Genocide in Africa and the So-Called War on Terror: The Mounting Crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan in Light of the Failure of Intervention in Rwanda

by Anthony J. Hall, Author and Founding Coordinator of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge (established 2002)

Another terrible storm of genocidal terror is raining down on Africa
without outside intervention to counter the prolific loss of human life.
Beneath the local complexities of the conflict lie the stark outlines of
an outright grab for land and power on the part of the Arab religious
fundamentalists who seized control of Sudan's government in a military
coup in 1989. The primary victims of the terror are presently the
Indigenous peoples of Darfur, Sudan's westernmost province. The 200,000
janjaweed, the most prominent of the government-backed militias
engaged in the push to displace and eliminate the Fur, the Masaalit and
the Zaghawa peoples, regularly describe their prey as "slaves."In the
words of Gregory Stanton, a former US State Department official who is
presently president of the Washington-based Genocide Watch, "the Arab
militias of Darfur want to drive out the black Africans because they
want to confiscate their grazing lands, water resources and cattle."

Stanton is adding his voice to those of a growing number of observers at
the United Nations, Amnesty International, and various other human
rights organizations who together are sounding the alarm that a very
clear episode of ethnic cleansing is fast spiralling into outright
genocide . Almost a million black Africans have been displaced from
Darfur through the violence of government-backed thugs who are animated
by the same combination of Arabic and Islamic zealotry that made Sudan
such a congenial host country for Usama bin Laden and a number of his
fellow mujahadeen in the years following their overthrow, with US
backing, of the Soviet puppet regime in Afghanistan. The quest to expand
the realm of Arabic supremacy into the Aboriginal territory of black
Africans is going forward in Sudan through a concerted campaign
involving the mass slaughter of civilians, systemic gang rapes, and the
looting and burning of whole villages. The majority of the survivors
are being held in virtual concentration camps within southern Sudan.
Over a hundred thousand victims of this reign of terror, however, have
escaped across Darfur's western border into Chad. Some of the clearest
accounts of the new reign of terror in Sudan are being gathered in
Chad, where the death toll of starving refugees grows daily. Reports
from Chad indicate the Sudan Air Force has been bombing the refugee
camps and the escape routes of the displaced peoples.

Quite naturally and properly, comparisons are being made between the
current crisis in Sudan and the failure of the western powers to respond
ten years ago to very clear reports then emerging about the unfolding
genocide in Rwanda. The current failure to intervene once again puts a
spotlight on hosts of gross inequities which plague the international
system. It highlights particularly the persistence of that genre of
institutionalized racism that that still prejudices the governments of
Europe and the Western Hemisphere against constructive engagement in
the deteriorating condition of most black Africans south of the Sahara.
As Stanton writes, "African lives still are not seen to equal the value
of the lives of Kosovars and other white people, who are inside our
circle of moral concern." As the mounting crisis in Sudan clearly
suggests, that racist bias towards black Africa continues also to infect
the volatile sensibilities of those who are seeking various forms of
decolonization for the Arab world. The unbroken legacy of the
Africa-based slave trade continues to permeate broad arrays of human
relationship on this planet.

The mounting crisis in Sudan marks a particularly important test for the
United States and its self-declared global leadership of the so-called
War on Terror. It begs the question of whether the superpower is capable
of affording the terror currently being inflicted on hundreds of
thousands of menaced black Africans anywhere near the level of attention
it claims to direct at those who so ruthlessly snuffed out the lives of
four thousand or so victims of the 911 attacks. If ever there was an
moment to undertake pre-emptive intervention in order to avert a
massive act of genocide, a massive act of terror, now is that moment!

Although the government of George W. Bush may be loath to admit it,
there is much more than immediately meets the eye to connect the
building crisis in Sudan with the attacks on the symbols of American
primacy in New York and Washington. Some of these connections can be
drawn from a reading of Against All Enemies, the blockbuster by Richard
Clark, the White House's presiding expert on counter terrorism since the
presidency of Ronald Reagan. Clark devotes considerable space to
examining the radical politics of Sudan's ruling theocrats who came to
power in 1989 in a military coup inspired by the guiding lights of the
National Islamic Front. The dominant figure in the movement's rise to
state power was Hassan al-Turabi. In the early 1990s Turabi welcomed his
"soul mate,"Usama bin Laden, into Sudan. "Sharing a common vision of
worldwide struggle," Turabi and bin Laden collaborated on a number of
projects including, according to Clark, the establishment of "a new
construction company, a new investment firm, control of the Sudanese
commodities market, a new airport, a road between the two largest
cities, new terrorist camps, a leather factory, Arab Afghan War veterans
housing, arms shipments to Bosnia.. and development of an indigenous
weapons industry (including chemical weapons)." When the two men parted
company after their intense collaboration on the way to 911, they
apparently "pledged to continue the struggle and to use Khartoum as a
safe haven"in their cooperative quest to consolidate the militant
strength of the Arab Islamic world. This pact included a commitment to
continue a form of pedagogy which one human rights group called "a
brutalization of Sudan's children with Muslim Brotherhood jihad
indoctrination at all stages of education."

The building crisis in Sudan is the latest episode in the world's most
persistent and lethal civil war. Since 1983 about two million Sudanese
citizens have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Christian
and traditionalist black Africans who block the way to the elaboration
of the kind of uniform Arab Islamic polity long promoted by the likes of
Hassan al-Turabi and the generals who have kept the Sudanese theocrats
in power. According to Jeff Drumtra of the United States Committee for
Refugees, the attacks on Aboriginal Africans on the southern frontiers
of Sudan's Saharan region amount to "a very deliberate policy of
depopulation." In the words of Stanton, "the Sudanese government wants
to confiscate the rich oil reserves under the lands of the Nuer, Dinka,
Shilluk, Nuba and other black African groups."

The political situation in Sudan has been complicated by some
antagonism between former allies in the governance of Sudan. Turabi was
recently put under house arrest by Sudan's president, General Omar
al-Bashir. When he was released, Turabi seemed to take the side of the
ruling oligarchy's armed opponents in Darfur. While Turabi and several
generals were arrested recently due to allegations they were plotting a
coup, an American scholar of Sudanese origin has suggested that these
manouevres may be part of an elaborate plot on the part of Khartoum's
ruling oligarchy to pull the government of Sudan back from the
commitments it has already made in the peace talks underway in Kenya.
The mirage of the coup is, according to Elias Nyamlell Wakoson, a
professor of literature at Grayson College in Texas, "a political game
to divert attention of the domestic constituency from peace talks in
Kenya and turn it on Darfur." In comments published on April 2 by the
Interpress News Agency, Wakoson adds, "It is obviously a mobilization
strategy to find a pretext to intensify the genocide in Darfur." Such
speculation about the difference between appearance and substance is
entirely consistent with President George Bush's observation in June of
2002, when he said "Sudan's government cannot continue to talk peace but
make war."

The terrible reports of a new reign of terror falling on the Indigenous
peoples of Darfur needs to be evaluated in the light of the kind of
rationales used to justify the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The government of Sudan is today pressing forward crimes against
humanity similar to those perpetrated by the regime of Saddam Hussein
against Kurds and Sharia Muslims during the most ruthless phase of his
dictatorship. Will the US government, or, for that matter, all the other
governments on the planet who say they are animated by the spirit of
respect for human rights, stand idly by as yet another preventable act
of terror sweeps away the lives of many hundreds of thousands of black
Africans? Will another Rwanda clarify the principle that the life of one
black African is currently valued at considerably less than the lives of
say a thousand World Trade Center workers in the macabre mathematics of
human worth in a world dominated by a single superpower? Will we
continue to be pointed repeatedly towards a non-existent link between
al-Qaeda and the regime of Saddam Hussein, even as we learn almost
nothing in the commercial media about huge acts of terror being pressed
forward daily by the very regime that hosted Usama bin Laden as he
developed his worldwide networks of finance and fundamentalist
solidarity?

In November of 1997 President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 13067
freezing many forms of American transaction with Sudan. That document
described the government of Sudan as an "unusual threat to the national
security and foreign policy of the United States."In justifying the
move, the former American president alleged that Sudan's government
advanced "continuing support for international terrorism, ongoing
attempts to destabilize neighboring governments, and the prevalence of
human rights violations, including slavery and the denial of religious
freedom." President George W. Bush has renewed the sanctions against the
Sudanese government annually, alleging its ongoing support of specific
organizations classified by the US government as terrorist groups.
Accordingly, the action or inaction of the US government in the face of
the mounting crisis in Sudan will tell us much about the real nature of
the so-called War on Terror. The US response will signal whether it is a
genuine effort to minimize the violence of a terrible scourage on
humanity or whether it is simply a cynical pretext to afford military
protection to small enclaves of race and class privilege as well as a
way to give cover to the global operations of the world's most elaborate
military-indutrial complex-the world's most prolific inventor,
manufacturer and distributor of weapons of mass destruction.

Professor Anthony J. Hall's most recent book is The American Empire and
the Fourth World (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003). He
is Founding Coordinator of Globalization Studies at the University of
Lethbridge. This essay was written on April 6, 2004.

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