On Mass Violence and Darfur

I went to a lecture by Jacques Semelin last night, on genocide and mass violence. He argued (among other things) that our preoccupation with the term genocide and eagerness to label current and past episodes of mass killing as such is perhaps counterproductive.

I definitely agree with him. The 'Save Darfur' campaigns are a good example of this. The intentions are good, the idea being that if what is happening is accepted as genocide then the international community will have to do something. Sadly, this does not seem to be the case. The US Congress declared Darfur a genocide back in 2004 - and to what effect? Interestingly, a UN Commission the next year found that genocide was not taking place, and for good reasons, that I won't go into in depth but include a) the fact that the ethnic/tribal/religious distinctions are unclear; and b) the crucial factor of genocidal intent is unproven. Rather, this was (albeit extremely brutal) counter-insurgency warfare. This, of course, should not mean that we cheerfully wash our hands of the problem. This is my main worry about the preoccupation with proving genocide - it sets the bar too high. If it doesn't look like Auschwitz, we can look away. Is mass killing and rape not enough to move us to action?

Semelin echoed the views of the foremost scholar on Sudan, Gerard Prunier, in concluding, regarding the genocide semantics: from the point of view of the Darfuris, WHO CARES? People are suffering and dying on a huge scale; let's try and work out how to do something about it.

He's also director of the Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence which looks like an important project and useful resource. Probably not one for a lazy weekend browse (unless you like to confront the dark side of human history on a Saturday morning!), but anyway...

*There's also the question of whether the genocide approach obscures the complex historical/political context - e.g. the fact that Darfur is the site of a civil war - and focuses effort on miltary intervention rather than political solutions. For those of you particularly interested in the Darfur debate, there's an excellent blog here.