Darfur & Beyond: Africa, Tribalism, Genocide

The Darfur region keeps changing, with rebel groups and the government interests of Chad and Sudan now represented there or working through there. It's changing, but not for the better. It is now a crossroads and staging area for those insurgent and government interests, but it is the refugees who continue to suffer and die there. And yet, the Darfur region, Sudan and Chad are merely part of the larger, continuing history of African conflict and genocide.

Yes, the refugee camps and refugees are still there, to be sure; and squalor, hunger and death are still the realities of life for them. "Beyond Darfur," a recent article in Foreign Affairs, sets the table for its thesis by first describing the horrors we've heard of so often and understand too well: the atrocities, the genocide carried out in western Sudan's Darfur region by the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militias. This "ethnic cleansing" of marginalized African peoples by the controlling Arab Sudanese peaked in 2003-04 and has claimed at least 250,000 lives and driven over 2 million more to the refugee camps where the poor conditions continue to claim lives. And while the disagreements and skirmishing goes on, the article warns of new dangers:

But while this crisis simmers, the larger problem of Sudan's survival as a state is becoming increasingly urgent. Trends more ominous than even the carnage in Darfur could bring the country far more bloodshed soon. Long-standing tensions between the Arabs, who populate the Nile River valley and have held power for a century, and marginalized groups on the country's periphery are mutating into a national crisis once again.

The 1980s saw millions of Christian and animist Africans killed in the south of Sudan as the Arab Sudanese National Congress Party (NCP) in Khartoum subdued the south's non-Arab Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). With the mediation of other countries, a Comprehensive Peace Agreement was finally reached in 2005. But renewed conflict and disagreement between the SPLM and the NCP over agreed oil revenue sharing and steps toward political autonomy threaten the fragile 2005 agreement. There have been skirmishes and the amassing of armies at the makeshift borders. And while mediators are again desperately at work, peace and hope stand on poor footing, indeed.

Meanwhile, Chad threatens Sudan from the west. An Economist article chronicles an audacious, if foolhardy, attempt by a rag-tag group of rebels located in the Darfur region to attack Khartoum. And, amazingly, they were almost successful. A convoy of trucks and munitions and a few thousand rebels somehow managed to traverse much of Sudan undetected, or at least unopposed. But as they approached Khartoum they were engaged by the NCP and turned back, having absorbed considerable losses. But they were encouraged by their near success and, unbowed, vowed to attack again and succeed. But the real story, the unsurprising story for those closer to the realities of the region, was that those rebels were backed and supported by Chad, which has its own contentious history and ambitions with regard to Sudan.

And these disagreements and skirmishes between Khartoum's Arab NCP and southern Sudan's SPLM, on the one hand, and among the NCP, Darfur rebel groups, and Chad, on the other, continue unabated, notwithstanding existing agreements and ongoing third-party mediation. Sudan does indeed appear on the brink of disaster.

But if only that were the extent of the dark, dispiriting warring and genocidal campaigns on the Dark Continent. The Economist's most recent sections on the Middle East and Africa have been dominated by articles detailing or updating the warring or violence in other African countries--which often, directly or indirectly, appear to involve disputes or historical animosities between various African tribes. My post of 4.11.08, "I and My Brother Against My Cousin," addressed the role of tribalism in the Middle East and the evolution of terrorism, but doubtless finds general application to Africa's warring and genocidal history as well.

Robert Mugabe's violent and destructive rule of Zimbabwe continues the oppression and killing of his opposition, while ignoring the economic damage he has wrought upon the country and its people. The only opposition presidential candidate brave enough to oppose him was soon run to ground and Mugabe, brazenly, ran an election in which he was the only candidate left standing. And then after declaring an overwhelming victory based on what he said was the democratic expression of the will of his people, it was reported by TV news outlets that he hurried to a conference of African leaders, exultant in his self-congratulatory statements and supremely arrogant in his bearing. And for those few among his fellow African leaders who would criticize him or call for him to step down, he challenged in response that only those among them with "clean hands" had any right to question his standing or his methods. Voices muted, the African Union conference moved on. And there are indeed practical limits to what the U.N. or the rest of the world can or will do.

The Congo, another site of long-term violence and genocide, was reported to have improving conditions, but not good [although by fall, new fighting had broken out between government forces and rebels backed by Rwanda--and attrocities were increasingly being reported]. Although now past, Kenya's most recent violence assures it's place among Africa's dangerous places. South African xenophobia has turned to violence against refugees from the Congo, Zimbabwe and other nearby countries where oppression and murder are still a way of life. Apparently, there are few places to find safe haven or to hide. And then, can we possibly forget Rwanda's years-long genocidal conflict, and Uganda, too? Just to name a few.

Yes, perspective is called for. Africa is not the only place where the shadowed face of genocidal agents and their killing fields are found. Many other genocidal perpetrators and occasions of genocide take their place, however perversely, alongside the history of the progress of mankind, as if to remind us of what we are always capable of becoming. Just a few such examples of the last century would include the Russian pogroms, the Holocaust perpetuated by the Nazis against the Jews, Gypsies and others, the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. And those are just a few of the more notorious and publicized.

There are many, many more to be found around the globe and across time. They usually emerge, run their horrific course--often for years--then are resolved in some incomplete fashion, but offering at least a measure of stability. But in Africa, it seems to be part the continental identity. There always appears to be one occasion or another of warring, genocidal aggression between African tribes or countries playing itself out. And most often there are multiple violent situations unfolding concurrently.

It's always sad, dispiriting, and unclear to consider how the world's citizens can proceed wisely in serving best the interests of all involved, or potentially involved. So troubling to me has been this continuing recurrence of man's ultimate inhumanity to man that a couple years ago--after a presentation I made to my Council on World Affairs study group on the subject--I spent some time writing about it. In my resulting essay on genocide, "Never Again" in the Cassandra's Tears series, I observe that:

I had remained naively confident that the world had meant it when it collectively said, 'Never again'...

But I have learned. And in my more despondent moments, a cynical, resentful view emerges. All the impotent declarations appear more a dark charade of teasing, empty promises and false hopes played out against a cruel and denying reality. They are empty because no assurances are possible; they are false because all reasonable hope has been rendered futile by national and geopolitical realities. And the cruel, denying reality is perpetuated by the exploitative, populist demagoguery of those ultimately bent on the dominating regional power that enables 'ethnic cleansing': hatefully rationalized, unrepentant, ethnic or sectarian mass murder.

But with considerable resignation, I also had to acknowledge the implications of that reality:

But please, excuse this rant, the flailing outrage of my savaged naivety, the resentment of my flagging hope. Most of the time, my view is more balanced, tempered by the realities and responsibilities of nations in world-wide society, and informed by the more difficult lessons of my faith. I have learned that controlling or stopping the principals and agents of genocide is most often a frustratingly, dishearteningly complex matter...

...frequent have been the unsatisfying cases where the complexities, barriers to success, and the likely cost in lives lost by intervening forces, dictated reasonable caution, going slowly. In those cases, intervention was most often pursued through diplomacy, humanitarian aid, and the use of political or economic sanctions or incentives. Unsatisfying responses, yes, and often of limited effect. And the necessary analyses are unavoidably cold, clinical critiques of trade-offs, costs and benefits, of national self interest...but the practical questions must still be asked, the wiser voices heeded, however unsatisfying the answers. Doesn't it all make you sick with grief?