Mar. 21, 2006 – Frustrated by what some see as the government’s inaction on the Darfur genocide, a growing grassroots movement is pressuring the White House and Congress to do more to prevent further atrocities.
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From Portland, Oregon to Nashville, Tennessee, dozens of non-profit, faith-based, and student groups have launched public awareness campaigns about the Sudanese government-backed, ethnically polarized violence. In addition to pushing government and educational institutions to wield their economic leverage by divesting their funds from Sudan, some call on policymakers to fund and orchestrate international military intervention in the war-torn region.
Human rights observers accuse the Sudanese government and Janjaweed militia of waging an campaign of genocide against civilians in Darfur, the vast, western-most region of Sudan. The recent conflict, which has complex roots in political and economic strife, arises from Sudanese government attempts to brutally stem an insurrection in that part of the country.
According to an analysis by the Coalition for International Justice and sociologists from Northwestern and Toronto Universities, the conflict has killed an estimated 400,000 people and displaced approximately 2 million more since the most recent surge in violence began in 2003.
"There’s strong tendency for people to give some rhetoric, but not take any action," said Seth Izen, sophomore at Williams College and co-chair of the national, student-run Sudan Divestment Campaign. "And every time we say, ‘Never again,’ there’s always again."
Grassroots Groundswell
Simon Deng was one of the first Sudanese to receive US political asylum in 1980. As a child from the Shiluk tribe in Southern Sudan, Deng said an Arab man kidnapped him at the age of nine and gave him as "a gift" to an Arab family in Northern Sudan. He said he was enslaved for three and a half years under brutal conditions before managing to escape.
But now, as one of 250,000 Sudanese refugees living in the United States, Deng refuses to dwell on his own personal hardships. Since coming to the US and settling in New York City, he has worked to raise awareness about conditions in his native country. After participating in demonstrations at the United Nations, the US Embassy, the US State Department and the White House, Deng is taking his protest on a 300-mile walk from New York City to Washington, DC, hoping that this time his message will be heard.
"We as human beings always are good at sitting down and doing nothing, and assuming that since it isn’t on my back here, why should I worry?" Deng told The NewStandard as he was preparing to set out on his 22-day walk. "These things happen to our fellow human beings, [and] it is incumbent on us as human beings to stand up especially on behalf of those who cannot stand up for themselves."
Deng is joined on his walk by former NBA star and fellow Sudanese native Manute Bol. On route to DC, the two plan to stop at churches and universities along the way, picking up local supporters. When the protesters reach DC in April, they will hold a rally and meet congressional leaders.
"My people in that part of the world, they are not just walking one day," said Deng. "Sometimes they are walking for months to go and get to a place for safety; they walk months to go and get to a place where there is shelter; they walk days and days to get to where there is food. If they are doing so, then why should I not do it here?"
As Deng walks across the Northeast, former Marine Captain Brian Steidle, who spent six months in Darfur as a US representative to the African Union peacekeeping mission, is sharing his stories on a national tour. Steidle told TNS that he quickly became frustrated with his inability to help the countless civilians he saw suffering from government-supported militia attacks on their villages, which left many homeless, raped, tortured or murdered.
"All of us on these African Union teams wanted to help these people, wanted to protect them but we couldn’t do it. That wasn’t our job, our job was to watch and report," said Steidle.
"I’ve shown pictures of helicopter gunships attacking villages, of the Sudanese government burning, of the Sudanese government looting," Steidle said. "There’s no disputing the evidence when I show it, no disputing the Janjaweed [militia] and the government fighting side by side. There’s no disputing it because it’s photos and not somebody’s words."
Steidle said State Department officials asked him to stop showing his photos. The State Department did not return a request for an interview.
Students take a Stand
American youth have organized many of the US-based campaigns around Darfur, with some winning strong community support. Beginning at Georgetown University in 2004, Students Taking Action Now for Darfur (STAND) has spread to more than 200 college and high school campuses, according to the group’s website.
The organization has held two national conferences and helped lead an international "Darfur Fast" last October that organizers said raised more than a million dollars. STAND also aids local chapters in conducting educational events and rallies, hosting speakers, screening documentaries, planning letter-writing campaigns and lobbying elected officials.
Other student-led movements have pushed universities to divest from Sudan. The University of California, pressured by its own students, federal and state lawmakers, university affiliates and human rights groups voted unanimously last week to divest from nine international companies doing business in Sudan, including China's SinoPec and PetroChina, Videocon of India and Tatneft in Russia.
Although a 1997 executive order from former President Bill Clinton has barred US companies from doing business with the country, many American institutions – such as universities and retirement funds – invest in international companies with economic ties to Sudan. According to KDL Research and Analytics, an investment research company, there are about 120 publicly traded companies doing business with Sudan.
The University of California joins a number of schools like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Brown and Amherst that have reprioritized ethical responsibilities over financial investments. The campaign is modeled in part after the international divestment movement that applied pressure on the Apartheid government of South Africa during the 1980s.
"People have to understand the power of money," Seth Izen of the Sudan Divestment Campaign told TNS. Izen said in addition to university divestment, the greater goal is to push state pension funds to take similar measures.
The legislatures of several states, including New Jersey, Illinois, and Oregon, are leading the way in approving bills that prohibit pension-fund investment in companies with ties to Sudan, and similar measures are pending in at least seven other states including Indiana, Ohio, New York, and Texas. Activists are also pressuring TIAA-Cref, the largest private pension fund in the US, to divest from Sudan.
California assembly member Paul Koretz, who is pushing divestment legislation for the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS), said the vote to divest by a well-respected body like the UC Board of Regents will help to make divestment a mainstream response to the genocide in Darfur.
Koretz said he looks forward to the California pension systems following UC’s lead, and that "once that happens, it’s possible that the floodgates open and many more funds take similar action, and hopefully the government of the US starts to take note and actually do something."
US Action
Many groups working on Sudan campaigns interviewed by TNS said that the US government is doing more than other countries to address the conflict in Sudan. Washington was among the first to call the killings "genocide," while other world powers, including the United Nations, have not. And members of the House of Representatives drew praise from activists last week by authorizing an increase of $50 million to help maintain the African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in Sudan.
But as several thousand more perish each month in Darfur, many organizations are calling on federal lawmakers to go further by passing the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act. That bill, which passed in the Senate last November, condemns the Sudanese government for abetting the atrocities and calls for economic sanctions and other restrictions on individuals responsible for genocide and war crimes.
Activists also fear that the situation will only worsen without coordinated multinational intervention. Some would like the US government to take a stronger stand within the UN Security Council and push it to authorize such an intervention immediately.
Africa Action – a nonprofit organization that addresses Africa’s political and economic problems – wants the US government to push for a UN-led force to help stem the killing and rapes and to protect humanitarian groups working with internally displaced civilians and refugees in neighboring Chad.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), a DC-based peace and social justice lobby, wants the US to step-up humanitarian aid efforts and to engage Darfur through diplomacy – as it did when helping broker an peace agreement over southern Sudan in 2002 – to compel the government and militias to abide by ceasefire agreements.
Laura Weiss, FCNL legislative assistant, said the Senate’s passage of the Accountability Act was a significant step forward.
But the bill would allow the president to exempt individuals from sanctions "in the national interest of the United States." The parallel house bill has a similar exemption.
In fact, the State Department cited Sudan as taking "significant steps to cooperate in the war on terrorism" in its annual report on state-sponsored terrorism. And, according to a lengthy April 2005 report in the Los Angeles Times, the CIA has developed close relationships with Sudanese intelligence officials in order to gain access to Al-Qaeda suspects. One of those officials, Major General Salah Abdallah Gosh, who visited the White House in April 2005, is accused by members of Congress and Sudanese officials of participating in attacks on civilians in Darfur.
But some foreign policy experts suggest that international interventions should always be considered cautiously. Stephen Shalom, political science professor at New Jersey’s William Paterson University, emphasized that an intervention force from outside Africa could enflame a situation by being perceived as an infringement on sovereignty.
Shalom also said that organizers of a multinational response should make sure that participants are involved for humanitarian reasons and don’t have ulterior motives for maintaining a presence in the country in question. He said past international interventions have sometimes come too hastily before all peaceful options had been exhausted.
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Activists say that the current crisis in Darfur is an opportunity for the US to respond decisively to genocide before its too late – in contrast to the massive Rwandan genocide of the 1990s. Alex Meixner, legislative coordinator for the Save Darfur Coalition, said: "I’d like to think this is the first step toward the US being quickly responsible to these events as they’re happening and not just afterwards."
