Back To Sudan.

A while ago I'd the temerity to write about the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan. I've spent time in east Africa and something about the BBC coverage made me uneasy. In large part it was the reluctance to report the Sudanese Government's responsibility for the genocidal activities in Darfur. There was also a reticence about the Islamic fundamentalist nature of the regime.

This Telegraph article reinforces some of these fears, if you keep in mind that the BBC World Service -the main engine of overseas BBC reporting- are funded directly from the Foreign Office. Patrick Smith says

'Government has remained remarkably reluctant to criticise Sudan's Islamist government for gross oppression in Darfur'- a criticism I levelled at the BBC two months ago.

Smith, a respected authority, has no hesitation in saying 'Sudan government forces and their allies have continued to bomb and burn their way across the western region with impunity. The tragedy unfolding there is of Khartoum's political design.'

This last phrase is particularly interesting. Smith thinks that the negotiations over peace with the south of Sudan have enabled the Sudanese government to turn its attention to Darfur, where the Jangaweed have been doing the dirtiest work backed by the Government forces with which they can at times be indistinguishable.

Meanwhile,
'The Security Council has declined to condemn the Khartoum government',
which is not surprising when Sudan is a member of the UN Human Rights commission.

Now, into this mix comes Hilary Andersson's latest bit of investigative journalism for the BBC.

To some extent this fills the gap in their coverage, but it's still rather confused. It seems the Beeb, having fluffed reporting effectively the nature of events and their origins earlier on, are still in the 'scene setting' phase. Hence we get a lot of atmospherics from Andersson and indictments that are sharp in tone but vague in focus:

'No-one in the refugee camps spoke of gun battles between soldiers, only of massacres of civilians by the Janjaweed militia - Arab militiamen often seen fighting with the Sudanese government - or of massacres resulting from aerial bombings of villages by Sudanese government planes. '

Other instances of the same thing from Ishbel Matheson in this article:

'For months, the Islamic government in Khartoum, together with traditional Arab militia, have been accused of pursuing a scorched earth policy in western Sudan.

Everything we saw, everything we heard, suggests that this is true.

...there is little evidence that the government is willing, or able, to rein in the militia.'


Despite appearances, this phrasing does not actually implicate the Sudanese Government in acts of genocide- the kind of thing that might bring momentum for a UN resolution or pave the media road to an International Courtroom for Sudanese apparatchiks.

As to the role of religion in this flourishing ethnic genocide, what is undeniable is that there is a radical Islamic, warlike government in Khartoum, one which oppresses its own people and strategises peace apparently to make war. The desire not to offend Islam appears a significant factor in the failure to report Darfur with the clarity that is available. Those looking to analyse the appalling actions in Darfur might look at general trends of oppression of blacks by Islam, and specific outbreaks of such trends in Darfur.

Instead, as Andersson ends with a good old-fashioned humanist lament- I woke up when the moon finally rose at three o'clock in the morning. I watched as it cast its pale ghostly light across the cursed land we had seen and wondered, after Rwanda and Bosnia, why Darfur is being allowed to happen? - I am left thinking that this has been an apology for not reporting, rather than a wholehearted attempt to report. Of course I am sympathetic to British diplomatic dilemmas, but I wish the BBC didn't make an eery echo of them in their reporting.

Well, each case is different, but it doesn't help when specific indictments are ignored in favour of mystifying nuances. If only they could bring themselves to be less nuanced when the bad guys are Arabs and not American 'cowboys' and other obvious villains.