Salon Interview: US should be embarrassed - Darfur Genocide, 5/17/05

INTERVIEW-US should be embarrassed about declaring genocide and doing so little


By Julia Scott, The Salon.com

May 17, 2005 | As southern Sudan enjoys the first fruits of peace from the comprehensive treaty it signed with the Khartoum government on Jan. 9, ending a 21-year civil war, hundreds of civilians continue to die violently on a daily basis in Sudan's western region of Darfur. The situation in Darfur exploded in February 2003 after the Islamic regime disarmed insurgent African groups and left weapons in the hands of Arab militias, which it then hired to control the insurgency. The Arab militias began slaughtering and raping Darfuri civilians and razing their villages, displacing 2 million people and creating an untold humanitarian crisis.


Eric Reeves
In July 2004, Congress led the world in unanimously declaring the violence in Darfur a genocide, as the Bush administration also subsequently did. And Congress is considering the Darfur Accountability Act, which would take strong steps against the Khartoum regime and provide support for the meager African Union monitoring force that is now in Darfur.

But recent media reports suggest the Bush administration may be backing off its earlier genocide determination, and even trying to neuter the Darfur Accountability Act.

While the world was wringing its hands over Darfur, Smith College English professor and Sudan expert Eric Reeves was taking action on the tragedy. Since becoming involved with Sudan in 1999, Reeves has taken off six semesters to focus on raising awareness about the genocide. His writing has appeared in over 150 publications; State Department officials read his reports, and journalists quote his mortality assessments. Reeves also led the divestment campaign that eventually forced Talisman Energy, a Canadian oil and gas company that was operating in Sudan, to exit the country.

Asked what the world can do now about what he says is "arguably the most destructive civil conflict since World War II," Reeves told Salon, in a phone interview from his home in Northampton, Mass., "We can pass all the U.N. resolutions we want, but if we don't see to it that Khartoum is forced to adhere, none of these will make any difference ... If we wait for meaningful action from the U.N., we will be waiting forever." What's needed to stop the genocide, Reeves said, is immediate humanitarian intervention and military support to protect civilians and aid operations.

...entire Salon interview at Sudan Tribune

Darfur, which is roughly the size of Texas, was an autonomous sultanate until 1916, when it was conquered by Britain and incorporated into Sudan. The area is topographically diverse—high desert in the north flows into lush grasslands in the south—and ethnically kaleidoscopic. It is populated by some ninety tribes and countless sub-clans. Virtually all of Darfur’s six million residents are Muslim, and, because of decades of intermarriage, almost everyone has dark skin and African features. To a visitor, Darfurians appear indistinguishable.

Despite the tradition of ethnic mixing, the population has recently begun subdividing between “Arabs” and “Africans,” who are known, derogatorily, as zurga, or “blacks.” People of Arab descent tend to be nomadic, herding camels in North Darfur and cattle in the south. The three largest African tribes are the Fur—Darfur means “land of the Fur”—the Zaghawa, and the Masaaleit. The Africans generally farm, though certain groups, like the Zaghawa, sometimes maintain farms while also sweeping south with their herds during the harvest season. Competition among the tribes—for economic, not ethnic, reasons—has always been fierce, but tribal leaders customarily resolved these disputes, and their decisions were respected by the authorities in Khartoum.

In the nineteen-eighties, however, competition for land intensified. There was a regional drought, and the expanding Sahara began transforming arable soil into desert. The introduction of tractors and other mechanized farming equipment fed the ambition of some African farmers. Arab herders in North Darfur began to resent the seasonal forays of Zaghawa herdsmen into Arab-occupied grazing areas. African farmers grew hostile to the camel-riding Arab nomads from the north who increasingly trampled their farmland as they roamed in search of pasture. Arabs from countries to the west—Mauritania, Mali, Niger, and Chad—also began flooding the region, exacerbating the feuds. Farmers who had once celebrated the annual return of Arab nomads, whose animals had fertilized their farmland and helped carry their harvests to market, began to impede their migrations.

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