What Next for Darfur?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The New Republic is devoting its current issue to Darfur, and many of the essays seem to suggest that the United States ought to grab its military and intervene to keep the peace there. (Or rather, many of the articles seem intent on tweaking unnamed liberals whose “anti-imperialist” pose supposedly makes them complicit in genocide… or something.)

Anyway, leaving aside the fact that the Khartoum government recently signed a peace agreement with the main Darfur rebel groups—which may or may not translate into actual peace—and a large-scale military intervention might be unnecessary, there are real practical problems with an invasion of Sudan, if that’s what’s being recommended, that this TNR editorial passes over much too glibly. I reported on a bunch of difficulties over a year ago, and Samantha Power notes that the obstacles are no less dire now:

Thanks to the war in Iraq, sending a sizable U.S. force to Darfur is not an option. Units in Iraq are already on their third tours, and the crumbling Afghan peace demands ever-more resources. Moreover, sending Americans into another Islamic country is unadvisable, given the ease with which jihadis could pour across Sudan’s porous and expansive borders. Making Darfur a magnet for foreign fighters or yet another front in the global proxy war between the United States and Al Qaeda would just compound the refugees’ woes.

So what could be done short of invasion if, as some fear, the peace talks break down? Mark Leon Goldberg of the American Prospect recently wrote a piece noting that the Bush administration could deploy much more diplomatic pressure than it has in the past, and that there are plenty of steps short of invading that could go very far to halting the violence.

Unfortunately, as Marisa Katz reports in the TNR issue, the administration’s policy towards Khartoum over the past three years has generally been unabashed appeasement—partly because Sudan’s genocidaires such as Salah Abdallah Gosh have offered cooperation on terrorism issues (although one official tells Katz that this cooperation hasn’t been all that valuable). Now the administration’s stance appears to be changing of late, and for whatever reason, Robert Zoellick seems to have been able to pressure most of the parties involved to agree to a tentative peace deal, although this is one of those things on which we’ll really have to wait and see.

Finally—and perhaps most importantly—Eric Reeves, who has done better and more extensive work on Darfur than any journalist over the past three years, surveys the vast humanitarian wreckage in Darfur and points out that even if the fighting stops (again, a big ‘if’), the area is still going to be an utter disaster. Millions are displaced. Agriculture has been ruined. The next generation of Darfuris will grow up without having learned the necessary farming skills to sustain themselves. There are refugee camps that are bordering on permanence. Massive foreign aid and assistance will be needed. Massive, but doable. Yet Western countries have rarely, if ever, been good about helping refugees in post-conflict environments, or devoting the requisite resources to alleviating poverty and the like. That will need to change, and it would be unimaginably catastrophic to ignore Darfur just because the fighting has stopped.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate