Darfur, Politics and The War on Terror by Mahmood Mamdani

On July 14, 2008, after much advance publicity and fanfare, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) applied for a warrant for the arrest of the president of Sudan, Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir, on charges that included conspiracy to commit genocide along with other war crimes. The application charges al-Bashir with (a) racially polarizing Darfur into "Arab" and "Zurga" or "Black", (b) turning the 2003-5 counterinsurgency into a pretext to expel "Zurga" ethnic groups from their dars (homelands), and (c) subjecting survivors to "slow death" from malnutrition, rape and torture in their IDP (internally displaced persons) camps.

None of these allegations can bear historical scrutiny...

In the prosecutors mono-causal and one-dimensional version of history, colonialism turns into a benign "tradition" and any attempt to reform the colonial legacy of tribal homelands is seen as a dress rehearsal building up to genocide, just as any part of the historical record that suggests that the violence in Darfur has multiple causes (the 1987-89 inter-tribal civil war, the environmental crisis, the Chadian civil war, and the "war crimes" attributed to rebel groups by the UN Commission on Darfur) and thus multiple responsibilities, is expunged from the record. Having assumed a single cause of excess deaths in Darfur- violence- the application goes on to ascribe responsibility to a single source: "what happened in Darfur is a consequence of Bashir's will." This is demonization masquerading as justice.

The kernel of truth in the prosecutor's application concerns the period of 2003-4, when Darfur was the site of mass deaths. There is no doubt that the perpetrators of this violence should be held accountable, but when and how is a political decision that cannot belong to the ICC prosecutor. More than the innocence or guilt of the president of Sudan, it is the relationship between law and politics- including the politicalization of the ICC- that poses a wider issue, one of greatest concern to African governments and peoples...

The year 2003 saw the unfolding of two very different armed conflicts. One was in Iraq, and it grew out of war and invasion. The other was in Darfur, Sudan, and it grew in response to an internal insurgency. The former involved a liberation war against a foreign occupation, the latter a civil war in an independent state. True, if you were an Iraqi or a Dafuri, there was little difference between the brutality of the violence unleashed in either instance. Yet much energy has been invested in the question of how to define the brutality in each case: whether as counterinsurgency or as genocide.

Here we see the astonishing spectacle of the United States, which has authored the violence in Iraq, branding an adversary state, Sudan, which has authored the violence in Darfur, as the perpetrator of genocide. Even more astonishing, we have a citizens' movement in America calling for a humanitarian intervention in Darfur while keeping mum about the violence in Iraq. And yet, as we have already seen, the figures for the total numbers of excess deaths are far higher for Iraq than for Darfur. The numbers of violent deaths as a proportion of excess mortality are also higher in Iraq than in Darfur.

The Wind of Death by David Killingray

During the space of a few months in 1918 and early 1919, when large areas of the world were involved in the greatest war ever fought, virulent influenza struck. No continent was spared the silent and frightening arrival of the disease which left in its wake not only the dead, widowed, and orphaned, but often economic dislocation and famine. The global death toll has been variously estimated but may have been more than 50 million people.

The flu pandemic of 1918-19 was the single largest demographic disaster of the twentieth century, and, almost certainly the single greatest short-term demographic catastrophe in Africa’s history’. Whatever its origin the disease spread with great rapidity around the world along the conduits of war and commerce.

Most victims did not die of the infection itself but from pneumonic complications that accompanied the disease. The incubation period was between 48-60 hours and victims suffered cynosure, coughed blood, and in fatal cases often died by drowning from an accumulation of fluid in their lungs. In some cases death was sudden with apparently healthy people succumbing to the disease. More mystifying was the universally high death rate among younger men aged 15-40 years, the population group usually deemed to be the fittest and most strong and thus best able to resist the infection.

The pandemic was characterized by a ‘W’ shaped mortality curve: deaths being highest among the predictable victims, very small children and the very old, but also among younger men, and to a lesser extent women in the same age group, especially those who were pregnant. A possible reason for this is that in confronting the infection, the more robust natural resistance system of younger and stronger people went into overdrive and simply collapsed leaving them vulnerable.

The various measures taken to prevent, arrest and cure the disease were of little avail. Inoculation was at best ineffective, at worst lethal. Masks worn widely in hospitals and public places appear, from recent research, to have had some efficacy. Probably the best treatment for an infected patient was go to bed, take regular doses of aspirin, and be properly nursed*, a degree of care available only to a very small number of victims.

In East Africa and neighboring parts of central Africa, African populations suffered from the disruptions of war with harsh labor demands, loss of cattle, famine, human and cattle disease, all of which left them weakened to the ravages of influenza. Influenza was democratic, killing rich and poor, black and white alike but hitting hardest the poor and malnourished and those who lived crammed into insanitary slums and crowded housing that were vulnerable to infection. High mortality occurred in the confined mine compounds of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia.

Thus to the already 100,000 or more deaths as a result of war (mostly carriers), need to be added a further150,000-190,000 (5.5 percent of the population) deaths from influenza, totaling more than a quarter of a million deaths in a period of just over four years. A recent tentative estimate of flu mortality in sub-Saharan Africa by Johnson and Mueller suggests a total figure of 2.375 million dead in the space of few months. But all such figures are tentative and the truth is that the total death toll in Africa during the influenza pandemic can never be accurately computed. What is certain is that the pandemic brought a crisis of mortality to Africa.

*see comment

The Myth of the Oil Crisis by Robin M. Mills

In recent years, it has become the mantra among peak oil believers, the media, and even many industry professionals that "the age of easy oil is over". As William J Cummings, Exxon Mobil's spokesperson in Angola, said, "All the easy oil and gas in the world has pretty much been found. Now comes the harder work in finding and producing oil from more challenging environments and work areas".

This contention does not stand up to investigation. There has never been an age of easy oil, beginning with Colonel Drake's first well in Titusville, Pennsylvania (1859).

William Knox D'Arcy's 1908 discovery at Masjed-e Suleiman in Iran, the first find of oil in the Middle East, was a formidably difficult endeavor:

' At seven in the morning, the temperature was 110 degrees in the shade...and already five of the small band of Europeans, together with a Baghdad mechanic, ha been touched by the sun and one of them was dying. For the last six days grasshoppers swarmed across the country like locusts and devoured every trace of green pasture. The river was full of them and the water stank. Their bodies lay all over the camp and everywhere the men went they trod through a squelching mass of dead insects. Every half-hour they skimmed them from the water tanks. Small pox had broken out at Sekhuan, where they got their food and water. Their dwindling stock of firewood for the boiler was constantly being raided and then the boiler itself collapsed, its tubes corroded by the sulphorous waters. Letters from home, always the consolation of the exile, had failed to arrive because the carrier and his camel had died on route- and to cap it all, some idiot had just dropped a 14-lb. sledgehammer down the well.'

'The development of North Sea oil during the 1970's was the greatest technical challenge the industry ever faced. Entirely new technologies, backed by innovative financing, had to be devised to meet the vast cost of developments in this hostile environment. A series of disasters cost many lives: the sinking of the Sea Gem in 1965, with thirteen deaths, having just discovered the first offshore hydrocarbons in the U.K.; three sailors who died during the evacuation of the Hewett platform during the 1967 blowout; the collapse of the Alexander Kjelland rig in 1980, killing 123; and the fire and explosion on the Piper Alpha platform in 1998, in which 67 people died. Easy oil proponents should try telling a driller who worked the North Sea in the 1970's that this was easy oil- but keep a safe distance."

'The Soviet exploitation of the West Siberian oil fields involved the construction of million strong cities in some of the coldest areas of the planet, such as Novosbirsk (January temperature -19C)
The big Russian gas fields, brought on stream in the 1970's and 1980's, lie north of the limit of continuous permafrost, in which there are only two months per year when rivers are not frozen (and during those months, the area floods to a depth of 1.5-2 meters, a treeless region swept continuously by gale-force winds. Concrete had to be made with steam to prevent it from freezing."

Those who talk about easy oil lack a sense of perspective, because one's own problems tend to loom larger than others, particularly in the past. Alternatively, and in a more Machiavellian way, the industry likes the idea of the end of easy oil because in emphasizes the challenges they face. It also appeals to environmentalists because it promises an end to this nasty black stuff. However, although convenient, the idea of easy oil or an end to it is incorrect.

The Big Necessity by Rose George

'Japan makes the most advanced, remarkable toilets in the world. Japanese toilets can, variously, check your blood pressure, play music, wash and dry your anus and "front parts" by means of an in-toilet nozzle that sprays water and warm air, suck smelly ions from the air, switch on a light for you as you stumble into the bathroom at night, put the seat lid down for you ( a function known as the "marriage-saver"), and flush away your excreta without requiring anything so old-fashioned as a tank. These devices are known as high-function toilets, but even the lowliest high-function toilet will have as standard an in-built bidet system, a heated seat and some form of nifty control panel... This is the Washlet experience (usually translated as Washeretto).

Ryosuke Hayashi is Chief Senior Engineer and Manager of the Restroom Product Development Department at TOTO, one on the most successful toilet manufacturing corporations in Japan. 'Rick' is an important man. Of the 1,500 patents that TOTO has filed in Japan ( and 600 internationally), the Restroom Department is responsible for half and he finds my interest in Washlet quaint. It's been around since 1980, after all, when TOTO revamped the Wash Air Seat and launched the Washlet G ( for 'gorgeous') series. He'd rather talk about the Neorest, Toto's top-of-the line toilet and, in his engineering eyes, an infinitely superior combination of plumbing and computing.. retailing in Japan for $1,700, and in the United States for $5,000.

I persist in asking about the genesis of the Washlet and how it changed Japan and Rick finally humors me.

The original Wash Air Seat operated mechanically. It took several minutes for the spray to spray and the water to heat. TOTO solved this problem by making the workings electronically operated, the spray instant and the angle perfect. The Washlet nozzle extends and retracts at exactly 43 degrees, a position precisely calibrated to prevent any cleansing water from falling back on the nozzle after doing its job (this is known as 'backwash'). Determining the angle was a long, careful process, says Rick. I ask him how the research was done. He says, "Well we have 20,000 employees" and stops. I wait for enlightenment.

His assistant Asuka hands me a comic book by way of an answer. It is a 48-page TOTO history published by Weekly Sankei magazine in 1985.

The nozzle has to be accurate, and to make it so they needed to know the average location of the human anus. Facts like this are not easy to find, so they turned to the only source material available, which was anybody on the company payroll. Their workmates weren't impressed. "Though we are colleagues", one said with politeness, " I don't want you to know my anus position."

The engineers prevailed by performing the dogeza, the exceedingly respectful bow that requires someone to be almost prostrate. It is the kind of bow, a translator tells me, "that a peasant would do to a passing samurai if he wanted the samurai not to kill him- an exceedingly shocking thing to do in the context of toilets. Yet it worked...

The Dynamite Club by John Merriman

At precisely 4 a.m., the silence on the square was broken by the sound of the interior gate opening beyond the prison door, followed by the roll of drums and the rifles of the soldiers snapping into position. Deibler led Emile, his chest largely uncovered, toward the guillotine. With his hands folded in front of his stomach, he was being pulled more rapidly than his shackled legs could move. In the first light of the new dawn he could see spectators perched on the roofs and a photographer pointing his camera in the direction of the apparatus. He saw the mounted calvary of the Republican Guard, and the gendarmes, with sabers drawn, in a semi-circle.

Someone said, "poor lad! You wouldn't think him more than fifteen years old". Another witness remembered how incredibly calm his face looked. Conversations stopped and hats came off, as if a religious service were about to begin. The chaplain was two steps behind Emile, with nothing to do. Emile looked quickly right and left, as if looking for someone he knew in the crowd.

He had been contemplating his final moments for three weeks and wanted to project a noble image. Twenty steps from the guillotine, his face became paler. After a few more steps, he stopped and shouted what everyone expected to hear: "Courage, comrades! Long live anarchy!"

As he reached the scaffold, he repeated, "Long live anarchy!" Deibler's aides then grabbed him, pushed him brutally against the plank so that he lay flat, and shoved his head through the little window, which resembled the porthole of a ship.

Twenty seconds later, the dull sound of the guillotine reaching the end of its rapid descent could be heard. Emile's head fell to the ground and was quickly tossed into the awaiting basket just as casually as one would throw a large wad of paper into a small bin. An almost inaudible gasp of horror rippled through the crowd; some people turned rapidly on their heels and moved rapidly away. Two assistants pushed the body into a waiting box and then carried it quickly to the executioner's wagon.

The politician and journalist Georges Clemenceau left place de la Roquette horrified by the "crude vengeance" of French society that he had just witnessed. Emile's terribly pale face disturbed him: he saw the young man as a tormented Christ, "trying to impose his intellectual pride upon his child's body..let those for the death penalty go, if they dare, to smell the blood of La Roquette. We'll talk about it after"

Paris, 1894

Harlot's Ghost by Norman Mailer

'One would with difficulty discover which is worse: a successful or a failed C.I.A. mission'.

But all the missions dealt with in this novel are stupendous failures and only Bobby Kennedy * and a couple of KGB higher-ups attract any sympathy.

The book is perhaps the Moby Dick of Mailer's generation in terms of structure and bedrock themes: the question of salvation, whether by faith, works or grace-although the latter is now more like sheer luck than the old notion of providence. The C.I.A. is like the whale, an anomaly of nature representing the abundance and freedom of the American scene, pursued by people cut off from their roots and afflicted by various obsessions which have their usual random, self-delusionary flavor.

Realism rules, probably at the expense of literary excellence though the fact that the whole novel is delivered in dialogue is no mean achievement. Some chapters, like 33 in the final part, reflect truly superior craftsmanship and artistry. It is an honest book for, about and by Americans. The author's neutrality is exceedingly mature.

" Whom? Whom does all this benefit?" ( Vladimir Lenin) are the final words.

*Bobby quotes Aeschylus, from Agamemnon: "He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God"

Lenigrad; State of Siege by Michael Jones

One theatre in Leningrad had stayed open that winter (1941)- the Musical Comedy Theatre. Georgi Maximov, the theatre's director, had noticed something interesting about siege psychology: 'In the first months of the war our attendances dropped sharply. But after 8 September, when the city was surrounded, they rose again, and continued to rise despite the shelling and bombing.'

'The theatre became an island of joy in a sea of grief', actress Evgenia Mezheritskaya said. 'The front of the building might look like a military base, for the square was filled with camouflaged lorries, armored cars and even light tanks. But inside, soldiers and civilians could, however briefly, forget about their worries.

Sometimes there were seven or eight air-raid alerts during a performance. The audience would be led to the bomb shelter under the nearby Philharmonic Hall while the actors went to their posts, still in their costumes, to watch out for incendiaries. From 20 November these actors, who toured the front during the day as well as giving performances every evening, only received the minimum bread ration of 125 grams. They grew weaker and weaker. 'Every day things were getting worse and worse', actor Nikolai Rudashevsky recalled, 'by December many of us were finding it hard even to walk to the theatre'.

Yuri Panteleyev remembered appearing before the marines of the Baltic fleet. 'We had almost finished the show when one of the sailors reported that the Nazis were about to shell the area. It was decided to continue nonetheless, so we speeded things up, the singing became very loud and the men in the hall were roaring with excitement. The spontaneous applause and cries of "Bravo!" drowned the noise of the bombardment. Threatened with death, the audience came totally alive. That evening we truly understood the power of performing to others'.

Tamara Salnikova recalled a performance of "The Three Musketeers" given on 7 December:

' It had been snowing all day. I was walking to the theatre but was finding it really difficult to keep going- it was bitterly cold, and I was already dizzy from starvation. As I crossed the Kirov Bridge artillery shelling started. I tried to take cover, along with several other women, and we rushed to the snow mounds on either side of the bridge, and flung ourselves face downward. But suddenly, one of the women cried out and then began to crawl, leaving a trail of blood behind her. The shelling was still going on, but I followed her, and tried to haul her away from the bridge. Fortunately, at the Field of Mars, a militia unit appeared and they carried her off to the hospital'

Exhausted by this Salnikova eventually managed to reach the theatre, bloody and bedraggled:

' I went to the dressing room. The temperature inside was well below zero. I changed into my costume, and as there was a little electricity running I tried to melt my frozen make-up container on a small lamp. Then the hairdresser got to work and I did my vocal exercises. Unfortunately, my character was supposed to appear for the first act in a low-cut blouse...!'

She made it through to the interval, which offered her something of a reprieve, for in the second act- mercifully- she had a warmer outfit. Suddenly, she heard agitated voices in the corridor outside:

'I looked out, to see that one of our best actors- Sasha Abramov- had collaped. He had been standing next to the hot-water tank, trying to warm himself up, and drinking a little tea. His cup lay shattered beside him. Sasha died during intermission. At that time, thousands were dying of starvation, but the loss of my colleague, still in his musketeer's costume, left me absolutely stunned. The stage director spoke to us, and tried to rally us. He told us that we needed to go on- for the audience's sake- but I felt lost in a fog of disbelief"

Someone helped Salnikova change and got her out onto the stage, but as the curtain lifted she stayed rooted on the spot, unable to utter a sound:

' I was supposed to sing and dance- but nothing happened. I couldn't find my voice and my feet simply refused to move. Then as I looked out at the full audience, waiting expectantly, I recalled the exhortation of our stage director" "It is the duty of us- artists- to continue". The power of his words awoke something in me, and somehow, my duet happened after all.'