What Will Be Remembered? History and the Darfur Genocide
Eric Reeves | September 2019 | https://wp.me/s45rOG-9441
Perhaps a full history of the ongoing genocide in Darfur will one day be written. To be at all useful, it will necessarily include events from 2002 (and earlier) through the (potential) transition to civilian governance in Sudan in 2019. There is still little evidence that the dynamic new Prime Minister of Sudan, Abdallah Hamdok, will be able to rein in the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Darfur or halt the predations of armed Arab groups targeting non-Arab/African farmers and internally displaced persons. A role in the new Sovereign Council for RSF commander Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemeti”) seems to ensure that the RSF will remain the primary source of real power in Darfur; indeed, the Constitutional Draft ratified last month gives co-equal status to Hemeti’s RSF and the regular army, the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), under the command of Sovereign Council head General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. This in effect legitimates Hemeti’s forces as a private army, an untenable situation in any truly civilian government.
Beyond the continuing violence and insecurity in Darfur—which keeps more than 300,000 Darfuri refugees in eastern Chad, and leaves over two million displaced within Darfur—the truly vast resources necessary for reconstruction and restitution will have no adequate place in Sudan’s national budget, even if Prime Minister Hamdok reduces the exorbitant percentage of that budget devoted to the military and security services (including the RSF). Many thousands of farms and farmlands have been violently destroyed or seized by Arab militias and marauders; billions of dollars of livestock, crops, and possessions have been destroyed or seized; many thousands of villages have been wholly or partially destroyed, often including vital water sources and irrigation systems. Displaced farmers seeking to return to or work their farms are constantly subject to extreme violence, including murder, rape, and kidnapping.
In short, a violent catastrophe that has continued for seventeen years cannot be subject to a quick fix, and even preliminary improvements in the lives of people affected by the long siege of violence cannot begin until there is security. The “development” projects touted by the al-Bashir regime don’t begin to address the issues raised here, and IDP camps seem destined either to be dismantled or turned into giant, slum-like ghettoes if they lie near major towns (Nyala, el-Fasher, el-Geneina, two or three of the larger towns in Jebel Marra). Many of those who have violently seized farmlands come not from the Arab groups of Darfur but neighboring Chad, as well as nearby Niger and Mali. It will take a military commitment nowhere in sight to remove them and allow for the safe returns of the farms’ true owners.
I have done what I can for more than twenty years to fight for a just peace in greater Sudan, including South Sudan, South Kordofan, Blue Nile, and indeed all the areas that have suffered under the brutal tyranny of the al-Bashir regime. I vowed to myself that I would not quit these efforts until I had outlasted al-Bashir—and so I have.
Since 2003 my efforts have concentrated on Darfur, as have my publications. For a period—roughly 2004 to the beginning of the Obama administration in early 2009—Darfur was an international human rights cause célèbre. There has perhaps never been a foreign affairs crisis not directly involving immediate U.S. national interest that has been so completely taken up by American civil society, and to a lesser degree the civil society efforts of Canada and Europe. During this period I found it relatively easy to publish my thoughts on Darfur in prominent venues, such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Dissent Magazine, and many others.
But as the genocide continued with an apparent endlessness, those working in the cause of ending it wearied and drifted away. Perhaps more importantly, the priorities of the Obama administration were such that Darfur became much less important than a “productive” bilateral relationship between Washington and Khartoum in which counter-terrorism intelligence was the chief desideratum. One senior State Department official of the Obama administration spoke explicitly in November 2010 of “de-coupling” Darfur from any negotiations with Khartoum about securing international terrorism intelligence.
The second Obama administration Special Envoy for the Sudans, Princeton Lyman, declared with unsurpassable cynicism:
“We [the Obama administration] do not want to see the ouster of the [Khartoum] regime, nor regime change. We want to see the regime carrying out reform via constitutional democratic measures.” (Interview with Asharq al-Awsat, December 3, 2011 | http://english.aawsat.com/2011/12/article55244147/asharq-al-awsat-talks-to-us-special-envoy-to-sudan-princeton-lyman )
This shameless dishonesty, suggesting that the regime of Omar al-Bashir could “carry out reform via constitutional democratic measures,” to this day shocks me: everyone in the Obama administration knew full well that this was a preposterous excuse for continuing business as usual with a man (and a regime) for which the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant charging genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Darfur.
Today, I find it impossible to publish articles on Darfur in the prominent venues that once seemed to welcome my analyses; lecture invitations that were once more than I could possibly accept have ended entirely; broadcast interviews which I am sporadically invited to give have focused only on the events of the uprising, never on Darfur as a cause unto itself.
In a sense, this means little: early on in my writing about Darfur I resolved to create what I considered to be a year-by-year archive of the genocidal violence; the results of this archival endeavor may be found on my website, and in more organized form in the publications (including longer “e-publications) that are listed below.
This is my archive. It is difficult for me to imagine continuing this effort, although my Twitter account (@SudanReeves) is also an archive of more than 3,500 substantive Tweets since 2009, if with more discrete and focused commentary. I will continue to sustain this effort and give interviews as requested. But I no longer expect to publish in the more conventional sense. A decade of watching the world lose interest in the people of Darfur—mainly poor, Muslim, dark-skinned, and geopolitically irrelevant (and geographically extremely remote)—has been soul-destroying. Although I have received the most gratifying encouragement from my Sudanese friends and colleagues, as well as encouragement from many non-Sudanese friends and colleagues, I no longer believe I can contribute substantively, or at least in the ways I have in the past.
My hope, of course, is that someday someone will indeed write a full history of the Darfur genocide, and that the spate of books that appeared while Darfur was a subject of international interest will be superseded by the work of a person(s) committed to telling the full story, giving a full reckoning. Such a history cannot but be extremely harsh in its judgment.
If my work serves in any way in this cause, it will have been worth bearing witness as fully as I’ve been able to unfathomable human destruction and suffering.
Publications, 1999 – 2019
A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide (Key Publishing, 2007) (review commentary at http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article285.html)
Compromising with Evil: An archival history of greater Sudan, 2007 – 2012 (October 2012 in eBook format, www.CompromisingWithEvil.org) (review commentary at http://sudanreeves.org/2013/08/30/compromising-with-evil-an-archival-history-of-sudan-2007-2012-commentary/)
Genocidal Violence in Darfur, Sudan: A Continuing Archival History, 2013 – 2019 (September 2019 in eBook format, http://sudanreeves.org/2019/09/15/violence-in-darfur-sudan-a-continuing-archival-history-2013-2019/
Monographs:
“They Bombed Everything that Moved”: Aerial Military Attacks on Civilians and Humanitarians in Sudan, 1999 – 2011, May 9, 2011 (analysis and bibliography of sources, 80+ pages with accompanying Excel spreadsheet, at | https://wp.me/s45rOG-7566
“Changing the Demography”: Violent Expropriation and Destruction of Farmlands in Darfur, November 2014 – November 2015 | December 2015—includes framing analysis, extensive data spreadsheet covering all reported incidents of violence against farmers and farmland in Darfur, as well as a detailed mapping of these data onto three maps encompassing all of Darfur (monograph translated into Arabic) | http://wp.me/p45rOG-1P4
Continuing Mass Rape of Girls in Darfur: The most heinous crime generates no international outrage | January 2016 | Eric Reeves, author| Maya Baca, research and editing—includes framing analysis, extensive data spreadsheet for 2014 and 2015, as well as detailed mapping of these data onto three maps encompassing all of Darfur (monograph translated into Arabic) | http://wp.me/p45rOG-1QG
UNAMID Withdrawal and International Abandonment: Violence in Darfur 2017 – 2019, a statistical analysis, May 20, 2018, Eric Reeves, author; Maya Baca, research, data collection, and editing | https://wp.me/p45rOG-2qm
Articles:
[1] Published nationally through The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times News Service:
“Sudan could explode: Now is not the time for the U.S. to play nice with Khartoum,” The Washington Post (“Global Opinions”), December 16, 2016
“The World’s Abandonment of Darfur,” The Washington Post, May 16, 2015
“Sudan embraces genocide, terrorism—and now Iran,” The Washington Post, November 30, 2014 (Sunday)
“Civilians in Sudan’s Darfur region face wholesale destruction,” The Washington Post, July 28, 2013 (Sunday)
“Passive in the Face of Sudan’s Atrocities,” The Washington Post, February 12, 2012
“In Sudan: Genocide Anew?” The Washington Post, June 18, 2011
“Genocide by Attrition in Sudan,” The Washington Post (Sunday), April 6, 2008
“A Tragedy Straight out of Shakespeare,” The Washington Post (Sunday Outlook section), June 3, 2007
“Khartoum Triumphant,” The Washington Post (on-line), September 23, 2006
“Genocide Accommodated,” The Washington Post, September 3, 2006 (Sunday)
“Regime Change in Sudan,” The Washington Post, August 23, 2004
“Unnoticed Genocide,” The Washington Post, February 25, 2004
“The Terror in Sudan,” The Washington Post, July 6, 2002
“Capital Crime in Sudan,” The Washington Post, August 20, 2001
“A UN Seat for Genocide,” The Washington Post, August 15, 2000
“Use Oil as a Lever in Sudan,” The Los Angeles Times, June 4, 2001
“The Last, Best Hope Sits on Its Hands; We have the economic power to push for a just peace; millions of Sudanese are dying in the civil war,” The Los Angeles Times, February 10, 2000
“As in South Africa, It’s Time to Let Our Wallets Do the Talking,” The Los Angeles Times, August 30, 1999
“A ‘War on Terrorism’ and the Betrayal of Southern Sudan”: The Atlanta Journal & Constitution, September 26, 2001 (also The Hartford Courant (Sunday), September 30, 2001 The Montreal Gazette, September 29, 2001
[2] Other national news publications:
“Don’t Forget Darfur,” The New York Times, February 16, 2016
“A Better Restitution for Darfur,” The New York Times, July 15, 2015
“Preventing Civil War in Sudan: U.S. Involvement is Critical,” New York Times, January 8, 2014
“An urgent crisis in Sudan: Without help, a million could die in Darfur,” The New York Times, June 11, 2004
“Preventing Genocide in South Sudan,” The Daily Beast (with John Prendergast), April 29, 2014
“Now Khartoum is Attacking Refugee Camps,” The Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2008 (with Mia Farrow)
“The Darfur War Crimes Test,” The Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2008 (with Mia Farrow)
“Next Casualty: Why Darfur’s misery has just begun,” The New Republic (print edition; Darfur issue), May 15, 2006 (also served as primary consultant for the entire issue)
“The World’s Greatest Humanitarian Crisis—in Sudan again,” The Christian Science Monitor, August 5, 2012
“Genocide in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan,” The Christian Science Monitor, August 4, 2011
“Sudan at the Flash Point,” The Christian Science Monitor, November 24, 2009
“Khartoum Collapses Darfuri Civil Society Peace Effort,” The Christian Science Monitor, May 27, 2009
“Obama, Darfur, and ICC justice,” The Christian Science Monitor, November 24, 2008
“An Up-close View of Brutality in Darfur,” The Christian Science Monitor, May 12, 2008
“Genocide prevention: 60 years of abject failure; Darfur reinforces the impotence of this UN mandate,” The Christian Science Monitor, January 30, 2008
“Slave ‘Redemption’ Won’t Save Sudan,” The Christian Science Monitor, May 26, 1999
“Sudan’s Reign of Terror,” Amnesty Now, Summer 2004 [cover story on humanitarian and human rights crisis in Darfur]
“China, Darfur, and the 2008 Summer Olympics,” Foreign Policy in Focus, May 13, 2008
“Rapacious Instincts in Sudan,” The Nation, June 4, 2001
[3] National and international academic publications:
“In the Absence of Will: Could genocide in Darfur have been halted or mitigated?” (chapter in Preventing Mass Atrocities: Policies and Practices, ed. Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurr | Routledge Studies in Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, 2018
“Armed Conflict in Sudan (Blue Nile, Darfur and South Kordofan),” Armed Conflict Survey 2018 (Routledge, 2018); edited by The International Institute for Strategic Studies
“Darfur: International Indifference has Created the Longest, Most Successful Genocide in Modern History,” (peer-reviewed) journal article for ABC-CLIO/Modern Genocide database (2018)
“Kleptocracy in Khartoum: Self-Enrichment by the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party,” An Enough Forum Publication, December 2015
“Genocide in the Nuba Mountains: The International Response” in Conflict in the Nuba Mountains: From Genocide-by-Attrition to the Contemporary Crisis in Sudan, edited by Samuel Totten and Amanda Grzyb (Routledge Chapman Hall, 2014)
“Watching the Bubble Burst: Political Implications of Sudan’s Economic Implosion,” An Enough Forum Publication, 17 September 2014
“Failure to Prevent Genocide in Sudan and the Consequences of Impunity: Darfur as Precedent for Abyei, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile,” March 2014, Genocide Studies International (University of Toronto Press)
“The Collapsing Sudanese Economy: Political and Military Implications, International Obligations, Yale Journal of International Affairs, May 22, 2013
“Khartoum and the Language of War: Who’s Really Listening?” Idea: A Journal of Social Issues May 27, 2012 (Vol.16, No.1)
“A Scandalous International Hypocrisy on Sudan,” Issue Brief on Sudan (Council on Foreign Relations), April 26, 2012
“Humanitarian Obstruction as a Crime Against Humanity,” African Studies Review, Volume 54, Number 3 (December 2011), pp. 165 – 74
“Shame Without End: Darfur and ‘the Responsibility to Protect,’” Yale Journal of International Affairs (2011, Volume 3, Issue 2)
“Death in Darfur: Total Mortality from Violence, Malnutrition and Disease—May 2006,” The World and Darfur: International Response to Crimes Against Humanity in Western Sudan (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011)
“Obama, Sudan, and the ‘De-Coupling’ of Darfur,” February 2011 web column for Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
“A Single Child,” in Evoking Genocide: Scholars and Activists Describe the Works That Shaped Their Live (Key Publishing 2009); winner of CHOICE Magazine award as “Outstanding Academic Title” for 2010
Primary author of UN General Assembly A/HRC/15/NGO/76, September 27, 2010 (two-part document submitted to the UN Human Rights Council, Fifteenth session [Geneva], Agenda item 4); on the human rights situation in Sudan
“Failure to Protect: International Response to Darfur Genocide,” The Harvard International Review, Issue on “Failed States, Vol. 29 (4), Winter 2008
“A Central African Affair: Chad Insurgency Highlights Ongoing Darfur Genocide,” February 2008 web column for Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs,
“Debate on Darfur,” BBC News, October 27, 2006
“A Focus on Darfur,” UN Dispatch, May 2, 2008
Dedication for the 2005 World Refugee Survey (victims of Darfur conflict), US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Washington, DC (Spring 2005)
“Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur: A critical analysis” (two parts), Idea: A Journal of Social Issues, October 14, 2005 (Volume 10, No. 1)
“Sudan” Entry for Global Migration in the 20th Century: An Encyclopedia (ABC- Clio, 2005)
“Darfur Genocide and the International Failure to Respond,” The Institute for the Study of Genocide Newsletter, Spring 2005, Issue 35
“Darfur Genocide and the Current Faces of International Failure,” The Institute for the Study of Genocide Newsletter, Winter 2005, Issue 34
“No Further Evasion of the Essential Question: What will we do in Darfur?” Tinabantu: Journal of African National Affairs, Volume 2, No. 1, 2004
“The Shilluk Kingdom in Southern Sudan is Going up in Flames,” Tinabantu: Journal of African National Affairs, Volume 2, No. 1, 2004
“Catastrophe in Darfur,” Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 31 No. 99 (March 2004)
“Moral Imperative in Darfur,” Anthropology News, December 2004 (publication of the American Anthropological Association)
“The Genocidal Status Quo in Darfur,” The Institute for the Study of Genocide Newsletter (lead article), Fall 2004, Issue 33
“Current Proposals for Responding to Genocide in Darfur,” The Institute for the Study of Genocide Newsletter, Summer 2004, Issue 32
“No Further Evasion of the Essential Question: What Will We Do in Darfur?” The Edge (newsletter of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars), April 6, 2004
“On Genocide in Darfur,” December 30, 2003 at Africa InfoServe (Sudan publications of AfricaFiles.org; http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=4075)
“Consequences of Failure: The Face of Resumed War in Southern Sudan,” Bulletin of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, Fall 2003
“Peace or War? The Moment of Truth for Sudan,” Mediterranean Quarterly (Duke University Press), Fall 2002
“Oil Development in Sudan,” backgrounder published The Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, No. 60/61 (December 2001); reprinted in The Review of African Political Economy
“Allies in Oppression: Talisman Energy Inc. and the War in Sudan,” Bulletin of The Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, No. 59 (March 2000)
“Sudan: Humanitarian Crisis, Human Rights Abysm,” Human Rights Review, Volume 1, Number 3 (Spring, 2000)
Responding essay (on two articles treating Sudan crisis) for African Studies Review, Number 42, Number 2 (September 1999)
Dissent Magazine (quarterly print edition):
“Getting Darfur Wrong,” Review of Mahmood Mamdani’s Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror, Dissent Magazine, Volume 56, Number 4 (Fall 2009) (quarterly print edition)
“Refusing to Save Darfur,” Dissent Magazine (Fall 2008) (quarterly print edition)
“Genocide Without End: The Destruction of Darfur,” Dissent Magazine (Summer 2007) (quarterly print edition)
“Darfur: Watching Genocide, Doing Nothing,” Dissent Magazine (Fall 2006) (quarterly print edition)
“The Future History of Darfur,” Dissent Magazine (Fall 2005) (quarterly print edition)
“Darfur: Genocide by Attrition,” Dissent Magazine (Winter 2005) (quarterly print edition)
“Darfur: Ongoing Genocide,” Dissent Magazine (Fall 2004) (quarterly print edition)
[4] Publications in international news media:
“Darfur, an ICC Arrest Warrant, and the Humanitarian Imperative,” The International Herald Tribune, March 22, 2009
“Global Justice Challenged in Darfur,” The International Herald Tribune, September 1, 2008
“Genocide’s Victory,” The International Herald Tribune, December 9, 2007
“The Falling Dominos of Eastern Africa” [on cross-border violence from Darfur to Chad], The International Herald Tribune, April 26, 2006
“Without help, a million may die,” The International Herald Tribune, June 11, 2004
“A promise the U.S. must keep to Sudan,” The International Herald Tribune, October 28, 2003
“A brutal regime persists in a distracted world,” The International Herald Tribune, April 2, 2003
“Khartoum Attacks the International Committee of the Red Cross,” The International Herald Tribune, January 23, 2001
Canada
“Sudan at the Crossroads: The Canadian Response,” The Globe and Mail (Canada), October 27, 1999 [published as “Sudan at War: Canada Responds”]
“Don’t let oil revenues in Sudan fuel genocide,” The Globe and Mail (Canada), May 4, 1999
“The 21st Century’s First Great Genocide,” The National Post (Canada), May 10, 2005
“Only Canadian, US Partnership Can Bring Peace to Sudan,” National Post (Canada), November 29, 1999
“Mr. Axworthy and the Agony of Sudan: Consequences of Inaction” in The Montreal Gazette, March 28, 2000 [published as “Inaction on Talisman: Axworthy’s refusal to act against company will lead to more suffering in Sudan”]
“Sudan—No Longer Newsworthy?” The Montreal Gazette, August 8, 2000 [published as “In Sudan, no news is not good: Although media have turned away from the country, atrocities continue”]
“An Ultimatum to Sudan on the Bombing of Civilian Hospitals,” The Ottawa Citizen, October 7, 1999
“A Day of Infamy for Canada,” The Ottawa Citizen, June 25, 1999 [published as “Canada must end its bloody role in Sudan”]
“Darfur and Genocide,” Embassy Magazine (Canada), June 8, 2005
“Ending Schoolyard Violence—In Sudan,” The Catholic New Times (Toronto), April 30, 2000
“Oil Development and the Destruction of Sudan,” The Catholic New Times (Toronto), October, 1999 [published as “Investors Fuel Humanitarian Crisis in Sudan”)
Africa/Asia/Middle East
“Has South Sudan Passed the Tipping Point?” Eurasia Review: News and Analysis, January 10, 2014
“U.S. experts set out major advantages of South Sudan railway option,” MENA Rail News, July 13, 2013 (with Sharon Hutchinson, University of Wisconsin/Madison)
“The Sudans and Their Struggle for Water,” Africa in Fact (South African Institute of Race Relations), Issue 13 (June 2013)
“Sudan, South Sudan, and the Oil Revenues Controversy: Khartoum’s Obstructionism Threatens War,” Fair Observer (South Africa), April 2012
“Compromising with Evil,” Reuters | AlertNet (Nairobi), October 19, 2012
“Key’s to Sudan’s ‘Arab Spring,’” Reuters | AlertNet (Nairobi), July 9, 2012
“Darfur: The Truth Will Out,” Reuters | AlertNet (Nairobi), June 11, 2012
“Asking Seriously about Humanitarian Access to Blue Nile and South Kordofan,” Reuters | AlertNet (Nairobi), May 22, 2012
“Sudan: International crimes and threats to peace are mounting rapidly,” Pambazuka News: Pan-African: Voices for Peace and Justice, July 7, 2009 (Issue 538)
“Darfur and the International Criminal Court,” Middle East Report (on-line), April 29, 2005
“The Growing Likelihood of War in Sudan,” Islamica Magazine, Winter 2011
“The ‘Challenges’ of Darfur,” The Mail and Guardian (South Africa), February 24, 2006
“Kofi Annan and the Lesson of Genocide in Darfur,” US State Department News Feed (compiled by the US Embassy, Khartoum), July 8, 2005
“Prospects for Peace in Sudan: The Challenge of the Machakos Process,” Global Dialogue (South Africa), Spring 2003
Europe
“War or Peace in Sudan? Khartoum Is Making Its Decision—Now,” The European, November 17, 2010
“Sudan, Terrorism, and the Obama Administration,” e-International Relations (Oxford/Cambridge Universities), February 22, 2011
“Resumed Peace Talks in Naivasha, Kenya,” Parliamentary Brief Update (UK), October 19, 2004
“The Meaning of the Naivasha (Kenya) Peace Agreement,” Parliamentary Brief (UK), Volume 10, Number 1 (Summer 2004)
“Once more into the breach—but can Britain really hold the fort in Sudan?” Parliamentary Brief (UK), Volume 9, Number 1 (Summer 2003)
“The Foreign Minister of Sudan: Envoy of Hatred,” from The Sunday Independent (South Africa), July 29, 2001
“Swedish Corporate Complicity in the Oil-driven Destruction of Sudan,” Internationalen (Sweden), March 15, 2001
“The Netherlands to Ship Genocidal Oil,” Trouw (The Netherlands), September 4, 1999 [published as “Nederland bijna medeplichtig aan genocide Soedan”]
Sudanese
In addition, I have published more than 100 articles in various Sudanese news outlets, including Radio Dabanga, Sudan Tribune, and al-Hurriyat.
More publications, as well as lectures, academic presentations, Congressional testimony, and national and international broadcast interviews may be found at:
http://sudanreeves.org/2011/
Many hundreds of unpublished analyses, originally circulated electronically, have been archived at www.SudanReeves.org
Philanthropy
I will continue to use profits from sales of my woodturnings to benefit humanitarian organizations working in Sudan; see for example | https://www.oxfamamerica.
For a record of this philanthropy, see the account of my Sudan Aid Fund (Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts) | http://sudanreeves.org/2017/