Genocide In Africa And The So-Called War On Terror

Stanton is adding his voice to those of a growing number of observers at the United Nations, Amnesty International, and various other human rights organizations who together are sounding the alarm that a very clear episode of ethnic cleansing is fast spiralling into outright genocide . Almost a million black Africans have been displaced from Darfur through the violence of government-backed thugs who are animated by the same combination of Arabic and Islamic zealotry that made Sudan such a congenial host country for Usama bin Laden and a number of his fellow mujahadeen in the years following their overthrow, with US backing, of the Soviet puppet regime in Afghanistan. The quest to expand the realm of Arabic supremacy into the Aboriginal territory of black Africans is going forward in Sudan through a concerted campaign involving the mass slaughter of civilians, systemic gang rapes, and the looting and burning of whole villages. The majority of the survivors are being held in virtual concentration camps within southern Sudan. Over a hundred thousand victims of this reign of terror, however, have escaped across Darfur's western border into Chad. Some of the clearest accounts of the new reign of terror in Sudan are being gathered in Chad, where the death toll of starving refugees grows daily. Reports from Chad indicate the Sudan Air Force has been bombing the refugee camps and the escape routes of the displaced peoples.

Quite naturally and properly, comparisons are being made between the current crisis in Sudan and the failure of the western powers to respond ten years ago to very clear reports then emerging about the unfolding genocide in Rwanda. The current failure to intervene once again puts a spotlight on hosts of gross inequities which plague the international system. It highlights particularly the persistence of that genre of institutionalized racism that that still prejudices the governments of Europe and the Western Hemisphere against constructive engagement in the deteriorating condition of most black Africans south of the Sahara. As Stanton writes, "African lives still are not seen to equal the value of the lives of Kosovars and other white people, who are inside our circle of moral concern." As the mounting crisis in Sudan clearly suggests, that racist bias towards black Africa continues also to infect the volatile sensibilities of those who are seeking various forms of decolonization for the Arab world. The unbroken legacy of the Africa-based slave trade continues to permeate broad arrays of human relationship on this planet.

The mounting crisis in Sudan marks a particularly important test for the United States and its self-declared global leadership of the so-called War on Terror. It begs the question of whether the superpower is capable of affording the terror currently being inflicted on hundreds of thousands of menaced black Africans anywhere near the level of attention it claims to direct at those who so ruthlessly snuffed out the lives of four thousand or so victims of the 911 attacks. If ever there was an moment to undertake pre-emptive intervention in order to avert a massive act of genocide, a massive act of terror, now is that moment!

Although the government of George W. Bush may be loath to admit it, there is much more than immediately meets the eye to connect the building crisis in Sudan with the attacks on the symbols of American primacy in New York and Washington. Some of these connections can be drawn from a reading of Against All Enemies, the blockbuster by Richard Clark, the White House's presiding expert on counter terrorism since the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Clark devotes considerable space to examining the radical politics of Sudan's ruling theocrats who came to power in 1989 in a military coup inspired by the guiding lights of the National Islamic Front. The dominant figure in the movement's rise to state power was Hassan al-Turabi. In the early 1990s Turabi welcomed his "soul mate,"Usama bin Laden, into Sudan. "Sharing a common vision of worldwide struggle," Turabi and bin Laden collaborated on a number of projects including, according to Clark, the establishment of "a new construction company, a new investment firm, control of the Sudanese commodities market, a new airport, a road between the two largest cities, new terrorist camps, a leather factory, Arab Afghan War veterans housing, arms shipments to Bosnia.. and development of an indigenous weapons industry (including chemical weapons)." When the two men parted company after their intense collaboration on the way to 911, they apparently "pledged to continue the struggle and to use Khartoum as a safe haven"in their cooperative quest to consolidate the militant strength of the Arab Islamic world. This pact included a commitment to continue a form of pedagogy which one human rights group called "a brutalization of Sudan's children with Muslim Brotherhood jihad indoctrination at all stages of education."

The building crisis in Sudan is the latest episode in the world's most persistent and lethal civil war. Since 1983 about two million Sudanese citizens have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Christian and traditionalist black Africans who block the way to the elaboration of the kind of uniform Arab Islamic polity long promoted by the likes of Hassan al-Turabi and the generals who have kept the Sudanese theocrats in power. According to Jeff Drumtra of the United States Committee for Refugees, the attacks on Aboriginal Africans on the southern frontiers of Sudan's Saharan region amount to "a very deliberate policy of depopulation." In the words of Stanton, "the Sudanese government wants to confiscate the rich oil reserves under the lands of the Nuer, Dinka, Shilluk, Nuba and other black African groups."

The political situation in Sudan has been complicated by some antagonism between former allies in the governance of Sudan. Turabi was recently put under house arrest by Sudan's president, General Omar al-Bashir. When he was released, Turabi seemed to take the side of the ruling oligarchy's armed opponents in Darfur. While Turabi and several generals were arrested recently due to allegations they were plotting a coup, an American scholar of Sudanese origin has suggested that these manouevres may be part of an elaborate plot on the part of Khartoum's ruling oligarchy to pull the government of Sudan back from the commitments it has already made in the peace talks underway in Kenya. The mirage of the coup is, according to Elias Nyamlell Wakoson, a professor of literature at Grayson College in Texas, "a political game to divert attention of the domestic constituency from peace talks in Kenya and turn it on Darfur." In comments published on April 2 by the Interpress News Agency, Wakoson adds, "It is obviously a mobilization strategy to find a pretext to intensify the genocide in Darfur." Such speculation about the difference between appearance and substance is entirely consistent with President George Bush's observation in June of 2002, when he said "Sudan's government cannot continue to talk peace but make war."

The terrible reports of a new reign of terror falling on the Indigenous peoples of Darfur needs to be evaluated in the light of the kind of rationales used to justify the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. The government of Sudan is today pressing forward crimes against humanity similar to those perpetrated by the regime of Saddam Hussein against Kurds and Shiia Muslims during the most ruthless phase of his dictatorship. Will the US government, or, for that matter, all the other governments on the planet who say they are animated by the spirit of respect for human rights, stand idly by as yet another preventable act of terror sweeps away the lives of many hundreds of thousands of black Africans? Will another Rwanda clarify the principle that the life of one World Trade Center worker is currently valued at considerably more than the lives of say a thousand black Africans in the macabre mathematics of human worth in a world dominated by a single superpower? Will we continue to be pointed repeatedly towards a non-existent link between al-Qaeda and the regime of Saddam Hussein, even as we learn almost nothing in the commercial media about huge acts of terror being pressed forward daily by the very regime that hosted Usama bin Laden as he developed his worldwide networks of finance and fundamentalist solidarity?

In November of 1997 President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 13067 freezing many forms of American transaction with Sudan. That document described the government of Sudan as an "unusual threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."In justifying the move, the former American president alleged that Sudan's government advanced "continuing support for international terrorism, ongoing attempts to destabilize neighboring governments, and the prevalence of human rights violations, including slavery and the denial of religious freedom." President George W. Bush has renewed the sanctions against the Sudanese government annually, alleging its ongoing support of specific organizations classified by the US government as terrorist groups. Accordingly, the action or inaction of the US government in the face of the mounting crisis in Sudan will tell us much about the real nature of the so-called War on Terror. The US response will signal whether it is a genuine effort to minimize the violence of a terrible scourage on humanity or whether it is simply a cynical pretext to afford military protection to small enclaves of race and class privilege as well as a way to give cover to the global operations of the world's most elaborate military-indutrial complex-the world's most prolific inventor, manufacturer and distributor of weapons of mass destruction.

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Professor Anthony J. Hall's most recent book is The American Empire and the Fourth Worldhttp://www.mqup.mcgill.ca/book.php?bookid=1628 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003). He is Founding Coordinator of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge. This essay was written on April 6, and revised on April 9, 2004.

Note: The American Empire and...