c. 2006 Newhouse News Service
(UNDATED) It’s hard to know just what will be happening in Darfur on Sunday (April 30).
We do know, from the reports of just about anybody in that western section of Sudan, that what was always a hideous situation is deteriorating, that the fighting and killing and raping is spreading over the border into Chad, that some humanitarian efforts in the region are running out of both money and safe places to work.
“I think it’s a matter of weeks or months,” Jan Egeland, United Nations undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, told the U.N. Security Council, “that we will have a collapse in many of our operations.”
And at that point, a death toll now counted at something over 300,000 could shoot upward like a pillar of flame.
So Sunday, a lot of people are gathering to try to do something about Darfur.
In Washington, D.C., a rally to save Darfur _ to protect villagers from savage militias encouraged by the Sudanese government and rebel bands no more careful of civilians _ boasts a list of speakers from across the American experience. Besides miscellaneous congressmen, it counts Russell Simmons of Def Jam Records and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick; it features Elie Wiesel and the country duo Big & Rich.
Not to mention George Clooney.
“It’s a range and depth of people who on paper don’t seem to have much in common,” says Alex Meixner, legislative and communications coordinator of the Save Darfur Coalition in Washington, D.C.
“There’s not an argument with two sides here. The two sides are the people who’ve heard about Darfur and the people who haven’t.”
Save Darfur also has an expansive executive committee, including the American Jewish World Service, the American Society for Muslim Advancement, the National Association of Evangelicals, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The effort includes rallies in 13 other cities around the United States.
Something about the word “genocide” broadens the conversation. Or maybe it’s the actual act of genocide, of hundreds of thousands of deaths after all the times _ Treblinka, Bosnia, Rwanda _ we declared it would happen never again.
Just using the word hasn’t had that much impact. It was considered a landmark, in September 2004, when President Bush called the situation in Darfur “genocide,” but the impact has been limited.
“The word `genocide’ was not an action word, it was a responsibility word,” Charles R. Snyder of the State Department explained carefully to Emily Wax of The Washington Post soon afterward. “There was an ethical and moral obligation, and saying it underscored how seriously we took this.”
How many bodies does it take to make genocide an action word?
This week, even as the situation in Darfur deteriorates, there are inching indications that Darfur is getting a bit more attention.
The African Union, which has 7,000 troops to try to maintain order in an area the size of France, is pushing peace negotiations in Nigeria between the Sudanese sides, and has set Sunday as a deadline.
NATO, although it has no interest in joining the African Union troops, has expressed a readiness to provide training for them.
Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council agreed to place sanctions on four Sudanese, from both sides, whom it considers particularly responsible for the slaughter. It was something less than a grand moral pronouncement _ three nations abstained, although Russia and China lacked the nerve to cast a veto, and the United States maneuvered to keep one of its Sudanese intelligence resources off the list _ but it was something.
However remote the prospect, there’s a discomfort to the idea of a cell in The Hague.
And Save Darfur’s other effort, a Million Voices for Darfur, has already stirred up 500,000 e-mailed postcards to President Bush.
Nobody knows exactly what’s going to happen in the United States on Sunday, either.
But somehow, genocide should be an action word.
MO/JL END SARASOHN
(David Sarasohn is an associate editor at The Oregonian of Portland, Ore.)
