A Necessary Intervention
Why progressives should support military intervention in Darfur.
By Tim Fernholz, Georgetown University
Friday June 23, 2006
It’s a sunny day in Washington, D.C., and tourists meandering through the open plaza in front of the White House seem surprised to see 30-some odd people, dressed entirely in black, marching single file towards the White House. They lie down silently in front of the president’s house as their leader, speaking into a megaphone, details the reasons for their visit: the ongoing genocide in Darfur and the lagging American response to it. The next scene plays out with all the gravity of a Kabuki play: A few police cars pull up, a few police officers politely ask the protestors (who lacked a permit for their afternoon naps) to leave, and they troop off.
Tuesday’s die-in was organized by Africa Action, a non-governmental organization dedicated to Africa issues since 1953 and, lately, stopping genocide in Darfur. Africa Action’s goal in using direct action was to "show that there is a cross section of people in America that care about the genocide," according to their acting co-executive director, Marie Clark Brill. More importantly, they want to encourage the U.S. to persuade the U.N. to deploy a peacekeeping force of 20,000 to 30,000 troops to halt the genocide.
Ongoing since 2003, the genocide began as the result of a local insurgency against Sudan’s Islamist government in the underdeveloped and lawless Darfur region. The government’s reaction, though, was to stop directly confronting the insurgency and instead to support, financially and militarily, Arab militias called Janjaweed, in cleansing the region of ethnically African tribes that they see as the civilian supporters of the insurgency. Since then, at least 400,000 people have died. For comparison, 800,000 people died in the Rwanda genocide. Observers believe Darfur will reach those levels if the violence continues unchecked. Two million more have been displaced to refugee camps, where they continue to die. International outcry has increased, and as nations and NGOs attempt to provide a solution to the problem, an essentially toothless 7,000-member African Union (AU) peacekeeping force patrols an area the size of France without any air support. A peace agreement between the insurgents and the Khartoum government was signed in May, but the genocide goes on as the U.N. attempts to work out a peacekeeping solution. Meanwhile, 6,000 people die in Darfur every month and Janjaweed attacks continue.
On the left today, the issue of Darfur, and what to do about it, rivals Iraq as the most talked about foreign policy issue. Among liberal journals of opinion and the op-ed sections of major newspapers, liberals and progressives have argued over how to address the genocide in Darfur (and, in some cases, whether a genocide is actually occurring). A survey of the various arguments and the facts on the ground suggests that progressives need to adopt the uncomfortable stance of advocating a U.S.-led multi-national intervention.
Matt Yglesias and Alan Kuperman, writing in The American Prospect online and The New York Times, respectively, argue that what is happening in Darfur is not genocide. They say the current slaughter began as a tribal conflict that grew into an insurgency, and although the Khartoum government has committed war crimes in its attempts to suppress it, it is merely enacting a particularly brutal counter-insurgency, not genocide. Thus, the moral imperative to stop the genocide, and the legal one, from the U.N.’s 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, do not apply. So, to determine the appropriate response, we must ask if Darfur suffers from a civil war or genocide.
It is unequivocally genocide. The internationally agreed upon definition of genocide — from the ’48 Convention — comes in two parts: The first is the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group," and the second is actions based upon that intent, directly or indirectly. The U.S. government and some organizations agree that the Sudanese government’s actions in Darfur fulfill these two requirements, though the U.N. and other prominent human rights organizations have failed to call the crime by its proper name (just as they did during the Rwanda genocide in the 1990s). Yglesias argues that the international definition is incorrect, since waging war on enemy civilians has been a common tactic — he points out the World War II bombings in Dresden and Hiroshima as examples of warfare against civilians that was not genocidal. But these tactics, considered by some to be war crimes, are not comparable to the actions of the Janjaweed and their Sudanese backers. They were not motivated by ethnic chauvinism and thus fail to fulfill the first part of the definition. On the other hand, the murderers in Sudan have made clear they want to destroy the Darfuri people. After all, the Rwandan genocide also coincided with an insurgency by the Tutsi minority group against the génocidaire government. Does anyone claim that the U.N. was right not to intervene? Even as a tactic of counter-insurgency, it is still genocide. Arguing otherwise seems to be searching for an excuse to do nothing.
Kuperman ludicrously offers the solution of allowing " Sudan’s army [to] handle any recalcitrant rebels, on condition that it eschews war crimes." But Sudan’s army and government are known for violating agreements; they are already compromised as the agents of civilian destruction. Kuperman, and to a lesser extent Yglesias, worries that intervening on the side of the rebels, who are not innocent either, would be a mistake. But the mission proposed to stop the genocide is a peacekeeping one, not an alliance with the rebels. While all spoiler parties should — and can, with a robust mandate — be stopped by peacekeeping forces, the existence of an insurgency (provoked by the Sudanese government’s mistreatment of the province) should not prevent us from stopping the violence there; NATO intervened in Kosovo to stop ethnic cleansing even though there were insurgent groups on both sides.
So the genocide exists. What now? The previously cited U.N. convention on genocide requires the U.S., as a member of the convention, to "prevent and punish" the crime of genocide. The U.S. has fulfilled the letter of this conflict by punting the matter to the U.N. and offering limited support to the A.U. force. But, as The New Republic wrote in an editorial much mocked by those who deny the genocide or oppose intervening to stop it, " Even people who wish to know about the problem do not wish to know about the solution. … In the response to genocide, the use of military force is properly viewed as a first resort.” While this is, as the magazine concedes, a radical concept, employing soft power does not immediately stop the killing in a genocide. TNR, in a follow-up editorial, advocated deploying a 20,000 troop NATO force, U.S.-led if necessary, to stop the killing.
David Rieff responded to those assertions in the same magazine (similarly to Yglesias and activist Samantha Power), writing that, "The idea that, after Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, and Iraq, intelligent activists can still speak of humanitarian intervention as if it were an uncomplicated act of rescue without grave implications is a testimony to the refusal of the best and brightest among us to think seriously about politics." Rieff and other critics are right that there is nothing simple about intervening in Darfur. But the challenges of complexity do not outweigh the necessity of intervention.
Yglesias, Rieff, and Power argue that because of the Iraq war and America’s image abroad, we cannot become entangled in Darfur. First, Darfur is not Iraq. Iraq was essentially a war of unilateral choice; it was a massive conventional war followed by a worsening insurgency, in a country occupied by a population ambivalent about a U.S. presence. Darfur is a necessary intervention that will be less unpopular in Europe than the Iraq invasion, and Darfuri victims have repeatedly displayed a hope that America will save them. And the U.S. and its NATO (and non-NATO) allies have the resources necessary to stop the genocide. Acknowledging that America’s image abroad is beyond damaged and that military intervention in another Muslim country, even if it is to save the lives of Muslims, will not be popular in the Islamic world does not change the fact that it is the right thing to do.
The question of a post-war political settlement brought up by some of these critics is also important, and some proponents of intervention of have not recognized this. But stopping the genocide now will create the political space needed to begin a reconciliation process between the tribes and the central government. Yglesias concedes that Clinton’s Kosovo intervention, which stopped the violence and created political space for a political process that is still ongoing, was "the right thing to do nonetheless."
Yglesias also wonders if American intervention will seem like imperialism to developing world democracies and wonders, "Is war with Sudan an efficient humanitarian measure when we could be curing measles without great controversy?" If a multi-lateral peacekeeping mission is politically handed over to the U.N — as NATO intervention in Afghanistan was — then it will not be unpopular in these democracies, as the Afghanistan invasion was not. And curing measles is a not a good reason not to intervene in Darfur. Humanitarian foreign policy is not a zero sum game: Hard and soft power must be used in tandem. Even if the Bush administration can only be lobbied for so much by progressive activists, the fact is that choosing between stopping measles or genocide is no choice at all: Progressives must advocate for both to create an effective foreign policy. If we only cure measles, rogue governments will realize there is no price to be paid for genocide. And if we only intervene in genocides, untold lives will be lost to disease and our international image will decline. But only one of these is a pressing national security threat: In an age of North Korea and Iran, the United States cannot be seen as powerless in the face of a murderous state. Finally, Yglesias writes, "It’s extremely unclear to me why anyone would want the United States to become enmeshed in [Darfur]." There is a simple answer: The U.S. is the only one who can — or will — act in time.
It would be wonderful if the U.N. would deploy a peacekeeping force to Darfur. That is supposed to be the U.N.’s job. But it will only augment A.U. forces when the Khartoum government agrees to allow them in, and it is likely that Russia and China (who are supporters of Khartoum) will limit the mandate of the troops, making them ineffective peacekeepers. When they will be deployed — at the earliest January 2007 — it will be too late for almost 40,000 Darfuris who will perish in the interim if current death rates continue. The answer is for NATO, at U.S. urging, to deploy a more effective force much faster and hand the situation over to the U.N. when, and if, that organization is able to overcome internal objections. U.S. troops may be necessary in that NATO force, but U.S. leadership is a requirement: Only the U.S. can mobilize the necessary forces soon enough.
Rieff criticizes interventionists for failing to see the political problems of intervention. Interventionists attack their critics for failing to care about the solution to the genocide. But enlightened interventionists can accept that the situation is not a morality play and still advocate for an intervention now. Rieff and other opponents of intervention fail to present a solution beyond waiting for the U.N. to do something. As former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler said in May, "If we can’t act in the face of a genocide [sic], then what is the validity of a government in any of its actions?" The paralysis of government betrays progressivism; a political movement is predicated on the idea that government can act with real effectiveness, and it must in the face of massive injustice.
There will be more direct actions in Washington on the part of those who wish to stop genocide. But nothing will be accomplished — and a progressive foreign policy will not exist — until we intervene in Darfur.
Illustration: Matt Bors
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Comments
Whenever and wherever systematically massive scale atrocities are committed against a group of people just because to different groups, it is our moral imperative to do whatever we can to rescue the group/individuals being persecuted on what they are. The innocents Darfuris, childeren, women and men, are being slaughtered because they belong to the wrong groups according to Khartoum genocidaries.
— Darfur Daily News - Jun 23, 05:56 PM - #David Rieff: Who are the “best and brightest” among us? I have been hearing that phrase for a long time now and I have yet to see any “best and brightest” other than people who call themselves that. Are Yale graduates among the “best and brightest”? I think it is time for us all to begin to respect the American people and try to have a reasonable political dialogue among ourselves.
— Jana Lane - Jun 24, 11:47 AM - #Ten Things You Can Do Right Now to stop genocide in Darfur.
— Genocide Intervention Network - Jun 26, 09:00 AM - #I think we can agree that most people would want to stop the massive murders of people in Darfur; however, the question becomes one of practicality. I think that morally and based on American principles and human values, no one wants to sit so idly by and watch atrocities committed. Yet, everything is so interconnected in foreign policy today that one action abroad can have direct consequences elsewhere. My point rests with extremist Islamic groups who have risen up against the United States and any of its allies who attempt to extend its “Zionist reach” into the Muslim world. This is a message inspired by Al-Qaeda and UBL. So, when you look at the current situations we face in Iraq and Afghanistan, where much of the Al-Qaeda tapes have dissented largely to the American presence in the Muslim world, you have to wonder what effects extending our reach to Sudan, however positive and noble, will have on the policies in Iraq and Afghanistan-two places in which insurgency is increasing because people are being inspired to fight the ever-extending hand of “Zionist/Crusader” aggression in the Middle East. Whether or not we have noble intentions, the fact remains that we are extending our policy into yet another Muslim country. This is why I feel our policy toward the War on Terrorism in Iraq not only was a bad decision because of misinterpreted and befuddled intelligence, but also because it puts other possibly important foreign policy efforts in a more debatable position, because your actions one place, could potentially affect another project elsewhere in the world.
— Corey Ponder - Jun 29, 01:04 AM - #why does the left only support military action if black Africans are involved? You people are extremely racist in you world view.I guess in your lunatic world only people that are black deserve freedom and the people of Iraq are just a little too white looking for your tastes. Why not be inclusive and be willing to let people of all colors have freedom? Stop being so racist.
— dan bend - Jul 5, 07:38 PM - #This thing you call freedom that America fights for in Iraq is very interesting Dan. I would suggest first and foremost that we not simply place American agenda on the pedestal of moral sanctity or uprightness. On the surface we are fighting for freedom in Iraq. However if we truly value freedom, why do ANY of our administrations place support in the hands of other unpopular or oppressive regimes in the Middle East or around the world? I am in favor of all people being free, and I do not believe MY previous comment was an indication that this is not so. However, it is easy to be idealistic, and harder to be practical. Idealistically I want everyone to be free. Practically, I know that if I go and force myself into other people’s affairs, people will retaliate. You speak of the Muslim community not being black enough for our tastes. That is a shallow attack. I do not believe only black Africans deserve this freedom; however, let us remember how unjust Americans were to their own people circa 50 years ago. It goes without saying that this same country, having internal problems of its own, and still struggling with ideas of race and being different, could distort its idea of freedom when applying it in a global context. I do not argue for ignoring a people’s cry for freedom. I just advocate that people who reason in the manner that Bush does-good guy vs. bad guy, cops vs. robbers, liberator vs. usurper-realize that intervention leads to consequence especially when you have already made enemies with your policies in other foreign countries. I leave with this: I had the privelege of speaking to an official who worked in the Yemen embassy in DC. He said to a room of people that in his visits to Muslim countries with war torn, corrupted governments, no one there said we want America to come overthrow our government and install democracy or hunt down terrorist. No one cared about that. They wanted to know why AMerica was not helping them with issues that mattered, like building schools, and training teachers who were cognizant of the Islamic faith, and providing actual resources to the people and not already corrupt governments. When he said that, I just could not shake the feeling that we Americans are disillusioned about what priorities lay in the Middle East. I feel our view that we are helping Iraq by fighting there is what is fueling anti-American sentiments in these fundamentalist groups. However good we think our intentions may be in Darfur, if we go about it the wrong way, as we did in Iraq, this will only further complicate the situation we face with terrorist groups and their anti-American views.
— Corey Ponder - Jul 7, 10:42 AM - #