Mamdani is persuasive in Darfur debate, Prendergast waffles

By James North
Several hundred people packed into the Cowin Auditorium at Columbia’s Teachers College
last night, and nearly all of them stayed more than 2 hours for an
intriguing debate about what is actually happening in Darfur and what
should be done about it.
Mahmood Mamdani, a professor at Columbia, calmly presented some of the arguments in his just-published Saviors and Survivors; the Darfur conflict
started as a civil war; the Sudan’s government most ferocious
repression was in 2003-04; the conflict is now a simmering, complicated
stalemate. But, he said, the Save Darfur movement continues to misuse
the word "genocide," exaggerates the death toll, implies that the
situation is worsening, and calls for Western military intervention.
Mamdani continued that Save Darfur’s misleading view of the reality
today in Darfur is part of what is blocking a negotiated political
solution. By pursuing Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, for war
crimes, the International Criminal Court is making a settlement less likely, because al-Bashir is an indispensable part of the peace process.
John Prendergast,
Mamdani’s opponent, is a former Clinton administration official who is
highly visible in the Darfur solidarity world. He is more a
publicity-hungry showman than a genuine scholar, an Alan Dershowitz
with shoulder-length hair and a laid-back Indiana Jones manner. What
was fascinating was how much he backed off from Save Darfur’s extreme
claims, possibly in part because he was confronted with Mamdani’s
unassailable evidence.
Prendergast spent a healthy part of his presentation name-dropping, mentioning several times that he recently met President Obama, and boasting about the number of trips he has made to Darfur and Sudan. He was also manipulative, dwelling emotionally on the ongoing suffering in Darfur’s refugee camps
without recognizing the complexity that Mamdani had described. (For
instance, Prendergast spoke repeatedly about Darfur’s "rebels," without
noting that an insurgency that started as two groups has now splintered
into more than 20, at least one of which has gone over to the
government side.)
But on several major points of dispute, Prendergast weaseled. Early on,
he stepped back from the word "genocide,"admitting that "I wouldn’t
fall on my sword for it." (The web site for his own group, the Enough
Project, says straightforwardly that Sudan’s government is committing
"genocide" in Darfur.) He said the Save Darfur movement only advocates
outside force as a last resort, which will come as a surprise to anyone
who has over the years followed their strident calls for a no-fly zone
and other Western military intervention. And he even recognized that
the indictment of al-Bashir might only be useful as a stick to force
the Sudanese president to negotiate; Save Darfur has pushed for war crimes trials whatever the political cost.
In the spirited question period, Prendergast backpedaled even further,
denying he has a connection with Save Darfur. So it was a little
surprising to see this morning that the Enough Project is still listed
on the Save Darfur web site as one of its supporters.
Back to Mahmood Mamdani. Toward the end of the evening, he did
recognize that "Save Darfur did have a salutary effect at the
beginning," back in 2003-04, during the worst violence; this
acknowledgment would have been useful earlier, as most of the foot
soldiers in the movement are genuine, and would probably be more open
to his views if they did not think all their efforts had been
counterproductive.
But possibly his most profound insight was into the difference between
"victors’ justice" and "survivors’ justice." The model for victors’
justice is the Nuremberg trials;
the Allies had won, and Germans and the remaining Jews were not going
to be living in the same state. So prosecutors could hold the Nazi
criminals accountable.
The model for survivors’ justice is the South African settlement in the early 1990s. The African National Congress did not win a clearcut victory, and the apartheid officials, from generals on down to police constables, were going to remain in the same country. If Nelson Mandela and the ANC had followed the Save Darfur logic, fighting would be continuing to this day.