I am a member of Model Arab League, which is not important. What is important is that the Miami University delegation, while at a national conference in the spring, met a diplomat from Sudan (one week later Miami's 2007 commencement speaker John Lewis was arrested on the embassy's lawn, presumably for player hating). We discussed AIDS in Sudan, trade with China and freedom of the press, but our interest was piqued when the issue of Darfur came up.
At the time, the International Criminal Court had just issued an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, the then and current president of Sudan. It marked the first time the body had indicted a sitting head of state. Fortunately for al-Bashir, the Arab League agreed unanimously that this was an egregious assault on national sovereignty, as did the African Union. For his part, al-Bashir dismissed the charges as a Western conspiracy and proceeded to kick out all aid workers who could conceivably be spies, as well as threaten to withdraw from peace talks with the separatist Justice and Equality Movement.
Our diplomat was resolute. Having noticed a myriad of misspelled signs disparaging the ICC in the Sudanese embassy's lobby, one can imagine that he had spent the last few days protesting the ruling. The ICC believes al-Bashir played a direct role in the genocide that killed 300,000 people and displaced 2.7 million more. The embassy's official position is that the number is a Western exaggeration, and that the number dead is actually 10,000, which they believe is fairly negligible, forgivable even.
When we asked him directly who was at fault for the problems in Darfur, he said two parties were responsible. First, Chad (not your Cheetos-munching homie, but the country). According to our host, Sudan's neighbor was guilty of consistently and craftily supplying arms and safe harbor to terrorist factions and inciting the various flare-ups of violence. Second, the diplomat blamed the Save Darfur Coalition. According to the diplomat, this organization of American young people is directly responsible for bankrolling the systematic murder of thousands. So, if you have a friend involved on either S.T.A.N.D. or Save Darfur here on campus, tell them to stop it. What proof was given to our group to verify the diplomat's claim? Well, if all the money and donations that these clubs take in actually went to Darfur, Darfur would be as nice as Virginia. But it is not, in fact, as nice as Virginia, so the money is more likely being used to fund terrorists (he would later switch out Virginia for Florida, which dramatically enhances the analogy).
That was all at the start of the summer. Now, at the end of the summer, Rodolphe Adada is stepping down from his position as the head of the UN-AU peacekeeping mission in Darfur. He has been criticized as ineffective; the peace process and security failing to make adequate gains under his watch. This same week, the military commander of that peacekeeping force, Martin Luther Agwai, declared war is over in the region. This is good news, but could have a bad effect if it is presumed that the end of war indicates the end of strife. One has to wonder if the slow down of violence reflects not a successful intervention by the outside world but successful completion of the genocide.
Brett Schneider schneiba@muohio.edu
