Lately, an academic cottage industry has arisen of folks trying to argue that the existence a grassroots movement concerned about the targeting of civilians for genocide and crimes against humanity is a bad thing. A recent entrant in this industry is Marc Gustafson, a doctoral candidate and Marshall Scholar at the University of Oxford, whose misleading August 19th Christian Science Monitor op-ed is chock full of skewed figures and false premises.
While there is a lot that Gustafson doesn’t get, perhaps his most distorted claim asserts that activist pressure somehow cost lives in Darfur by diverting U.S. government funding away from humanitarian assistance for displaced Darfuris and towards civilian protection. First, even his own numbers show that U.S. appropriations for humanitarian assistance in Darfur increased by more than 20 percent in the time period he references. Indeed, the U.S. government’s annual financial assistance for humanitarian aid in Darfur has been one of the only things that has consistently gone right in the world’s reaction to this ongoing crisis, providing funding at or near the targets set by relief organizations. More to the point, he betrays an ignorance of how money is appropriated within the U.S. government’s budget. There is not a set “Darfur account” full of money that is then split between humanitarian assistance, civilian protection, diplomacy, sanctions enforcement, and other activities. Rather, there are separate accounts for different worldwide functions, such as food aid, non-food humanitarian assistance, multilateral peacekeeping support, bilateral peacekeeping support, etc., some of which are broken down by country, and some of which are not. Money is appropriated for – and then allocated from – these global accounts based on specific needs in Darfur, in South Sudan, and in and other places around the world.
Save Darfur’s efforts to shine a spotlight on what was clearly an unmet need for more robust peacekeeping and civilian protection in Darfur did not diminish the allocation for humanitarian aid, both because that’s not the way the system works and because that was never the intent. Quite the opposite, the intent was to push for the creation of a stronger and fully funded peacekeeping force to complement the humanitarian life line already in place. And that’s exactly what happened – the U.S. provided additional funds for the struggling undersized African Union peacekeeping force, pushed for the creation of the hybrid UN-AU force, and then provided additional funding to help field that larger force and give it a chance to succeed. All of these funds were additional to the U.S.’s already strong financial commitment to funding humanitarian aid in Darfur, not in conflict with that commitment. Put simply, there is no basis for arguing that money appropriated for civilian protection in Darfur decreased the amount appropriated for humanitarian assistance. If anything, the creation of a political constituency interested in Darfur served to bolster support for humanitarian programs there.
Moreover, Gustafson is very ill-informed indeed if he believes that spending on civilian protection, which did increase in part because of our advocacy, was (or is) unnecessary. The UN Security Council authorized the UN-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) in July 2007, because an under-resourced, outgunned African Union protection force was on the verge of collapse. In fact, the AU had threatened to pull out of Darfur entirely if the international community failed to provide a light at the end of the tunnel by agreeing to have the UN eventually take over the mission. Why was the AU mission on the verge of collapse? Because the AU force had neither the experience, the infrastructure, nor the stable funding support mechanism necessary to run a mission in such a large and dangerous place as Darfur. It is simply an enormous logistical undertaking in incredibly challenging and dangerous circumstances. That such a mission was undertaken at all is a testament to just how violent a place Darfur remains, and just how critical civilian protection is to stability in Darfur and the survival of Darfuris. The nature of the violence in Darfur has certainly changed over the years, though Gustafson’s assertion that violence significantly diminished immediately after an April 2004 ceasefire agreement is again remarkably ill-informed. Darfur’s recent history is littered with failed ceasefires, and the April 2004 N’Djamena ceasefire agreement is sadly just another example. Were it in fact as successful as Gustafson claims, one wonders why new ceasefires were deemed necessary in subsequent years.
The hard reality is that civilians are not safe; in particular, rape remains endemic. And that lack of security is also a major problem for the humanitarian operations on which 2.7 million displaced Darfuris and another 1.3 million “conflict affected” civilians depend in order to survive. The Government of Sudan, which bears overwhelming (though not sole) responsibility for creating this state of affairs, is certainly unwilling (and at this point probably unable) to provide the necessary security. That leaves it up to the international community, which means that the United States needs to play a leading role. Needless to say, neither Save Darfur nor the U.S. Government established the size of UNAMID or drew up its budget; the UN did. Though it is worth saying that Save Darfur’s advocacy efforts have helped convince the U.S. to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in additional bilateral peacekeeping funds over and above the standard U.S. share of the UN peacekeeping budget to help develop and deploy the force.
Gustafson also wades into the unnecessary debate over casualty rates in Darfur. Mortality studies sponsored by the UN, the U.S. government and independent experts over the years have produced different findings. Certainty is impossible, in large part because the Government of Sudan has barred the type of region-wide epidemiological survey that could provide authoritative information. Present estimates have been made by applying different methodologies to the limited supply of incomplete data. Save Darfur uses the most recent UN estimate that as many as 300,000 men, women and children have died as a result of the conflict in Darfur. And let’s be clear: the causes of death are both direct violence and the conditions of life (such as lack of food, water and shelter) deliberately inflicted upon civilians largely by the government and its proxies. (Shall we really spend valuable time on an extended debate about whether someone who died from the effects of malnutrition because government soldiers destroyed her food stocks was “killed” by the government?) It is interesting to note that new satellite data available on Google Earth and through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum reveal that there were actually twice as many villages destroyed as previously reported, a great many of them well after the April 2004 ceasefire.
Finally, Gustafson claims that activists exaggerated the situation in Darfur by calling it a genocide in order to expand the movement. This could not be further from the truth. Save Darfur as an organization views what has happened in Darfur as a genocide, and we’re hardly alone in that view. Indeed, the fact that the U.S. government itself determined Darfur to be a genocide and then failed to back up that determination with sufficient actions to end the crisis helped give rise to the Save Darfur movement. While others of good will have not reached the same conclusion regarding the “genocide” label, there is a broad consensus that the government of Sudan is responsible for crimes against humanity in Darfur. As the UN Commission of Inquiry emphasized, those crimes – a widespread and systematic attack on a civilian population – are no less heinous than genocide. Differing definitional views on genocide have never stopped Save Darfur from working with other organizations and activists to advocate for peace, protection, and justice for the people of Darfur. Focusing on debate simply for its own sake is at best a distraction from efforts to change the situation on the ground in Darfur. And premising a distracting debate on distorted facts and ill-informed suppositions is certainly not debate at its best.
The opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Save Darfur Coalition.
