Mamdani on Darfur

In an article he wrote for the London Review of Books in 2007, Columbia Professor Mahmood Mamdani explains the background of the fighting in Darfur and his view that there is the need for a political settlement to the conflict in Darfur to end the suffering of civilians.

Mamdani describes the role played by the U.S. government, the U.S. press and  some U.S. advocacy organizations to develop what he terms “the reduction of the complex political context to a morality tale….” (8)

Mamdani proposes that there has been a widespread and well funded campaign to support U.S. government sanctions against Sudan and the inaccurate labeling of the internal fighting as genocide.

Describing what he characterizes as akin to a public relations campaign to create a moral rather than a factual understanding of what has been happening in Darfur and Sudan, Mamdani explains that the contest over how the Darfur conflict is to be framed is actually the contest over whether outside intervention or an internal settlement of the conflict will prevail.

Mamdani observes that though the U.S. government invaded Iraq, progressive Americans treat the conflict in Darfur as the significant conflict to intervene in, rather than focusing on the conflict in Iraq.

Comparing the similarities of the fighting in Iraq with that in Darfur, with the differences in how the US media describes the fighting, Mamdani writes:

“The similarities between Iraq and Darfur are remarkable. The estimates of the number of civilians killed over the past three years is roughly similar. The killers are mostly paramilitaries, closely linked to the official military, which is said to be their main source of arms. The victims too are by and large identified as members of groups, rather than targeted as individuals. But the violence in the two places is named differently. In Iraq, it is said to be a cycle of insurgency and counter-insurgency; in Darfur, it is called genocide. Why the difference? Who does the naming? Who is being named? What difference does it make?”

Mamdani’s article argues that it is the campaign to label Darfur as a victim of genocide that helped to create this difference in naming. Among the sources he refers to are the columns by Nicholas Kristof that have appeared in the New York Times over a period of time. Mamdani describes the newspaper articles as providing “the reduction of a complex political context to a morality tale unfolding in a world populated by villains and victims who never trade places and so can always and easily be told apart. It is a world where atrocities mount geometrically, the perpetrators so evil and the victims so helpless that the only possibility of relief is a rescue mission from outside, preferably in the form of a military intervention.”

A media campaign which misrepresented Iraq as possessing “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) set the context for the U.S. invasion. As a result, much has been written about the problems revealed with the media in the U.S. and what lessons need to be learned to prevent such a problem from happening in the future. Despite the similarity of the role of the US media in both situations, however, there has been relatively little criticism of the reporting about Darfur. In the U.S. press, Iraq had WMD and now Sudan is committing genocide. (9)

Describing the impact of such misleading press reports, Robert Parry of ConsortiumNews explains that such news reports serve to inject “a synthetic reality” into public opinion in the U.S. “that misrepresents recent history, exaggerates external dangers and ridicules the few citizens who object.” (10) The impact of such narratives, Parry believes, is “quite practical and immediate.” He calls this the creation of a “false narrative.”

The simplistic story of genocide in Darfur is such a false narrative.

Notes

(8) Mahmood Mamdani, “The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency”, “London Review of Books”, 8 March 2007.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n05/mamd01_.html

Cassese was part of a UN investigation into whether there was genocide in Darfur. In this article he explains why he believes this is an inappropriate charge.

(10) Robert Parry, “Why We Write”, Consortiumnews, November 13, 2007.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/111207.html