Rethinking Darfurby Marc Gustafson

Marc Gustafson is a Marshall Scholar and doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford. He is currentlywriting his dissertation on political trends in Sudan.

No. 89

The war in Darfur has been devastatingto the Darfuri people, and its aftermath hasbeen a tragic story of suffering, displace-ment and sorrow. At the same time, the warhas become one of the most misunder-stood conflicts in recent history. Analystsand activists have oversimplified the causesof the war, slighting its historical and sys-temic causes. For years, public commenta-tors ignored important changes in the scaleand nature of the violence in Darfur, caus-ing important misperceptions among thepublic and in the policy community.

Analysts misrepresented the scale of theconflict by selecting high-end estimatesfrom local casualty surveys and then extrap-olating them over the entire region. Theyalso largely ignored the fact that the majori-

ty of the deaths from violence occurredbefore the end of 2004. Similarly, many com-mentators failed to mention that disease andmalnutrition (as a consequence of war)caused over 80 percent of the casualties inDarfur, far more than violence itself. Thetotal number of people who have died fromviolence in Darfur is approximately 60,000,which is considerably smaller than the400,000 casualties often cited by activists.

This policy briefing draws on historicalanalysis, explores mortality surveys, anddissects six years of American budgetaryallocations in Sudan to demonstrate thatthe conflict in Darfur has been misunder-stood by both policymakers and the gener-al public, leading to problems in craftingpolicy toward that troubled land.

June 1, 2010

Executive Summary

Introduction

In the summer of 2004, one of the largestAmerican activist movements in recent historyemerged in response to the plight of a popula-tion located in Darfur, one of the most remoteregions of the world. In this mostly desertprovince along Sudan’s western border withChad, a civil war between the government ofSudan and two rebel groups, the SudanLiberation Army, or SLA, and the Justice andEquality Movement, or JEM, had killed thou-sands of civilians and displaced millions fromtheir homes. The Khartoum government per-petrated war crimes against civilians in Darfur,and the rebel groups showed a similar disre-gard for the most basic human rights of thecivilian population in the region.

The causes of the civil war in Darfur in-clude a troubled history of sub-state politicaland economic disputes, land rights, geopoliti-cal interference and the rapid diminution ofwater resources and arable land due to deserti-fication.1 This decades-long story of Darfur’sdevelopment, however, is a complicated one toconvey to a large public audience. Instead, bythe summer of 2004, stories of unidirectionalmurder, rape, and genocide started to appearin American newspapers. In the absence of his-torical context, these stories came to define thepublic’s perception of Darfur and ultimatelymoved millions of Americans to join a cam-paign intended to stop the violence.

By 2005, the Darfur activist movementhad ballooned into a multimillion-dollar,highly commercialized awareness campaign.In its first year, the Save Darfur Coalition,which acted as an umbrella organization formost of the activist campaigns, raised morethan $15 million.2 By 2006, the organizationhad more than tripled its income, raisingalmost $50 million in donations and spend-ing 95.1 percent of its funds on advertisingand mobilization.3 Mostly through directadvertising and public events, the campaignshaped the public discussion on Darfur andultimately influenced American foreign poli-cy. Since the same mischaracterizations that

fueled interest in the conflict came to influ-ence American policy, it is worth examiningthe nature of the war and how activists por-trayed it over the last six years.

How ActivistsMischaracterized

the Darfur Conflict

As an awareness campaign, the SDC wasvery effective, but it failed to portray the storyof Darfur accurately. Activists began by inflat-ing casualty rates, often claiming that hun-dreds of thousands of Darfuris had been“killed,” when in reality, the majority of thecasualties to which they refer occurred as aresult of disease and malnutrition (as a conse-quence of war).4 Differentiating between thosewho “died” and those who were “killed” mayseem callous in the shadow of the horrific actsof war crimes and injustice in Darfur, butignoring these distinctions has been central tohow the activist movement has gone astray.Since many activists assume that hundreds ofthousands of Darfuris have been “killed,” theyhave pressured the U.S. government to fundviolence prevention plans and internationalpeace-keeping troops, as opposed to different,potentially more effective, policy changes.

In 2006 the SDC hired lobbyists in Wash-ington to draft legislation and pressure politi-cians to focus their efforts and funds towardviolence prevention and United Nations troopdeployment. After hiring lobbyists, the SDClaunched a public pressure campaign with thecentral purpose of “urging the immediatedeployment of international peacekeepers toprotect the people of Darfur.”5

At more than 150 nationwide events, activ-ists learned how to pressure government offi-cials by mail and telephone. By the end of 2006,according to the Save Darfur website, support-ers had sent a million postcards and 764,570 e-mails to President Bush and Congress andcalled the White House 12,545 times.6 The cen-tral message of the calls and mailings was that“time is running out” and that the violence

2

As an awareness campaign,

the SDC was very effective, but it failed to

portray the story of Darfur

accurately.

must be stopped.7 The SDC held rallies in NewYork City and Washington, D.C., where advo-cates such as George Clooney spoke about howthe situation in Darfur was “quickly worsen-ing.” After the rallies, Clooney, who had recent-ly returned from a trip to Darfur where he wasadvised and escorted by the SDC, addressed theUnited Nations Security Council on September14, 2006. He stated in his address that the situ-ation in Darfur was “getting much, muchworse,” and that “in the time that we’re heretoday, more women and children will die vio-lently in the Darfur region than in Iraq,Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel, or Lebanon.”8

Before the lobbyists, public pressure cam-paigns, and activists emphasized the need fortroop deployment in 2006, the United StatesCongress had approved more than $1 billionin assistance funds to Sudan. Less than 1 per-cent of those funds were allocated to supportthe peacekeeping efforts of the AfricanUnion, which began deploying troops in2004.9 These numbers indicate that the U.S.government was initially more focused on

providing humanitarian aid and develop-ment support than it was on funding peace-keeping activities.

From 2006 until 2008, when the SDC andmany other groups began to directly pressurethe U.S. government, the allocation of U.S.funds to peacekeeping activities increaseddramatically (see Figure 1) to approximately50 percent of the total budget allocated toSudan.10 Overall emphasis on deploying mil-itary forces increased dramatically. By 2007,the United Nations announced that it wouldbegin deploying the world’s largest peace-keeping mission in Darfur and the UnitedStates promised to fund one quarter of theUN peacekeeping effort.11

Meanwhile, during 2007 a number ofAmerican political figures proposed that theUnited States should attempt to fix things byattacking Sudan. In February then-senatorHillary Clinton suggested to Defense Secre-tary Robert Gates during congressional testi-mony that the United States should consider“directing punitive strikes against Sudanese

3

During 2007 a number ofAmerican politicalfigures proposedthat the UnitedStates shouldattempt to fixthings by attacking Sudan.

Figure 1

U.S. Contributions to Peacekeeping in Darfur

Note: The yearly totals are taken from two sources: (1) the actual and supplemental allocations listed in the congres-

sional budget justification under the categories of “Contributions for International Peacekeeping Activities” (CIPA),

and “Peacekeeping Operations,” (PKO); and (2) the funding for private contractors as documented in U.S. Government

Accountability Office, “Darfur Crisis: Progress in Aid and Peace Monitoring Threatened by Ongoing Violence and

Operational Challenges,” GAO-07-9, November 2006, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d079.pdf. For a more detailed

description of the CIPA and PKO allocations for 2007, 2008, and 2009, see the Stimson Center’s Future of Peace

Operations Program Reports. The reports for CIPA allocations are available at http://www.stimson.org/fopo/?SN=FP

200808071796, and the PKO reports are available at http://www.stimson.org/fopo/?SN=FP200808071797.

$ (

mil

lion)

planes known to have taken part in illegalbombing missions in Darfur.”12 In October,Susan E. Rice, who would later becomePresident Obama’s ambassador to the UnitedNations, proposed that Congress shouldimmediately “authorize the use of force inorder to end the genocide.”13 Most boldly, Sen.Joe Biden, during his campaign for the presi-dency, stated flatly that “I would use Americanforce now,” asserting a “moral imperative” to“to put force on the table and use it.”14

In retrospect, the emphasis on militarymeans and peacekeeping seems misguidedbecause, as many casualty surveys now show,the violent death rate (those who were“killed”) in Darfur declined significantly aftera ceasefire was signed in April 2004, while therate of those who were dying of disease andmalnutrition remained high. According to theCentre for Research on the Epidemiology ofDisasters (CRED) in Brussels, which has pro-duced three of the most comprehensive casu-

alty studies to date, the number of violentdeaths dropped to approximately 150 permonth by the end of 2004.15 In an interviewconducted in 2005, UN official Jan Pronk alsoconfirmed that “about 100 persons” werebeing killed per month by violence and thatmost of the violence in Darfur consisted of“banditry, looting and crime.”16

In 2005 the United Nations conductedanother, more comprehensive survey, whichconcluded that the decline in violent deathssince its previous report in 2004 has been“substantial.”17 By the middle of 2005, theCRED conducted another casualty survey inDarfur; the U.S. Government AccountabilityOffice called it the most reliable study of casu-alties in Darfur to date.18 In addition to criti-cizing other mortality reports for improperlyextrapolating the limited surveys conductedto the entire Darfur region, the 2005 CREDreport examined more than 20 surveys con-ducted throughout the region and concluded

4

The violent death rate in

Darfur declinedsignificantly after

a ceasefire wassigned in April2004, while the

number of thosewho were dying of

disease and malnutrition

remained high.

Figure 2

Violent Deaths in Darfur (per year) 2004–2009

Note: The yearly totals listed above are taken from a variety of sources. Year 2004 was taken from the 2005 Centre for

Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters report. Year 2005-2009 are estimates based on the following: 1. The CRED

report’s partial reporting of 2005. 2. United Nations African Union in Darfur monthly violence reports. 3. The United

Nations Mortality Survey for Darfur 2005. 4. Data-set from Armed Conflict Location and Event Data. 5. African Union

Mission in Sudan Monthly News Bulletin. 6. United Nations Mission in Sudan Monthly News Bulletin. 7. Unpublished

UN mortality reports posted on the Social Science Research blog entitled, “Making Sense of Sudan.” All the reports

indicate that the average annual violent death rate in Darfur between 2005 and 2009 was somewhere between 1000 and

3500.

that the total number of violent deaths from2003–2005 was approximately 30,000. A laterreport from CRED published in the Lancet in2010 estimated the total number of violentdeaths in the conflict from 2003 to 2010 at62,305.19 Figure 2 outlines estimated deathsfrom violence from 2004 to 2009.

Despite the decline in violent deaths,activists, journalists, and academics continuedto sensationalize the problems in Darfur. Infall 2006, the SDC, ignoring the recent CREDreport and UN statements about the rapiddiminution of violence, began to run ads inthe United States and the United Kingdomreading “SLAUGHTER IS HAPPENING INDARFUR. YOU CAN HELP END IT. In 2003Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir moved tocrush opposition by unleashing vicious armedmilitias to slaughter entire villages of his owncitizens. After three years, 400,000 innocentmen, women and children have been killed.”

Shortly after the ads were released, theBritish Advertising Standards Authorityfound that Save Darfur’s ad campaign violat-ed codes of objectivity, and it ordered thegroup to amend its ads to present the highdeath toll as opinion, not fact.20 But by thatpoint, the Save Darfur Coalition had alreadyconvinced millions of Americans that the sit-uation in Darfur deserved immediate mili-tary intervention.

Activists have also mischaracterized thenature of the violence in Darfur, highlightingalmost exclusively the crimes of the govern-ment of Sudan and rogue Arab tribes. SaveDarfur advertisements, newsletters, and web-sites continue to use the term “ongoing geno-cide” to describe the conflict, even though thenature and scale of the violence has changedsignificantly since the height of the conflict in2003–2004. The repeated use of the word“genocide” distorted the balance of culpabilityand innocence. Using the term “genocide”implies that there is a unidirectional crimetaking place, one in which there are victims(i.e., the people of Darfur) and a culprit (i.e.,the government of Sudan).

In reality, however, there are victims andvillains on both sides of the civil war in

Darfur. The government of Sudan has killedmany people and is responsible for war crimesin Darfur, but the rebel insurgents are alsoguilty. When the United Nations conductedits International Commission of Inquiry onDarfur, it found that in addition to Khar-toum’s “crimes against humanity,” many ofthe rebel groups had also engaged in “seriousviolations of human rights and humanitarianlaw.”21

The international community has largelymisunderstood the role of the rebel groups,believing that they emerged to protect the peo-ple of Darfur from the government’s genocidalonslaught. In reality, however, the rebel groupsinitiated the war by launching an insurgency in2003, winning the first 32 out of 34 battlesagainst the government.22 Unable to controlthe insurgency, the government armed ad hocmilitia groups in Darfur to suppress the rebelmovement. These militiamen, often alongsideSudanese government soldiers, killed, rapedand tortured tens of thousands of innocentDarfuris. After 2005 and the introduction ofinternational observers, government-ledattacks declined rapidly and the rebel groupsbegan to fissure. Rebel infighting became theprimary cause of violent deaths and otheratrocities in Darfur by 2006. The governmentand its ad hoc militia groups were likelyresponsible for the majority of casualties fromviolence before 2005, and the majority of casu-alties from violence overall, but by 2006, frac-tured rebel groups and individual defectorswere wreaking havoc in Darfur, becoming thechief perpetrators of violence against civiliansand attacks on peacekeepers and humanitari-an workers.23

The Activist Impactin Darfur

Most of the rebels’ actions have gone unno-ticed in the international community becauseof how the conflict has been framed byactivists and American government officials.Use of the term “genocide” has allowed rebelgroups in Darfur to slip under the radar and

5

Despite thedecline in violentdeaths, activists,journalists, andacademics continued to sensationalize the problems inDarfur.

commit crimes without the rest of the worldtaking notice. Had “genocide” not been thefocus, activist campaigns might have also chal-lenged the rebel groups. For example, Eritrea,Chad, and the Sudan People’s LiberationMovement, or SPLM, were the principal fun-ders of the rebel groups in Darfur. They were(and some still are) also allies and aid recipi-ents of the U.S. government, which meansthey could have easily been pressured to cuttheir lifelines to the rebel groups.24

Additionally, a disproportionate emphasison “genocide” and military violence has hin-dered the peace process. The primary peaceprocess, which led to the Darfur Peace Agree-ment, lasted almost two years, but was hastilyconcluded in May of 2006 after seven roundsof negotiations. UN official Jan Pronk stated amonth earlier that the peace talks were beinggiven a one-month deadline. One of the rea-sons for the deadline, according to the chiefAfrican Union mediator, Salim Ahmed Salim,was that the process was “severely underfund-ed.”25 The other reason for the deadline, ac-cording to Alex de Waal, a Darfur expert andprogram director at the Social Science Re-search Council, was that the internationalcommunity, particularly the United States, wasputting pressure on the AU mediation team toexpedite the agreement.

If U.S. political leaders and activists hadbeen more focused on peacemaking, perhapsmore funding and time could have been allo-cated to the talks. Instead, the U.S. govern-ment spent over $1 billion on peacekeepingand rushed the peacemaking process to anend. “With more time,” argues Alex de Waal,“the AU team and [British international devel-opment secretary Hilary] Benn could proba-bly have found a formula to satisfy” all par-ties.26

The abrupt end of the peace talks caused anumber of problems. First, one of the mostimportant provisions of the Darfur PeaceAgreement was the incorporation of the rebelgroups into both the armed forces and the localpolice force. This police force could haveaddressed the issues of banditry and the safety ofthe aid workers, which would later become sig-

nificant problems in Darfur. It also could haveprovided jobs for many of the rebels who even-tually turned to banditry in desperation aftertheir rebel groups broke apart. The creation ofthe police force was one of the provisions thatwas being negotiated in the final days of thepeace talks and was cut short before all partiescame to an agreement.27 Second, more time mayhave prevented the rebel groups from splittinginto different factions. After the peace agree-ment ended, fighting between rebel groupsbecame one of the most significant causes ofviolent deaths in the region. Alex de Waal arguesthat the peace agreement’s abrupt end is one ofthe reasons why the rebel groups split into somany different factions.28

Before the peace talks had come to an end,activists had already decided that the deploy-ment of international troops was the bestsolution to the problems of Darfur. The veryexistence of peace talks was rarely mentionedin American media. A survey of Save Darfurnewsletters since 2004 shows that the peaceprocess was scarcely mentioned to the SDCcommunity. Other activist groups and indi-viduals dismissed the process as irrelevant. Forexample, only one week after the peace agree-ment was signed, Eric Reeves, one of the mostprominent Darfur activists and chroniclers ofDarfur events, declared that the agreementwas “a meaningless piece of paper signedunder genocidal duress” and that more effortshould be focused on stopping the violence.29

In defense of SDC’s strategy to focus pri-marily on violence prevention and claims ofgenocide, rather than on the peace agreementor development, Alex Meixner, SDC’s policydirector, argues that violence in Darfur waspreventing humanitarian aid from reachingthose who needed it. Peacekeeping was there-fore “necessary to complement humanitarianassistance.”30

An analysis of the U.S. Agency for Inter-national Development’s monthly reports par-tially supports Meixner’s point. In 2005 and2006 USAID reports document attacks on aidworkers and note that some locations were toodangerous for aid workers to provide assis-tance. The humanitarian groups, however, still

6

The very existenceof peace talks

was rarely mentioned in

American media.Activist groupsand individuals

dismissed theprocess as irrelevant.

had access to approximately 90 percent of theaffected population in 2005, which is remark-able given the landscape and size of Darfur andthe short time they were given to reach such adispersed population.31 Insecurity was part ofthe reason why the humanitarian groupscould not reach the remaining 10 percent, butaccording to the newest CRED report, releasedin January 2010, the primary problem by 2006was that the humanitarian aid budget hadbeen significantly cut.32 The World FoodProgramme, the primary supplier of food toDarfur, experienced a 50 percent budget cut,while UNICEF was only able to raise 11 percentof its yearly budget. The number of aid workerswas reduced by 18 percent, meaning that thenumber of affected populations without assis-tance increased.33 At the same time that thehumanitarian budget was cut, the budget forpeacekeeping soared into the billions, meaningthat donors were more interested in funding

the peacekeeping mission than providinghumanitarian assistance.34

Insecurity, however, was still a problemand was preventing access to some regions ofDarfur, particularly in West Darfur. USAIDreports indicate that the primary causes ofinsecurity in the inaccessible camps camefrom bandits and car thieves, two problemsthat peacekeepers are not traditionally de-ployed to address. These issues require a localpolice force, a developed penal code and fur-ther civic development, all important ele-ments of the failed peace agreement. As therate of violent deaths in Darfur dipped belowemergency levels, attacks against peacekeep-ers and humanitarian aid workers began torise.

Richard Gowan, an expert on peacekeepingat the Center on International Cooperation,says that this trend is indicative of the current“crisis in peacekeeping” worldwide. Part of the

7

Figure 3

Humanitarian Access to Affected Populations in Darfur

Source: United Nations Darfur Humanitarian Profile no. 33, http://www.unsudanig.org/docs/DHP33_narrative_1% 20October%202008.pdf.

% o

f a

ffe

cte

d p

op

ula

tio

ns

ac

ce

ss

ible

problem, says Gowan, is that the traditionalrole of peacekeepers has changed significantlysince the Cold War, when peacekeepers weremeant to perform military tasks and monitorthe implementation of peace agreements.35

Today, the mission of peacekeepers is oftenunclear, as “there is no strategic formula fordetermining when peacekeepers should be de-ployed, or more importantly, when theyshould leave.”36

In Darfur, peacekeepers were originallysent in to monitor the April 8, 2004, ceasefireand to act as a deterrent to warring Sudaneseparties. Over time, civic infrastructure brokedown in the absence of a viable peace agree-ment, and the peacekeepers were suddenlyresponsible for local development and civicduties for which they were not trained.37

Therefore, the SDC and the internationalcommunity’s demand for more peacekeep-ing troops not only precipitated a harmfulreallocation of funds away from humanitari-an aid in 2006, but it was also ill-conceived,signaling a belief that peacekeepers, insteadof the local citizenry (via the peace process),could repair Darfur’s infrastructure and per-form the necessary law enforcement duties.

Not surprisingly, then, the increase of inter-national troops in Darfur did not reduce theproblem of banditry or improve access to theaffected population. In fact, humanitarianaccess to affected areas worsened after theUnited Nations began to deploy troops (seeFigure 3). In 2008 the United Nations pub-lished a report indicating that during themonths following the April 2004 ceasefire, theaccessibility to affected populations was rela-tively high, averaging roughly 90 percent.However, once the international peacekeepersbegan to be deployed in 2006, the accessibilitydecreased. (It is important to note that onlyone third of the authorized peacekeepers hadbeen deployed by summer 2008.38)

Had the Abuja peace talks been properlyfunded and the two sides given adequatetime to come to an agreement, a more robustlocal police force could have been establishedto control the banditry that impeded hu-manitarian assistance. Also, rebel groups

may not have fractured into as many splintergroups, causing rebel defectors and rebelinfighting to become a significant threat toaid workers.

Darfur and Activists Today

Today the situation in Darfur continues tobe mischaracterized. Most of the ongoing vio-lence can be attributed to banditry, lawless-ness, and fighting between rebel groups, withone notable exception being the recent gov-ernment attacks in Jebel Marra.39 According toUNAMID reports, the average monthly casu-alty rate for the last five months of 2009 was51.40 Very few of these are linked to the con-flict between Sudanese government forces andthe rebel groups. Since last year, the conflict inDarfur has not met the 1,000 casualties peryear threshold that many political scientistsconsider necessary for a conflict to be catego-rized as a “civil war.”41 In January Lt. Gen.Patrick Nyamvumba, the commander of thepeacekeeping force in Darfur, described thesituation as “calm, very calm at the moment,but it remains unpredictable.”42 Additionally,Sudan’s elections in April—which were expect-ed to reignite violence in many areas ofDarfur—were surprisingly peaceful.

Despite these changes, there still seems to beno consensus over what to call the situation inDarfur. On the one hand, many governmentofficials and activists have not changed the waythey talk about the conflict. President Obamaused the word “genocide” in the present tensewhen addressing the issues of Darfur in speech-es in Germany and Ghana in 2009.43 U.S.ambassador to the United Nations Susan Ricealso continues to use the term “genocide.”44

Activist groups such as the SDC and theGenocide Intervention Network still frequentlyuse the terms “ongoing genocide” and “war inDarfur” in their literature and advertisements.

On the other hand, U.S. Special Envoy toSudan Scott Gration argues that the geno-cide in Darfur had ended.45 The Obama ad-ministration’s Sudan policy, released lastOctober, referred to the genocide in Darfur

8

The increase ofinternational

troops in Darfurdid not reduce the problem of

banditry orimprove access to the affected

population.

as if it were still happening, but substantivelycentered on a more conciliatory approach toKhartoum, offering both incentives and pres-sure.46 Additionally, former top commanderof UNAMID, General Martin Agwai, has stat-ed that the war in Darfur has come to an end.Most of the remaining violence, he says, isdue to “low-level disputes and banditry.”47

Even Eric Reeves, a promoter of erroneouscasualty figures early in the conflict, con-cedes that “there is no doubt that violencehas diminished significantly in the past twoor three years—and many, including myself,have been slow to recognize how significantthis reduction has been.”48

SDC has learned many lessons from itsmistakes and has made efforts to improve theway it provides information. It has decreasedthe Darfur casualty rate on its website, from400,000 to 300,000, and provided a sectionexplaining the “myths” of the Darfur conflict.It has shifted its central focus away from vio-lence and toward the upcoming referendumin the south, the peace process in Doha, Qatar,and pressuring the U.S. Government to notrecognize the results of Sudan’s recent elec-tions. Other groups, such as the GenocideIntervention Network have also adjusted thecasualty rates, and have made efforts toencourage support for the peacemakingprocess. Additionally, Special Envoy Grationhas shifted the U.S. government’s primaryfocus to the peace process in Doha, and to thepeace agreement between the north and thesouth.

Regardless of these changes, however,members of the current administration donot agree with Gration’s response to theDarfur conflict and many activist groups reg-ularly criticize Gration’s efforts to supportpeace over punishment and engage diplomat-ically with the current government of Sudan.There is still disproportionate emphasis onthe government of Sudan’s role in the conflictand undue attention paid to the issue ofgenocide over the root causes of the conflict.While activists have contributed to these con-ditions, it must be said that the current land-scape of Darfur activism is vastly mixed, with

different groups pursuing different policyobjectives.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that American activistswere able to bring attention to the conflict inDarfur. In fact, their efforts may be the reasonwhy Darfur is host to the largest humanitari-an assistance effort in the world. Even so, theirefforts have had negative consequences. Onelikely unintended consequence was the diver-sion of public attention from other wars ofgreater scale and longevity. For example, in thenearby Democratic Republic of the Congo,the annual casualty rate since 2003 has beenapproximately four times higher than it was inDarfur. A decade-long civil war in that countryhas led to the deaths of almost one millionpeople, many more deaths than in Darfur.49

But there is no American activist movementfor the Congolese and the level of internation-al humanitarian aid and peacekeeping assis-tance is still smaller than what it is in Darfur.

One possible explanation for why the pub-lic came to pay attention to Darfur and not tothe DRC is rooted in the nature of the Darfuractivists’ campaign. Stories of race-based ram-page and warfare—like the one activists pro-moted in Darfur—attract more attention thando more mundane but materially more devas-tating events involving complicated politicalprocesses, famine, or other causes of death.Some activists are aware of this phenome-non.50 Accordingly, one could see how the sto-ries of genocide and rapine in Darfur not onlymischaracterized the conflict, but turnedattention from other, more devastating envi-ronments like the one in the DRC.

It is easy to understand why activists do notwant the U.S. government or the internationalcommunity to shift their focus away from thedifficulties that many Darfuris still face, espe-cially since violent conflict could easily returnin the absence of an effective peace agreement.However, ignoring the changes in the scaleand nature of the Darfur conflict has alreadyhindered understanding of and response to

9

Stories of race-based rampage and warfare—like theone activists promoted inDarfur—attractmore attentionthan do moremundane butmaterially moredevastatingevents.

the conflict. Today, Darfur’s peacekeeping andhumanitarian missions continue to grow, yetthe level of violence has remained below emer-gency levels since the end of 2004. Banditry,intra-tribal fighting, and, most importantly,the absence of a peace agreement still poseserious problems, but these are problems thatdemand the development of local infrastruc-ture and participation, not the type of inter-vention advocated by activists and even somepolitical leaders.

In the case of Darfur, activists created anumber of negative consequences. They pro-moted an inaccurate perception among thepublic and policy elites about the nature andextent of violence in the region; they helpedshift U.S. diplomatic emphasis away from thepeacemaking process and from atrocitiescommitted by rebel groups; and they divertedattention from more devastating problemselsewhere. Despite activists’ good intentions,these costs are real, and should be added tothe ledger we use when measuring the impactof political activism on the Darfur issue.

Notes1. On economic disputes and land rights, see Alexde Waal, ed., War in Darfur and the Search for Peace(Cambridge, MA: Global Equity Initiative, 2007).On geopolitical interference, see Julie Flint andAlex de Waal, Darfur: A Short History of a Long War(London: Zed Books, 2006), p. 51. The diminu-tion of annual rainfall over the last century is doc-umented in Alex de Waal, Famine that Kills: Darfur,Sudan, 1984–1985, 1st ed. (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1989), p. 85.

2. Internal Revenue Service, Return of OrganizationExempt from Income Tax—Save Darfur Coalition, Vol.Form 990, 2005–2006.

3. Ibid., 2006–2007.

4. Olivier Degomme and Debarati Guha-Sepir, “Pat-terns of Mortality Rates in Darfur Conflict,” TheLancet 375, no. 9711 (January 2010): 294–300,http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)61967-X/fulltext. The CRED re-port is the most comprehensive assessment of casu-alties to date. It draws its data from more than 63different casualty surveys conducted in almost everyregion of Darfur. For the claims of the Darfuractivists, see www.savedarfur.com, www.enoughpro-

ject.org, and www.standnow.org. Also, see newsarchives by activist Eric Reeves and journalistNicholas Kristof, where one can see cited casualtyrates between 450,000 and 700,000. Nicholas D.Kristof, “Will We Say ‘Never Again’ Yet Again?” NewYork Times, March 27, 2004; and Eric Reeves, “DarfurMortality: Shoddy Journalism at the New YorkTimes,” SudanReeves.org, August 14, 2007, http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article180.html.

5. On the pressure campaign, see Save Darfur,“Global Days for Darfur,” SaveDarfur.org, April 3,2007, http://www.savedarfur.org/page/community/post/lisaravenscraft/BWf. Other efforts ofthe campaigns are available on the www.savedarfur.org website. As for the lobbyists, this is publicinformation available on opensecrets.org and bylooking at the publicly available yearly IRS reportson Guidestar.org.

6. Save Darfur Website, http://www.savedarfur.org/pages/darfur_by_the_numbers.

7. Save Darfur Website Archive at www.archive.org:http://web.archive.org/web/20060918213342/www.savedarfur.org/content?splash=no

8. A transcript of Clooney’s speech is available athttp://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/georgeclooneyunitednations.htm.

9. United States Congressional Budget Justifi-cation for Foreign Operations, 2004, 2005, http://www.state.gov/s/d/rm/rls/cbj/.

10. The total annual budget includes contributionsto the United Nations through the Contributionsfor International Peacekeeping Assistance (CIPA)account.

11. Lauren Landis, “En Route to Darfur,” Dipnote:U.S. Department of State Official Blog, September28, 2007, http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/entries/index/en_route_darfur.

12. Comment during hearings on Department ofDefense Authorization for Appropriations forFiscal Year 2008, February 6, 2007.

13. Susan E. Rice, “The Genocide in Darfur: Amer-ica Must Do More to Fulfill the Responsibility toProtect,” Brookings Opportunity 08 PositionPaper, October 24, 2007, http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/1024darfur_rice_Opp08.aspx.

14. “Biden Calls for Military Force in Darfur,”Associated Press, April 11, 2007.

15. Debarati Guha-Sepir, Olivier Degomme, andMark Phelan, “Darfur: Counting the Deaths.Mortality Estimates from Multiple Survey Data,”

10

Ignoring thechanges in the

scale and natureof the Darfur

conflict has hindered

understanding of and responseto the conflict.

Centre for Research on the Epidemiology ofDisasters Report, May 2005, http://www.cedat.be/sites/default/files/ID%20211%20-%20Counting%20the%20Deaths.pdf.

16. Quoted in IRINNews.org, “Interview with JanPronk,” August 4, 2005, transcript at http://www.janpronk.nl/interviews/english-french-and-german/interview-concerning-sudan.html.

17. “Mortality Survey among Internally DisplacedPersons and Other Affected Populations in GreaterDarfur, Sudan,” Report of the World HealthOrganization and the Federal Ministry of Health inSudan, September 2005, p. 2, http://www.emro.who.int/sudan/pdf/CMS%20Darfur%202005%20final%20report_11%2010%2005.pdf.

18. U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Dar-fur Crisis: Death Estimates Demonstrate Severityof Crisis, but Their Accuracy and Credibility CouldBe Enhanced,” GAO-07-24, November 2006, p. 19,http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0724.pdf.

19. Degomme and Guha-Sepir, p. 298.

20. British Advertising Standards AuthorityAdjudication on Save Darfur Coalition, August 8,2007, http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/TF_ADJ_42993.htm.

21. United Nations, “Report of the InternationalCommission of Inquiry on Darfur to the UnitedNations Secretary General,” January 25, 2005, p.158, http://www.un.org/News/dh/sudan/com_inq_darfur.pdf.

22. Flint and de Waal, p. 99.

23. See Reports of the Secretary-General on theAfrican Union-United Nations Hybrid Operationin Darfur (UNAMID) for 2004–2009, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/unamid/reports.shtml.

24. For evidence of these countries funding rebelgroups, see ibid. Washington no longer sends aidto Eritrea.

25. African Union, “Briefing by Dr. Salim AhmedSalim, AU Special Envoy and Chief Mediator forthe Darfur Conflict to the UN Security Council,”January 13, 2006.

26. Alex de Waal, “I Will Not Sign,” London Review ofBooks 28, no. 23 (November 30, 2006), http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n23/alex-de-waal/i-will-not-sign.

27. In the final days of the peace agreement, theUnited States Deputy Secretary of State RobertZoellick insisted that the bulk of rebels incorpo-

rated into the Army and local police forces comefrom one of the rebel groups, the SudanLiberation Army/MM (Minni Minnawi). Thisbred discontent among the rebel groups and wasone of the reasons why the other rebel groupsrefused to sign.

28. Alex de Waal, “I Will Not Sign.”

29. Eric Reeves, “Why Abuja Won’t Save Darfur,”New Republic (online), May 10, 2006, http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=15581.

30. Alex Meixner, “Misinterpreting the Genocidein Darfur,” BlogforDarfur.org, August 25, 2009,http://blogfordarfur.org/archives/1281.

31. United Nations Darfur Humanitarian Profile,no. 33, http://www.unsudanig.org/docs/DHP33_narrative_1%20October%202008.pdf. See also Chart2, “Percentage of Affected Population Accessible toUN Humanitarian Aid,” in this article.

32. Degomme and Guha-Sepir.

33. Ibid.

34. The 2010 Centre for Research on theEpidemiology of Disasters report shows that afterthese budget cuts, there was a rise in child mortali-ty rates and diarrhea-related deaths, even thoughthe violent death rate continued to decline.

35. Richard Gowan, “The Strategic Context:Peacekeeping in Crisis: 2006–2008,” InternationalPeacekeeping 15, no. 4 (August 2008): 453–69.

36. Personal interview with Richard Gowan,January 15, 2009.

37. Both the African Union Mission in Sudan(AMIS) and United Nations Mission in Darfur(UNMID) peacekeeping forces have includedsmall police forces, but their capabilities havebeen very limited, given their size and the exten-sive training necessary for familiarizing policeofficers with the cultural and legal norms ofDarfur. The failure to control banditry in Darfur,and many other states with peacekeeping activi-ties, has precipitated a systemic reallocation ofresources at the United Nations from military-centric peacekeeping to police-centric peacekeep-ing. This change is addressed in B. K. Greener,“UNPOL: UN Police as Peacekeepers,” Policing andSociety 19, no. 2 (June 2009): 106–18.

38. “Darfur Force Only at ‘Half Strength’ by End ofthe Year,” Telegraph, September 18, 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/sudan/2983392/Darfur-force-only-at-half-strength-by-end-of-the-year.html.

11

39. Recent government attacks in Jebel Marra inearly March are of particular concern because theyhave caused significant civilian casualties, possi-bly as many as 200. For details see Agence France-Press, “U.S. ‘Extremely Concerned’ by ReportedDarfur Offensive,” March 2, 2010, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gXMqekdY9K_-t_nyuoSy5N8f3pRQ.

40. Monthly casualty reports from the UnitedNations African Union in Darfur have been post-ed on the Social Science Research Council blog,Making Sense of Darfur, http://blogs.ssrc.org/darfur/category/darfur/numbers/. Reports forJanuary and February have yet to be made public.

41. For the casualty reports of the last year, seehttp://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unamid/reports.html. On political scientists’ 1,000 per-son per year casualty threshold, see Melvin Smalland J. David Singer, Resort to Arms: International andCivil Wars, 1816–1980, 2nd ed. (Beverly Hills, CA:Sage Publications, 1991) or Harvard’s Correlates ofWar website, http://www.correlatesofwar.org/.

42. Quoted in Jeffrey Gettleman, “Fragile CalmHolds in Darfur after Years of Death,” New YorkTimes, January 2, 2010.

43. Transcript of Obama’s Germany Speech, http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/berlinvideo/; Transcript of Obama’s Ghana Speech, http://www.scribd.com/doc/17283880/President-Barack-Obamas-Speech-in-Ghana-Africa-July-11-2009-VideoTranscript.

44. Mark Leon Goldberg, “Amb. Susan Rice:

Darfur Is an ‘Ongoing Genocide,’” UN Dispatch,January 26, 2009, http://www.undispatch.com/node/7599.

45. Colum Lynch, “Sudan’s ‘Coordinated’ Geno-cide in Darfur Is Over, U.S. Envoy Says,” Washing-ton Post, June 18, 2009.

46. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Susan E. Rice, andScott Gration, “Remarks on the Sudan Strategy,”October 19, 2009, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/10/130686.htm.

47. Quoted in “War in Sudan’s Darfur ‘Is Over,’”BBC, August 17, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8224424.stm.

48. Quoted in Gettleman.

49. Human Security Report, “The Shrinking Costsof War,” January 20, 2010, p. 42, http://www.humansecurityreport.info/2009Report/2009Report_Pt2_3_DeathTollInTheDemocraticRepublicOfTheCongo.pdf.

50. Two analysts at the International RescueCommittee noted that number of deaths seemsnot to be the primary determinant of attention,and stressed the importance of raising salience.Despite their appalling estimate of deaths in theCongolese conflict—4 million people—they notedthat since 98 percent of the deaths were not fromviolence, people viewed the devastation as “un-heroic, seemingly apolitical and therefore untele-visable.” Richard Brennan and Anna Husarska,“Inside Congo, An Unspeakable Toll,” WashingtonPost, July 16, 2006.

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