The Well-Intentioned vs. Genocide

By Nicholas Desai | Friday, May 13, 2005

There is much to applaud about Dartmouth's Darfur Action Group, an organization dedicated to helping ameliorate the crisis in Sudan. Importantly, they have recognized one of the most horrific crises in today's world. Their goals and tactics, however, need refinement and improvement. But first, some context.

Darfur, a region in western Sudan, has been for several years home to mass murder, rape, and pillaging on an almost unimaginable scale. Jonathan Karl of ABC News estimates that between 70,000 and 300,000 people have been killed and that, of the region's 2.6 million residents, 2 million live in refugee camps. The Islamist government in Khartoum provides air cover to the janjaweed militias—Arabic for "devil on a horse"—as they raze entire villages, rape black women, loot, and kill. The loss of the traditional bean harvest will likely lead to mass starvation.

The thugs who carry out these deeds, trained soldiers and also common criminals, often frame the conflict racially. Though true ethnic distinctions are dubious, the leaders in Khartoum consider themselves Arabs, not blacks. Khartoum justifies the killing as a legitimate action against two rebel groups in Darfur. However, the government is also bitter at having had to make concessions in the resolution of the 50-year Sudanese civil war, which ended in 2003 thanks to American pressure. Pro-Khartoum forces are ostensibly putting down an insurrection, and victims of famine and killing are collateral damage—war is hell, they say. As Musa Hilal, a janjaweed leader, put it, "A bullet can miss its mark." It can do so hundreds of thousands of times, apparently.

What has been done? Last summer, the United States Congress resolved that the events constituted a genocide. (Khartoum officials branded this an attempt to court the black vote.) President Bush and then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice soon followed suit in public (although Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick has backpedaled in the last few weeks). In March, the UN Security Council dispatched 10,000 "blue helmet" peacekeepers to southern Sudan, where the civil war ended almost two years ago. To the delight of human rights activists, the Security Council referred the names of 51 suspected criminals to the International Criminal Court. In response, the Islamists in Khartoum have dragged fifteen of the most notorious killers before their own kangaroo court so as to placate critics. A senior Islamist official is not among these sacrificial offerings. Meanwhile, the rate of killing has eased largely because the vast majority of Darfuri villages have been burned to the ground.

At Dartmouth, the Darfur Action Group hopes that its multi-pronged campus campaign will help mollify the crisis. First, DAG has supported legislation in state and national legislatures by "doing research to support the bills." The proposed Darfur Accountability Act would impose an arms embargo, deny visas to and freeze assets of government officials, aid the African Union military mission currently in Darfur, and institute a no-fly zone in that region. Having passed the Senate, the bill has since become bogged down in the House as the Bush administration has urged legislators to tone down the legislation. In addition, the students hope to see Vermont divest its state pension funds from companies that do business with Sudan and for New Hampshire to condemn the international apathy in a resolution.

Second, they are participating in the "One Hundred Days of Action," a fundraising and awareness campaign intended to help supply the African Union peacekeeping troops already in Darfur with communications equipment. Their function thus far has been largely observational. Through an organization called the Genocide Intervention Fund, associated with the leftist Center for American Progress, they hope to channel funds raised to strengthen the effectiveness of peacekeepers. Thus far, DAG has raised $1,735.72, partly through the sale of food on Webster Avenue.

Third, they are urging the trustees to divest the College's endowment from corporations they deem entangled in the activities of the government in Khartoum. In letters to various companies, the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility, composed of professors, administrators and students, has inquired as to the extent of the government's involvement with the Islamists and their cronies. DAG has advised ACIR and lobbied companies directly. The Trustees, who have the final vote on the matter, have not yet been contacted. ACIR, in conjunction with DAG, hopes to do so within a month.

The fourth set of DAG actions attempt to raise awareness around campus and in the community. Members handed out cards in Collis containing a quotation by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Three students, including DAG General Secretary Anne Bellows '06, delivered a presentation at Hanover High School and hopes also to engage senior citizens in the region. Some members decided to give up something—cigarettes, for one student—to raise awareness and donate the money spent on that commodity to the Genocide Intervention Fund. Certain members also have worn green arms bands, which, according to Bellows, make you "self-conscious" and start conversation. Various speakers, including journalists and professors, have come to discuss the matter.

Only a fool or a reprobate could assert that the mass murder in Darfur ought not to stop. It is therefore extremely difficult to criticize the tactics employed by DAG as largely ineffectual, though they are. Why criticize a group of students who have taken up such a noble cause? It is that the importance of Darfur—and the need to take it seriously—entitles DAG's cause and how it is carried out to more criticism, not less. The Darfur Action Group fails to live up to its name.

"Awareness Group" is more like it. They have put a great deal of effort into informing the student body of the rape and killing, by screening Hotel Rwanda, wearing armbands, distributing Nick Kristof quotations, sponsoring speakers, and talking to high school students and others. Their commitment to education and consensus-building is so insurmountable as to provoke nostalgia for the now-enervated radical Left's inexorable certitude. Where are the committed revolutionaries? When were the stormers of Parkhurst replaced by diffident educators? (The group, ostensibly non-partisan, is certainly left-liberal in association and spirit. Not that there's anything categorically wrong with that.) Most Dartmouth students have at least a vague notion of the atrocities of the janjaweed and also a moral sense that it is wrong. Students—like this student—would rather engage in activities directly aimed at disabling the operations of racist irregulars than watch a Don Cheadle movie, however moving it may be.

Certainly there are actions that strive to go beyond awareness. Divestment hopes that the Trustees will convince publicly-traded companies to influence the Islamists in Khartoum to stop arming the janjaweed commanders, who will then stop their bloodthirsty men in the field from murdering and pillaging. There are many long and flimsy links in this chain. The more valid argument for divestment, I think, is not that divestment will stop a great deal of killing, but that a marginal difference here can save at least a few lives abroad. Rape and terror, however, are cheap commodities, and janjaweed do not weigh their murders through such a precise financial calculus. A large-scale financial attack on Khartoum might be effective, but divestment on this scale is obviously not really about Darfuri lives as much as it is about Dartmouth consciences. It's one of the oldest, most revered tenets of civil disobedience, articulated by Thoreau: "I do not care to trace the course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man or a musket to shoot one with—the dollar is innocent—but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance." The merits of that view are debatable; surely, though, Thoreau and his followers are not particularly concerned with solvency.

Attempts to arm the African Union peacekeepers would also be ineffective. Currently, there are only 2,000 in a region the size of Texas. Kofi Annan has promised to increase this number to a still-pitiful 7,447 troops by the end of August and a few thousand by year's end. The head of UN Peacekeeping during the Rwanda crisis considers 44,000 to be an adequate number. Moreover, these peacekeepers probably will not be "authorized" to attack Sudanese troops, just janjaweed. A pittance of money for these poor, brave men will, at best, help them document the horror.

The Darfur Action Group ought to ignore all "ways to make a difference" except for the one that actually will: lobbying for legislation that will mobilize nations to threaten Sudan with military intervention. Well-intentioned people will object, wondering why an armband, bake sale, or other attempts to trace one's moral allegiance, Thoreau-style, could possibly hurt the chances of meaningful intervention, as I contend it does. The danger lies in believing that one is an agent for good when one's actions are actually vacuous and inadequate. Rain dancing wastes time, energy, and, in this case, real lives. The most committed students at Dartmouth, convinced that they can "make a difference" by giving up cigarettes or through another futile gesture, have less time to commit their energies where they are most needed. It is not as if Dartmouth students have exhausted all possible avenues, save the frat-row bake sale. The eloquence of Dartmouth's students, plus the College's good name, can make a real difference in convincing legislators and other officials to do the right thing. And if, as I suspect, no nations or international organizations will intervene, people should not scrub their hands like Pilate, insisting that they urged divestment, fasted, baked brownies and watched a movie. Out of reverence for the dead, we should avoid the tendency to sublimate flippantly catastrophic failures into positive personal emotions or squeaky-clean moral consciences. If we cannot really solve the crisis, then, as David Brooks said of the December tsunami, "This is a moment to feel deeply bad."

The Well-Intentioned vs. Genocide

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