Posted by aogThursday, 01 July 2004 at 10:23 TrackBack Ping URL

Enabling the slackers, appeasers, collaborators and cleansers

Bonassus has a post about the situation in Darfur, Sudan. He mentions the lack of signficant media attention. Bonassus mentions the standard theory that non-Americans killing non-Americans never rates attention. However, he then cites NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on some alternative theories, which Bonassus and I find less than persuasive.

it’s really, really, really hard to get to Darfur to report on the situation

Think of the lesson this is teaching the thugs of the world - just make it hard to report and you can get away with anything (unless you’re the Americans). Mugabe in Zimbabwe has certainly used that to great effect. Kind of deflates the “intrepid reporter” image cultivated by Big Media, though.

The death toll is mainly indirect, from famine and disease rather then murder

True, but of course much of the famine and disease stalking Darfur is the direct result of actions by the Janjaweed supported by the regime in Khartoum. Certainly during the sanctions against Iraq there was plenty of reporting on the (greatly exaggerated) indirect costs of that.

While I overall agree with Bonassus’ assessment (particularly with regard to the weak excuses for lack of coverage), I do think he misses on a couple of key points.

First, he falls in to the same trap as those he complains about, which is viewing the USA as the only moral agent in the situation. How one can write about Darfur and Sudan without once mentioned Sudan’s place on the UN Human Rights Commission is beyond me. Not only does this make a mockery of the concept of the UN doing anything about the situation (or leading other nations to do something), it also points out other African nations are not only overlooking the situation but maintaining political support for the Khartoum regime while it is going on. Why is Sudan on the UNHRC? Because of the solid support from other governments in Africa. Yet somehow it is still the USA’s responsbility, not any other nation or supra-national organization, to set this right. Apparently expecting the EU to act or even other nations in Africa to stop actively supporting the Khartoum regime is too much.

Secondly, he calls for charitable donations to help the refugees in Darfur, claiming that ” the marginal utility of your charity dollar in Darfur is off the charts in comparison to donations to most other causes” and that “it sure can’t hurt”. I’m not so sure of either. The question of moral hazard here is not a trivial one. Suppose enough donations were gathered to take care of all the refugees. Would that not be of great benefit to the ethnic cleansers? Would it not create the example that if one is sufficient ruthless, someone else will clean up the mess leaving the cleanser with the spoils? One notes that the problems in southern Sudan started abating not when aid donations rolled in but when the southerns became well enough armed that the operation became costly to the Khartoum regime. When the NGOs start running guns in addition to food, water and medicine to the refugees, let me know. I’d probably chip in for that.