conflict rooted in
tribal contentions, pitting nomadic tribes that thrive on local
conquest against each other, is not newsworthy from a media
point of a view – and not as exploitable from a politician's
– and so an unspoken war of hidden definitions, rhetoric and
sub-meanings had to be unleashed, with 1.2 million Sudanese
refugees being the least important component thereof.
For
a besieged and discredited US government, the civil strife in
Darfur is a Godsend. It draws attention away from the United
States’ own indiscretions, focusing it on the “Arabs,” who
are brutalizing “Africans” in a civil war that the House of
Representatives unanimously termed in a July 22 resolution
“genocide.”
That
term has also introduced another battlefield of definitions and
counter-definitions: "What is happening in western Sudan is
not the same as Kosovo or Rwanda, nor is it, strictly speaking a
genocide," writes Adrian Hamilton in the Independent.
"It is the kind of messy local, tribalized tragedy bred on
deprivation and lack of resources and fuelled by outside
interference."
But
for the US government, there is more to Sudan's misfortunes than
a mere distraction from its own blunders and calamities. The US
has for many years helped feed the civil war that has
irreparably ravaged the country. In 1998, Bill Clinton ordered
the bombing of Sudan's largest, if not only, pharmaceutical
plant, alleging that it manufactured agents that could be used
to produce weapons of mass destruction. It took only a few
months of investigations before the claim was declared a farce.
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Refugees in Darfur
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Hence,
the US government acted as it often does in such crises: it
drafted, pushed for and passed a UN Security Council resolution
on July 31, threatening sanctions and other “punitive
measures” if the Sudanese government failed to rein in the
Janjaweed “Arab” militias within thirty days. Those who
recognize the complexities of the Darfur conflict should also
realize the resolution is an already–served sentence for
Sudan, and perhaps an initial invitation for military
intervention in a country that is already swarming with
militants and deeply scarred by war.
If
the crisis in Darfur escalates, then the only possibilities that
await Sudan are the imposition of sanctions, a senseless bombing
campaign, and further cultural animosity and division between
those who gullibly identified with the “Africans” and those
who rashly sided with the “Arabs.”
None
of these likelihoods however, will help the “abandoned,
starved and desperate refugees” of Darfur, one of whom is
Aziza Mahmoud, who had an encounter with one of the Janjaweed
“Arab” militias. Now she is in a refugee camp, living with
her children in a five foot-high shelter made of twisted
branches and leaves, torn clothes and cardboard.
She
told the Independent’s Kim Sengutpa "My sister had
dragged my children away. But I could not move. I was standing
there crying when he turned and shot me. He did not say
anything. He just fired. I dragged myself behind my home and lay
there. My neighbors carried me away with my husbands' (dead)
body. I have five children who have no father. I cannot work
because if I just walk a little my foot hurts. I cannot even
stand at the roadside begging for too long without
hurting."
The
late Palestinian professor Edward Said once wrote that human
rights are not "cultural or grammatical things, and when
they are violated, they are as real as anything we can
encounter." His words ring true today in Darfur as they
have in Palestine for generations. True, the burnt villages
often vary in name, but in the final analysis, the definitions
for anguish, brutality and indifference remain unchanged.
*
Ramzy Baroud
is a veteran Arab-American journalist. A regular columnist in many
English and Arabic publications, he is editor-in-chief of
PalestineChronicle.com and head of Research & Studies Department
at Aljazeera.net English.
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