How you can change course of history in Sudan

During our visit to Darfur and the Darfurian refugee camps in Chad, we heard story after story of mind-numbing violence perpetrated by the Sudanese government army and the Janjaweed militias they support. We heard of women being gang-raped, children being thrown into fires, villages and communities that had existed for centuries being burned to the ground in an effort to wipe out the livelihoods and even the history of those communities. We heard things that simply should not be happening in the twenty-first century.

In one of the refugee camps in Chad in 2005, we met Fatima, forty-two, who described how she had to escape her village of Girgira in western Darfur after her mother, husband, and five children were all killed by the Janjaweed militias. She said she feared the government would kill her as well. In desperation, she walked for seven days to a refugee camp. She couldn’t walk during daytime hours because of the Janjaweed gangs. She hid under trees and plants. Despite all this, she wanted to return home, but she wanted to be sure it was safe. Having lost everything, she no longer trusted anyone, even the African Union troops deployed in Darfur.

Omda Yahya, a tribal leader we talked with from Tine, also saw all his children die in a violent raid on his town and in the subsequent escape to “safety.” His town, he says, was attacked by men on horseback, planes dropping bombs, and armies on foot. He fled with many of his tribe, and after more than fifteen days of walking without food or drink, they arrived at a refugee camp. “We lost our village. They burned it. If we get all our possessions back, then after that we can go back. But now we don’t think it is safe to go back.”

How do we respond to these horrors?

What we’ve learned is that there are three pillars to fostering a real change in human rights and conflict resolution policy: field research to learn what is really happening in the conflict zones and what needs to be done, high-level advocacy to deliver the message to the people who determine policy, and domestic political pressure from a constituency that cares about these issues and takes them up with their elected officials.

This last one often goes missing. Sustained and robust campaigns by organized citizens are needed for maximum impact. Fostering these constituencies must be our focus.

Will the United States lead efforts to protect people when they are being systematically annihilated by predatory governments or militias? Will we punish the perpetrators of crimes against humanity? Will we promote peace processes with high-level envoys and other support? None of these options is beyond the realm of the possible; they are simply matters of political will. If U.S. citizens and therefore the government answer yes to these questions, millions of lives will be spared in the coming years.

The good news is that much of the suffering could come to an end. It is within our power. If the U.S. government takes a lead role during each crisis marked by crimes against humanity, our chances to prevent or end these crimes increases dramatically. If the U.S. government had taken a leading role in three areas of policy—peacemaking, protection, and punishment—these crimes could have been prevented or stopped. If U.S. citizens and their government increase their activism and work to build an international coalition to stop mass atrocities, major changes are possible.

Despite what you may see on the evening news, there are encouraging signs of progress. Indeed, sparse and sporadic news coverage of Africa focusing solely on crises there has led to a “conflict fatigue” associated with the continent as a whole.* By ignoring the positive news, U.S. and European media risk fostering a dangerous tendency to dismiss the entire continent as hopeless. So when wars erupt and their attendant human rights abuses emerge, the response—if there even is one—is often tentative and muted, and conflict-ridden countries easily descend into a free-fall. We think these conflicts are not just an affront to humanity; they are the greatest threat to overall progress throughout the African continent.

Yet despite the many obstacles, there is good news coming out of Africa every day. There has been a move away from dictatorships toward democracy in many countries, and a commitment on the part of many African governments to fiscally responsible economic policies focused on alleviating poverty. Peace agreements have been forged in countries which only a few years earlier had been ripped apart by war and crimes against humanity. Witness the tragic tales of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Mozambique, southern Sudan, Rwanda, and Burundi, all of which had horrific civil wars that came to an end, laying the groundwork for huge positive changes.

So that is the point. If we can prevent and resolve these wars that lead to such devastation, one of the biggest reasons for Africa’s misery and dependence will be removed. By giving peace a chance, we give millions and millions of Africans a chance.

We have identified the Three Ps of ending genocide and other crimes against humanity: Protect the People, Punish the Perpetrators, and Promote the Peace. (We will describe these in detail in Chapter 9.) If the government of the world’s sole superpower, the United States, motivated by the will of its citizens, takes the lead globally in doing these three things, crimes against humanity can come to an end.

The decisions we need to make to protect those who are suffering are clear, and the sooner we decide, the more lives will be saved.

That is our choice.

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