Lone Pakistani Notices Darfur

Interesting letter published in Dawn that I would like to share:

THIS is apropos of the report saying that almost six years of fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan has killed 200,000.

This is very shocking, indeed. The Muslims have been killing Muslims in Darfur since 2003. It is strange that nobody in Pakistan talks about it. The religious parties don’t speak out against this death and destruction.

I would greatly appreciate if anyone could explain the reasons for this intriguing silence.

S. CHAUDHARY
Lahore

Nobody in Pakistan talks about it because both victims and perpetrators are one in the same: in this case, Muslims. Same goes for Pakistan, where Muslims wantonly kill other Muslims except that is much more noticeable to the average Pakistani because it hits so close to home.

What happens in Darfur is too far away for anyone in Pakistan to care-- out of sight, out of mind. In my mind, racism also plays a factor: African Muslims are considered inferior by other Muslims. Nevertheless, the plight of Palestinians is quite popular among Pakistanis because it hits all the right buttons: Jews, imperialism, Crusades, Americans, etc. Yet the body count is much higher in Darfur than in Palestine, but Israelis are treated as genocidal, and not the Sudanese government.

It's this double-standard that has trapped Muslim countries in their rhetoric about injustice by the Israelis.

Darfur Is Real, Not Fake...

I know. I know. Fisking a Pakistan Observer editorial is like shooting fish in a barrel and a total waste of time, but this editorial is so wrong on almost every count, it deserves a response. Since the editorial is brief, confirming the childish thought process of its writer, I present it in full below

IN an ominous development, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor has filed genocide charges against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. The charges filed Monday include masterminding attempts to wipe out African tribes in Darfur with a campaign of murder, rape and deportation.

The Western powers, led by the United States, have been raising pressure against Sudan in the context of Darfur region, where a conflict is raging for the control of local resources. Situation in Darfur has been exaggerated to a great extent to portray the Christian population as the most oppressed section of the society with a view to building a case for foreign intervention and creation of a separate homeland for them. It is because of this that tons of propaganda material is being churned out daily against ‘oppressive’ policies of the Sudanese Government and activities of the Janjawid militia. There are also reasons to believe that another factor behind the Western interests in Sudan and this particular region is reports about huge oil and gas deposits in the country and the United States and its coteries have their eyes on this natural wealth of the poor country.

The first paragraph is probably the only correct item in the whole editorial. The rest I dismiss as a product of intellectual laziness.

• Though there are Christians in Darfur, the majority of the population is Muslim. The Pakistan Observer is trying to spin this affair strictly as a Christian-Muslim conflict - a clash of civilizations, so to speak - when in reality it is an African-Arab conflict; and if you are a Marxist, even a class conflict.
  
  
• The residents of Darfur do not want a separate homeland. This is a lie set forth by the Sudan government to sanction their actions in Darfur. What the residents of Darfur want is to share in the prosperity of Sudan and its oil wealth. If there is oil in Darfur, Sudan wants it all for itself.
  
  
• And is the testimony of thousands of refugees mired in camps in neighboring Chad propaganda? The thousands of images broadcast all over the world of dying refugees propaganda? Even the United Nations, not the quickest of actors, condemned the actions of the Sudanese government? If what I'm hearing and seeing is propaganda, I want to know what the truth is.
  
  
• Naturally, the West is behind all this because they want to exploit Darfur's natural resources. This is typical post-colonial analysis used by critics from the developing world to frame all actions and policies taken by the West against oppressive regimes. It plays well enough, I suppose, but in the end it rings hollow. Darfur is already being exploited, not by the West but by Sudan, the Arab world and China, who are shamelessly supported Sudan to the hilt because it needs Sudan's vast energy reserves to fuel its booming economy. But even China cannot ignore public opinion, so it has voted with the U.N. Security Council to let the ICC prosecute Sudan for war crimes. Does this still sound like a Western conspiracy? Anyone familiar with functioning of the ICC, which The Pakistan Observer clearly does not, knows that the process is a lengthy and tedious one, with checks and balances to ensure that prosecutions are not politically motivated or capricious.

For The Pakistan Observer, whose standards are already low, to publish this tripe as an editorial is just outright irresponsible.

Why Is India Silent On Zimbabwe

Perhaps I've been living in a fog, or just may have missed reports in the media, but what is India's official position on the current situation in Zimbabwe?

Everyone except Robert Mugabe knows full well that recent elections were a sham. The United States and Europe (and even the United Nations) have rightly denounced the elections as illegitimate since the atmosphere was poisoned with fear and violence. Yet India and many non-Western countries have been eerily quiet.

I can only guess why. For all his dictatorial tendencies and his calamitous economic policies, Mugabe is still a popular figure and continues to draw respect from many countries, especially those who were themselves under colonial rule. To them Mugabe is a legend, whose reputation as an independence leader is beyond reproach. And Mugabe is banking on this sympathy to help him weather the storm. This also explains the bellicose statements made by Mugabe's spokesman during an African Union summit in Egypt. To quote:

Charamba had harsh words for Western pressure: "They can go hang. They can go and hang a thousand times."

The African Union, under whose auspices its leaders are trying to convince Mugabe the error of his ways, will be ineffective given the fact that most of its members are worse than Mugabe. So don't expect anything to happen on that front.

Instead countries like India should take the lead in condemning Mugabe for what he is and resist the temptation to engage in knee-jerk anti-Western histrionics. A condemnation from non-Western countries like India carry a heavier weight than those by the west, whose legacy of imperialism and colonialism taint their calls for Mugabe's ouster.

The question is: will India rise to the occasion, or say nothing, thus affirming Mugabe's actions?

Why Sudan Sucks

The whole teddy bear fiasco, for me, puts into focus why Sudan should be a charter member of the ‘Axis of Evil’. This country, and the Islamic regime that rules it, is a blot on humanity, decency, and just plain common sense.

Its crimes are numerous: slavery, war against Christians in the South, the pillaging and rape of Darfur and the resulting refugee crisis, and, finally—the cherry on top, so to speak—the arrest and jailing of a poor British schoolteacher, whose only crime is letting her elementary school-aged children to call a class teddy bear ‘Muhammad.’

These charges of blasphemy are used in the most capricious ways. In Pakistan, for example, blasphemy laws are often applied to settle scores, or appropriate property from non-Muslims. In the case of Sudan, it’s used to make an example out of a non-Muslim (and a Westerner), as a warning that Islamic law applies to them too—that all non-Muslims are, in essence, dhimmis.