Introduction

The conflict in Darfur may be the first conflict to result from a peace agreement. Just as peace was being signed between southern Sudanese rebels and the Government in Khartoum, the conflict in Darfur erupted. In Darfur, the fighting emerged out of a similar situation of desperation as in the South in which the local population had almost no access to the central government. While the people of Darfur provided the central government with bodies for service in the military – many to fight in the South, ironically – Darfuris received poor and abusive government in return. In the mid-1980s, when drought and famine hit the region, the central government's response was negligible and inept. When the rebellion broke out in 2003, the government unleashed a terrible counter-attack with bombardments from the air and paramilitary forces on the ground.

"When drought and famine hit the region, the central government's response was negligible and inept. When the rebellion broke out in 2003, the government unleashed a terrible counter-attack ..."

While the consequences for the civilian population in Darfur have been horrific, peace in Darfur, like peace in the South, may require a weak commitment to justice, at least in the short- to medium-term.

Early developments

During the mid-1980s the people of Darfur, western Sudan, suffered a terrible famine.  As a result of the spreading Sahara, reduced rainfall, and increasing pressure on the land, between 100,000 and 200,000 people died. Many northern tribes moved South to avoid the advancing desert and find pasture for their herds. Given the local and national governments' inability to deal effectively with new demands on land, conflict between settled and nomadic groups erupted.

In 2003, a rebellion of mostly settled Darfurians broke out against the national government for its failure to deal with the region's problems. Rebel groups launched a surprise attack on El Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, damaging government aircraft and helicopters and looting fuel and arms depots. This was followed by another major attack on Mellit, the second largest town in North Darfur, where rebels again looted government stocks of food and arms. In response, the Sudanese government dismissed the governors of North and West Darfur and other key officials, and increased its military presence in Darfur, unleashing the now-infamous Janjaweed, a group of nomadic fighters on horseback armed by the national governments of Sudan and Libya.

"The Sudanese government’s supply of weapons ... became available for use in Darfur with the onset of the peace talks in the southern regions of the country."

As its people starved, the Sudanese government’s supply of weapons improved considerably as the country began to export its oil – with the help of foreign companies – and these arms became available for use in Darfur with the onset of the peace talks in the southern regions of the country. More than 2 million people perished in the decades-old conflict in the South, largely through government intransigence and war-induced famine. But while negotiators in Nairobi were deadlocked – on the issue of whether Khartoum should be governed under Islamic law – and while the fighting in the South had essentially dropped off, Darfur became a "region in flames", according to human rights activists, once the government unleashed its counter-insurgency.

The combatants

The present conflict in Darfur essentially sets the Government of Sudan and its allies against an insurgency composed of two main groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), each with their own interests and supporters. From the outset, however, the rebel groups were chiefly composed of three ethnic groups, the Zaghawa, Fur and Masaalit. Over the last few years, under increasing attack by the Janjaweed, members of some smaller groups, including many "arabized" peoples, have joined the rebellion.

Like the conflict in the southern part of the country, the Darfur conflict has developed racial and cultural overtones, threatening to shatter a historic but fragile pattern of co-existence between Arab-speaking northerners living around Khartoum and Afro- and arabized-Sudanese spread throughout the West of the country. Whereas the earlier conflict in the South pitted Christian and other religious Afro-Sudanese against the mostly Arab and Islamic government of the country, the conflict in Darfur is being fought between Muslims, who largely self-identify as either African or Arab.

By mid-2004 the mounting toll of death and displacement forced the crisis in Darfur onto the stage of world affairs. A formerly unreported conflict over natural resources escalated into what many have referred to as "the first genocide of the twenty-first century".

"By mid-2004 ... a formerly unreported conflict over natural resources escalated into what many have referred to as 'the first genocide of the twenty-first century'."

The results

The conflict has escalated since 2003, with fighting concentrated in North Darfur. The government has launched offensives against the SLA in Um Barou, Tine, and Karnoi, in response to the SLA attacks on El Fasher, Mellit, Kutum, and Tine (the latter on the border with Chad and an important trade route to Libya). Government response consisted of heavy bombing by Russian-made Antonov aircraft plus ground offensives of government troops using heavy equipment including tanks, many of them supplied by China.

As with all conflicts, a disproportionate number of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) affected by the conflict are women and young girls who are most at risk of sexual abuse and gender-based violence. Since the outset of the conflict, there have been disturbing reports of sexual attacks on children under 10 years old.¹ Violence against women surged in 2006, with more than 200 instances of sexual assault in five weeks around the Kalma camp in South Darfur alone.²  Most of the victims are assaulted when they leave camps and villages to collect firewood, a necessity that forces them to walk miles into the bush where they are vulnerable to attacks by Janjaweed militia or members of the rebel groups.

By the end of 2008, 300,000 people had been killed during the conflict according to the United Nations, and at least two and a half million more displaced. While food and water delivered by aid agencies to the remaining population of Darfur is an attempt to address survival needs, humanitarian assistance continues to be endangered by the insecurity of the region. Both sides in the conflict, the rebels and the government-allied forces (the Janjaweed militia) continue to violate ceasefire agreements, including attacks on the displacement camps and humanitarian workers. Planting crops is almost impossible for people living under the threat of such attacks.

Who's responsible?

In 2008, Darfur was referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigation. In early March, 2009, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Sudan's President, Omar Hassan al Bashir, after charging him with war crimes and crimes against humanity. This followed the request on November 20, 2008, by the prosecutor of the ICC for arrest warrants for three rebel leaders believed to be responsible for attacks on international peacekeepers.

Evidence continues to show the Sudanese government's support for the Janjaweed, however, and its responsibility for the greatest number of atrocities in Darfur. Human Rights Watch research indicates that, in spite of all the evidence of massive atrocities committed by its allied militia, the Sudanese government resumed recruitment of new militia forces in late 2006.

Few would disagree that Sudanese President al Bashir has presided over a regime responsible for gross crimes against humanity, nor that the culture of impunity amongst world leaders must be challenged. But beyond that there is wide disagreement over important elements of peace and justice.

"Few would disagree that Sudanese President al Bashir has presided over a regime responsible for gross crimes against humanity... But beyond that there is wide disagreement ..."

Peace vs. justice

Those who support the ICC indictment talk of the gravity of the alleged crimes and the need for justice. Even if it can be demonstrated that the President took no steps to encourage rogue security force elements and their Janjaweed auxiliaries to attack civilians at Darfur, supporters of the ICC argue, he is still accountable for not restraining them. They suggest that the indictment will force the Khartoum regime to make peace in Darfur, and prosecution — even if it fails — would be a salutary deterrent on potential tyrants elsewhere.

Desmond Tutu, the former archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, argues that Africa cannot afford to let al Bashir off the hook: "African leaders argue that the court's action will impede efforts to promote peace in Darfur. However, there can be no real peace and security until justice is enjoyed by the inhabitants of the land. There is no peace precisely because there has been no justice. As painful and inconvenient as justice may be, we have seen that the alternative - allowing accountability to fall by the wayside - is worse."

Those who urge caution offer a more nuanced argument which does not sit well in the world of good vs. evil, or black and white solutions. These people are not necessarily rejecting the ICC. Few outside al Bashir's own circle would suggest that he does not have crimes to answer for. However, the current indictment risks causing further violence and suffering in Sudan.

Peace now ...

In a worst case scenario, according to long-time Sudan-watcher John Ashworth, destabilising al Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP) could lead to the collapse of the already fragile peace agreement with the South, which ended 22 years of war. This puts southern Sudanese, including their government, in a difficult position. While they have no love for al Bashir due to the atrocities committed during the war in the South (crimes for which he is not being indicted), for better or worse they are stuck in a partnership with the NCP as co-signatories of the CPA. If the CPA collapses, the prospect of peace in Darfur, already very distant, will recede still further.

In the shorter term, the grip of the state security organs has tightened. Sudanese civil society organisations have been closed, students arrested, public rallies orchestrated to raise the ante, and a climate of fear created amongst moderates who might support the ICC indictment or oppose the regime. Despite the easing of some restrictions after the signing of the CPA, there is still a formidable state security apparatus which has not been reformed since the years of military dictatorship.

The Khartoum regime has also retaliated against international aid agencies in northern Sudan. Humanitarian agencies have faced rising numbers of attacks on their workers and restrictions on their work by government forces and armed opposition groups. Sudan expelled 13 international and three local humanitarian organizations from Darfur in March in response to the ICC's arrest warrant of al Bashir. As fighting escalates with the ending of the rainy season, and fresh attacks on civilians drive thousands more people from their homes, humanitarian access to civilians in Darfur will remain seriously compromised.

... justice defined ...

The ICC is seen as a tool of Western interests. The perception of the ICC is that it has so far concentrated on African issues and has not addressed cases which are of interest to the non-Western world. Since the establishment of the ICC in 2002 to prosecute individuals suspected of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, the court has issued arrest warrants against 13 people, including al-Bashir. All the people indicted are Africans. ICC investigators are all located in Africa, investigating atrocities in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Darfur. Seen in that context, it is unsurprising that al Bashir has accused the ICC of a colonialist conspiracy against Africa by ignoring crimes among the "neocolonizers" in Gaza and Iraq. Pakistan, too, another "friend of the West" has not attracted much attention in the name of "justice".

Without minimising the atrocities committed against civilians in Darfur — by Sudanese security forces and Janjaweed militiamen — it is easy to understand why there may be perceptions of anti-African bias and wilful ICC myopia towards American actions in the Middle East. But prominent political and military figures who were not African have been indicted by a UN tribunal following the internecine fighting in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. And the ICC is considering cases outside Africa, including national leaders like President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia. But a more fundamental question concerns the nature of justice during a conflict like Darfur, according to Ashworth and others with connections inside Sudan.

Many see only the narrow terms of retributive justice: finding someone guilty and punishing her/him. But there are other models. Restorative justice recognises that something has gone wrong and must be put right, that relationships have been broken and must be healed, in such a way as to bring the most benefit to the most people. It may involve trials and punishments, but only as part of a broader process.

There is a thread of this in Darfur, according to expert Alex de Waal, although it is more difficult to discern a single clear message from Darfuris. When Darfuris speak of their right to justice, according to de Waal: "They talk about restorative justice. They talk about returning to their homes. They talk about compensation. They talk about being able to resume the life they’ve lost. I do not see how [the ICC process] has taken a single step forward in terms of all those other components of justice."³

"Many see only the narrow terms of retributive justice... But there are other models... 'There should be holistic justice that encompasses accountability, truth recovery, reconciliation, institutional reform and reparations'."

The Sudan Council of Churches, a force in the southern Sudan peace process, states: "The Church believes in justice without compromising peace and stability of the nation. There is no dichotomisation.... societies in transition like Sudan need other instruments and other models in order to supplement one form of justice. There should be holistic justice that encompasses accountability, truth recovery, reconciliation, institutional reform and reparations." And Thabo Mbeki, heading an African Union panel on Darfur, says that while ICC indictments may strike a blow against impunity, they will do little to soothe the hatreds that have spawned rapes and massacres.

... justice delayed

The government in Khartoum has been largely uncooperative with all attempts to establish peace and justice in Darfur. Investigators of the ICC, whose mandate was established by the Security Council of the UN, have been blocked in their investigations by the government. The Sudanese Minister of Justice has implausibly declared that Sudan is better equipped than the ICC to investigate human rights violations occurring within its borders. In the six years since the outbreak of violence in Darfur, no major actor in conflict has ever been charged by the Minister or his courts.

The government remains convinced of a military solution to the conflict. But the decision to expel NGOs made by the NCP was accomplished without consultation and against the will of the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement (the NCP's partner in government) and that puts an additional strain on relations between the two parties. Many fear a return to war in the South as a consequence of the NCP's recalcitrance.

Nations in transition need stability and peace. Justice can be broader than trials and punishment, particularly during the search for peace. But justice, in some form, will come. Peru has just tried their former leader, Alberto Fujimori, finding him guilty of acts he commissioned as President 18 years ago. Argentina has done the same. In order to begin to establish peace and reconciliation in Sudan, the punishment of al Bashir may need to wait.

International responsibility

The international community has once again become culpable in large scale loss of life in Africa through its inaction. With ample warning of the crisis, coupled with the twenty year history of abuses committed against southern Sudanese, the UN Security Council refused to authorize the resources necessary to halt the Janjaweed and force the government of Sudan to make concessions at the negotiating table, as deaths continued to mount. The cries of "never again" heard since the genocide in Rwanda have rung regretfully hollow.

"The international community has once again become culpable in large scale loss of life in Africa through its inaction... It would be convenient to say that 'it's all about oil' ... but it's not that simple."

It would be convenient to say that "it's all about oil", that the world's thirst for hydrocarbons is the reason for the world's silence on Sudan, but it's not that simple. It's a tidy argument to link oil to Darfur, as some have done, but the situation is far more complicated and difficult to understand. All conflicts have multiple causes and interpretations, and the one in Darfur is no different. It is about oil, but it is also about climate change, genocide, neo-colonialism, and religious fundamentalism.

Regardless, the impact of the conflict on the civilian population of Sudan and, like Rwanda, the consequences of inaction will be evident for years in Darfur. Villages have been burned to the ground, water sources poisoned, and populations traumatized through large scale loss of life. The region will need sustained costly humanitarian support for decades to come as the result of a crisis that, sadly, could have been avoided.

Notes and links:

1. Tara Gingerich and Jennifer Leaning, The Use of Rape as a Weapon of War in the Conflict in Darfur, Sudan, prepared for USAID, October 2004 <http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/documents/reports/the-use-of-rape-as-a-weapon.pdf>.

2. International Rescue Committee, "Increased Sexual Assaults Signal Darfur’s Downward Slide", 23 August 2006 <http://www.theirc.org/news/latest/increased-sexual-assaults.html>. 

3. Alex de Waal, on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, "Indicting Sudan's President for War Crimes", aired on National Public Radio, 9 March 2009. <http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/darfur/2009/03/09/alex-on-the-kojo-nnamdi-show>.

In 1998, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) appointed an International Panel of Eminent Persons to investigate the genocide that had occurred in Rwanda four years earlier. Several months later, the Panel asked me to write their report. First conceptualized as a relatively brief statement, the report was subsequently published as a 300-page history of Rwanda from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century. So there would be little ambiguity about its conclusions, the Eminents agreed with my suggested title. The report was called  "Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide".

I had previously shown what I imagine to be the conventional interest in the Holocaust, at least for a Jew, and read as widely about it as my primary obligations permitted. For many years I made it a point to read at least a book a year about the Holocaust. But since histories, memoirs, novels and  plays on the subject continue to pour off the printing presses with no apparent sign of slowing down, I never considered myself anything more than a casual browser in the grisly subject.

At the same time, I knew next to nothing about other genocides. I knew something about the German annihilation of the Hereros of South-West Africa in 1904 from my academic work on African history. So far as I can now recollect, I didn't have a clue about the Armenian genocide by the Young Turks; I can't even say I was aware it had happened. My longstanding interest in the way Stalin had betrayed the Russian Revolution introduced me to the famine in the Ukraine, but once again the issue of genocide was marginal at best. Despite perpetually trying to keep abreast of African matters, I had never heard a word about the anti-Tutsi pogroms unleashed by the new Hutu rulers of Rwanda in the 1960s, and certainly knew nothing whatever about the vast massacre in 1972 of educated Hutu by the Tutsi soldiers who ran Burundi, which some consider the first African-inflicted genocide.

I was very much aware of the pathological reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, but that was related to my fury at the US aggression against  Viet Nam and the secret bombings of Laos and Cambodia. I remain persuaded that Pol  Pot and Company could probably not have been able to seize control of the country without the destabilization caused by American B-52s,   and I still consider this to be among the many counts against Henry Kissinger that the International Criminal Court should be warranting. But whether the Khmer were guilty of genocide according to the UN's 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was not my major concern.  

The same was true of the 1965 massacres by the Indonesian army of perhaps half a million so-called Communists as well as countless ethnic Chinese who ran much of the country's commerce—the opposite of Communists, in other words; the American embassy in Jakarta was smack in the middle of that one too, giving the killers lists of alleged Communists whom they duly murdered.   The slaughter of political rivals could be called politicide, though under Soviet pressure the 1948 Convention had dropped the proposed use of that designation. I knew and wrote about this appalling tragedy, but it was the insidious role of the US that most troubled me. For some reason, I read long ago (and still own) Robert Payne's Massacre, a harrowing account of the vicious 1971 Pakistani attack on what was then East Pakistan which resulted in millions of Bengali deaths and countless rapes. Many Indians and Bangladeshi have always considered this a genocide. I'm less certain, and Payne didn't use the word, but concepts like politicide and femicide certainly seem to apply.

I acknowledge sheepishly but frankly that the genocide of Rwanda's Tutsi largely floated beyond my consciousness in 1994; I  was immersed in reviewing the Ontario education system for the province's NDP government and had eyes for little else. But I was quite aware of the Bosnian Serb massacre, now judged  genocidal, of 8000 Bosniak males a year later in Srebrenica. But I also better concede that much of the time I felt overwhelmed by the complexity of the decade-long Balkan crisis.

All this changed with the OAU Panel. For my report I spent some time reading in the literature of genocide generally, most of which I never knew existed. Once the task was completed and the report released, it soon enough struck me that for a lifelong social and political activist, the real purpose of knowing something about genocide was to have something to say about genocide prevention, which is what in fact motivates most scholars in this gruesome field.

Besides beginning to throw myself into reading, writing, thinking and discussing these issues, I developed and spent the better part of two years running a virtual international organization called Remembering Rwanda, devoted to gathering attention around the world for the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide in 2004. That experience too influenced my thinking about the subject, as did the tragic emergence in 2003 of the Darfur crisis, which former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan began describing as early as the following year as "another Rwanda". Towards the end of 2008, the decade-old crisis in eastern Congo had also won the dubious distinction of being described as potentially "another Rwanda", even while Darfur continued to smolder. Whether or not either constituted a Convention genocide, both were horrific beyond words and demanded interventions that never materialized. Perhaps I should say "that of course never materialized".

Working through my experiences and new understandings over these past 10 years, I find 10 lessons that help me convey some of what I've learned.

1. All genocides are morally equal.

There are some who would create a hierarchy among genocides. This is an unworthy and unhelpful exercise. It is inherently divisive, insulting those whose genocide is considered somehow less monumentally terrible than one's own. We need, as  historian Peter Novick put it in his remarkable book The Holocaust in American Life, no Olympics of victimization. Instead of demanding a gold medal in suffering, we should seek the solidarity of victims. Those who have been targeted for total annihilation share a singularly terrible place in history.

2.  Survivors of genocide and their descendants care primarily about their own tragedy.

Generally, most genocides are remembered, commemorated and fought against by their own survivors. This is no doubt human nature. It is especially true of Jews and Armenians. Rwandans are far more interested in the Holocaust than Jews are in the genocide of the Tutsi. There are of course individual exceptions to this generalization, and after largely ignoring the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, many Jewish organizations got active seeking to end the conflict in Darfur.

3. All of us are capable, under certain circumstances, of committing unimaginable acts.

Every genocide on record was carried out by a combination of some sadistic and psychotic leaders and plotters (mostly but not solely men) and a majority of ordinary people. Such people have been, and can be, found in every corner of the world. This includes the Europeans and Americans  who decimated the native peoples of the Americas; the Europeans who ran the slave trade and the Americans who exploited those slaves (even without killing them all, slaves were by definition robbed of their humanity, thereby constituting genocide according to the 1948 Convention); the German soldiers who forced the Herero people into the desert to die of thirst  and the ones who later ran the death squads and death camps; the countless good citizens throughout central and eastern Europe who willingly became Nazi collaborators; the Hutu peasants who got caught up in their leaders' propaganda and slaughtered their own friends and neighbours; the Sudanese pastoralists who have been killing Darfuri villagers. 

4. Never trust anyone who vows "Never Again".

No one who has pledged Never Again has ever lived up to the promise. The phrase has become the empty rhetoric of blowhard politicians and small-time dignitaries on solemn occasions. Often these bloviations are repeated by those who have no capacity whatever to carry out the promise but feel they are obligated to sound serious; instead, they just make themselves ridiculous. Too often this solemn commitment is made by those who have real influence but have no intention to act on their vow. In practice, almost no potential genocide has ever been prevented in advance and no ongoing genocide (loosely defined) has been halted by outside intervention. This is true of Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, and now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

5. There will be more Holocausts.

Primo Levi, a Jewish Italian survivor of Auschwitz, first believed, and wrote, that because it had happened, it could not happen again. Later he understood the real logic of the Holocaust: Because it happened, it could happen again. Rwanda happened. Darfur became "another Rwanda". Congo may become "another Rwanda" or—who knows?—perhaps another Darfur. There will be others, as sure as humans inhabit the globe.

6. Genocides are never just about the killers and their victims.

Genocides always involve outsiders in certain ways direct or indirect, immediate or historical. Rwanda is the most obvious example, given the role of the Catholic Church and Belgium in exacerbating divisions between Hutu and Tutsi and France's close cooperation with insiders in the Habyarimana government who were plotting the genocide. In Congo, Mobuto, openly backed by the US and funded by the World Bank, was allowed to turn his mineral-rich country into an anarchic non-state where war lords and resource companies could conspire to plunder whatever Mobuto left behind. When in 1994 France allowed unrepentant Rwandan genocide leaders to escape into Congo, the scene was set for the subsequent Central African wars that have never ended. America's secret bombing of Cambodia (and Laos) during the American invasion of Viet Nam so destabilized the country it allowed the Khmer Rouge to take over. In other words, more often than not the western world shares responsibility for the tragedy. The imperative to intervene follows from that responsibility, not from our vaunted superior morality or our humanitarianism.

7. Most ordinary people will be bystanders. Acting righteously in a dangerous situation is more than we have the right to expect from most people.

Activists too easily scorn ordinary people who simply want to live their own lives. NOT being involved in the crises of others is the default position for most of the world, and nothing else can be expected. It is no doubt gratifying to look down on the majority as ignorant, indifferent or self-absorbed. It is more accurate to think of them as unaware, busy trying to cope with life's adversities, and having their own perfectly reasonable priorities. For most, coping with everyday life is hard enough. We should give praise to the minority who always emerge to join a campaign rather than being disappointed about and scornful of the majority who don't.

As for the righteous, the surprising thing is not how few there are but invariably how many. The gentile who saved Jews, the Hutu who saved Tutsi, the Congolese women who stand up to their rapists, the Zimbabwean human rights activists—these few show a courage unimaginable to most ordinary people. How many among us would risk "doing the right thing" if it meant risking imprisonment, excruciating torture, or even death? How many would give their lives to save another's? It helps nothing to have unreasonable expectations of others when most of us would not act any differently in the same circumstances.

8. Don't expect those with the means to intervene seriously.

Ever since it was decided not to destroy the train tracks leading to the Nazi death camps, the powerful have always found good reasons not to intervene. Look at the Permanent Five members of the Security Council—those who really control most of the UN's agenda—during the Rwandan crisis. The Russians and Chinese didn't give a damn, the French had their usual diabolical political agenda, the British slavishly followed the US line, and the Clinton administration, for its own good partisan political reasons, was prepared to face any public humiliation and self-debasement rather than send reinforcements to bolster the existing puny UN mission.

For Darfur, all five once again had reasons of self-interest, persuasive to themselves, to oppose any attempt to force the Sudan government to call off its armed forces  and Janjaweed militia. China wants Sudan's oil and its weapons market. Russia too wants to sell oil-rich Sudan weapons to use against Darfuris. France  plays its usual geopolitical games revolving around language. Britain is content to follow the US leader, and the US plays an astonishingly two-faced game. The Bush administration led the way in publicly declaring the Sudanese government to be guilty of genocide in Darfur, yet has worked actively and openly with the Sudanese intelligence and secret services on the "war on terror". The US State Department's 2007 Annual Report on State Sponsors of terror states that "The Sudanese government was a strong partner in the War on Terror and aggressively pursued terrorist operations directly involving threats to US interests and personnel in Sudan." Why then did we expect the Bush administration to seriously undermine that same government?

To add insult to injury, one of the states that has been most protective of the Sudanese government, both within the African Union and at the United Nations, is South Africa. Important recent business ties between the two countries apparently take precedence, in the eyes of the South African government, over the atrocities orchestrated by Sudan in Darfur.

9. We don't need a finding of genocide to intervene in a humanitarian disaster.

Determining a full-blown 1948 Convention genocide can be very tricky and controversial. Even now there is disagreement over whether Darfur constitutes a genocide. Determining a crime against humanity is much less problematic or controversial. It is widely  agreed that the Sudanese government is responsible for committing or orchestrating appalling crimes against the Darfuri people.

Strangely enough, an eloquent  statement of this position was articulated  by none other than Colin Powell. In 2004, Powell, as Secretary of State, informed the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the US had decided, based on evidence it had commissioned,  that genocide was taking place in western Sudan.  But he then added the following critical sentences: : "Mr. Chairman... let us not be preoccupied with this designation of genocide. These people are in desperate need and we must help them. Call it a civil war. Call it ethnic cleansing. Call it genocide. Call it 'none of the above'. The reality is the same: there are people in Darfur who desperately need our help."

Exactly. This is why the Responsibility to Protect doctrine is potentially more effective than the Genocide Convention. Assuming the political will to intervene—a huge assumption—it is far easier if actual genocide need not be proven or agreed on.

10. Genocide CAN be prevented. The pattern of betrayal can be broken.

Way back in 1935, already distressed by the impunity with which Hitler was re-arming Germany, Winston Churchill shared his deep frustration with the House of Commons. Human behavior, he complained, demonstrated the "long dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind." Imagine what he'd say almost three-quarters of a century later. The record shows there is ample reason for great cynicism about the possibility of genocide prevention in the future, let alone ending the ongoing conflicts in Darfur or eastern Congo.

Heaven knows we have the tools, if anyone wants to use them—the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, the 2005 UN General Assembly Declaration on the Responsibility to Protect, the moral authority of Never Again, not to ignore international outrage. But none of these tools is worth a Zimbabwean dollar if the major international actors lack the political will to invoke them. To date, national self-interest has always trumped all other humanitarian considerations. To complicate matters further, the American invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration, in the name of democracy and freedom, has significantly muddied the waters. It has become difficult to distinguish a genuine humanitarian invasion from an imperial adventure. Differing opinions on the Afghanistan conflict among women and men of good will is a fine example. These complications can't be dismissed.

Still, there are pretty clear-cut causes on the agenda at this very moment, eastern Congo and Zimbabwe being among the most obvious. Humans being their own worst enemies—"I have seen the enemy and he is us" (Walt Kelly's Pogo)—we can be only too confident others will present themselves momentarily. And then there is only one method of moving a recalcitrant or self-interested Security Council—public opinion, the weight of organized civil society making demands. We must put so much pressure on our own governments that they will make our concerns their own, and take them to the United Nations. Nothing else will work. It's never easy, but yes, we can too.

Hugh was part of the At Issue Ezine Editorial Committee from the beginning. He brought to us a lifetime experience of working for and writing about justice issues in Africa, Central America and northern Canada. Without Hugh our committee meetings would have been routine. His wealth of experience and love of language provided insights and anecdotes that enlivened every session he attended and his no-nonsense approach to editing articles was a constant guide.

He is sorely missed.

The approach we take in "Perspectives on Darfur" is Hugh's final legacy to us. Even though in his last months Hugh spent much time flying back and forth to the Yukon in Canada to help the Dene with land claims, he found time to lead our thinking on the next topic we had planned for the Ezine.

In 2008, Darfur was less in the news than it had been previously; however, we felt there were many unsettled problems and unanswered questions that needed clarification:

• Displaced people were still in camps and refugees still lived across the border in Chad.
• Was the peace agreement signed by some in Nigeria and not by others meaningful?
• Had the Janjaweed been disbanded?
• What about human rights abuses and thousands of deaths? Was impunity still the rule?
• What to do about a government that bombed its own citizens?
• How would the unresolved problems in west Sudan affect the proposed settlement in the South?
• What about the accusation of genocide and the international action that should follow?
• Could the UN, in conjunction with the AU, do anything to resolve these problems?

And since our earlier discussions, one more issue has arisen that may answer some of the questions but raise another:

• How much worse will things be for thousands of Dafurians and other Sudanese since the International Criminal Court's indictment of President Al Bashir had led to his banning of key NGOs?  

The articles that follow by people who know the issues and the region well should take us some way towards the clarification that the complexities of Darfur require: 1.  Gerry Caplan (activist and writer) – the issue of genocide.
2.  John Lewis (Kairos) – human rights abuses.
3.  Wafula Okumu (Institute for Security Studies, in South Africa) – the possibilities and problems involved in UN/AU intervention.
4.  Wendy Gichuru (United Church of Canada) – similarities and differences with the situation in South Sudan.
5.  Darnace Torou (Chadian educator and activist) – the impact of the war in Darfur on Chad.