16 April 2009

Several hundred people packed into the Cowin Auditorium at Columbia's Teachers College Tuesday night, and nearly all of them stayed more than 2 hours for an intriguing debate about what is actually happening in Darfur and what should be done about it.

Mahmood Mamdani, a professor at Columbia, calmly presented some of the arguments in his just-published Saviors and Survivors; the Darfur conflict started as a civil war; the Sudan's government most ferocious
repression was in 2003-04; the conflict is now a simmering, complicated stalemate. But, he said, the Save Darfur movement continues to misuse the word "genocide," exaggerates the death toll, implies that the situation is worsening, and calls for Western military intervention.

Mamdani continued that Save Darfur's misleading view of the reality today in Darfur is part of what is blocking a negotiated political solution. By pursuing Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, for war
crimes, the International Criminal Court is making a settlement less likely, because al-Bashir is an indispensable part of the peace process.

John Prendergast, Mamdani's opponent, is a former Clinton administration official who is highly visible in the Darfur solidarity world. He is more a publicity-hungry showman than a genuine scholar, an Alan Dershowitz with shoulder-length hair and a laid-back Indiana Jones manner. What was fascinating was how much he backed off from Save Darfur's extreme claims, possibly in part because he was confronted with Mamdani's unassailable evidence.

Prendergast spent a healthy part of his presentation name-dropping, mentioning several times that he recently met President Obama, and boasting about the number of trips he has made to Darfur and Sudan. He was also manipulative, dwelling emotionally on the ongoing suffering in Darfur's refugee camps without recognizing the complexity that Mamdani had described. (For instance, Prendergast spoke repeatedly about Darfur's "rebels," without noting that an insurgency that started as two groups has now splintered into more than 20, at least one of which has gone over to the government side.)

But on several major points of dispute, Prendergast weaseled. Early on, he stepped back from the word "genocide,"admittin g that "I wouldn't fall on my sword for it." (The web site for his own group, the Enough Project, says straightforwardly that Sudan's government is committing "genocide" in Darfur.) He said the Save Darfur movement only advocates outside force as a last resort, which will come as a surprise to anyone who has over the years followed their strident calls for a no-fly zone and other Western military intervention. And he even recognized that the indictment of al-Bashir might only be useful as a stick to force the Sudanese president to negotiate; Save Darfur has pushed for war crimes trials whatever the political cost.

In the spirited question period, Prendergast backpedaled even further, denying he has a connection with Save Darfur. So it was a little surprising to see this morning that the Enough Project is still listed on the Save Darfur web site as one of its supporters.

Back to Mahmood Mamdani. Toward the end of the evening, he did recognize that "Save Darfur did have a salutary effect at the beginning," back in 2003-04, during the worst violence; this acknowledgment would have been useful earlier, as most of the foot soldiers in the movement are genuine, and would probably be more open to his views if they did not think all their efforts had been counterproductive.

But possibly his most profound insight was into the difference between "victors' justice" and "survivors' justice." The model for victors' justice is the Nuremberg trials; the Allies had won, and Germans and the remaining Jews were not going to be living in the same state. So prosecutors could hold the Nazi criminals accountable.

The model for survivors' justice is the South African settlement in the early 1990s. The African National Congress did not win a clearcut victory, and the apartheid officials, from generals on down to police constables, were going to remain in the same country. If Nelson Mandela and the ANC had followed the Save Darfur logic, fighting would be continuing to this day.