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TEL AVIV NOTES - "Darfur: A View from the Arab World"
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Editor: Bruce Maddy-Weitzman June 17, 2008
Darfur: A View from the Arab World
Irit Back
According to Lawrence Pintak, publisher and co-editor of Arab Media &
Society, "Darfur has been the biggest untold story of the Arab
world". Arab media coverage of the crisis in the Darfur region of
Sudan during 2003-07 was marginal, he said, in comparison to the
treatment of events in Iraq and Palestine, notwithstanding the fact
that the conflict in Darfur is widely recognized as the first
genocide of the 21st century. Pintak blamed Arab journalists for
providing their audiences with "selective information", i.e.,
information that reflects their governments' agendas, at the expense
of a fuller and more balanced picture. Their stories also tended to
focus more on political machinations than on the human dimension of
the crisis. Moreover, he stated, Arab journalists and intellectuals
frequently employed "conspiracy rhetoric". Hiding beyond incessant
claims regarding Zionist plots and Westerns conspiracies, they tended
to avoid critical discussion of the Darfur conflict's complex
internal and regional dimensions.
The Arab media's coverage of Sudan's previous internal conflict fails
to help explain its indifference to the Darfur tragedy. Sudan's
North-South conflict was the longest (1956-1972; 1983-2005), and one
of the bloodiest civil-wars in post-colonial Africa. This nearly
continuous conflict not only possessed clear regional features - the
northern-based government against the rebel south - but was also
perceived as racial ("Arabs" against "Africans") and religious
(Muslims against Christians and animists). As such, Arab media
attitudes almost automatically tended to justify the government's
cause against the rebels. The Darfur conflict possesses regional
features as well (North versus West) and even some racial ones (again
"Arabs" against "Africans"). However, a key difference is that in
Darfur's case, all the protagonists are Muslims. One could have
perhaps assumed that Arab attitudes towards Darfur, as reflected in
both the media and Arab League declarations and activities, would
have therefore been more ambiguous, and less unequivocally supportive
of the regime than during the earlier North-South conflict. For the
most part, however, this was not the case.
On February 26, 2003, the Fur insurgents of the Liberation
Movement/Army (SLM/A) inflicted heavy casualties on Sudanese army
garrisons throughout western Darfur and destroyed helicopters and
bombers at al-Fashir. Soon they were joined by the Zaghawa Justice
and Equality Movement (JEM). The Sudanese government responded to
these blows directly, conducting air raids on Darfurian villages, and
indirectly, by supporting the janjaweed semi-governmental militias.
The estimated numbers of fatalities in this unfolding conflict range
between 250.000-400.000, and approximately two million persons have
been displaced from their homes.
The international response to the escalation of the conflict in
Darfur led to the signing in April and May 2004 of cease-fire
agreements in N'djamena and Addis Ababa, respectively, between the
Sudanese government and the two rebel groups, paving the way for the
deployment of a multi-national African Union force (AMIS). The
decision of the African Union to intervene in an intra-state conflict
was a historic one. However, the minute size of this force
(eventually reaching 7,000 personnel in 2007) severely constrained
its ability to act against the Sudanese army's and janjaweed
militias' aggressive violations of human rights. Meanwhile, the
Sudanese government successfully rebuffed international efforts to
deploy a larger and more effective international force (the current
size of the UN mission, including the AU component, is just over
9,000). In addition, the international community refrained from
imposing any kind of meaningful sanctions on Sudan,
Initially, Arab League attitudes were almost entirely at one with
those of the Khartoum government, a League member-state. During 2004,
the League rejected any notion of international military intervention
or sanctions, and called on the UN to give Sudan more time to resolve
the conflict. It continued to back the Sudanese claim that a viable
solution for the crisis could be achieved only through the AMIS
presence there, rejecting a larger UN-sponsored mission. Moreover,
the League's support for the AMIS budget was in fact quite limited.
At the Khartoum Arab summit conference on March 2006, in the face of
international criticism regarding their passivity, Arab League states
pledged to allocate $150 million to AMIS. One year later, however,
only about 10% of the promised funds had actually been tendered, and
the European Union remains the source of most of the funding for the
AMIS force. As for personnel, the contributions of the African Arab
states to AMIS have been negligible.
The Arab League's passivity regarding the events in Darfur can be
also be explained from an additional angle - the marginality of Sudan
in Arab eyes. Robert O. Collins, one of the best-known historians of
Sudan, put it thusly: "The Arab League chose not to become directly
involved in a conflict in which its members had no immediate
self-interest in a land populated by a people for whom their historic
perceptions and prejudices gave them no reason to lend anything but
minor assistance". Of course, this general assumption glosses over
the varying interests of individual Arab states. For example, Egypt
has unique and abiding concerns regarding Sudanese affairs, deriving
first and foremost from the geo-strategic importance of the Nile
Valley, as well as from close historical connections and the current
problem of the inflow of refugees from its immediate southern
neighbor. Nonetheless, the fact that Arab countries see Sudan as more
African than Arab appears to help explain the indifference both among
official circles and in the media toward the events in Darfur,
especially in comparison to other "more important" areas such as Iraq
and Palestine.
Interestingly, recent events point to the possibility of a change in
this pattern of response. Two years ago, Nabil Kassem of al-Arabiya
television produced a documentary film on Darfur, Jihad on
Horseback. He believed that the film's scenes of unspeakable
brutality and untold suffering would shake Arab public opinion out of
its indifference. "Arabs should be ashamed having one million Muslims
begging for help. Shame", he declared. As it happened, the film was
never broadcast on any of the main Arab TV channels. However, parts
of it were made available on the Internet, resulting in lively
discussion on various blogs and talkbacks. Moreover, since 2007,
al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera are providing broader, more critical, and
"on the ground" coverage of Darfur. Another source for critical
discussion on Arab world attitudes towards the violence in Darfur are
Arab activists in humanitarian and human rights organizations. Nadim
Hasbani, the Arab Media Officer of the International Crisis Group,
writing in al-Hayat, denounced "Arab governments [that] continue to
support the perpetrator of massacres rather than the civilian
victims". In addition, a coalition of Muslim organizations and human
rights groups recently called for the Arab League to play a more
active role in trying to solve the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.
Do these examples signify a real change in Arab world attitudes
toward the crisis in Darfur? The answer is not unequivocal. On the
one hand, there are growing signs of a developing public discourse
denouncing Arab indifference and inaction concerning a contemporary
genocide that is happening within the Muslim world. On the other
hand, in analyzing the declarations and deeds of the Arab League, it
seems that real policy change is occurring very slowly, if at
all. To be sure, the Arab League supports the deployment of the
hybrid UN-AU force in Darfur (UNAMIS), and rejects accusations of
negligence. On June 10, 2008, the Arab League's envoy to Sudan,
Ambassador Salah Halima, told reporters that the League is doing its
utmost to reach a political settlement of the crisis. Yet, most of
its declarations continue to reflect the Sudanese government's
position regarding the conflict (such as referring to the local
Darfurian groups as "rebels"). Moreover, its budgetary and manpower
contributions to the African and international forces in the region
remain minimal. More than five years after the beginning of the
conflict in Darfur, and notwithstanding its escalation to a
full-scale genocide, it seems that the events there are still
marginal to Arab concerns.
TEL AVIV NOTES is published with the support of the V. Sorell Foundation
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