Human Rights: Criminal silence on Darfur

Pray for me

The world’s moral anger is aroused by the clear-cut ethical dimensions of the conflict. There is, indeed, little confusion about who the good and the bad guys are.

When the Darfur Peace Agreement was signed in Abuja, Nigeria, on May 5, 2005, there were high hopes that it would put an end to the violence in western Sudan. Two years later, the death toll in Darfur has topped over 300,000 people while another 2.5 million have been displaced into neighbouring Chad because of the violence.

The perpetuation of the conflict in Darfur illustrates several realities about the sorry state of trans-national organisations like the United Nations and their ability to provide respite in conflicts where governments turn against their own people.

A recent report issued by Amnesty International exposes some of these manipulations. When the UN Security Council imposed the arms embargo on Darfur in 2004, it applied the embargo only to non-state actors. Despite the fact that there was ample evidence that it was the Sudanese government which was perpetuating these attacks on its people, the passed resolution continued to allow arms to be shipped to the government.

Since the imposition of the arms embargo the Sudanese government has imported $24 million worth of arms and ammunition and $57 million worth of aircraft equipment from the People’s Republic of China. Furthermore in 2005, it imported $27 million worth of aircraft and helicopter equipment from the Russian Federation. Smaller quantities of small arms and other weapons were exported to Sudan from Belarus and Iran.

The Amnesty report further details how these weapons were put to use by the Sudanese government. According to the AI report backed by photographs, military helicopter gunships were used in attacks on civilians in Darfur by the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed militia. In November 2006, military helicopters bombed villagers from the air while Janjaweed attacked from the ground. Since January 2007, Chinese jets owned by the Sudanese government have been seen in areas around Darfur and western Sudan and also been used in attacks on areas purported to belong to the rebel militias.

The dimensions of the Darfur conflict and the successful ability of the Sudanese government to manipulate the ambiguity of its connections with militias like the Janjaweed is indicative of the larger inability of the international community to deal with weak or failed states. The international system, built as it is on the nation-state as its primary unit, is at a loss when it comes to dealing with governments that use militias to accomplish their nefarious purposes. If the Sudanese or any other government in a weak state wants to do something nasty, it is far easier to subcontract its dirty deeds to a “militia” rather than take it on itself.

When the acts in question are as egregious as genocide, it becomes easy for a government to shift blame from itself to the militias and thus elude military sanctions from the UN. For weak governments seeking to subjugate sections of their own population, the message from Sudan certainly seems to be: find a militia to do your dirty work.

Another crucial question posed by the Darfur conflict is the now familiar query of why the international community, knowing full well the dimensions of the conflict, allows such a massive humanitarian crisis to persist? Why haven’t China and Russia come under more criticism for supplying arms that are essentially fuelling genocide? The answer lies in the same fact that allows the Sudanese government to evade international responsibility. When dominant superpowers like the United States attack smaller, weaker countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, the David vs. Goliath, favourite vs. underdog dimension of the conflict attracts everyone’s attention. The world’s moral anger is aroused by the clear-cut ethical dimensions of the conflict. There is, indeed, little confusion about who the good and the bad guys are. Despite vast political differences, political communities as diverse as Venezuela and India condemn the atrocities and news media around the world focus their attention on the cruel superpower guilty of committing them.

Darfur is a different matter. When a Government turns against its own people, the lines of moral outrage are far more difficult to draw for a world community which has little patience with complicated stories. Few know or care to know, how and why the Sudanese government would like to exterminate the people of Darfur? However evil and villainous its actions, the government doesn’t fulfil the world’s simplistic expectations of a genocidal Goliath bound on achieving victory at all costs. Few understand that one reason why Khartoum is engaged in these massacres is to re-entrench its own power in the area and gain better control of oil resources within Sudan. Even fewer worry about the immense cost imposed on neighbouring African countries like Chad that are now receiving hundreds of thousands of refugees. Daunted by the prospect of having to understand something a little more complicated than Bad Superpower attacking small country for oil, the world simply looks the other way.

The Muslim world itself is just as complicit in the reprehensible ignorance that characterises the world communities’ attitude toward Darfur. Again, because the lines of conflict are not drawn as simply as Muslim against non-Muslim or occupier against occupied, the suffering of the Darfuri people fails to become the subject of religious sermons in the Muslim world. Because, both the perpetrators of evil (in this case the Sudanese government) and the victims (the Darfuris) are likely to be Muslim, it offers little in terms of making the individual Muslim feel wronged and serves few political agendas.

Indeed it does the opposite, it reminds individual Muslims that acts of reprehensible cruelty and despotic barbarism may just as well be carried out by Muslims as anyone else. Because it bears this grim message, one that does not lend itself to valorising one faith or nationality over another or suggest that religious unity can overcome anything, it is ignored. The death toll rises, the villages continue to burn and yet the world remains silent.

Rafia Zakaria is associate editor of altmuslim.com and an attorney and member of the Asian American Network Against Abuse of Women.  She teaches courses on constitutional law and political philosophy. This article previously appeared in Daily Times (Pakistan).