[Marxism] A Columbia University debate on Darfur

[Louis Proyect]

http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2009/04/14/professor-coalition-member-debate-darfur
Professor, coalition member debate Darfur
by Madina Toure

Debate became heated Tuesday evening as students, faculty, and locals 
gathered for a heated debate about the role of international cooperation 
in the Darfur genocides.

The event, sponsored by the Institute of African Studies and was 
moderated by Law School faculty Co-Director Peter Rosenblum, Herbert 
Lehman Professor of Government Mahmood Mamdani, and John Prendergast, 
co-chair of the Enough Project and member of the board of Save Darfur 
Coalition. They debated divisive issues such as the number of deaths in 
the region, whether the genocide should be approached politically, 
economically, or militarily, and who should implement peace and how it 
should be done.

Prendergast, who had been held in a Darfur camp, recounted the harsh 
conditions he had endured.

“Unless there is peace we have nowhere to go,” he said. “It is shameful 
that we are reduced to hoping for some kind of help from faraway people 
that have mercy on us.” He said that, after a meeting with President 
Obama, he was certain that a peace deal could be on its way.

Mamdani implicated the West, in part, as one of the causes of the genocide.

“Darfur seemed globalized,” Mamdani said. “Darfur is a charity, Iraq is 
a tax. The assumption is that the problem is internal and the solution 
is external ... the United States has to learn to live in the world, not 
occupy it.”

Mamdani also gave credit to the African Union for bringing about the 
dramatic decline in deaths since January 2007.

The African Union is, according to Mamdani, “the only group which has 
begun with the assumption and stuck with assumption that the solution 
cannot be an external intervention from the outside.”

According to a United Nations report on Darfur in 2007, more than 
200,000 people are estimated to have died and at least 2 million 
displaced from their homes since fighting 2003.

But Prendergast questioned this assertion of improvement in death rates 
and fighting, saying that mortalities in some areas have been almost 
impossible to track.

Conflict between the two candidates continued when Mamdani questioned 
the accountability of those who supposedly implementing justice.

“To whom is the ICC International Criminal Court] accountable?” he 
asked. “Global justice requires a reform of the political system.”

Mamdani’s argument captured the attention of Nancy Elshami, BC ’10, who 
said, “Mamdani’s research and critical approach was illuminating, not 
only of the situation in Darfur, but of the disparities within the ICC.”

But Prendergast defended the ICC, arguing that they put aside the case 
until further evidence was provided. Mamdani insisted that they threw 
away the case.
Mamdani also spoke out against international non-governmental 
organizations like Save Darfur.

“Save Darfur is not a peace movement ... Save Darfur is a war 
mobilization,” he said, adding that, “it employs an advertising agency 
... putting out the figures which you read, none of which are credible. 
It is a pornography of violence, a form of voyeurism.”

“As long as these problems remain unaddressed then we are going to 
continue to have forums like this [one],” he added.

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