[wvns] Darfur: Right up your alley
The contrast in western attitudes to Darfur and Congo
shows how illiberal our concept of intervention really is
Right up your alley
Where anti-Arab prejudice and oil make the difference
Roger Howard
Wednesday May 16, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2080265,00.html
In a remote corner of Africa, millions of civilians
have been slaughtered in a conflict fueled by an
almost genocidal ferocity that has no end in sight.
Victims have been targeted because of their ethnicity
and entire ethnic groups destroyed - but the outside
world has turned its back, doing little to save people
from the wrath of the various government and rebel
militias. You could be forgiven for thinking that this
is a depiction of the Sudanese province of Darfur,
racked by four years of bitter fighting. But it
describes the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has
received a fraction of the media attention devoted to
Darfur.
The UN estimates that 3 million to 4 million Congolese
have been killed, compared with the estimated 200,000
civilian deaths in Darfur. A peace deal agreed in
December 2002 has never been adhered to, and atrocities
have been particularly well documented in the province
of Kivu - carried out by paramilitary organisations
with strong governmental links. In the last month
alone, thousands of civilians have been killed in heavy
fighting between rebel and government forces vying for
control of an area north of Goma, and the UN reckons
that another 50,000 have been made refugees.
How curious, then, that so much more attention has been
focused on Darfur than Congo. There are no pressure
groups of any note that draw attention to the Congolese
situation. In the media there is barely a word. The
politicians are silent.
The key difference between the two situations lies in
the racial and ethnic composition of the perceived
victims and perpetrators. In Congo, black Africans are
killing other black Africans in a way that is difficult
for outsiders to identify with. The turmoil there can
in that sense be regarded as a narrowly African affair.
In Darfur the fighting is portrayed as a war between
black Africans, rightly or wrongly regarded as the
victims, and "Arabs", widely regarded as the
perpetrators of the killings. In practice these neat
racial categories are highly indistinct, but it is
through such a prism that the conflict is generally
viewed.
It is not hard to imagine why some in the west have
found this perception so alluring, for there are
numerous people who want to portray "the Arabs" in
these terms. In the United States and elsewhere those
who have spearheaded the case for foreign intervention
in Darfur are largely the people who regard the Arabs
as the root cause of the Israel-Palestine dispute. From
this viewpoint, the events in Darfur form just one part
of a much wider picture of Arab malice and cruelty.
Nor is it any coincidence that the moral frenzy about
intervention in Sudan has coincided with the growing
military debacle in Iraq - for as allied casualties in
Iraq have mounted, so has indignation about the
situation in Darfur. It is always easier for a losing
side to demonise an enemy than to blame itself for a
glaring military defeat, and the Darfur situation
therefore offers some people a certain sense of
catharsis.
Humanitarian concern among policymakers in Washington
is ultimately self-interested. The United States is
willing to impose new sanctions on the Sudan government
if the latter refuses to accept a United Nations
peacekeeping force, but it is no coincidence that
Sudan, unlike Congo, has oil - lots of it - and strong
links with China, a country the US regards as a
strategic rival in the struggle for Africa's natural
resources; only last week Amnesty International
reported that Beijing has illicitly supplied Khartoum
with large quantities of arms.
Nor has the bloodshed in Congo ever struck the same
powerful chord as recent events in Somalia, where a new
round of bitter fighting has recently erupted. At the
end of last year the US backed an Ethiopian invasion of
Somalia to topple an Islamic regime that the White
House perceived as a possible sponsor of anti-American
"terrorists".
The contrasting perceptions of events in Congo and
Sudan are ultimately both cause and effect of
particular prejudices. Those who argue for liberal
intervention, to impose "rights, freedom and
democracy", ultimately speak only of their own
interests. To view their role in such altruistic terms
always leaves them open to well-founded accusations of
double standards that damage the international standing
of the intervening power and play into the hands of its
enemies.
By seeing foreign conflicts through the prism of their
own prejudices, interventionists also convince
themselves that others see the world in the same terms.
This allows them to obscure uncomfortable truths, such
as the nationalist resentment that their interference
can provoke. This was the case with the Washington
hawks who once assured us that the Iraqi people would
be "dancing on the rooftops" to welcome the US invasion
force that would be bringing everyone "freedom".
Highly seductive though the rhetoric of liberal
interventionism may be, it is always towards hubris and
disaster that it leads its willing partners.
Roger Howard is the author of What's Wrong with Liberal
Interventionism
===
Flapping Their Gum: Sudan Threatens U.S. Soft Drinks
A Different Kind of Cola War: Sudan's Ambassador
Threatens to Ban Key Soft Drink Ingredient
By RUSSELL GOLDMAN
June 1, 2007
http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3232434&page=1
Sudanese Ambassador to the U.S. John Ukec Lueth Ukec
gestures during a news conference at the National
Press Club in Washington, Wednesday, May 30, 2007.
(Susan Walsh/ AP Photo)
The Sudanese government's response to proposed U.S.
sanctions intended to force an end to the bloodshed in
Darfur was short, sweet … and fizzy.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday in Washington, Sudan's
ambassador the United States denied government-funded
militias were killing civilians in Darfur, and
threatened to cut off exports of gum arabica, a key
component in soft drinks, if the Bush administration
imposed economic sanctions.
"See how many people are dying in Darfur -- none,"
said Ambassador John Ukec Lueth, who then went on to
say that economic sanctions would hurt all the people
of Sudan but none more so than those suffering in
Darfur.
Ukec held his press conference Wednesday, a day after
President Bush pledged to impose new sanctions against
Khartoum and called on the United Nations to follow
suit.
The Sudanese government has long denied it sponsors or
supports the Janjaweed, an Arab militia that the
United States accuses of perpetrating genocide against
black African herdsmen in Darfur, Sudan's western
province.
With a bottle of Coca-Cola raised above his head, Ukec
surprised reporters when he threatened to cut off
imports of gum arabic, an emulsifier made from the
acacia tree that adds to the fiziness of sodas.
"I want you to know that the gum arabic, which runs
all the soft drinks all over the world, including the
United States, mainly 80 percent is imported from my
country," Ukec said.
"I can stop that gum arabic and all of us will have
lost this," he said.
Ukec's threat raised a series of important questions,
not least among them: Do we really have to choose
between our lofty desire to save innocent lives and
our desire to have a Coke and a smile. Do we have to
deal with a pariah state for the fun of creating
geysers of Mentos and Diet coke in our backyards?
Can Sudan actually be, as one reporter asked the
ambassador, "suggesting that if the U.S. sanctions
stayed in place, that the [Sudanese] government may
expel Coca-Cola or stop the export of gum arabic and
bring down the Western world?"
The good news: no, no and no.
Sudan does continue to supply the world with about 80
percent of its gum arabic. A decade ago, nearly 80
percent of all the gum arabic imported into the United
States came from Sudan, but a lot has changed since
then.
For starters, Coca-Cola, the world's largest
soft-drink maker, does not purchase any gum arabic
from Sudan.
"As a matter of policy, we don't disclose where we
source our ingredients," said Kari Bjorhus, a
spokeswoman for Coca-Cola. "But we don't buy gum
arabic from Sudan." Pepsi, the world's second-largest
soda producer, however, refused to comment for this
story.
Commerce Department documents indicate that the United
States has decreased its reliance on the Sudanese
product over the last several years.
In 2006, America imported 12 percent, or $6.2 million
worth, of its gum arabic from Sudan. That figure
represents a 54 percent drop year over year from 2005.
Most gum arabic, nearly 38 percent, is now imported
from Chad.
Even if Sudan did cut off gum arabic imports, analysts
say, there is little to worry about. "I don't think
its going to make a big ripple," said Michael Bellas,
chairman of Beverage Marketing. "There are so many
alternative sources these days. Both Coke and Pepsi
have, I'm sure, looked for substitutes," he said.
The United States might have to worry less about Sudan
cutting off gum arabic exports than Sudan has to worry
about the United States cutting off imports. In
January, when Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was named
speaker of the House, she floated a plan to ban U.S.
companies from importing the emulsifier.
U.S. trade concerns, like U.S. sanctions, however,
might be moot. Thursday, an official in the Sudanese
finance ministry told Reuters that the country did
such little business with the United States these days
that sanctions would have little impact.
"It doesn't have that much effect on the economy. We
don't have direct economic or trade relations with the
United States," the official told Reuters.
"Our economy is shifting from the USA and Europe to
the East. We have almost 70 percent of our foreign
trade with the East," he said.
Most of Sudan's economy is no longer dependent on
agricultural goods, but oil exports to China.
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