Reflections: Mirror, mirror on the wall By Hani Shukrallah The most accurate reflection of the bankruptcy of the Arab political and ideological landscape is to be found not in Palestine, nor even in Iraq, but in Darfur. In the first two instances the images reflected back at us are too busy, too complex for our ever-dimming perceptions. We cannot quite make out the barren wasteland that is contemporary Arab reality. In Darfur, though, the picture mirrored is stark. And it is horribly ugly. Practically everybody has failed the test of Darfur: opposition movements and civil society organisations as much as Arab governments. The bitter and raucous contest between the two ideological/political camps -- the liberals and the nationalists/Islamists -- that has passed as a lame excuse for intellectual and political life for years now has once again been demonstrating its vacuity. The picture is more pathetic than fearful. Having stood by as a million of their close kin were being butchered, brutalised, subjected to rape and ethnic cleansing, everyone is now scrambling into action, or rather scrambling to give the appearance of action: the Americans are coming; Israel's pernicious machinations are working behind the scenes; Arab national security faces yet another dire threat; yet another Arab country is falling prey to American domination and Zionist infiltration and they're after our oil. And so we suddenly discover the humanitarian tragedy in Darfur. The discovery is a transparent ploy to placate America and, hopefully, to get Al-Bashir to "shave his own head", as the saying goes, "before having it shaved for him," � la Saddam. Unlike Saddam, however, Bashir, along with Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh and Libya's Gaddafi, has been displaying ever-growing hair- dressing skills since George W declared his global "war on terror" and Saddam Hussein's dental examination was flashed across the world's television screens. Bashir's problem lies in trying to balance the requisites of mollifying the Americans while maintaining the hegemony of his corrupt, theocratic and viciously authoritarian regime during a period of intense domestic and regional crisis. Which accounts for the equivocation, dilly- dallying and the occasional displays of defiance, both "popular" and governmental. But what stands out in the whole mess is just how subordinated the terrible plight of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese -- presumably as much our people as the Palestinians and Iraqis -- is to other considerations, whether these are defined as averting US intervention in yet another Arab country by urging Khartoum's "gradual" compliance, forestalling the same through protests and expressions of solidarity with "the Sudanese people", or proclaiming jihad against the Western imperialists. And there is not an ounce of principle in any of it. We've been endlessly railing against the Western media, and considerable sections of Western (especially American) public opinion, and rightly so, for the racism inherent in their attitude to Palestinian suffering. Why, runs the constant refrain, is Palestinian blood deemed so cheap? But what of the blood of the Sudanese in Darfur? How cheap is that? Since when did we become so sceptical of reports in the progressive Western media and of international human rights organisations, the very same media and organisations for which we have expressed deep admiration for their honest and courageous reporting of the Israeli occupation in Palestine and of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq? Suddenly, in Darfur, we've discovered that they are Western, with suspect (imperialist) agendas. What has become of the democracy and human rights that every political and ideological trend in today's Arab world blazons across its banners (with the sole exception of the jihadists who, at least, are consistently loathsome)? As far as Darfur is concerned most of us are happy to feign ignorance, or the kind of scepticism that we fail to muster even in the face of the most outlandish e-rumours as long, of course, as the rumours are to our taste. Remember the one about the 3,000 Jews who didn't show up at the World Trade Centre on 9/ 11? There is no great mystery about Darfur. A corrupt, repressive and backward regime plunders, impoverishes and disempowers its peoples to such a degree that they are set against one another in the daily struggle for survival, for livelihood, for land. Under such conditions whatever ethnic and/or tribal fault lines that exist -- however tenuous, or even manufactured -- can become chasms. The absurdity of the Arab/ black African divide in Darfur is testimony to this. (It so happens they're all black and they're overwhelmingly Muslim). The regime favours one tribal/ethnic group over other groups, arms them to the teeth, backs them militarily and cynically mobilises them in a ruthless -- no holds barred -- fight to maintain its oppressive control over the whole population. This is the "tragedy" of Darfur. It is a familiar pattern that has on more than one occasion descended into the horror we see today in Darfur, the butchery and ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of people. Remember Bosnia, anyone? It's not that no one in the Arab world has spoken out against the atrocities in Darfur. One of the few bright spots in this whole mess came from a most unlikely quarter. The Arab League Secretariat's fact-finding mission to Darfur last May, and in a manner unprecedented in the history of the normally insipid pan-Arab organisation, reported that massive violations of human rights had been committed by pro- government militias. Few at the time seemed to notice or care. After fierce Sudanese protests the report was shelved and Arab foreign ministers, meeting at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo this week, were silent on the atrocities committed by the Sudanese government in Darfur, though they emphasised their opposition to foreign intervention and, predictably, demanded the international community adopt a more gradual approach towards solving the crisis. Sudan's Islamist government, which has been fervently "cooperating" with the US "war against [Islamist] terror", has donned, for the moment at least, the moth-eaten mantle of pan-Arab nationalism: beware Zionist machinations in Darfur, the Sudanese foreign minister warned his peers. It's all horribly familiar. So recurrent is this sense of déj� vu that along with the recognition comes nausea. By all means let us confront US/Israeli oppression and atrocities in Palestine and Iraq. But is it not also time that we came to the conclusion that our dismal failure so far in effectively confronting those atrocities is inextricably tied to our willful failure to face the monsters in our own midst? It's a simple lesson that recent Arab history has been drumming into our heads over and over again. How many Saddams will it take for us to finally learn? There will be no replay of Iraq in Sudan. The dire warnings are so much posturing. The Americans will not intervene militarily, and Khartoum, with as much foot- dragging as it can get away with, will rein in its "devilish" militias. Tens of thousands of people will have died; it will take years for the survivors to restore a semblance of normalcy to their lives, the scars possibly never to heal; and we will have learned, most likely, nothing at all.
