Save Darfur in 2009

8/14/2019 Save Darfur in 2009

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Save Darfur in 2009

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Welcome to Voices on Genocide Prevention. Withme this week is Jerry Fowler, President of the Save Darfur Coalition. Jerry, thankyou for joining me.

JERRY FOWLER: Its my pleasure.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: As some of you may remember, Jerry spoke with uslast year just as he was leaving the Holocaust Museum and moving to take overthis new position at Save Darfur. At the time, I promised to bring you back, Ithink within a year, to tell us about the transition, a little bit more about whatsgoing on at Save Darfur and what we can expect in the future. For people whodont know, though, well start with the basics. So what is the Save DarfurCoalition?

JERRY FOWLER: Well, Save Darfur is several things actually. First and foremostits an alliance of 180 or so organizations of all stripes -- faith-based, secular, civilrights, human rights -- who have come together out of a sense of tremendousconcern and outrage at the violence in Darfur, and are working together in orderto end it, to promote protection of civilians, accountability, and ultimately peace.So thats one part of Save Darfur. And in general, theres this large constituencyof which organizations are a part, individuals are a part, super-activists are apart, students are a part. We work with all of these partners to try to push for anend to the crisis in Darfur and a just peace in all of Sudan.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And Save Darfur was born out of an emergencymeeting held up in New York, I believe in late summer of 2004, and you werethere representing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. What do you think theorganization or the coalition has achieved? Its been five years now. What havebeen some of its major achievements?

JERRY FOWLER: Well, as you say, this coalition itself came together in July of 2004 at an emergency summit for Darfur that we held in New York. Even beforethat, there were people who were speaking out. I mean, its not fair to say thatnobody paid attention and that the public didnt pay attention before July of 2004.

And it has grown immensely since then. I think during that period the primaryaccomplishment, and a very, very important accomplishment of this internationaloutcry, has been to keep people alive.

When I first traveled to the region earlier in 2004 and met with refugees who hadcrossed over into Chad, inside Darfur there were a million or so people displaced,and they were displaced into a desert where they couldnt survive without outsideassistance. And that was one of the things that I really didnt totally understand.It is difficult to understand until youre there, I mean, to be in a desert where the


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daily high is 115 degrees and your food has been destroyed, and your wells havebeen poisoned or the government is guarding other wells. You cant survivewithout outside assistance. The government was basically blocking outsideassistance at that point, very, very difficult for humanitarian organizations to getin.

As a result of international pressure, the Sudanese government was forced toallow in a humanitarian operation that has now been quite large and is literallykeeping people alive there, now over or somewhere around 2.5 million peoplewho depend upon-- who have been driven off the land. Theres actually morethan that who depend upon outside assistance because theyve been affected bythe collapse of the economy, because so many people have been driven off theland. I think that if we gave up, if we closed up shop, if we stopped raising ourvoices, that that international humanitarian operation would not survive verylong. The Sudanese government puts a tremendous amount of pressure on themas it is. The situation is very, very horrendous, and in spite of the pressure andthe attention, the humanitarian space now, or humanitarian access I should say,is the lowest its been in a couple of years.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And how has the situation, the crisis in Darfur, howhas it changed in these five years?

JERRY FOWLER: Well, I think in the period 2003 to 2005, there was a sustained,systematic, direct campaign of violent destruction and displacement by theSudanese government and militia allies, who are sometimes called theJanjaweed, against specific ethnic groups in Darfur. And in the course of thatcampaign, either because of the direct violence or because of these conditions of

life that I was describing, several hundred thousand people died. They perished.Thousands and thousands of girls and women were raped. And, as I said, 2.5million people were driven off the land.

I think from the middle of 2005 now, once this incredible amount of destructionand displacement had taken place and the survivors of it are huddled in theseimmense Internally Displaced Persons camps, what they call IDP camps, thenature of it has changed. People are still in a tremendous amount of danger. If they venture outside of these camps they can be subject to attack. Thecountrysides very, very insecure, but its not the kind of systematic attacks that

you had before. Occasionally the government has attacked people in camps, butthat happens from time to time. There is occasionally fighting between rebelgroups and the government. Weve seen this recently, within the last couple of weeks, and civilians can be caught in the middle of that. And the government hasabsolutely no regard for civilian life, and unfortunately sometimes it seems thatthe rebels dont either. But in that sense, I think the basic idea that youve got ahuge civilian population in peril remains the case and the problem. The ultimateauthor of that peril is the Sudanese government. The actual nature of the perilhas changed over the last few years.


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BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: One of the other things thats changed is the largerSudanese landscape, maybe not changed enough, but at least it has some majormarkers that its hitting as part of the evolution of the Comprehensive PeaceAgreement, which was signed between Sudans North and South. Major elections,national elections, are supposed to happen this year, and two years beyond that

the possibility that the South could declare its independence through areferendum. How does Darfur, and the work of advocates on Darfur specifically, fitinto this larger Sudanese context?

JERRY FOWLER: Well, thats a very important question, and I think its-- as ageneral matter, we have to keep in mind that the problem of Darfur cant beresolved unless the larger problem of Sudan is resolved, and vice versa. Andthere are local aspects, Darfur aspects to the problem, involving resources,relationship between groups, and the Sudanese government has been veryassiduous at exploiting those local problems and pitting groups against eachother. That in fact is a strategy that they used with tremendously devastatingeffect in the South during the long war, as you say, in the Southern part of thecountry.

The larger problem of Sudan is really one of the center against the periphery.What people have responded to in Darfur, what they were responding to inSudan, is basically that power and wealth has been concentrated in the hands of a minority elite based around the capitol of Khartoum. And in some ways, the so-called Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which resolved the war in the South,provided a framework for addressing that basic inequality in power and wealth.But it was an agreement between, not even as you just said the North and the

South, it was an agreement between one political party in the North, the NationalCongress Party, which has controlled the government now for 20 years aftertaking power in a military coup, and it was a very narrowly based part of this eliteat the center, and then a group called the Sudanese Peoples LiberationMovement, which is a Southern rebel movement. So even though the agreementis comprehensive in the sense of providing a framework for transforming thecountry and the relations of power and wealth, it is only between two parties. Andthe one party in particular, the National Congress Party, its main objective isreally to perpetuate its hold on power. I think moving forward, the rest of theperipheries have to be incorporated into the CPA, and particularly Darfur, where

the violence has been the most acute.BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: By that, do you mean opening up the CPA processfor new negotiations, or some sort of participation in elections? How would youbring these other groups among the periphery into that process?

JERRY FOWLER: Well, I think there are a variety of ways that it could be done. Ithink that the conception at the time that the CPA was negotiated was thatelections would be a way to bring about this transformation, that if you have full


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and free elections that were full and free and fair, that involved the participationof all different groupings, that that would contribute to this transformation. Nowtheres some doubt about when these elections will happen. Youve got thesituation in Darfur, which makes it very difficult to imagine that you can havemeaningful elections there, so it throws a lot of this into doubt. I think themechanism of integrating Darfuris into the CPA, integrating people from Eastern

Sudan into the CPA, is not one where theres a readily easy answer, but as thereare negotiations to resolve the conflict in Darfur, this ultimate need has to be keptin mind.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And a final question. Ill sort of ask it the inverseway. I mean, what do you think that international activists can achieve? I mean,its clear, and I think a lot of credit should be given to the international movementfor the aid effort, which as you said, has stemmed the dying in Darfur, notnecessarily altered the conditions that people live in, but stemmed the dying,which is something that cannot be minimized in its importance. What are theachievable things that activists should be working on today and over the nextyear?

JERRY FOWLER: Well, I think to speak in broadest terms, what is achievable is afurtherance of what has been achieved, which is to put the needs of civilians intothe mix of governmental responses to the crisis in Darfur and to Sudan morebroadly. I think too often what we see is that various governments have differentkinds of interests in Sudan, whether its the Chinese governments interest in oil,whether its the U.S. governments interest in counterterrorism, whether its otherinterests of influence or resources or politics. Governments generally dont havean interest in protecting human life, and I think what international movement has

done is created a political interest in protecting human life, because its shownthat theres a constituency of conscience -- a constituency that will speak outfrom conscience and say that when human beings are targeted for destruction,we cant stand idly by. And of course were frustrated that we havent achievedmore, more quickly, but the fact is the situation could be much, much worse. Aswe move forward we can keep that aspect, the needs of the civilians, in theforefront of the minds of governments, our government, other governments, theSudanese government.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And-- sorry, I promised already it would be a last

question, but a final one. Do you have any immediate agendas or proposals thatyoure putting, particularly to the new U.S. government?

JERRY FOWLER: Well, we think that for the Obama administration, a window of opportunity has opened up to finally end the crisis, end the genocide instead of manage it from week to week and month to month. Thats a combination of thepolitical capital-- or the opportunity is a product of the combination of PresidentObamas political capital, the honeymoon that any American president wouldhave, but in particular, the extent to which this president has captured the


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imagination of people abroad and governments abroad, especially in Africa. Andthe fact that the Sudanese governments feeling more pressure than it hasbefore, especially with the impending possibility -- maybe by the time you airthis, the reality -- that the president of Sudan will be indicted for war crimes bythe International Criminal Court. What we want is a sustained, diplomaticinitiative, what my colleague John Prendergast has called a peace surge, to finally

end the crisis. The first step that the Obama administration needs to take is toappoint somebody who is in charge, an envoy who is in charge of Sudan policy,whos got the stature, the mandate and the authority to drive U.S. policy onSudan, to negotiate with key players abroad, especially China, but key players inAfrica, key players in Europe, to have a coordinated diplomatic effort to finallybring this crisis to an end.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Jerry, thank you very much for joining me today. Of course listeners can always find out more about what Jerry and the Coalition aredoing on their website, so...

JERRY FOWLER: SaveDarfur.org.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: SaveDarfur.org . Thank you.

JERRY FOWLER: Thank you, Bridget.

NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention , fromUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about preventinggenocide, join us online at www.ushmm.org/conscience . There youll also find theVoices on Genocide Prevention weblog.
http://www.savedarfur.org/http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/http://www.savedarfur.org/

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Save Darfur in 2009