Untangling the False Narrative of a ‘New Humanitarianism’ for Darfur

In his book “Saviors and Survivors”, Mahmood Mamdani describes how US Secretary of State Colin Powell “made two pivotal presentations” during his term in Office under George Bush. The first presentation was his defense of the US government claim that there were Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq, thus establishing the pretext for the illegal US invasion of Iraq. The 2nd false narrative Powell was instrumental in creating had to do with the claim that there was genocide being carried out in Darfur.

With respect to Powell’s claims of WMD in Iraq, much of the mainstream media in the US dutifully went along with the US government propaganda campaign by creating a false narrative to justify the US government’s military attack on Iraq.

There has been the general acknowledgement by some of the mainstream media that their advocacy on… weiter lesen

[Editor's Note: This is Part I of a two part article. For Part II see "The Struggle Over How the Media Frames Its Presentation of the Darfur Conflict"]

 Some Background

The question before the Security Council on Thursday, July 31 was whether or not to renew the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). This joint (hybrid) peacekeeping mission combines UN and African Union (AU) efforts to work toward finding a way to bring peace to the Darfur conflict in Sudan.

 UNAMID’s renewal falls under Article 7 of the UN charter. To be a peacekeeping operation, there needs to be a peace agreement, or the potential for such an agreement along with a means of encouraging the  contending forces to support the mission and a resolution of the conflict.

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