When the Save Darfur Coalition held a rally on April 30,
2006, drawing thousands to Washington DC, it was a watershed for Darfur
activism in the U.S. Save Darfur’s advocacy efforts enjoyed a moment in the
sun, the culmination of an aggressive and well-funded media campaign.
Yet the rally also symbolized another, less reported aspect
of Darfur activism in the U.S.: the tendency to marginalize Darfurian and
Sudanese voices. As reported, “the original
list of speakers [for the April 30 rally] included
eight Western Christians, seven Jews, four politicians and assorted celebrities
- but no Muslims and no one from Darfur”; organizers had to hurry “to invite two
Darfurians to address the rally after Sudanese immigrants objected” to their
previous exclusion from the line-up.
Save Darfur’s prioritizing of Western voices is
unsurprising, given the group’s establishment-friendly posture. The Coalition,
in fact, praised then-President Bush for its “good work” in resolving the
crisis (evidence for which is nonexistent), and brought former Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright, who famously said that the deaths of half a million
Iraqi children as a result of the murderous U.S. sanctions regime was “worth
it,” to a rally later in 2006. More noteworthy, however, has been the tendency
for the U.S. left to do the same.
In fact, not only has the U.S. left largely ignored the
Sudanese left, which has a storied history and continues to struggle valiantly
against the brutal regime led by Omar al-Bashir, but it has also mostly failed
to grapple with the Darfur conflict as a whole, not to mention the other issues
plaguing Sudan. In some cases, this has even lead to apologetics for the
Sudanese government, as if its largely adversarial relationship with the West
should afford it a special place in our consciousness as a victim of
imperialism. Though understandable in that our most pressing moral responsibility
as U.S. leftists is to address crises that are of our own making and thus that
we have the most power to change, such as the occupations of Iraq and
Afghanistan and U.S. support for Israel’s aggressive military posture, it is
also paramount that the Darfur issue not be ceded to establishment-friendly
groups which do not share our concern for anti-imperialism.
We traveled to Sudan in February to unearth the voices of
the Sudanese left and opposition movements, and bring them to a Western audience.
What emerged from our interviews and conversations suggests some baseline
points of fundamental importance to Western activists:
1) The U.S. sanctions regime against Sudan, though it may be
satisfy an internal desire amongst Western activists to “do something” to
demonstrate disgust with Khartoum, is very much like other instances of U.S.
sanctions, such as Iraq or Cuba: they hurt the poor, while the government not
only survives, but thrives on the propaganda of being able to portray the
country, not unfairly, as a victim of Western malice.
2) While Barack Obama’s election has generated significant
enthusiasm in the country, this is predicated on the desire for his
administration to break with Bush-era policies and make serious efforts to
address the Darfur crisis and improve relations with Sudan. Obama also risks
losing the preliminary support he has engendered amongst ordinary Sudanese if
he does not end U.S. backing for Israel’s highly repressive policies vis-à-vis
the Palestinians, an issue the Sudanese people follow and identify with very
closely.
3) That China is viewed by many Sudanese as a new colonizing
power, willing to cozy up to Khartoum for access to oil, amongst other economic
benefits, is hardly a surprise to anyone in the West. The Sudanese left,
however, helpfully reminds us that some two decades prior the U.S. was
fulfilling the same neo-colonialist role, flooding the then-in-power
dictatorship of Jafaar Nimeiri with weapons shipments and economic aid as the
regime prosecuted a brutal civil war against the country’s south. They do not
want China to leave, just to be replaced with an equally pernicious U.S.
influence.
4) The current status of the Sudanese left as small and
fragmented is a relatively recent phenomenon, and largely a product of two
decades of repression by the governing right-wing Islamist regime. Recent
history, however, provides reasons for cautious optimism. In fact, as early as
a few decades prior, the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) was one of the largest
in Africa or the Middle East, and the country long had a vibrant labor movement.
Left-wing politics has a vibrant history in Sudan, and still remains a part of
the social fabric in a way that the left is not in the U.S. That the SCP was
recently able to hold a party convention, after a long absence, is a hopeful
sign of a left-wing resurgence in Sudan. One of the contenders in the
presidential elections scheduled for mid-2009, a leftist originally from
Atbarah, a northern Sudanese town famous as the historical center of strength
for trade unionism and radicalism, told us his campaign has been attracting
positive media coverage and receptive audiences.
5) Our duty as Western activists is not to impose solutions
from outside; it is to be in solidarity with those struggling on the ground,
and to listen to them, learn from them, share with them, and give a forum for
their voices to be heard. This is the very basis of the concept of
‘solidarity.’ Holding rallies to ‘save’ Darfur while marginalizing Darfurian
and Sudanese voices is simply incongruous with what should be our aim: building
a left-wing movement of a global nature. So is ignoring a conflict, as the U.S.
left has largely done in this case, because its perpetrators are official U.S.
enemies.
Note:
The views expressed are the personal views of individual contributors and do not necessarily
reflect the views of Africa Action.
