10 August 2004
Darfur--The Farmer and the Cowman
The Darfur crisis in Sudan should be understood as a classical rivalry between herder and subsistence agricultural cultures. This kind of conflict has bedeviled the histories of many societies around the world. One solution to it was forever immortalized by Rodgers and Hammerstein in their musical, Oklahoma. The theme underlying the play’s story line was summarized in the lyric, “Oh the farmer and the cowman should be friends.”
The Western press has characterized the tragic starvation and migration of the people of Darfur as a racial genocide. It is probably more accurate to describe the suppression of the farmers in Darfur in economic terms rather than racial ones. The Sudanese government has shown itself to be incompetent to maintain order in Darfur. For humanitarian reasons, this may justify international intervention. However, the prism of racial genocide doesn’t clarify the causes of the crisis.
It’s harder for governments in the U.N. and the Africa Union to accept maintaining civil order, rather than genocide, as a justification for intervention. The majority of countries in those organizations struggle with such situations every day, and they would risk inviting intervention when any of them fails. Associations of state governments, like the UN and the AU, are justified in eradicating human suffering through temporary police action; but only if they help the failed state, like Sudan, to educate its population to live peacefully with each other. The motto proposed in the Oklahoma song was the following:
“I don't say I'm no better than anybody else,
But I'll be damned if I ain't jist as good!”
International Organizations should help governments instill that conviction among competing cultures in a lawless region like Darfur.
The Darfur crisis in Sudan should be understood as a classical rivalry between herder and subsistence agricultural cultures. This kind of conflict has bedeviled the histories of many societies around the world. One solution to it was forever immortalized by Rodgers and Hammerstein in their musical, Oklahoma. The theme underlying the play’s story line was summarized in the lyric, “Oh the farmer and the cowman should be friends.”
The Western press has characterized the tragic starvation and migration of the people of Darfur as a racial genocide. It is probably more accurate to describe the suppression of the farmers in Darfur in economic terms rather than racial ones. The Sudanese government has shown itself to be incompetent to maintain order in Darfur. For humanitarian reasons, this may justify international intervention. However, the prism of racial genocide doesn’t clarify the causes of the crisis.
It’s harder for governments in the U.N. and the Africa Union to accept maintaining civil order, rather than genocide, as a justification for intervention. The majority of countries in those organizations struggle with such situations every day, and they would risk inviting intervention when any of them fails. Associations of state governments, like the UN and the AU, are justified in eradicating human suffering through temporary police action; but only if they help the failed state, like Sudan, to educate its population to live peacefully with each other. The motto proposed in the Oklahoma song was the following:
“I don't say I'm no better than anybody else,
But I'll be damned if I ain't jist as good!”
International Organizations should help governments instill that conviction among competing cultures in a lawless region like Darfur.
Comments:
Post a Comment
