Darfur: The Political is Personal

        Darfur is the genocide of my generation.  When I consider how I can stop the death toll of 400,000 from continuing to climb, I think that I can do nothing, because this is a political crisis, and only a political solution between powerful men whom I don’t know can bring this genocide to a halt.  And, oddly, this thought comforts me, because I’ve done everything I can do.

        For awhile, though, this thought has no longer provided comfort to me.  A friend named Keith emailed me a link to a video of a speech by Bono.  In the speech, Bono asked, “Can we really say that we would allow this to happen if it was happening anywhere else but Africa?”  As I envisioned genocide in Norway, or Japan, or Poland, I suddenly thought of all the additional things I would try to do to bring it to an end.  Sad, but true.  What are these things I would do?

        I would find out how such a thing could happen – the root causes.  I’m not interested in protesting to protest.  I’m not interested in giving money to be a philanthropist. I’m interested in what causes poverty, what causes tyranny, what causes genocide.

        What is causing genocide in Darfur?  I found that it’s not that complex, or hard to discover.  Blacks in Western Sudan demanded more representation and investment from the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum, where the country’s oil wealth has been hoarded for new glass office towers and hotels.  The government armed a militia – the janjaweed – to put down the rebellion.  That was 4 years, and 400,000 lives ago.

        Where are the arms coming from?  They are paid for entirely with the proceeds from oil exports.  Who is buying the oil?  China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) buys 70% of it.  Where does CNPC get the money to buy all this oil?  From two sources: (1) the rapidly expanding Chinese manufacturing sector and (2) the profits of its subsidiary, PetroChina.  As to (1), why is China’s manufacturing sector booming?  The enormous American market for Chinese goods that has produced the largest trade imbalance with another country in American history.  As to (2), who is Petrochina?  CNPC tried to go public in 1999, but couldn’t because it buys oil from Sudan, so it took all its operations that don’t buy oil from Sudan, called it PetroChina, and put it in the NYSE.  Your retirement is probably invested in it - if, that is, it is invested in Berkshire Hathaway or Fidelity, the two largest foreign shareholders in PetroChina.

        All of the sudden, I don’t feel so comforted.  All of the sudden, I see that the political is deeply personal.  When I wonder how German non-Jews could have allowed Jews to disappear and done nothing, I realize I need only examine myself to find the answer.

        When we want to buy anything we desire, we are easily used by others.  When we will invest in anything that ensures the best return for our retirement, we are also easily used.  When we continue to watch TV news that tells us more about sex and celebrity than about genocide, we are easily used.  In short, when we are the sum of our wants, we are easily used by others.  Interestingly, the best Holocaust scholars point to the same factor in Weimar Germany – the horror of the inaction of ordinary Germans was in how banal it all was. 

        On the other hand, when we can say ‘No’ to our desires at the store and avoid products made, in whole or in part, in China, and when we can say to our investment advisors and 401k administrators that we’d rather have a little less in retirement than we would like to invest in PetroChina, we are more than the sum of our wants.  When we refuse to watch TV news, and we email newspaper reporters who cover Darfur and their editors with our thanks, our daily lives rise above the banal existence of animals and we become more fully human.

        I can hear the reply in my mind: But what difference will one person make by boycotting Chinese products, PetroChina investment and TV news?  First, if every person who thought this were to actually do these things, it would make a difference so loud it would reverberate around the globe.  Second, it’s precisely the seduction into politics with its permit-approved protest stages that blinds us to our banal complicity in genocide.  To protest in the U.S. is easy, because it’s not personal.  To be the change we want to see in China, on the other hand, is personal. 

        When we identify that side of each of us that wants, wants, wants, and sacrificially wean ourselves from these wants, we gain something that we cannot gain by direct effort – our dignity as full humans created in the image of God.  A man or woman whose identity and dignity comes from God, and not from having one’s wants continuously fed, is the most unstoppable political force in the world.

Comments

[Matt Coles]

Ken,

Darfur's not the only genocide of our generation, nor even the main one. It is the most popular one, though, at least for now. Celebrities and the media are quite interested, and I thank you for your research into the factors behind it.

Any thoughts on the abortion genocide?

[Hugh Hollowell]

No matter what the issue is, somehow, someone manages to tie it to either homosexuality or abortion.

Sighhh...

[Hugh Hollowell]

By the way, thank you for the insight and the research.

Ultimately, all causes come down to people and personal choices.

[Paul Higgins]

You might be interested to read about this, actually; there's a much longer history of Islam/Christian tribal warfare going back to the 1960s-1970s, between the largely Christian part of the country and the largely Muslim part. The genocide moved to Darfur only in recent years, but the 'lost boys' of Sudan were the earlier victims of the same ongoing mess. Greed was at the root, though, in both cases; a desire for land and/or oil.

[Geoff Holsclaw]

ken, thanks for the wise reflections.

[Nic Nelson]

"when we are the sum of our wants, we are easily used by others."

So true. If all of us led countercultural lives in our media consumption and material consumption, the effect would be felt not only in Khartoum and Beijing but many other places around the world as well as our own neighborhoods and families. The Law of Unintended Consequences works positively as well as negatively-- even if genocide in Darfur is our focal tipping point, the effects of our "radical" (as seen by other Westerners, I guess) choices won't be limited to Darfur.

It is difficult to convey the enormous benefits my family has reaped over the past 16 years of having no television in the home, for instance. My tipping point was soft porn taking over the advertising and music industry, but my children are an order of magnitude less materialistic as well as less sexualized, and far more likely that I was at their age to continue making the choices you suggest, Ken.

[Rhonda]

thank you for posting this. its complacent of me to say i can do nothing in a situation that is so much bigger than myself. thank you.