Social Science Research Council

This is the first in a series of three postings on the challenges facing the UN-AU Mediation. It is an edited version of a paper written jointly by myself and Abdul Mohammed and presented to the AU-UN informal consultations with the international partners on the mediation strategy held in Geneva last week.
Part 1: Is the [...]

Darfur’s Arabs are back in the spotlight—as victims, as Janjawiid, and as rebels. The relationship between the Sudan government and the Darfur Arabs has never been simple, and it’s not getting any less so now. Most important is to recognize that Darfur’s Arabs—despite their silence—are nobody’s fools.

Posted on behalf of Cara Parks of the New Republic
Yesterday on the New Republic website we ran an editorial on Darfur that I think your readers would really enjoy. The piece uses the declaration of Kosovo’s independence last week to look back at NATO’s involvement in the region — and then compares this experience with [...]

In her posting yesterday, Mia Farrow identifies the success of the "genocide Olympics" campaign—which she was instrumental in starting—as a "defining moment." She is right. For the first time, an international activist movement has compelled the Chinese government to recognize that it has global human rights responsibilities. Beijing’s rebuttal of Stephen Spielberg’s charges is the [...]

Editor’s note: Mia Farrow and Ronan Farrow, who were instrumental in starting up the "genocide Olympics" campaign, have offered these words.

Without question this is a a defining moment for each of us, and a deeply consequential one for the people of Darfur and eastern Chad. Responsible leaders and citizens alike should think carefully as to how they might best use their leverage with China. The successful staging of the 2008 Beijing Olympic games have proven to be a lone point of leverage with a country that has thus far been impervious to criticism. Those who have Peking’s ear in the lead-up to the Games and those underwriting the ceremony–the corporate sponsors–must step up and do their part. [...]

Editors note: We are pleased to have this contribution from Daniel Large, a UK-based scholar on China—Sudan relations who has published widely on the topic. He recently authored a piece, “China and the Changing Context of Development in Sudan,” for the journal Development.

Europe and America have tended to regard China as the Great Hope or the Great Demon, moving historically between binary projections of China as an enlightened model to learn from or as an example to avoid. In the case of Sudan today, however, China is paradoxically held up to represent both: it is supposedly the route to peace in Darfur but it is also responsible for ‘empowering evil’ in Sudan.

Steven Spielberg’s decision not to continue his role as artistic director[...]

Editor’s note: Chris Alden, senior lecturer in international relations at the London School of Economics, contributed this post on Steven Spielberg’s withdrawal from his involvement in the Beijing Olympics. Alden is the author of the acclaimed China in Africa, part of the African Arguments series to which Alex de Waal’s book on Darfur, written with Julie Flint, also belongs.

Steven Spielberg’s decision to publicly withdrawal from his post as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics has reignited a simmering debate as to China’s relationship with the Sudanese government and its role in the troubled Darfur region. In what appears to be a carefully worded statement, Spielberg acknowledges that while the Sudanese government bore the ‘bulk of the responsibility’ for crimes in Darfur, the ‘international community and China in particular should be doing more’ [...]

This past Wednesday, the Hollywood director Steven Spielberg resigned from his post as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics. His stated aim in doing so was to attract attention to China’s ties with Sudan.

China responded by continuing to distance itself from the issue [...]

Posted on behalf of Mark Duffield

Munzoul Assal has provided an useful and provocative analysis of urbanisation in Sudan and its social and political implications. In response, Asif Faiz has provided a different inflection. Taken together, they usefully mark out what is at stake in this discussion. In developing this idea, I want to begin by adding to the views of Munzoul.

The current conflict in Chad and Darfur is a reprise of the “thirty years’ war” that embroiled Chad, Libya and Darfur from the mid-1960s until the early 1990s. This was not only an important sideshow in the Cold War–the CIA’s biggest covert operation in Africa in the 1980s–but has had a profound and lasting impact on the whole region. Millard Burr and Robert Collins’ book, Darfur: The Long Road to Disaster, tells the story–but needs a new edition.