Inviting foreign journalists

The global media plays a key role in raising international awareness about conflicts in remote areas. Not surprisingly, the Darfur rebels have from early on engaged with foreign journalists and encouraged them to visit the areas under their control, the so-called ‘liberated areas’. According to one foreign correspondent covering Sudan (2011 int.), ‘The Darfur rebels recognised that they could use the international media as a weapon in their war. I found it relatively easy to contact the SLA to travel with them in Jebel Mara, likewise with JEM in North Darfur.’ These visits were often facilitated by diaspora members of the rebel groups in Western countries. On the ground, the journalists were picked up by middlemen, who brought the journalists to rebel-held areas from across the border in Chad or from one of Darfur's main towns. In the liberated areas, the journalists would live and travel with rebel contingents. The British filmmaker Philip Cox, who was one of the first foreign journalists to visit Darfur in early 2004, is a case in point. His visit was organised by a London-based activist and sympathiser of the SLM, who later also brought journalists from Al-Jazeera to Darfur (SLM member 2011 int.). The visit was very effective. Cox provided the first TV images of the Darfur conflict, which were broadcast around the world, and he also facilitated visits of other news teams. He later recalled: ‘Before I left Darfur I called up BBC and they were very excited. And eventually I sold the material to Channel 4 and to CNN, ARD, Scandinavian and Japanese TV. Everyone came in. This was in April, May 2004. And then a lot of people wanted my contacts to get in. For a while there were various news teams. I had no problem putting them in touch with my rebel contacts.’ (Philip Cox 2011 int.) Cox later produced an award-winning documentary about his time with the SLA, which was widely broadcast.

As Darfur hit the headlines in the summer of 2004, the rebels proceeded to organise visits of international NGOs, who would bring with them embedded journalists. This was the case of the Norwegian People's Aid (NPA), which has a long experience working in SPLA-controlled areas in South Sudan. According to an NPA representative (2007 int.),

Around the same time, John Prendergast and Samantha Power went to the liberated areas of Darfur. Their accounts received a lot of publicity and essentially relayed the narrative of the rebels. In an opinion editorial in the New York Times (15.7.2004), Prendergast recounted: ‘Bodies of young men were lined up in ditches, eerily preserved by the 130-degree desert heat. The story the rebels told us seemed plausible: the dead were civilians who had been marched up a hill and executed by the Arab-led government before its troops abandoned the area the previous month. The rebels assert that there were many other such scenes.’ An article by Power in the New Yorker (30.8.2004) included similarly gory scenes. Both Prendergast and Power became influential figures in the Darfur advocacy movement.

The closest to a perfect propaganda stunt for the rebels was a later visit by French writer and celebrity-activist Bernard-Henri Lévy. His journey to Darfur in March 2007 was sponsored by the Save Darfur Coalition and organised by Abdel Wahid al-Nur in Paris, where the SLA leader lived in exile from 2006 until 2011. On the ground, BHL, as he is known in France, was assisted by Abdel Wahid's men from the SLA, who brought him into Darfur from Chad (Tubiana Reference Tubiana2007). His account of the situation in Darfur was published in Le Monde (13.3.2007) and essentially made him a spokesperson of the rebels. Thus, BHL recommended that the international community arm the rebels in order to help them win the war in Darfur. His call had little echo in the international community, but he became one of the driving forces in the French advocacy movement and contributed to enhancing the French media coverage of the Darfur conflict (Weissman Reference Weissman and Lamloum2010). To sum up, despite some unsuccessful attempts to trigger international media attention in 2003, the insurgents facilitated several trips of international journalists and opinion leaders from 2004 onwards. This greatly helped to make Darfur known and relayed the rebels' narrative to the world. It also committed their visitors, many of them well-known writers with extensive connections and media pull, to the Darfur cause.

Activating diaspora networks

When the insurgency started, the Darfur diaspora played a major role. According to the Sudanese scholar Suliman Baldo (2011 int.), ‘The shock of the first reports about Darfur provoked a major reaction within the Darfur diaspora. In North America, Europe, the Middle East, they got organised to make known what was happening in Darfur and to help their communities back home. They mobilised a lot of support.’ The Darfur rebels managed to capture some of this support, which contributed to internationalising their cause. For example, members of the diaspora helped the insurgents on the ground acquire satellite phones. These phones were useful on the battlefield and they allowed the rebels to call journalists and human rights organisations, something they were unable to do at the outset of the conflict in 2002 (Flint & de Waal Reference Flint and de Waal2008: 292). Thus, members of the Darfur diaspora transferred funds to affiliates in Dubai – a place that did not fall under the Sudanese sanctions regime. The middlemen subsequently sent the 14-digit scratch card codes via SMS to the field, allowing the rebels to recharge their Thuraya satellite phones (SLM member 2011 int.). Beyond material support, the diaspora was instrumental for the rebels in establishing political connections in Western capitals. According to I.D.F. & Assal (Reference Black and Williams2010: 39–40), ‘These social networks and an understanding of how politics worked in these countries helped the rebels develop effective connections beyond Sudan's borders.’ Germany is a case in point. According to Haydar Ibrahim (2007 int.) of the Khartoum-based Sudanese Studies Centre,

All rebel movements relied on diaspora members. For example, JEM relied on Abdullahi Osman El-Tom, an anthropology professor in Ireland. He described his role as follows (2011 int.): ‘I want to connect JEM with the West. For this, I give lectures and I go to meetings. I do interviews. I talk in the radio. I represent JEM in the English-speaking world. I also attend negotiations. I was in Abuja and Doha.’ As interlocutors with Western governments, people like El-Tom are useful to raise awareness about Darfur and to alleviate fears raised by JEM's Islamist background. The diaspora connections were equally important for the SLM. Abel Wahid had spokespersons in different capitals. Particularly important was Ahmed Mohamedain Abdalla, a Darfuri based in Canada, who provided advice, drafted speeches, and liaised with foreign governments on Abdel Wahid's behalf. Two other figures stand out in the SLM's diaspora network: the doyen of Darfuri political opposition and Chairman of the Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance (SFDA), Ahmed Diraige, and Sharif Harir, former lecturer of anthropology in Norway and co-founder of the SFDA. Diraige was somewhat sceptical about the ‘young Turks’ in the Darfur rebel movement and, apart from a brief engagement as head of the National Redemption Front, stayed outside the rebellion (Diraige 2011 int.). However, he was a relentless advocate of the Darfur cause and acted as a mentor for many SLA rebels. Harir was formally integrated in the SLM and participated in peace negotiations as one of its representatives. In a nutshell, the diaspora acted as translators between the locally rooted rebels and the global reality of international politics. Activating the diaspora network thus served to increase the knowledge about the situation in Darfur in the international realm.

Connecting with the Darfur activists

As mentioned above, a civil society advocacy campaign emerged in the USA, the UK and France starting in 2004. This campaign was instrumental in raising the profile of Darfur in global public opinion and it undoubtedly helped the rebels internationalise their cause. The campaign provided the rebels with a ready-made platform, which functioned as an intermediary between the rebels and international audiences. The campaigns boosted the rebels' profile and gave them instant credibility on what Bob (Reference Bob2005) called the ‘market for transnational support’. For example, when Suleiman Jamous, at the time SLM's humanitarian coordinator, was held by the government, Mia Farrow's son Ronan wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal (21.6.2007) calling for Jamous's release and comparing him with Nelson Mandela. In turn, the rebel representatives provided the activists with information from the field, shaping a narrative that was conducive to internationalising Darfur. Thus, Abdel Wahid's advisor Abdul Mohamedain worked with Eric Reeves, one of the most prolific Sudan campaigners in the USA, as an editor of his 2005 book on Darfur, A Long Day's Dying. Crucial to establish the linkages between rebel movements and activists were members of the Sudanese diaspora working for advocacy groups in North America and Europe, such as Omer Ismail of the Enough Project, Niemat Ahmadi of SDC and Abdelbagi Jibril of the Darfur Relief and Documentation Centre. While they did not formally belong to the movements, and even occasionally criticised them, they shared the rebels' anti-government stance and helped to secure communication with the activist milieu.

However, despite these linkages, the USA-based advocacy movement, and SDC in particular, was keen to differentiate itself from the rebels, especially on the question of non-consensual military intervention, which it did not advocate for. This led to some frustrations among the rebels. According to an SDC representative (2011 int.), ‘We didn't coordinate with rebel groups, to the contrary. When we met them they were lecturing us why we weren't calling for bombing Sudan.’ It appears that some of the activists, on request of the UN–AU mediators, even tried to get Abdel Wahid to join the peace talks, albeit to no avail (SDC representative 2010 int.). The US activists' reluctance to be associated with the rebels was reflected during a rally in Paris organised by Urgence Darfour on 20 March 2007, a few weeks before the French presidential elections. Reportedly, an envoy from SDC had come to Paris especially for this meeting. He expressed his concern with the list of attendants and speakers, stressing that he did not wish to shake hands with Abdel Wahid, who was also present. The French activists visibly had less trouble with that. The rally was not intended as a support meeting for the Darfur rebels, but it nonetheless resembled that, as Abdel Wahid raised his fist as a symbol of victory every time someone mentioned the rebellion in Darfur. BHL was present at the meeting, along with the leadership of the French Darfur advocacy movement, and most candidates of the upcoming presidential elections. One of the speakers was Bernard Kouchner, a long-term advocate of humanitarian intervention, who was a few months later nominated as France's foreign minister by then President Nicolas Sarkozy. Kouchner's appointment was seen by many as an attempt by the new government to co-opt the Darfur activist movement (Glaser & Smith Reference Glaser and Smith2008: 62–4). Although there was no official support from the Ministry, it maintained close contacts with Abdel Wahid, and Kouchner continued to champion the cause of Darfur during his tenure as foreign minister. Abdel Wahid also took advantage of his association with BHL, who invited him to public events and opened a blog for him on his online platform ‘La règle du jeu’.Footnote ³ Thus, regardless of whether the activist movements kept their distance or engaged more directly with the Darfur rebels, the massive campaign around Darfur allowed them to project their cause in the world and created the impression that they had far-reaching international support.

Adapting the discourse

Another mechanism of projection for the Darfur rebels consisted in the alignment of their discourses with well-known categories in the west, such as genocide, federalism and humanitarian intervention. This was useful because it generated legitimacy for the rebellion and provided a framework for public opinion in Western countries to make sense of the events in far-away Darfur. Clapham (Reference Clapham and Clapham1998: 17) aptly captured this dynamic when he stressed the importance of language in the internationalisation of rebellion: ‘Politicians everywhere use different vocabularies to address different audiences, but the range required of insurgent leaders is particularly great, stretching from the mobilisation of indigenous spirituality, on the one hand, to the matching mobilisation of Western ideologies of development, democracy or human rights on the other.’

Abdel Wahid is particularly adept in calibrating his speeches. In an interview with one of the authors, not only did he consistently refer to the conflict in Darfur as genocide, but he also spoke of ‘concentration camps’ when talking about the internally displaced camps in Darfur and of the ‘final solution’ when referring to Khartoum's actions (Al-Nur 2007 int.). The reference to the Holocaust both served to render the urgency to ‘do something’ about Darfur and to denigrate the Sudanese governments and those advocating for engagement with it. Another example in this respect is al-Nur's opinion editorial in the Wall Street Journal (18.6.2008) entitled ‘Why We Won't Talk to Sudan's Islamo-Fascists’. In it, Abdel Wahid painted the Darfur rebellion as a bulwark against Islamist extremism: ‘We founded the SLM in 1992 in response to the violence perpetrated by the Arab-Islamist dictatorship of G. Omar al-Bashir. His National Islamic Front had seized power three years earlier in a military coup and immediately engaged in a brutal jihad against the African population in South Sudan, in the Blue Nile and Nuba Mountain region.’ Deploying the term ‘jihad’ here directly addressed the US public opinion, particularly wary of the consequences of Islamic extremism since 11 September 2001. At the same time, Abdel Wahid portrayed himself as a progressive leader: ‘we must forge new alliances, no longer based upon race or religion, but upon shared values of freedom and democracy. This is why we opened a representative office in Israel last February.’ Notably, the mention of the terms ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ echoed US regime change discourses, while the association with Israel sought to place the SLM in proximity of a traditional US ally. Abdel Wahid also fine-tuned his discourse for French public opinion, emphasising his role as the leader of the Darfuri resistance, as mentioned below.

JEM's discourse is more sophisticated in terms of generating international support for their cause. Khalil Ibrahim continuously emphasised the marginalisation of Darfur in the wider context of the imbalance between an all-powerful centre and neglected peripheries – a recurrent theme since the publication of the Black Book in 2000. This discourse resonated particularly in Sudan among those who have long been excluded from political power. While keeping with the essence of the centre-periphery argument, JEM slightly adapted its discourse when addressing international audiences. Indicative of this is the fact that the English translation of the Black Book differs in some respects from the Arabic original (Bolton Reference Bolton2010). Thus, the English version appeals to a more international audience, while the original was oriented to a Sudanese and Islamist audience.Footnote ⁴ Beyond the Black Book, JEM has articulated a federalist solution based on power sharing between different regions in Sudan, similar to the organisation of the state in the USA or Germany. El-Tom (2011 int.) articulated this vision as follows: ‘Our aim is to restructure Sudan and create a system whereby all Sudanese would have equal opportunities, responsibilities and status irrespective of their religion, creed, region, language and so forth. We want a democratic system whereby people would elect all their leaders from the council to the president. And we want a confederal system whereby each region has autonomous powers.’ This is echoed by an interview that Khalil Ibrahim gave in 2009: ‘The entire “periphery” of the country wants liberation from the “centre”. The only way out is for Sudan to become a federation, which would consist of (six) autonomous regions. This can be accomplished by preserving the religious diversity and working on the basis of consensus politics' (quoted in Loeb et al. Reference Loeb2010: 46). Thus, the discourse on federalism resonates with Western political elites familiar with this kind of state structure, while the marginalisation of the periphery by the centre is a common theme for the political left, which has used this model to make sense of the domination of capitalist societies in the centre over developing countries in the periphery.

Grandstanding rhetoric and intransigence

The internationalisation of Darfur has encouraged grandstanding rhetoric and fostered a lack of willingness to compromise among rebel groups. For example, Abdel Wahid al-Nur labelled the Sudanese government ‘Islamo-fascist’ and ‘génocidaire’ and called for regime change on a conservative pro-Israeli online broadcasting platform.Footnote ⁵ Khalil Ibrahim disparaged Omar al-Bashir as a criminal and demanded that he be arrested and tried at the ICC (quoted in Loeb et al. Reference Loeb2010). That conflict parties denounce each other with harsh rhetoric is not unusual per se, and it is certainly understandable in Darfur, given the scale of the crimes committed by Khartoum. However, in other conflicts, parties are eventually obliged to moderate their stance and seek a compromise with their enemy; otherwise they risk being eclipsed. The internationalisation of the Darfur conflict, and its framing as genocide, has engendered a different dynamic. The Darfur rebels were much more likely to get the attention of the media, activist groups and policymakers, which are crucial in an asymmetric context like Darfur, if they perpetuated the dominant narrative of the conflict. The international environment thus provided an incentive for grandstanding rhetoric, rewarding those who bought into it and penalising those who did not. For some rebel leaders, in particular Abdel Wahid, intransigence has thus become a rational strategy. Instead of political engagement, these leaders prefer to adopt a wait-and-see attitude, hoping that international help will be forthcoming in the future.

A statement about the ICC indictment of al-Bashir by a young student affiliated with one of the rebel groups (2009 int.) is telling: ‘It is good that the international community has accused the president, now they have to come and arrest him.’ Another example is Abdel Wahid's stance towards peace talks. In Abuja, he demanded ‘a guarantee for implementation like in Bosnia’ (quoted in De Waal Reference De Waal2006). According to Alex de Waal (Reference De Waal2006), who served as an advisor to the AU mediation team in Abuja, the fact that the desired NATO intervention was not forthcoming was one of the reasons why Abdel Wahid refused to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement. This position related to the debate about Darfur on the international level: activists were demanding the deployment of a robust peacekeeping mission, which they thought was more important than peace talks. At a big Darfur rally in Washington, which took place in April 2006 during the final stages of the Abuja talks, some activists booed a US government representative speaking about peace negotiations. After the DPA, the International Crisis Group (2006), which at the time had a close relationship with the Darfur activists, criticised the Abuja agreement for not making security guarantees in the form of a robust peacekeeping force a priority.Footnote ⁶

After Abuja, al-Nur maintained his stance, refusing to participate in peace talks altogether. This even led his friend Bernard Kouchner to call him ‘stubborn’ (Libération, 24.3.2010). In response, al-Nur (Reference Al-Nur2010) justified his position, invoking General De Gaulle for this purpose:

Before negotiating with the Sudanese government, al-Nur demands that security be guaranteed by an international force that is different from the current peacekeeping mission: ‘These troops are there to maintain the peace. Shouldn't there then be first a peace to maintain. The Sudanese government is still at war against us. We don't need maintainers of peace, we need makers of peace.’ These claims only make sense against the background of the internationalisation of the Darfur conflict. Instead of taking responsibility and negotiating a peace settlement that requires painful compromises, Abdel Wahid preferred to opt out, hoping that the international context will change in his favour.

Another consequence of grandstanding rhetoric seems to be that it crowded out more constructive discussions about how the conflict in Darfur can be resolved and how governance could be organised to prevent future conflicts. For example, it is not surprising that the two most constructive proposals for a long-term solution of the Darfur conflict – the Heidelberg Darfur Dialogue Outcome Document and the Doha DeclarationFootnote ⁷ – were elaborated by representatives of civil society and not by rebel groups. One of the reasons for this may be that these proposals run counter to the dominant narrative of Darfur in the international community, whose support the rebels seek. For example, comparing Darfur with the Holocaust implies that violence in the conflict is not the result of a complicated social process, but simply of the projection of evil. The remedy, therefore, is not to negotiate a political settlement involving all parties to the conflict, but to stage an intervention stopping the ongoing genocide and punishing those responsible.

Fragmentation and lack of local engagement

Darfur's status as a global cause célèbre made it an object of prestige in international diplomacy. As a result, all kinds of international actors – the UN, the AU, the Arab League, the US, European states, Sudan's neighbouring countries, a host of international NGOs – professed their willingness to contribute to the resolution of the Darfur conflict. The competition among Arab states was particularly intense. When Qatar became the official venue for the negotiations, both Egypt and Libya launched parallel processes (Flint Reference Flint2010: 37–9). Such activism led to a proliferation of often uncoordinated talks, consultations, and workshops, allowing the rebels to ‘shop around’ for the most promising forum. Peacemaking thus became a lucrative livelihood strategy, as the rebels travelled around the world, lived off generous per diems, and stayed in luxurious hotels. Tellingly, this earned them the nickname ‘hotel rebels’.

The courting of the Darfur insurgents by international actors had two problematic consequences. One is that it lowered the barriers of entry for new rebel groups and thus encouraged endless fragmentation and factionalisation. The establishment of a new group, and therefore the prospect of receiving international recognition and material benefits, was no longer linked to a leader's grassroots support or fighting power. Instead it depended on his international connections. Not surprisingly therefore, since the Abuja agreement in 2006, the Darfur insurgents have excessively fragmented (Tanner & Tubiana Reference Tubiana2007).Footnote ⁸ This created serious obstacles to peace, as it proved impossible to have serious negotiations with a multitude of actors whose alliances are constantly shifting. Also, the fragmentation made it easy for the Sudanese government to neutralise the rebel movements by applying the same divide-and-rule tactics that it had used during the war against the SPLM. An international journalist (2011 int.), who has travelled to Darfur with the rebels multiple times, describes these effects as follows:

A second and related consequence is that the international engagement drew the Darfur insurgents away from foot soldiers and the civilian population at the local level. Thus, Abdel Wahid has been absent from the field in Darfur since 2006, while Khalil Ibrahim spent extended periods in Chad and Libya. This contributed to a rift between the movement leaders and their field commanders, with the result that some of them switched over to different factions (Flint Reference Flint2010). Moreover, it meant that the rebel leaders were less capable to organise the resistance at the grassroots. Indeed, contrary to the SPLM in South Sudan, the Darfur rebels did not establish a ‘guerrilla government’ in the form of a civilian administration consolidating the areas under their control (Rolandsen Reference Rolandsen2005). This reflects the rebels' military strength, but other factors may play a role as well. Traditionally, rebel movements, and first and foremost the SPLM, achieved internationalisation through ‘practical humanitarianism’.Footnote ⁹ This means that they established control over certain territories and then invited international NGOs, journalists and diplomats to these areas. The Darfur rebels did not have to do this, as Darfur was already widely known. Insofar as they have a strategic interest in internationalisation, it made it less crucial to establish territorial control and may thus have contributed to lessening the rebels' engagement at the local level. Another consideration is that no rebel leader has acquired the legitimacy of uniting all Darfurians, as John Garang managed to do in South Sudan. There are also signs that the established groups are increasingly being challenged, in particular among young people in displaced camps (Reuters News, 29.7.2010), even if the rebel leaders still enjoy popular support, especially within their respective tribal groups (Loeb et al. Reference Loeb2010: 33–4).

Deterrence of mass violence

The previous two propositions pertain to problematic and mostly unintended consequences of the internationalisation of the Darfur conflict. The following point is qualitatively different in that it outlines a positive outcome related to the reduction of mass violence. Thus, when armed conflict escalated in Darfur in 2003, it went largely unnoticed. The situation today is fundamentally different, as thousands of international humanitarian workers and peacekeepers are present on the ground as a result of the internationalisation that the Darfur conflict has undergone since 2004. While it is impossible to ascertain how exactly this affected the belligerents' behaviour on the battlefield, it seems plausible that the international attention has contributed to deterring extreme violence in Darfur. Abuses against civilians remain commonplace, but the government has not reverted to the mass violence it instigated in 2003–04. Some observers have argued that this is because the government has achieved its objective of crushing the insurgents. However, armed groups continue to roam Darfur, and displaced camps have become a hotbed for subversive activities against the government. Therefore, one reason for the difference may be that with the international spotlight shining on Darfur, using mass atrocities as a counter-insurgency measure has become more costly. Also, the Sri Lankan scenario, where the government moves to completely eradicate the rebels, is difficult to conceive, given the international outcry that such action would provoke.

A similar deterrence effect may affect the insurgents. The UN Commission of Inquiry (United Nations 2005) as well as human rights organisations (e.g. Human Rights Watch 2004: 32–9) confirmed that rebel groups committed human rights violations and war crimes. However, contra the propaganda of Khartoum lobbyist David Hoile (Reference Hoile2005), these abuses are in no way commensurate to those of government-affiliated groups. There is also no indication that the Darfur rebels have systematically used mass violence against civilians as part of their war-making effort.Footnote ¹⁰ Indeed, the SPLA seems to have used much more brutal methods in its war against Khartoum (e.g. Human Rights Watch 1994: chapter IV). Although substantiation is impossible, it is plausible to argue that the internationalisation of the Darfur conflict has played a role in discouraging them from using mass violence. Compared with the SPLA, the Darfur rebels have been much more exposed to the international media spotlight. While this is generally an asset for them, it also provided grounds for criticism, which puts their international reputation in jeopardy (Gabrielsen Jumbert Reference Gabrielsen Jumbert2010: 192). For example, criticism was forthcoming when rebel fighters killed ten AU peacekeepers in Haskanita, South Darfur (e.g. New York Times 1.10.2007). Not surprisingly, the fighters responsible for the attack later voluntarily surrendered to the ICC (BBC News 16.6.2010). Another example is the establishment of courts martial by JEM's leadership to judge fighters accused of having misbehaved on the battlefield (JEM member 2011 int.). Moreover, after being accused of using child soldiers, JEM signed an agreement with UNICEF in July 2010 barring the recruitment of fighters under the age of 18. Likewise, in April 2012, JEM signed a deed of commitment banning the use of anti-personnel mines with the NGO Geneva Call. The point here is not that these measures were perfectly implemented, or that the rebels did not commit some abuses. However, they are indicative of the importance the rebels attribute to good international standing. In this context, atrocities against civilians are less likely because they carry significant reputational costs.