DISASTER IN DARFUR - UCSB Department of History - University of ...

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Nations, the United States and the European Union and with the representatives of the
SLM and JEM at Abuja. These disingenuous and contradictory statements were
accompanied by repeated attacks from the armed forces and their allied janjaweed militia
on the people of Darfur that provided fuel for the intensive debate now taking place as to
whether the disaster in Darfur constituted genocide.
The Western media--newspapers, magazines, journals, television, and the
internet--has relentlessly featured the plight of the beleaguered civilians of Darfur. Many
harsh denunciations carried the guilt of the silence or dilatory response to the Rwanda
genocide in 1994 that came vividly to mind during the ten-year memorial services for that
tragedy held in April 2004. The media in the Arab world, even the usually strident Al-
Jezeera, was more subdued, embarrassed by a conflict now between Arabs and Africans,
not the Americans, and the rhetorical appeals for Arab solidarity with Sudanese Islamists
committed to the spread Arabic language, culture, and religion. Reporting by the media
was accompanied by demonstrations in Europe and the United States, countless meetings,
and speeches, both provocative and practical, exhorting their governments to do
something to protect the Africans of Darfur.
The political response from the West was ambiguous; their humanitarian response
unconditional. With its armed forces ensnared in Afghanistan and Iraq the United States
was unwilling to commit its few remaining troops to a difficult military mission in yet
another Muslim country. Although both Britain and France had regularly been involved
in peace-keeping missions in Africa, neither was inclined to plunge into isolated Darfur
to challenge an Arab Islamist government. Both the US and the EU sought to resolve this
dilemma militarily by urging the AU to intervene promising to provide the necessary