Today, Explained - Save Darfur, again

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

A bloody civil war is spreading famine and fear through Sudan. It’s a near-repeat of a crisis from two decades ago, but this time Sudan is not commanding the world’s attention the way the “Save Darfur” movement did. This episode was produced by Peter Balonon-Rosen, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sudan is a very big country, the third largest in Africa. What's happening in one part of Sudan is often contained to that one part, like a drought in California that has no bearing on water levels in New York. Twenty years ago, a conflict that the U.S. and its allies called a genocide unfolded in the far west of Sudan in a region called Darfur. The capital, meanwhile, in the east east was largely untouched. Then a civil war broke out in Sudan in April of last year, and it's affected every part of the country. 25 million people in need of international humanitarian assistance, and that's more than

the population of the United States' 10 largest cities. I mean, this is a huge, huge crisis. But recently, another dynamic unexpectedly emerged. In Darfur, we're again hearing warnings of a genocide. Because we did not complete the chapter on genocide 20 years ago, that chapter never really closed and is now taking on a new life of its own. And today explained what is happening in Darfur again. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King.

Sudan is a notoriously difficult country for foreign journalists to get into during times of war. The government is very tight-fisted with visas. Nicholas Barrio is trying to get in. He's a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, and we reached him at his base in Kampala, Uganda. Nicholas has been following closely as two armed groups, Sudan's army and a large and well-armed paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, fight for control of, and by all accounts, destroy Sudan. So the major battlefield is around the capital, Khartoum, where the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary force, quickly made a lot of gains at the beginning of the conflict, capturing large areas, and the military responded with airstrikes, drone strikes,

try and drive them out. So much of it has been bombed into rubble. Most of the streets, the markets, banks, the shops have been looted and are empty. Across the country, more than 15,000 people are estimated to have been killed since the conflict started in April 2023, while almost 9 million have been forced to flee their homes. The control is still contested. The rapid support forces, which is the paramilitary force,

controls parts of this capital, while the other part is under the control of Sudan's military. Around 40 civilians were killed on Thursday when RSF paramilitary forces shelled Omdurman, a city which lies across the Nile from the capital Khartoum. And then a few months into the conflict, the rapid support forces ended up capturing three of the capitals in the Far region and are fighting to capture the only holdout capital. There are fears the worst is yet to come in the larger city of El Fasher. It is almost surrounded by the RSF.

Satellite images in recent days show the apparent burning of homes in its outer neighborhoods. Sudan's military is on one side. What does the country's army want? The country's army initially wanted to integrate this rapid support forces, which is a militia, under its command and control. But this didn't go down well with the command of the paramilitary force. So that's the major point of contention that brought things where they are at the moment. The militia says, we're not going to be integrated into the army. Instead, we're going to fight.

Does the militia want anything else other than just not being integrated? What is their objective in this war? Other than being integrated, they also think they can take control of this country. So they are fighting for power and then the country's resources. Nicholas, who has the support of Sudanese civilians? It's not very clear at the moment, although I could say that the majority of the civilians are not happy with the rapid support forces, mainly because they've been accused of committing atrocities, attacking settlements, evicting people from their homes, and doing a lot of widespread robberies. That said, the military has also been accused of indiscriminate

airstrikes that sometimes kill civilians. But on the whole, the rapid support forces look a bit more unpopular because they have been accused of conducting widespread atrocities targeting civilians. The rapid support forces are also accused of carrying out a massacre on Wednesday in which at least 150 people died. The UN Children's Fund says 35 children were among the victims of that attack on a village in central Sudan. There are a lot of Assad attacks. They are targeting civilian settlements. They also fire shells in civilian homes and their attacks are widespread, especially within the capital where they are occupying a lot of civilian homes

and then in Western Darfur. It's clear that they are systematically targeting civilian infrastructure and civilians. Sudan's Rapid support force militia in al-Fasher in Darfur today. Victory brings not honor, but goods to loot and women to rape. No wonder millions of Sudanese are fleeing the conflict. The UN says more than 9 million Sudanese people have been displaced since April of last year. We've seen credible claims that torture and rape are being used as weapons of war.

The capital Khartoum has been absolutely devastated. It really is shocking. Do you have insight into why the brutality of this war is being inflicted on civilians instead of these men just fighting each other? I think it stems from the history of this conflict. Back in the early 2000s, when these Black communities were not happy with government and tried to rebel against the government of Omar al-Bashir, he quickly organized these Arab militias to put down this rebellion. It was President Bashir who ordered the army to crack down on militants

in the western region of Darfur. The resulting conflict killed hundreds of thousands of people, and Bashir was accused of organizing war crimes. The tactics that were used then to suppress the rebellion were very brutal, scorched-earth tactics driving poor communities from villages and cramming them in refugee camps and the small cities. Now at the time you had policiers riding on horses and camels. They don't have military training, they don't have a lot of training in terms of how war is supposed to be executed, and they are trying to replicate what they did 20 years ago, but this time at a larger scale, better armed, with more money, and more outside backers. And then the fact that there is an ethnic dimension in this conflict, you have

Arabs versus African communities. We are hearing, and I imagine you're hearing there in Kampala, two very distressing words, famine and genocide. The UN Food Agency, the WFP, recently warned that a famine is impending. Why the food shortages? Why is food such a concern? This has been going on for more than a year. So the farmlands are abandoned. The farmers are displaced. So there's no food being grown at the moment.

And then you have trade routes which have been displaced because of the conflict. Banks have closed down, the banking system has shut down, so the merchants, even in areas that are not affected by these conflicts, are not able to import food because the banking system corrupts. So in terms of figures, you have 18 million people who are actually food insecure. Some 40% of the population in immediate desperate need of food security assistance. Since the outbreak of armed conflict in April 2023, production of millet in Sudan has almost halved, while maize production has decreased by a quarter. Genocide is a very specific legal term. And so it is significant that human rights observers are saying we may be looking at a genocide. What is happening in Sudan and where is it happening that has made people think there is some sustained campaign to eliminate an entire group of people?

So this started mainly spread across the region of Dafa, but it started as early as June, July in West Dafa. The rapid support forces, backed by their Arab militias, systematically targeted African communities. So there are a lot of tribes which are African in western Sudan and others are Arab. So there are a lot of reports from human rights groups which have documented systematic attacks. The campaign group Human Rights Watch is accusing paramilitary forces in Sudan of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. They asked what tribes we were from.

If you answered mass elite, they would kill you immediately. I lied and said I am not mass elite. This is the same dynamic as 20 years ago. You have Arab militias attacking African farmers. This is the genocide that human rights observers say that may be brewing is exactly the same thing? Yes, it's exactly the same thing. And the conditions are almost the same, only that this time around there are fears that it could even get worse because 20 years ago the rapid support forces were just a fling of scattered militias

lightly armed with small guns. This time around it's heavy weapons including including artillery, armored vehicles. So the conditions are the same, but the scale is likely to be worse. Nicholas Barrio, The Wall Street Journal, currently in Uganda. 20 years ago, a conflict that, as Nicholas said, mirrors today's almost exactly, sparked a movement in America called Save Darfur. It took over college campuses, Capitol Hill, even Hollywood for a time. What happened to that movement? Coming up next. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture

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The ACLU knows exactly what threats a second Donald Trump term presents, and they are ready with a battle-tested playbook. The ACLU took legal action against the first Trump administration 434 times. And they will do it again to protect immigrants' rights, defend reproductive freedom, fight discrimination, and fight for all of our fundamental rights and freedoms. This Giving Tuesday, you can support the ACLU. With your help, they can stop the extreme Project 2025 agenda. Join the ACLU at aclu.org today. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. And 20 years ago, I got my start in journalism in Sudan

covering the Darfur conflict. Now, every journalist in the region back then knew the name Eric Reeves. Eric was the guy writing op-eds and blog posts about the horrors unfolding in western Sudan, and eventually the guy urging Americans to save Darfur. Eric is very unusual. He was not really an Africa expert at the time. He was, in fact, an English professor at Smith College who became obsessed with Sudan after visiting in 2003. I loved the people. I loved the landscape. It was in a moment in which peace had come. The people were no longer looking upward to see if there were bombers coming their way.

Before his Darfur advocacy, he was just an ordinary Massachusetts American who made a little extra income from a hobby. I create wooden vessels on a lathe and selling galleries and online and in shows. And gave that money to charity. I've always used the profits for humanitarian organizations. I settled on Doctors Without Borders as the one that was doing the best work. One day he was talking to an aid worker about where his money was going, and Eric learned about Darfur. And then Eric decided to make sure that everyone else learned about Darfur, too. It was hard not to know something about what was going on in Darfur. What we saw was that the non-Arab population, the African population,

was being attacked by Arab militia forces, what was called the Janjaweed militia. We crossed the border on our mule. They burnt our house down and murdered my husband. Then we fled. Along the way, we passed burning houses and animal carcasses. They destroyed villages. They poisoned wells. They burned food stocks. They raped girls and women. They killed people. This old man is taking a short break. For the first time in days, he washes his feet to pray, even though water is scarce.

I want to thank God that I made it over the border. Over there, they're killing us Africans, although we're Muslims. They attacked our villages on horseback and with warplanes and destroyed them. I published in the Washington Post in February of 2004, an op-ed, that put me on the map. Headline, Unnoticed Genocide. The terrible realities in Darfur require that we attend to the ways in which people are being destroyed because of who they are, racially and ethnically. Nothing could have been clearer that this was genocide. That opinion came to be quickly

ratified by Nick Kristof of the New York Times. The United States Congress, in a bipartisan vote, declared it to be genocide. And the Bush administration declared it to be genocide in September 2004. We concluded, I concluded, that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility and that genocide may still be occurring. My recollection is that when this was identified as a genocide,

suddenly all eyes are on Darfur. How important was that designation, do you think? I think it was quite significant. But the word was out. It was clear what was happening. Genocide is the ultimate human crime. And it was being committed. And we had an abundance of evidence from human rights organizations, NGOs, non-governmental organizations on the ground, the UN, and intrepid reporters. They provided a very, very loud megaphone

for the word genocide. By about 2006, Save Darfur, this movement, was very big. It was all over college campuses. There was a massive rally on the National Mall. The junior senator from the state of Illinois, Barack Obama! Silence, acquiescence, paralysis in the face of genocide is wrong. I remember George Clooney was doing advocacy. We need humanitarian aid to be allowed into the Sudan

before it becomes the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. I remember Mia Farrow was wandering around out there. This is one of the first times in U.S. history that a campaign to prevent a genocide or stop a genocide in such a far-off place really became politically mainstream. Can you talk about how you saw that evolve from almost no awareness to suddenly every college kid worth their salt is saying Save Darfur? The Save Darfur movement, such as it was, a bit pretentious in its title, but it began in 2005. that here you had sedentary farmers being attacked in their villages by heavily armed

Arab militiamen supported by the military aircraft of the Khartoum regime and sometimes the soldiers of the Sudan armed forces. This was one-sided if we're talking about moral equity. And I think it was that clarity that helped galvanize students. I spoke to many, many campuses, and it was, I would say, in my experience, the utter moral clarity of what was going on that really moved students a lot. They understood the facts, the basic facts. They understood the moral clarity. But they wanted solutions. They wanted the problem to be solvable. And they weren't patient.

And none of those is good for a movement that's going to sustain political pressure. What was the goal of the movement at the time? Folks were advocating for what exactly? What did you want to see happen? Well, what I wanted to see happen was a non-consensual military force deployed, whether under the UN auspices or not, in order to protect civilians. But the political resistance, remember, this is a time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This was not a great time to be asking for non-consensual deployment

of military force. So, I'm not really sure what the students expected to happen, but ironically, the election of Barack Obama ensured that the Save Darfur movement would end. He was a catastrophically bad president for Darfur. The notion, as expressed by one important figure in the Obama administration, that we don't want to see regime change in Khartoum. Why was the U.S. so interested in continuing Omar al-Bashir's rule in Khartoum, knowing he was a very bad guy? Knowing it, but also deeply desiring counterterrorism intelligence. That was a deep and important truth that helped sustain the Bashir regime, which felt that, well, if we give the U.S.

what it wants in the way of counterterrorism intelligence, we can continue to prosecute genocide in Darfur, and we can maintain power, which was corrupt, tyrannical, brutally destructive of Sudan's agricultural sector. But none of that added up to enough to overcome the lust for counterterrorism intelligence. In March 2009, the International Criminal Court indicted Omar al-Bashir for crimes against humanity and genocide. The filing marks the first time prosecutors at the world's first permanent global war crimes court have issued charges against a sitting head of state. He was furious. Sunday, the country's information minister said that Sudan does not recognize the International Criminal Court and refuses to obey any decision or order in issues. He expelled 13 of the world's finest humanitarian organizations working in Darfur, thereby crippling the remainder of the UN's humanitarian presence in Darfur crippling operations.

As the UN system, we have opposed this decision strongly, and we will continue to do so, and it's why we continue to ask the government of Sudan to reverse it. At the same time, news journalists were not given travel permits. Human rights organizations found access impossible. And so I think that 20 years later, you know, 20 years on from the original advocacy, there is a temptation to ask, how did we end up back here again? But what I think I hear you saying is we were always kind of here. Sudan has remained unstable. And while some of the players have changed, we're still dealing with very bad men fighting for control of this country. And civilians bear the brunt. That's exactly right. The notion that somehow that it ended

is just nonsense. And now, unfortunately, the attention is off of Sudan. College students' advocacy has moved on to other things. Even George Clooney, you're more likely to hear his name invoked in the context of Israel and Gaza than Sudan. Do you think we can look back and say we learned anything from the advocacy of two decades ago that could help us again draw attention to what's going on in Sudan? The situation is so much more complicated now. The moral equities are so much more difficult to sort out. We're talking about the lesser of two evils, and the greater of two evils here happens to be monstrously evil, but the lesser is, is still monstrous. Eric Reeves, you can find his work at sudanreeves.org. Today's episode was produced by Peter Balanon Rosen and edited by Matthew Collette. It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard and engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea, Kristen's daughter. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. you