The third in a series on How to Think About Darfur, by James North:
Barack Obama’s big speech in Berlin was generally short on specifics, but he mentioned Darfur twice. He called the conflict “genocide” and later said, “never again.” He thereby endorsed the Holocaust Template to
understand the conflict in the Sudan, but this has not always been a helpful frame of
analysis.
Take, for instance, the Sudan’s government’s announcement two weeks ago that
it has appointed a high level committee to counter the International
Criminal Court’s accusation of genocide against president Omar
al-Bashir. The defense committee will be headed by Salva Kiir, the
first deputy president, who is theoretically the second-most powerful
man in the country.
Anyone who stopped paying attention to the Sudan a few years ago would
be flabbergasted at this choice. Salva Kiir is also the leader of the
Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, which until 2005 was waging a
several-decades long war to win greater autonomy, and possible
independence, for southern Sudan from the regime in Khartoum.
The southern Sudanese struggle is the longest conflict on the
African continent, and it actually fits the “Arabs” against “Africans” pattern (which I described in an earlier post)
better than the more recent fighting in the western province of Darfur.
Sudan, Africa’s largest country, is 1200 miles from north
to south. British colonialism joined millions of “Africans,” who practiced
Christianity or traditional African religions, to the “Arab” Muslims of
the north. Fighting broke out at independence in 1956, and has
continued, almost without interruption, since then. During the latest phase of the conflict (1983-2005), nearly two million people
died.
But three years ago, partly due to pressure from the West, the warring
sides signed a fragile peace treaty and formed a government of national
unity. The truce has held despite occasional clashes. And southern
Sudanese will have the right to choose independence in a 2011
referendum.
I wish I could read Salva Kiir’s mind. President Omar al-Bashir ordered the bombing raids and the military
attacks that killed so many of Kiir’s fellow southern Sudanese. At the
same time, he recognizes that al-Bashir is a canny political survivor,
who is apparently prepared to finally let southern Sudan go so he can
preserve his own power over the rest of the country. Kiir may well feel that if you haul al-Bashir off to the Hague to face the
International Criminal Court, the peace deal could unravel, and
hundreds of thousands more could die in renewed fighting.
If we really wanted to apply the Holocaust Template, the analogy would go like this: in 1938, Chancellor Adolf Hitler
appoints his number two – a Jewish leader of the Social Democratic
party, with whom Hitler governs in uneasy coalition – to defend him
before the League of Nations. The impossibility of this scenario shows
us that the Holocaust Template does not help us much in understanding Sudan today.
P.S. The Times touched on some of these issues re Sudan yesterday. Mike Desch has written of the misuse of the Holocaust analogy in Middle East policy in this important paper.
