Sunday, July 29, 2007
Opinion

Africa's Darfur

The ongoing suffering of Sudan’s Darfur region...

An African Union Mission in the Sudan (AMIS) soldier prepares to go on patrol in southern Darfur.
CREDIT: STUART PRICE/AFP/Getty Images

By Ron Goodden

The ongoing suffering of Sudan’s Darfur region is a tragedy justly deserving both our pity and our active involvement.

And yet, on a continent where misrule seemingly vies with incompetence and callous indifference to present the world with serial crises, the situation in Darfur more plausibly gives Africa’s elites fresh opportunities to correct leadership failings and demonstrate African compassion and vision in bringing about African solutions.

Physically Africa’s largest country, Sudan shares the fate of many African nations where ethnic and religious diversity have made for an uncomfortable situation. Its northern Muslim population dominates a largely Christian or animist south. Government heavy-handedness, recently brutal, has been the catalyst for years of insurgency, costing many lives. Substantial petroleum reserves found mainly in the south add to the already explosive mix.

Although the government and its main rebel antagonists reached an accord in 2005 that reduced overall strife, ethnic rivalries in the western Darfur region are being savagely exacerbated by Muslim militias armed and supplied by Sudan’s government—with added death and destruction the sad result.

Consequently, no one should be surprised when even China comes to re-think the wisdom of sizable investments in Sudan’s infrastructure designed to help secure the country’s bountiful petroleum resources for China’s rapidly growing economy. Beijing now finds itself compelled to help shield Sudan’s government from international outrage
over Darfur. That the very characters used to render “Africa” in written Chinese literally translate as “wrong continent” might have suggested to Beijing a bit
more caution before getting involved with Sudan’s troubling realities.

Curiously enough, some of the same voices that quickly criticized America’s role in ending Saddam Hussein’s ruthless oppression of the populace in Iraq—and who even now labor to cast doubt on our Afghanistan mission—are agitating for American military involvement in the trackless wastes of Darfur, where we would battle the same Islamist-extremist element against which we are currently fighting in the Middle East.

American bombs interrupting the plans of Sudan’s religious radicals might be a welcome scenario to those who support the Bush administration’s resolve in continuing the vital war against terror in the face of intense partisan criticism. But what of Africa’s long-term interests beyond being a venue in the war on terror?

Decades into self-rule, most African governments still look to the outside world both to meet the needs of their people in times of stress and as a convenient scapegoat for their own shortcomings. These African leaders blight their hopes of ever sitting at the international table as true equals by failing in too many instances to put their own houses in order. And it is outside forces that benefit from their lack of stability.

The Organization of African Unity, recently re-monikered as the African Union (perhaps in hopes of being more favorably compared with the European Union), could now greatly boost its image by taking effective actions to both resolve the strife in troubled Darfur and to bring the Sudanese government into compliance with human rights norms—and by being seen accomplishing these feats largely on its own.

Let non-African aid in Darfur therefore be limited to the transport of African Union peacekeepers and inter-African aid; and have the role of aid organizations kept to providing only whatever logistical expertise applies, so that Africa’s deliverance might in this case be won for, and by, its own. There is much America can do in the way of transportation and communication that will maximize mission effectiveness without bluntly appropriating command.

Aid organizations, meanwhile, must offer more than the certainty that their advocacy today will turn into criticisms tomorrow, as realities bear down on relief efforts more interested in chasing funding than in producing results.

And in Sudan the reporting of events mustn’t be hobbled by a news media intent on portraying events in confused racial terms. Muslim is not synonymous with Arab. Sudanese Muslims often differ little in physical appearance from their non-Muslim countrymen; labeling them “Arabs” parses racial categories in a manner that ignores the fact that they are Africans.

A vast region of our globe, and those truly concerned about its progress, expects better of those called to Darfur’s aid. SP

Ron Goodden is an Atlanta-based writer. Columnist Mark Douglas is on vacation.