The Fanonite

Alex de Waal analyzes the politics and practicality of intervention on BBC’s Viewpoints.

Analysts say that Darfur is Rwanda in slow motion, that we should send troops to protect African civilians from their Arab killers and disarm the infamous Janjaweed.

Khartoum came under attack by rebels just two weeks ago

In the Rwandan genocide, a million people were slaughtered in a hundred days. It was Africa’s holocaust. Few would have opposed a short sharp episode of colonial-style armed intervention to stop it.

The British Foreign Secretary, David Milliband, certainly leans towards such a policy for Darfur.

“Too many times, in the aftermath of mass atrocities, we’ve promised ‘never again’,” he said.

“But in a world where so many states remain wedded to the principle of non-interference and the primacy of sovereignty, how do we make the responsibility to protect a reality, not a slogan?”

His are good intentions but they pave the way to a problem from hell.

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Sami al-Hajj — an al-Jazeera cameraman, an innocent man — has just been released from Guantanamo where he was held and tortured for seven years without charge. He was arrested and delivered to the Gulags of the ‘land of the free’ by the execrable Musharraf regime in Pakistan. His innocence proved no impediment to his American tormentors who kept him gagged and bound even during his final flight to Sudan.

(At the end of the first report, Al Jazeera interviews someone from Reporters Without Borders. The name may suggest a link with Medicins Sans Frontiere; there’s none. RWB is a dodgy outfit that receives funding from NED, and its targets predictably align neatly with the official US enemies list [Venezuela, Cuba etc])

An earlier interview with Sami’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith.

Nneka, singing Heartbeat. So beautiful and impassioned, it leaves you speechless. This is the kind of authenticity that MTV and the like spend billions trying to imitate; they never succeed, but inevitably dilute the art in the process. This is heartfelt; a call for justice, recognition of our shared humanity and solidarity on a personal level.

In her own words:

“I get inspired when I take a severe look at the things going on in our world today; especially in my country. How people live, suffer and endure pain, politics and religion, when I see all that man has evoked and created out of self-centeredness and devotion to material things”.

Nneka’s voice strikes an eerie balance between rage and pain which mirror’s the abrasion of two continents, Europe and Africa, within Nneka’s life so far. Nneka reiterates her humility in the face of her musical talents.

“I do not see myself as a performer but as somebody who shares her heartfelt feelings with others. I have fortunately, by the grace of God, the opportunity to sing my message to you on stage.”

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A documentary based on Frantz Fanon’s Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (Black Skin, White Masks).

‘If a government wants to abuse human rights and rig elections, it needs to have the support of - or be - the western powers’, writes Seumas Milne.

There is no question that the struggle over land and power in Zimbabwe has brought the country to a grim pass. Nearly a decade after the takeover of white-owned farms and the rupture with the west, economic breakdown, hyperinflation, sanctions and Aids have taken a heavy toll. With the expectation now that a second round of elections, mired in claims of fraud, may after all keep President Mugabe in power, the prospect must be of continued economic punishment and crisis.

On a different scale, there’s also no doubt that in Tibet — the other central international focus of western concern in the past month — deep-seated popular discontent fuelled last month’s anti-government protests and attacks on Han Chinese, which were met with a violent crackdown by the Chinese authorities. Certainly, given the intensity of the US and European response, from chancellors and foreign ministers to Hollywood stars and blanket media coverage, you’d be left in little doubt that these two confrontations were the most serious facing their continents, if not the world.

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Onion News Network: In The Know panelists discuss whether we should spare Africa’s feelings by not telling them about the global economy.

How Can We Let Darfur Know How Much We’re Doing For Them?

Panelists discuss the tragic lack of media access in Darfur and how we can help Darfurians realize how much we’re helping them.

A revision to Michael Barker’s earlier article.

On March 8, 2008, I wrote that Professor Stephen Zunes was correct to point out that Stephen Gowans was mistaken to claim that “the governments Zunes really seems to be concerned about (Zimbabwe, Iran, Belarus and Myanmar) are hostile to the idea of opening their doors to unrestricted U.S. investment and exports” (Point 5).

My statement was incorrect, because in Zunes’ first article “Nonviolent Action and Pro-Democracy Struggles”, it is very clear that he is primarily concerned with four counties in particular, that is, Zimbabwe, Iran, Belarus and Myanmar. These are all countries in which the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its democracy manipulating cohorts are highly active. Moreover, judging by NED’s project database, over the past five years the NED has funnelled over $13 million to the following groups working within (and also outside of) these four countries.

• Zimbabwe ($1.5 million in 2004, 2005 and 2006 only; in 2006 groups obtained $1 million) Groups funded include: American Center for International Labor Solidarity, Centre for Policy Studies, Crisis Coalition, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, Federation of African Media Women – Zimbabwe (FAMWZ), International Republican Institute, Mass Public Opinion Institute (MPOI), Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA-ZIM), National Constitution Assembly, National Democratic Institute, Zimbabwe Community Development Trust (ZCDT), Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, and ZimRights.

• Iran ($1.4 million) Groups funded include: Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, American Center for International Labor Solidarity, Center for the International Private Enterprise, Civic Education and Human Rights, Institute of World Affairs, International Republican Institute, Iran Teachers’ Association, National Iranian-American Council, Vital Voices Global Partnership, and the Women’s Learning Partnership. For further discussion of the NED’s work in Iran, see here.

• Belarus ($2.9 million in 2004 and 2005 only) Groups receiving funding are not listed. For further discussion of the NED’s work in Belarus, see here.

• Myanmar ($7.7 million – in 2004, 2005, and 2006 only) Groups receiving funding are not listed. For further discussion of the NED’s work in Myanmar, see here.

Needless to say these NED grants represent the tip of the iceberg of the ‘democratic’ monies following into these counties, as their grants topped up by better funded ‘aid’ agencies, like the US Agency for International Development: indeed, total official overseas development aid provided by the United States for 2005 came to $27.6 billion.

Michael Barker is a British citizen based in Australia. Most of his other articles can be found here.

James Nachtwey’s impressions of war. (thanks Manfred)

So China is indirectly responsible for human rights abuses in Darfur by virtue of its business links with Sudan, and Steven Spielberg pulls support for the Beijing Olympics. Israel on the other hand is directly responsible for the creeping genocide of Palestinians, and what does he do? Make propaganda films to deflect attention from its crimes.

‘It’s gratifying to have a new focus on Darfur but China’s role in halting the country’s conflict is no bigger than anyone else’s’, writes Jonathan Steele

The excitement over Steven Spielberg’s withdrawal of support for the Beijing Olympics has helped to re-focus attention on Darfur. That is all to the good, especially if it leads his fellow-protesters to look more clearly at what is actually happening there and what moral responsibility China really has in allegedly failing to stop the war in Darfur. Brian Brivati wrote on this blog yesterday that “China is the key“, but is that really the case?

Wars always have at least two sides, and in the Darfur case that is an underestimate. There are around a dozen different rebel groups currently fighting the government. To put the blame on only one party makes no moral or political sense. The best way to stop the fighting and the humanitarian emergency that flows from it is to have an organised ceasefire and hold talks. This is what the Sudanese government did last October on the eve of the peace conference that the UN and the African Union held in Libya. Only a minority of the rebel groups reciprocated the ceasefire offer or attended the conference. They preferred to go on fighting, in part because they feel the one-sided approach of much of the outside world, with its exclusive pressure on the Khartoum government, helps their cause.

The point is slowly being accepted by many of the so-called Darfur support groups. Compared with three years ago, when the campaign started, their statements now show a greater willingness to recognise the rebels’ negative role in attacking aid workers, stealing humanitarian supplies, and raiding government-held villages and towns. The latest atrocity in early February when Khartoum-backed militias burnt down two towns in Western Darfur was provoked by attacks by the Justice and Equality Movement, one of the main groups which rejects peace talks. The pattern is depressingly familiar from almost every counterinsurgency campaign in history - rebel raids, which produce a government over-reaction. But who is to blame? If the rebels went to the peace table, there would have been no impulse for the government to respond with force.

The support groups still seem not to appreciate that the humanitarian situation has changed. Claims of genocide were never accepted by the UN, but the events that gave rise to them occurred in 2003 and 2004. Today’s Darfur is still appalling but not so bloody a place. In any case, the death rates of those years are heavily disputed, as is their cause. The victims of hunger and disease exacerbated by forced displacement are one-sidedly, and often deliberately, described by lobby groups as having been killed by government forces or their militias, as though they were executed.

Subsequent years have seen a huge deployment to Darfur of UN and other international aid agencies. They eliminated starvation and massively reduced death from disease. Displacement in overcrowded camps is no longterm solution and people need confidence and security to go home. But the need to bring in a more powerful UN peacekeeping force to help to ensure that should not obscure the fact that the humanitarian effort has already been one of the UN’s most successful interventions anywhere.

Getting governments to fulfil their promises of troops for the new hybrid UN/AU force in Darfur, trying to obtain more helicopters, and building the peacekeepers’ bases more quickly are important tasks. But, however well-equipped its force is, the UN cannot impose peace. That can only be done through a ceasefire and political talks. As Ban Ki-moon rightly said last week, “the deployment of Unamid will only be as effective as the political process it is mandated to support“.

How does China relate to this? It helped to pass the UN resolution to set up Unamid. It has contributed several hundred military engineers to Unamid. What more can it realistically do? The idea that it can pressure Khartoum “to stop the killing”, as Brivati wrote yesterday, is too simple. The killing is more likely to stop when the rebels come to the peace table that the AU and the UN (with China’s help) have laid out for them.