Questioning the motives of Save Darfur movement

Home News Tribune Online 07/11/07

HASSAN MAHMOUD

The humanitarian disaster in Darfur that claimed the lives of 200,000 people is heart-wrenching and needs to come to an end. However, in comparison with the more vicious human slaughters that are taking place in Congo resulting in the deaths of 4 million people, one would think that the latter should grab more attention than the former. That is not the case.

Hardly anybody in the United States knows about the Congo's war. One courageous reporter, Nicholas Kristof wrote: "Just imagine 4 million Americans or Europeans had been killed in a war, and that white families were starving to death as a result of that war. The victims may be black and poor, but that should not make this war in Congo no less an international priority." An editorial in The New York Times of June 12, stated: "Darfur is not the only place where people are dying in staggering numbers. Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken more than 3 million lives."

On May 5, 2006, the Sudanese government signed a peace agreement, orchestrated by Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoelick, with the largest rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), but the other two minor groups refused to sign and continued the fighting and even attacking the African Union Forces established by the United Nations and hijacking U.N. relief convoys. President Bush received Minni Minnawi, the leader of the SLA, in the White House and congratulated him on his peace effort. The BBC's Alex Last in Abuja said the groups that didn't sign the peace pact face being isolated by the international community and will eventually split, further destabilizing the region that is already plagued by violence.

So why this concerted campaign by the Save Darfur Coalition in the media? Until now, the United Nations refused to consider what is going on in Darfur as genocide. It is a civil war between a government and some rebel factions, stoked by foreign interests.

To quote an article in The New York Times of June 2: "Even as advocacy groups attained the seeming triumph of President Bush's new sanctions against Sudan, the organization that helped bring the conflict in Darfur to the world's attention is in upheaval, firing its director (David) Rubenstein, and when Ruth Messinger of the American Jewish World Service and a Save Darfur board member was asked about that, she declined to comment. Save Darfur has gotten in hot water with aid groups helping the refugees of the conflict. Save Darfur's advertising was confusing the public and damaging the relief effort. Sam Worthington, the president of InterAction, a coalition of aid groups complained to Mr. Rubenstein of the inability of Save Darfur to be informed by the realities on the ground and misstating facts. Some relief agencies said that they were horrified when Save Darfur's ads in February reported that international relief organizations, among others, had agreed that the time for negotiating with the Sudanese government had ended. Aid groups also complain that Save Darfur, whose budget last year was $15 million, doesn't spend that money on aid for the long-suffering citizens of the region."

Elie Wiesel pressured President Bush to declare from the Holocaust Museum that what is taking place in Darfur is genocide equal to the Holocaust. Unfortunately, we haven't heard Wiesel condemning the killing of 4 million people in Congo or the Iraq war, which resulted in the death of 3,600 of our soldiers and maiming of more than 30,000, plus the deaths of more than 700,000 Iraqi civilians and the resulting 4 million refugees, most of whom fled to Syria and Jordan, thus straining the fragile economies of these poor countries. We haven't heard Mr. Wiesel and the Save Darfur organization asking our government to share the economic burden of the refugees in these countries or allow a substantial number of those refugees to come to the United States as we allowed 800,000 Vietnamese refugees to come to this country. They are rather angling to inject our troops into another misadventure in Sudan.

It is the conviction of the Arab and Muslim people in the Middle East that Israel and its supporters in the United States would like to see all Arab countries destabilized and in turmoil so they would be unable to resist Israel's colonial schemes in the Middle East.

"Be Counted" columnist Hassan Mahmoud is a resident of Westfield.