Despite the rubber bracelets* and the outraged Facebook groups,** the genocide in Darfur and the ongoing crisis in Sudan seems to have again slipped away from the world’s view. I suppose we can only handle one major humanitarian crisis at a time,*** and this week it’s monks in Burma. But 10 peacekeepers in Darfur were just killed, and while al-Bashir is feeding everyone his usual shit about settling the conflict, settlement is nowhere in sight. And this is just the current genocide that has wiped out 200,000 people are displaced 2.5 million; there’s still the rest of the country to deal with, and civil war has been raging since I was born. Many, many more have been slaughtered in acts that don’t technically fall under the “genocide” label; even more have perished as they tried to escape to refugee camps. They’ve been murdered, they’ve starved to death, they’ve died of disease, they’ve been killed by wild animals and by the elements while trekking for months trying to find a safe haven. They’ve been kidnapped and sold as slaves and concubines. They’ve been beaten, abused, enslaved, and raped. al-Bashir and the government in Khartoum has funded and encouraged it. In response, the opposition forces have grown more brutal. Neither side (if you can even divide it into “sides,” it’s grown so complicated) has the moral high ground here.
In the meantime, millions of people live in refugee camps. Some have been re-settled, many in the United States. But our asylum laws make it tough for people in conflict-ridden states to gain entry into this country. We have a “persecutor bar” which has been expanded to include a “terrorist bar,” both of which sound nice, but are devastating in practice. If you are found to have ever persecuted someone because of their race, ethnicity, religion, etc, you are automatically barred from gaining asylum in the United States. If you are found to have ever aided terrorism, you are automatically barred from gaining asylum in the United States. Again, both of which sound all fine and good — until you look at the breadth of those bars.
In Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda and many other nations scarred by war, children are routinely recruited into the military. They’re used as soldiers — they kill people. They are persecutors by any measure. But those children are, firstly, children, and secondly, often only perform their duties under duress. Child soldiers who don’t do what they’re told are killed. Child soldiers have often seen their entire families slaughtered, and they have no one to so much as feed them. Child soldiers are not soldiers by choice.
Yet former child soldiers cannot get amnesty in this country.
The same expansive definitions are problematic with the “terrorism” bar. Anyone who gives money to an organization that the United States deems terroristic — even if the person wasn’t aware that the money was being funneled into terrorism — cannot come to the US through an amnesty program. If you act on behalf of a terrorist organization, you are barred from amnesty, even if your action happened under extreme duress — there are all kinds of horror stories about a terrorist putting a gun to a civilian man’s head and telling him to shoot another man, or robbing him; the civilian is now deemed a terrorist aid and cannot come to the United States to escape.
And on it goes.
The African Union should be in charge of handling the crisis in Darfur, but they need adequate support. The UN has to play its part, too, and the United States needs to start addressing the situation as well. We need to contribute adequate funding and open up our asylum laws at the very least; at best we would actually fully participate in the UN and fully engage with the international communities and the set laws, but that isn’t going to happen anytime soon. So we need to open our own borders to the people who can escape, and we need to make sure that the living conditions of the displaced people are, at the very least, livable — and we need to do that without significantly burdening the states where the refugee camps are located.
Yes, it’s a complicated situation, but the money and the weapons coming into Khartoum and being distributed to the militias are coming from somewhere. al-Bashir is flat-out lying when he says he wants to end the conflict; if you want to end a conflict, you don’t give your roving killers more resources to continue it. al-Bashir wants to keep Sudan united as one nation under Islamic law, which the people in the South largely oppose. al-Bashir values the one-Sudan solution and the international community cares largely because of (…drumroll please…) the oil found in Southern Sudan.
Not that a divided Sudan would solve the Darfur conflict; it wouldn’t. But it would give Khartoum fewer resources, and starving the beast is usually a good thing. Unfortunately, China and Russia are all too willing to send supplies, arms, and other military equipment to the Sudanese government. Perhaps international pressure and calls to boycott the Beijing Olympics will be successful in pushing China to end its funding to a murderous regime; perhaps not.
And while ending the genocide in Darfur is #1 on the Sudan agenda (as it should be), it can’t be forgotten that the genocide sprung from 20 years of bloody civil war and infighting. It can’t be forgotten that the rest of Sudan is nowhere near recovery.
Human beings are relatively intelligent animals. We can discuss, think about and act on a variety of issues at once. We are fabulous multi-taskers. But it seems that if issues are beyond the view of America and Europe, we can only handle one at a time. Darfur was trendy for a while; now Burma is taking the stage. Iraq is constantly simmering on the back burner, and Iran is heating up back there too. But the focus has to be one place. Maybe we can evolve to the place where multiple complex international conflicts can gain our attention and our action at the same time. But I won’t hold my breath.
*Here is where the cynic in me admits that I hate the colorful rubber bracelets. I deeply, deeply despite them and I think they are relatively useless for activist purposes. Yes, they can start conversation and they can raise awareness and even the cynic in me can’t be irritated with most of the people who wear those stupid rubber bracelets. But I hate them. This could be its own post, but it’s not about elitism or fashion or any of that; it’s about my general frustration and disappointment with what activism has turned into. Like I said, another post. Until then, I will continue to glare at your LiveStrong bracelet.
**Do these actually do anything? I understand the solidarity, and maybe they’re being used more effectively than I know, but right now I mentally file them in the same drawer as colorful rubber bracelets.
***Vanessa, I’m with you.