Chris Blattman

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Genocide: debauching the currency?

Rony Brauman, former President of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders to the American cousins) despairs over the overuse and misuse of the genocide label:

Apart from the judicial inflation to which it gives rise, the major problem with this perception of armed conflicts as “genocides” (the former Yugoslavia, Sudan, and undoubtedly more to come) is that it removes them from history and politics, in order to subject them instead to a purely moral judgment.

To qualify a war as genocidal is to leave the terrain of politics, of its relations of force, of its compromises and contingencies, in order to situate oneself in some metaphysical beyond in which the only conflict is between Good and Evil: fanatics versus moderates, blood-thirsty hordes versus innocent civilians.

That massacres have been perpetrated by the Sudanese regime within the context of counterinsurgency operations, that a strategy of terror has been employed by the army and militias — these are proven facts. That there has been an intention on the part of the regime to exterminate the peoples of Darfur — this, however, is mere speculation.

If it was the case, how is to one understand the fact that two million Darfuris have sought refuge around the principal army garrisons of their province? How is one to understand the fact that one million of them live in Khartoum, where they have never been bothered during the entire course of the war? How is one to understand the fact that an enormous humanitarian apparatus has been put in place that has permitted thousands of lives to be saved?

Can one seriously imagine Tutsis seeking refuge in areas controlled by the Rwandan army in 1994 or Jews seeking refuge with the Wehrmacht in 1943?

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3 Responses

  1. Mr. Brauman seems to display a stereotypical French je ne sais quoi with words… “Beyond policts and history!” That’s just meaningless. Why does labeling something “gencide” take it anyplace beyond? Academic articles will still be written (Journal of Genocide Research, anyone?). So that part of the claim (Brauman’s) is silly. Brauman daydreams about a word that can make people stop thinking. Ach!

    The second part is more insidious, and the argumentation contradicts the first part, for Brauman engages in politics and history, exactly as he earlier supposed one couldn;t once someone (anyone?) had labeled a situation a genocide. So his historical and political argument is that it can’t be a genocide because they seek refuge and are not destroyed. He thinks this is a slam dunk, when anything more than one minute of thought makes you realize that it is perfectly possible for life in an encampment to be preferable to immediate death. Hah, isn’t that precisely what happened to the Jews in Germany and outlying countries!? Didn’t many see themselves as reluctantly agreeing to “protection” by the force bent on exterminating them. So the paradox just tells us that genocide is a complex historical and political event, despite Brauman’s apparent claim that it is not.

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