Just a quickie, I hope, before I head off for a final bout of summer travel (to Oxford for Charles’s and Pamela’s wedding!), on an article that will surely lead the Swedish blogosphere into a tizzy, now that Erik’s linked to it.
Mikael Pawlo, a writer at the Swedish IDG tech news website, faults Swedish (and, for that matter, all) bloggers for not blogging Darfur. While genocide looms, he writes, Swedish bloggers are discussing I, Robot and Buffy. A failure by the Swedish media and politicians to give Darfur the attention it deserves has not led to bloggers raising hell. So much for all that supposed grass-roots journalism, he concludes. So much for blogging.
Mikael, sorry. It’s my fault. I should have made it clearer to you and everyone else who visits this blog: I am against genocide. Slavery too. Famine, war, oppression — all bad. Lots of other things besides. Here I was, all this time thinking it was my obligation to engage readers with interesting posts about things I possibly know something about, about topics where there is disagreement and hence room for interesting debate, when it turns out all you want is a checklist of the world’s injustices, sorted by size, updated semi-weekly.
Of course, Mikael, you could always start your own blog. It’s not like I had to get a licence or something to run this here URL. If you had a blog, you could tell all comers what exactly annoys you with the process currently underway to alleviate this crisis. We might even find we disagree on some things (oh, look, something to blog about!). For example: I think Darfur is now getting the attention it deserves, at least in the media I follow. I think the UN is applying the lessons it learned in Rwanda. I think alarm bells were raised soon after the situation in Darfur escalated from mismatched ethnic conflict to incipient genocide; I think aid agencies are there in force, and well funded this time, on the border, while the thorny issue of military intervention in Sudan proper is discussed in the US, EU and UN. I think the specter of this intervention, and the certainty of sanctions, is spurring the Sudanese government to try to rein in the militias responsible (we’ll see). I think an outside military intervention does not automagically solve this crisis. What do you want — a rerun of Somalia? If not, got any bright ideas?
But I am not an expert in the details of combating incipient genocide, so I don’t know why you particularly want to know my opinion. (For that matter, I suspect you aren’t an expert either.) I do know that a lot of expertise exists, and that it is being applied en masse to the crisis. As far as this blog is concerned, I’m just trying to avoid sounding like those letters to the editor that get published in Time magazine. You know the ones: “I think it’s a real tragedy what is going on in [insert region here]. Why can’t people just get along? We can send people to the moon, so why can’t we stop this? Sincerely, Marge Smith, Tulsa Oklahoma.” Way to go, Marge.
Way to go, Mikael.
Awesome website, I liked reading a lot of your opinions. We share a lot of the same views. I wonder if you’ve seen “Farenheight” as yet.
I am in NY (moving to Stockholm next year) I appreciate your web presence. Blog on!
Sorry to keep bitching at your posts (I really like them, honestly). But I don’t think Pawlo meant that we necessarily should start complaining about terrible things that are happening in Africa. If I understand him correctly he feels that there are good reasons to critizise the action (or in-action) of the Swedish Government. And he is right there, I think. (Particularly the Foreign Minister who claimed that this is “almost” a genocide.) But there is hardly ever any such discussion among Swedish bloggers.
I am somewhat surprised that such level-headed people as you and Chadie should be so thin-skinned. You are absolutely right in saying that anyone must be free to chose the subject and the style of h/h blog (if that’s what you said.) And cat-blogging and MT intricacies seem to interest a lot of people. But what Pawlo did was to take stock of the Swedish bloggosphere and characterize it – I can’t help it, but I think he is right. Maybe he sounded condescending, but don’t we all?
Kind regards
Bengt O.
BTW, I much prefer the Maggie Smiths to the other type.
Bengt O is right on. My main point is of course that the world-changing grassroot journalism through blogging is very far away. That doesn’t mean that your particular blogging is bad or that you should change your blog’s topics.
It is just this:
http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/08/05/im_from_markoff_re_we_the_media_review.html
Best regards,
Mikael
I don’t know much about the issue either, but I thought
why not try to learn something? Via Instapundit I found
the following, which is my attempt to condense it down
to the most salient issues:
from http://www.robertcorr.net/blog/archives/000183.shtml
Analysis of satellite imagery commissioned by Amnesty International
reveals the extent of the destruction of villages around Mornay in an
area west of Darfur. Landsat images were collected on 30 March 2003
and again on 01 May 2004 and compared in order to ascertain the amount
of village destruction that took place between these dates in the area
of Mornay West Darfur, on the Azum River, a border between the Masalit
and Fur areas. The analysis of Landsat images shows that at least 44%
of the villages in the region have been burnt. Most of the burning
appears to have taken place in the Masalit and the Fur areas.
[and]
…the attacks on Masalit and Fur villages by Sudanese government
and militia forces follow clear patterns and were carried out in what
appeared to be coordinated and planned operations. Villages were not
attacked at random, but were emptied across wide areas in operations
that lasted for several days or were repeated several times until
the population was finally driven away.
[and]
Human Rights Watch surveyed an area of approximately sixty square
kilometres or twenty-five square miles, and found the area, once
well-populated and intensely farmed, to be completely deserted.
[and]
…the government and militia attacks on the Masalit and Fur villages
appear intended to discourage continued habitation by the population.
[and]
In all the villages visited, food stores had been systematically looted
and burned even when a few grass huts, known as tukls, remained standing.
Everything necessary for the storage and preparation of food — pots,
bowls, glasses for tea — lay smashed.
[and]
Human Rights Watch has obtained copies of government documents whose
contents sharply contrast with the Sudanese government?s repeated
denials of support to the Janjaweed; on the contrary, the documents
indicate a government policy of militia recruitment, support and
impunity that has been implemented from high levels of the civilian
administration.
An editorial from the “Ottawa Citizen”:
The Sudanese government made a false promise to protect the people
in Darfur, and has threatened guerrilla war if other nations try
to help them. Courage must replace patience in dealing with Khartoum.
Under the cover of a 21-year civil war, the Arab Islamist government
in Khartoum has been using bandit gangs called Janjaweed to drive
black people in its western territory from their homes. The gangs
are made up of nomads threatened by desertification and who are
loyalists of President Omar el-Bashir; the farmers in Darfur have
land Mr. el-Bashir wants to give them. The farmers are also Muslim,
though not generally Islamists. . . .
The United States and Britain are pushing a Security Council resolution
to impose trade sanctions, but they’re having trouble getting it
passed. Pakistan and China, for instance, are hesitant to interfere
with Sudan’s oil trade, which supplies about 300,000 barrels a day
to Asia, partly pumped by a Chinese company.
The critics of the war in Iraq, those who said that was all about
oil, are silent. France, the great multilateralist, has given just
$6 million to a UN fund for Darfur, which Mr. Annan says needs
$350 million. (The Americans have found $130 million so far.)
But for the aid to mean anything, the people of Darfur must have
security, which Mr. Ismail has indicated the Sudanese government
will deny them. These are the words of both a terrorist and a promoter
of genocide, not a man who will be swayed by threats of trade
sanctions. The world has dithered and innocents have died. It’s
time to find the nerve to act.
from http://africapundit.blogspot.com/2004_05_09_africapundit_archive.html#108423262814361293
Here’s a great example of African solidarity in action:
African nations have ensured that Sudan will keep its seat on the
U.N. Human Rights Commission, a decision that angered the United States
and human rights advocates who cited reports of widespread rights
abuses by the Khartoum government.
A coalition of 10 organizations concerned with human rights issues
went further Monday, complaining that too few democracies are being
nominated for seats on the commission.
In elections Tuesday for 14 seats on the main U.N. human rights watchdog,
the coalition said three out of four African seats will be filled by
non-democratic regimes — Sudan, Guinea and Togo.
Oh, I’m so thankful that the honorable gentlemen from Khartoum have been
spared the ignominy of being kicked off the human rights commission. And
it’s heartwarming how well African nations stick together.
from http://amygdalagf.blogspot.com/2004/07/darfur-pt.html
Mr. Osman, the health minister, scoffs at suggestions that his government
created the crisis. While accompanying Dr. Lee Jong Wook, director
general of W.H.O., on a tour of Darfur this week, Mr. Osman disavowed
any connection between the Janjaweed and the government and singled out
the rebels for blame. Outside governments and relief workers question that.
Mr. Osman said he feared that talk about ethnic cleansing in Darfur from
the Bush administration is designed to justify an American military invasion.
“They’re saying that so they can bring their troops in,” he said.
[and]
An ethnic dimension to the attacks is undeniable. The militias are Arab
and the villagers they attacked were, by and large, from black African
tribes. Those who survived, now clustered together in camps, reported
that they were subjected to ethnic taunts during the violence. The
victims say they were called “abid,” which means slave, and “zurug,”
which means black in Arabic.
from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19774-2004Jul27.html
The Europeans know that the killings in Darfur probably constitute genocide,
as Congress recognized last week, but they shrank from calling it that.
They suggested they might increase their support for the African Union’s
cease-fire monitors in Darfur, but stopped short of calling for a force
large enough to protect civilians from the government-backed militia. They
declared qualified support for “imminent” sanctions, but assigned
responsibility for imposing these to the U.N. Security Council, which
is hamstrung by the threat of a Chinese veto. They advertised the aid
that they have given, but they failed to note that the U.N. relief appeal
is less than 50 percent funded and made no mention of the detailed request
for helicopters that the U.N. staff had presented to them the previous week.
More than 30,000 people are thought to have died in Darfur already. How
many deaths will it take?
from http://windsofchange.net/archives/005284.php
The casualties are piling up, with over 30,000 believed dead and 1 million+
refugees. After wars with the black and mostly Christian south, the
(mostly Arab) Sudanese government is busy terrorising and ethnically
cleansing the black and mostly Muslim west. Robert Corr may have written
the best history and summary of the Darfur crisis in the blogosphere.
Even in such an obvious case, however, multilateralism is running into
trouble:
“The United States and Britain are pushing a Security Council resolution
to impose trade sanctions, but they’re having trouble getting it passed.
Pakistan and China, for instance, are hesitant to interfere with Sudan’s
oil trade, which supplies about 300,000 barrels a day to Asia, partly
pumped by a Chinese company.”
…oh, and don’t forget all the French oil deals (France is opposing
sanctions, of course, as it did in Iraq). Not to mention Russian military
contracts with Sudan. Meanwhile, African nations have ensured that Sudan
will keep its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
Gary Farber has more on the limited progress being made, and sums it up
as “Small steps continue. Meanwhile, people die.” The Washington Post
looks at the EU’s cynical half-measures and asks, appropriately, “how
many more deaths will it take?”
from http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=876262004
UNTIL a few weeks ago, few people had heard of the Darfur region of
Sudan. They were unaware that more than a million people had been
driven out of their homes by ruthless Arab gangs who rode in on
camels and horses, shooting and killing the black African men who
lived in the scattered villages of the region, then raping their
wives and daughters and kidnapping their children as slaves.
They did not know about the government planes that swept in to
mop up the survivors, bombing what remained of the villages,
slaughtering those who had sought refuge away from their burning
huts. Asked to explain what had triggered such horrors, they would
have been quite unable to do so. Darfur barely registered on the
international radar; it certainly was not at the forefront of the
United Nations? collective mind.
[and]
There is a school of thought that argues that by the time the
United Nations Security Council applies its attention to a crisis
anywhere in the world, that crisis will already be out of hand, or
the moment to intervene effectively will have passed. That is an
argument that is particularly apposite in relation to what is going
on in Darfur. The same school of thought also contends that when
the UN does finally accept that something must be done, it will
do the wrong thing, and do it so slowly that it merely compounds
an already hopeless situation. And here we have Darfur again. Given
the opportunity to act firmly and decisively, for once to present
a united front to face down an aggressor and to protect those who
cannot defend themselves, the UN has chosen the path of least
resistance. It has shied away from using its power for good in
favour of mealy-mouthed attitudes and toothless threats of some
future, ill-defined, approbation.
So it is no to sanctions, and yes to yet more empty gestures,
lest it offends those nations who have much to gain economically
by cosying up to the Khartoum regime, and who gain pleasure by
thwarting the aspirations of those who backed the war in Iraq,
however well intentioned those aspirations may be.
In one sense, whatever the UN had decided yesterday, it was already
too late. Although the very nature of the territory, its physical
inaccessibility and the reluctance of the Sudanese government
to allow in independent observers, makes it hard even now to know
for certain the extent of what is, and what has been, going on,
it seems likely that the atrocities inflicted on the black African
population of the region were at their height in the early months
of this year.
The stories that have emerged from those who have visited the camps
mostly relate to that period. In early June The Scotsman carried
story after heartbreaking story from those refugees camped out along
the border between Chad and Sudan, most of whom told of attacks on
their villages back in February. All told variations of a similar
story: the Janjaweed rode in, there was shooting and killing,
animals were stolen, houses set alight, some women and children
abducted, the women raped and the children enslaved, and often
the arrival of Sudanese aircraft to bomb the survivors and what
property they had left.
from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29211-2004Jul30.html
In an effort to stop the killing and head off a looming humanitarian
disaster, Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.N. Secretary General
Kofi Annan visited Sudan this summer. On July 3, the United Nations
and the Sudanese government issued a joint communiqué in which Khartoum
formalized commitments it had made to Powell and Annan to immediately
disarm the Janjaweed, prosecute egregious abuses of human rights and
honor a cease-fire agreement reached two months earlier.
But recent events suggest that in making these commitments, Khartoum’s
objective was to stall for time in the hope it might deceive the
international community into believing the crisis had been brought
under control. This cynical approach is graphically illustrated by the
recent arrest and prosecution of a group of alleged Janjaweed militiamen
on charges of robbery and murder in southern Darfur’s provincial capital
of Nyala. According to reliable sources inside the government, the
“Janjaweed” were in fact common criminals plucked from a Nyala jail,
who were informed that they would be sentenced to death unless they
agreed to pose as Janjaweed and confess to the crimes. The true killers
remain at large.
…på webben där!
…Många, även normalt sett sansade bloggare som Stefan Geens och Skeptikern (se kommentar till Chadie’s inlägg – eller är det kanske ironi, Skep, var god markera sådant ordentligt i fortsättningen), verkar helt ha missförstått den….
Me, thin-skinned? This is the internet, people! Emote!
Mikael, you’re changing the ostensible point of your article after the fact. Not allowed! Which is it: Are you lamenting that Swedish bloggers are ignoring Darfur as a subject to blog (“Och trots den nya eran av distribuerad journalistik och omvälvningar av presidentvalskampanjer är de svenska bloggarna tysta medan 1 000 människor om dagen dör i Sudans område Darfur”), or are you lamenting that they are blogging it in an unprofessional manner? Your article makes the first point, but your link to Joi makes the second point, which is really what I just wrote: Much better for a blogger to shut up about the stuff he is not equipped to cover properly than to pollute the blogosphere with inanities. The best blogs censor themselves in this manner.
Some further points:
Bengt, I happen to agree with Laila Freivalds (legal terminologies and popular usage of words like genocide, illegal combatant and terrorism diverge) so the onus is not on me to blog this. (“Laila says X. I agree!” = boring blogging) You are welcome to take her to task, however. I might even enter the fray in response.
Don’t go looking for grass-roots journalism on blogs and journals that cover Buffy (with the possible exception of fistfulofeuros.com).
Me – thinskinned? Maybe – but that has not with this matter to do.
I still mean that the case of Sudan was a bad case to prove that the swedish blogosphere does not stand for any new journalism.
I think that Pawlo might has right in his conclusion, but not about that case.
But on the other hand: exactly who has said that the blogosphere should bring something new and special?
Sammanfattning av veckans svenska bloggosfär
När jag började blogga gjordes det vecko-sammanfattningar på weblogs över vad som skett i bloggvärlden. Dessa slutade sedan. Det förstår jag, det måste ta sin tid att ha bra koll och skriva något som ger en bra bild av veckan…
Now that the topic has been raises, the New York Times provides the kind of nuance that is hard to find without being there.
Stefan, here is a letter from the head of an aid agency that describes how aid agencies are not there in sufficient numbers at all: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=549048
And for anyone else, the following blog blogs purely on Sudan and Darfur: http://platform.blogs.com/passionofthepresent/
from http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,14658,1279835,00.html
Quote:
The EU said yesterday there was widespread violence in the Darfur
region of Sudan but the killings were not genocidal, a potentially
crucial distinction which underlined its reluctance to intervene.
“We are not in the situation of genocide there,” Pieter Feith, an
adviser to the EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said in
Brussels after returning from a fact-finding visit to Sudan.
“But it is clear there is widespread, silent and slow killing and
village burning of a fairly large scale. There are considerable
doubts as to the willingness of Sudan’s government to assume its
duty to protect its civilian population against attacks.”
He said in the absence of willingness to send a significant military
force, the EU and others had little choice but to cooperate with Khartoum.
[and]
The genocide convention, adopted by the UN in 1948, calls on
signatories to “prevent” and “punish” genocide. If governments
accept events in Darfur amount to genocide they would be obliged
to intervene.
Given the risk of such a logistical and military challenge,
that is something few governments are willing to contemplate.
Over the weekend, at the wedding I attended, I had a talk with someone who is a field officer for the OHCHR and was in Darfur a few months ago. Some points I took away from the conversation (he’s welcome to elaborate/correct me):
1) It’s not genocide (“The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group”). The dynamics on the ground are completely different.
2) The plight of the civilians there is the worst he’s ever seen in his professional career.
3) There are precedents for sending in troops on humanitarian grounds alone — there is no need to first assert there is a genocide underway.
4) UN experts are lobbying governments to support armed intervention to defend aid workers. It’s these national governments that are dragging their feet, though they do so because the perceived risk of failure is high.
Darfur already has become a synonym for dithering by outside powers
in the face of genocide. Soon it may also deliver another grim verdict
on the ability of the Security Council to back up its own resolutions.
Hamstrung by the unwillingness of veto-wielding members, such as China,
to intervene, it delayed action for months, then watered down the
language it finally adopted on July 30 to omit any direct sanction against
the Sudanese regime. Days after that, an agreement between U.N. and
Sudanese officials further weakened the pressure on Khartoum: Among
other things, it converted a requirement that the government-sponsored
Janjaweed militia be disarmed into a Sudanese promise to provide a list
of those it admits to controlling.
from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27341-2004Aug23.html
If bloggers were really so concerned about polluting the internet with inanities, there surely would be no blogs?
Can I point out that it is very difficult to remark upon elisions in the blogosphere *as a whole* without coming across as some sort of sanctimonious lecturing pedant? Not helped at all by the way most bloggers, myself included, have such thin skins as to take even the widest generalisation personally.
However, the disgruntled response of bloggers to mild criticism does not mean that we should not criticise. If an entire nation’s worth of journalists ignore a crucial issue such as Darfur, it is notable, and worthy of comment. Like it or not, the same critique applies to blogs.
Blogging is a new media, and its general political and social make up is not yet fixed. [Apolitical, over-personalised confessional style blogging may be the norm today, but holds no real influence over tomorrow, as more social classes and groups discover the media.]
That does not render blogging immune. Nor is worthy bleating the only possible response to a political crisis.
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL