17 Jan 2007: ISS Today: Arab-African Dichotomy Discourse Dangerous for Civilians in Sudan
17 January 2007: Arab-African Dichotomy Discourse Dangerous for Civilians in Sudan
As the increasing violence in Sudan’s western region of Darfur became e regular feature on the news menu from the African continent during 2006, it took rather ‘extraordinary’ measures to get it to the top of the public agenda. One of those extraordinary moments was a visit to Darfur by Hollywood star and sex symbol George Clooney. Clooney’s visit to a strife torn African region was certainly not the first time a celebrity has taken on the cause of ‘humanitarianism in Africa’ with the Band Aid concerts of the 1980s having set the precedent. But what is now changing is the level of intersection between the media, celebrities and policy making, as Clooney’s address to the US Congress on the Darfur demonstrated. Certainly the star’s visit probably grabbed more attention than that of former UN Chief Kofi Annan’s numerous statements of concern on the four-year-long conflict, but there is a more worrying trend in the relationship between the media and policy makers – one that suggests that rather than reporting on the events, superficial media commentary has an influence on politics in the region that may in fact inflame hostilities rather than alleviate them.
This phenomenon has been highlighted in a recent review of the field based strategies for humanitarian protection in Darfur by the UK based Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) published in December 2006. The reports attempts to draw lessons from the field in the realm of ‘civilian protection’, the new humanitarian buzz-phrase aimed at emphasising the ‘growing international recognition of collective responsibility to protect civilians caught up in conflict’. Darfur is thus the first civil war described as a ‘protection crisis’, largely because of the new language of the “Responsibility to Protect”, but also because of the nature of the crimes, a large percentage of them involving gender based sexual violence.
The deployment of the observer African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) with a mandate to oversee the implementation of the N’Djamena Humanitarian Ceasefire of 2004 set the basis for a ‘soft’ approach to diplomacy. Instead of focusing on the belligerents in the conflict -- the government of Sudan and the key rebel factions -- attention was soon diverted to the AU’s lack of capacity effectively to implement the limited protection element of its mandate.
As a result, the ‘protection of civilians’ element of the war became the responsibility of the international humanitarian community by default, once more depoliticising the actual issues in the conflict. Indeed, far from the Arab versus African dichotomy that has been used to explain the conflict, Darfur represents more comprehensively the questions of access and control of land ownership, and the relationship between Sudan’s peripheral regions and Khartoum --- causes that extend much further than what is implied in an imposed ‘ethnic’ reading of the war.
It is now clear that the emphasis on ‘humanitarianism’ and the media dichotomy used to explain the crisis as a fight for the survival of ethnic Africans in the face of the violence of their Arab neighbours has hardly paid dividends for civilian protection in Darfur. What is has done is to polarise communities even further by assuming that all pastoralist communities (described as Arab) are sympathetic to the pro-government militias or Janjaweed. This false ascription of affinity has influenced NGO decisions about areas of operation and assistance – which has almost entirely been focused on the Fur community, and may have the effect of further inflaming discord between the various groups. As the authors of the Humanitarian Review, Pantuliano and O’Callaghan, suggest, the protection bias towards non-Arab IDPs and the apparent solidarity with their ‘cause’ have meant that Arab pastoral communities have been overlooked. “Yet Arab pastoralists, especially those without a dar have always been amongst the most impoverished and marginalized in Darfur.” They emphasise that the neglect of Arab groups extends to their rights; as one relief worker was told that UNMIS ‘never investigated a single incident of violence against an Arab’. This miscalculation has already created resentment towards the international community with several incidents of fatal violence against humanitarian workers in ‘Arab’ dominated areas.
The internationalisation of the conflict has also boosted the expectations of the rebel movements. Certainly the proliferation of armed groups inside Darfur suggests that there is no cohesiveness amongst the rebels, each group claiming to be the legitimate representative of the Darfurian people. It is clear that the DPA’s single rebel signatory faction, SLM Minnawi, cannot claim to represent the region’s oppressed in their entirety being itself largely composed of Zaghawa people. One of the outstanding but highly relevant questions remains, why has there been no substantive attempt to bring the Arab pastoralist community of Darfur into the negotiating forum? Is it assumed that the Government of Sudan (GOS) would be speaking on behalf of all Arabs in Sudan? If so this position only solidifies what has largely been a fallacy about identity in Sudan, a trend that will provide the basis only for future and perhaps more intense ‘ethnic’ violence - which would be a case of life imitating media.
Mariam Bibi Jooma, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)
