Is Darfur a Genocide? (Colin Powell says, "Yes.")

by Michelle

Published March 02, 2009 @ 05:14PM PT

This post --- a bit of a sidebar to the multi-blog Rumble started here in the (virtual) halls of Change.org --- ended up being quite long, so I've divided it into three parts. Part I introduces the debate and covers the U.S. State Department's 2004 report on Darfur, Part II covers the 2005 UN report, the ICC indictment application against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, and the issue of genocidal intent. Part II discusses possible implications of an indictment (or lack thereof) of Bashir on the genocide charge. The ICC is scheduled to announce its decision on the arrest warrants for Bashir on Wednesday.

Among the many points of criticism levied against the Save Darfur movement is the assertion that the conflict in Darfur is not, actually, a genocide. (This criticism is often thrown by many --- not all, but many --- in such a way as to seek to invalidate the movement as a whole.)

The argument seems to be that activists sensationalize the conflict by calling it "genocide," and in so doing misconstrue and misdirect their efforts, to detrimental effect.

For instance, in his response to The Rumble (in which he accuses me of missing the point, but given that he pulls a quote from the beginning of my post without consideration for the rest of my arguments, he seems to miss mine as well), journalist Steve Bloomfield writes:

"I once had a long - and sadly off-the-record - chat with one of the leading Darfur campaigners in the UK. Why, I asked, did he insist on calling the crisis a ‘genocide'? After a bit of back and forth, he admitted that it wasn't really a genocide now. But, he added, ‘what you've got to understand Steve is that we only get 30 seconds on the Today programme.'"

I'm certainly not saying that Steve did not have this conversation, but in reality, the genocide question in Darfur is much, much more complicated, and does not stem purely from an activist looking to maximize shock value on a 30 second TV spot. Nor is the contained to this activist/aid worker divide --- the heart of the matter rests in competing reports from the international policy and legal communities.

The key documents of concern are the 2004 U.S. State Department investigation that concluded that genocide did occur in Darfur, a 2005 report by a UN commission of inquiry that concluded it didn't (or rather, concluded that they couldn't conclude that it did), and the application by the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on genocide charges.

Powell's Testimony

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 9, 2004 that the "actions of the Sudanese government and its proxies, the [Janjaweed] militia" amount to genocide against the people of Darfur:

"Citing the recently completed State Department investigation that was conducted in the refugee camps in Chad with the assistance of the American Bar Association and the Coalition for International Justice, Powell identified ‘a consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities (killings, rapes, burning of villages) committed by [Janjaweed]  and government forces against non-Arab villagers' from which ‘we concluded that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the Government of Sudan and the [Janjaweed] bear responsibility.'"

In his testimony, he compared the evidence gathered in the report vis-à-vis the international legal definition of genocide, and stated,

"The evidence leads us to the conclusion that genocide has occurred and may still be occurring in Darfur. We believe the evidence corroborates the specific intent of the perpetrators to destroy ‘a group in whole or in part'. This intent may be inferred from their deliberate conduct."

Say what you will about the Bush administration and its apparent ease with stretching/bending/completely fabricating the truth --- but I don't think the American Bar Association and the Coalition for International Justice have earned anything close to a similar reputation. As Colin Thomas-Jensen of the ENOUGH Project noted,

"The U.S. made the genocide declaration after sending a team out to collect evidence, which was reviewed by the legal team at State.  Based on the available evidence, they made the determination.  No other country took any similar action."

This was not a case of media sensationalism, or the frivolities of an overzealous activist, but an investigative report compiled and analyzed against the international legal definition of genocide.

(Stay tuned for Parts II and III.)

[Photo: Secretary of State Colin Powell testifies on Darfur before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2004.]