Class: Perspectives on War, Aggression, and Conflict Resolution

(This is the text of letter regarding the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan. It has been sent through general mail to President Bush, leading presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and John McCain, and congressional representative James Walsh.)

“Remember: Silence helps the killer, never his victims.”
- Elie Wiesel

To Whom It May Concern (which should be EVERYBODY):

Darfur is sexy. Posters, t-shirts, stickers, and maybe even a television spot here or there. Save Darfur. Stop the Genocide. Not On Our Watch. People supposedly care to end a vulgar injustice thousands of miles away and seemingly worlds apart. I try to tell myself that I supposedly care to play some role in alleviating suffering. I see the posters or t-shirts, I read the news clippings, I hear the empty promises of political leaders, and I wonder to myself, “What is actually being done to stop this? Is this person or this promotion really doing any good?” I catch myself after that instinctively critical thought and turn the question back on myself. “What do I do to contribute to stopping the atrocities?” Sure, I sign the petitions. I click and send the prewritten emails. I go to events on my college campus that serve to inform people about the conflict. Can I do more? Yes. Will I do more? I do not know. I suppose this letter is one small step in trying to shape the conversation that takes place in politics and policymaking. You (whether you are the person this is addressed to or an office aide) could very easily toss this letter aside citing a book you have written an introduction for, or a bill you have co-sponsored, or some event you spoke at. I guess I am just asking you to hear me out as a concerned member of the world we share, as someone who holds the pursuit of social justice and the promotion of the world’s common good as a high value, as someone who took a little bit of time to write a letter.
The conflict in Darfur comes out of a long history of civil war and cultural, geographical, and agricultural conflict between peoples in Sudan. The most recent conflict—the genocide in the Darfur region—comes along ethnic and geographic lines of tension. Estimates vary, but the most consistent numbers from different reports hold that almost 250,000 people have been killed and approximately 2.5 million people have been displaced and forced to flee their homes. The people who have been displaced are forced into crowded, unsanitary, and vulnerable refugee camps in other regions of Sudan and neighboring countries Chad and Kenya. Although the lines of conflict are blurry, generally the black African population of the region has incurred tremendous suffering and death at the hands of government propped militias and military aircraft.
However, talking about the bad news will not make positive action any more realistic. You have heard the bad news, the deaths, the rapes, the villages destroyed, and the tremendous suffering. I hope that this letter is an opportunity to make some of the good news real. In their collaborative activist work Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond, John Prendergast and Don Cheadle write, “The good news is that these horrors can be stopped. It is in our hands: citizen action in the United States and around the world can make a huge difference to the protection and survival of entire communities and peoples.” I hope at least in some small way to take what is in my hands and pass it along to your hands. You are in a unique position to change the conversation of national politics from division, slander, and big business interests to the pursuit of justice and promotion of the common good.
For individuals it is easy to be called to action in the form of spreading awareness, signing petitions, sending emails, and writing letters. The question of what we petition for is much more complicated and difficult. Awareness will not make change. Misguided activism has the potential to do more harm than good if promoting a possibly destructive solution. Pushing forward conflict resolution policy and social change has three pillars: field research to learn what is really happening in the conflict zones and what needs to be done, legal advocacy to influence determinations of policy, and widespread political pressure from a citizenry seeking to force an issue into the relevant political conversation.[1] This research, policy impact, and mobilization must be done with a positive energy. It is too easy for the tragedy of Darfur to be overlooked as a pit hole of the usual African conflict as opposed to a beacon of hope for peace and reconciliation.
The United States has led the world in providing emergency assistance to displaced peoples and refugees.[2] Emergency assistance may provide needed base goods to aid survival of displaced people but it does nothing create a social, political, and economic atmosphere for ending the conflict. Now, if the injustice is researched and acknowledged and the citizenry becomes increasingly concerned and outspoken about the issue, what should the policymakers (also known as YOU!) do to end the conflict and encourage productive reconciliation? This letter, combined with the mobilization of the citizenry, is working towards establishing the political will. Once the political will is established, what do the politics need to do? It has already been proven that the government in Khartoum will respond to intense punitive measures. In the 1990s, economic sanctions from the United Nations Security Council led the regime in Khartoum readily and actively renounced its ties with Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. This same pressure must be applied. Some people argue that economic sanctions will only hurt the poor and ravaged of the country more, but the poor and ravaged have already hit rock bottom. They have been slaughtered, raped, pillaged, and displaced. Punitive measures must be taken to force the government regime to respond.
The U.S. government can support this pressure on the Sudanese government through divestment, cutting business ties with Sudan, pressuring China to cut its huge business ties with Sudan, and being active in the United Nations Security Council response. The government should support university, church, and local and state government divestment campaigns. The huge United States divestment during the international anti-apartheid movement was a significant pressure against the white minority regime in South Africa. That same pressure must be applied to Sudan. Big business and government are so closely tied that business failure will force the government to respond by intervening to end the violence and killing.
We must reject the notion that one person, one letter, or one action is irrelevant to change. We exist as individuals but we do not exist alone. We live in a human community that must move. I, as an individual, have the ability to strive for social justice because WE exist together. Change is not inevitable as we learned from the struggle against apartheid. Let us recognize the injustice in our world and begin to take at least small steps to challenge its existence. The manifesto of the original Students for a Democratic Society reads, “We are the people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit…If we appear to seek the unattainable, it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable.” A perfect peace might be impossible to achieve in reality, but we can certainly acknowledge that we can make the broken peace in which our world exists a little more perfect than it now stands. Our failure to speak out and act out against this war against humanity will leave us—as a nation and as individual people—on the wrong side of history. RISE UP!


PEACE & ACTION,
Jeremy R. Marks