Mamdani on Darfur and the Politics of Naming
June 5, 2007
Democracy Now had a long interview with Mahmood Mamdani, the world’s leading African scholar, on the situation in Darfur, following up on his revealing article in the London Review of Books.
[Full transcript available here]
- MAHMOOD MAMDANI: Well, I was struck by the fact — because I live nine months in New York and three months in Kampala, and every morning I open the New York Times, and I read about sort of violence against civilians, atrocities against civilians, and there are two places that I read about — one is Iraq, and the other is Darfur — sort of constantly, day after day, and week after week. And I’m struck by the fact that the largest political movement against mass violence on US campuses is on Darfur and not on Iraq. And it puzzles me, because most of these students, almost all of these students, are American citizens, and I had always thought that they should have greater responsibility, they should feel responsibility, for mass violence which is the result of their own government’s policies. And I ask myself, “Why not?” I ask myself, “How do they discuss mass violence in Iraq and options in Iraq?” And they discuss it by asking — agonizing over what would happen if American troops withdrew from Iraq. Would there be more violence? Less violence? But there is no such agonizing over Darfur, because Darfur is a place without history, Darfur is a place without politics. Darfur is simply a dot on the map. It is simply a place, a site, where perpetrator confronts victim. And the perpetrator’s name is Arab, and the victim’s name is African. And it is easy to demonize. It is easy to hold a moral position which is emptied of its political content. This bothered me, and so I wrote about it…
We should not be constrained when it comes to discussing the SDC leadership.It’s crucial we know who they are.
I,for one have my suspicions.Jeremy Scahill,a colleague of Amy Gooodman at DN,has studied US military contractors in some depth and suggested on a recent edition of the show that these guys were straining at the leash to get involved in Darfur.
Remember they are not interested in famine relief but they are interested in self-enrichment by means of fighting and servicing war-related needs.
If you do the research you’ll likely discover that SDC is backed by war profiteers and arms companies like Lockheed.The latter has thoroughly insinuated itself into the heart of the US political process so that few of the Washington political elite Republican/Democrat will blithely cross their highly placed lobbyists.
Yes,we’re talking MIC(Military Industrial Complex).A short account of Bruce Jackson’s career affords an insight into the real motives for US “humanitarian” interventions.The term is of course a classic oxymoron.
Jackson is a strategic planner for Lockheed.He has a distinguished pedigree as a dog of war on lobby groups forwarding plans to expand NATO into the former Soviet bloc,and for regime change in Iraq.Jackson worked with Bush’s deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley on this distinguished latter project which illustrates graphically the workings of Washington’s “iron triangle”.
From within this network of government,conservative think tanks,lobbying firms,law firms,and of course the arms industry the next US-sponsored war is being planned.
It was the American Security Council that lobbied hardest for the US to escalate the war in Vietnam and take the war to the communist North with lavish use of airpower.Who backed the ASC?General Electric,Lockheed,General Dynamics et al.
When it came to planning for the Iraq war it was Lockheed that made sure Blair was on Bush’s side.They’d already in 2001 gone to no.1 in the Pentagon contractors league with a $20b contract to develop the F35 Joint Strike fighter.BAE was,according to Goldmans,struggling up to the attack on Iraq.
Well,to get Blair more definitively onside Lockheed brought BAE into the massive F-35 construction deal with the contract to build the planes’ tails and fuselage.The deal enabled BAE to not only push forward with its $70b contract to build the Typhoon jet fighter for sale to our Saudi(democratic?) allies,but also to save 10,000 jobs for itself and 4000 jet building jobs.
Africa,with its rich mineral deposits and oil(esp.in Nigeria and Sudan-China is a big customer)has always been a target.US-sponsored proxy wars have already taken a hideous toll across the continent and France has got involved as well(in Rwanda backing the Hutus against the US-favoured Tutsi).Of course more recently the US backed the Ethiopian intervention in Somalia.
So now they want to get involved via proxies in Darfur.Well, humanitarian intervention it won’t be,but the contractors sure stand to make billions out of the carnage and mayhem that will be the result.