Les Politiques: Humanitarian work should be saved from 'Save Darfur'

Humanitarian work tainted by political motives harms the cause it claims it defends. That has been the case of some organisations claiming to work to stop a genocide in Darfur. Numbers of those who were killed in Darfur were inflated by the 'Save Darfur' campaign, from 200000 to 400000. Not that the fact diminishes the crime but it definitely lays a discredit on the cause.

The recent imprisonment in Chad of French 'humanitarian workers' from 'L'arche de Zoé' under suspicions of child kidnapping is a perfect example of how ideological and political manipulation of the Darfur cause has subverted the humanitarian label, despite France's foreign affairs minister Bernard Kouchner, the champion of armed humanitarian intervention who has been outspoken on the 'Darfur genocide', breaking his silence and embarrassement to condemn Arche de Zoé's actions, and despite France's government denying its involvement, contrary to declarations form the imprisoned 'humanitarian workers'.

"In April, Zoe's Ark announced a campaign to evacuate 10,000 orphans from Darfur alongside other French charities including Sauver le Darfour (Save Darfur).

It said it wanted to place orphaned Darfuri children aged under five in foster care with French families, invoking its right to do so under international law.

But the charity has been accused of child trafficking in the case of the 103 children it attempted to fly out of Chad.
UN officials say many of the children are from Chad, not Sudan, and there is no evidence that they are orphans."

Today, on a French radio, RTL, Rony Braumann, founder of 'Médecins Sans Frontières', accused directly Bernard Kouchner and French zionist Bernard Henri Lévy of bearing direct responsibility in overdramatizing the Darfur crisis causing the ensuing diplomatic deadlock that is going to hinder real humanitarian work, but not political agitation.

Look for example at the political contorsions and extortions found in an article Bernard Henri-Lévy wrote on March, 13, 2007 in Le Monde under the title 'Choses vues au Darfour' (Things seen in Darfur, article archived now):

"I tell myself while listening to him (a chief from the rebels whom BHL met in Chad), that I saw very few Mosques in devastated Darfur. I saw very few veiled women. I think of the school in ruins I have seen in Deissa, where the girls classes were next to the boys'. And the idea comes to me that, after all, another aspect of this war - which is at the same time another reason for us to mobilize: radical Islam against moderate Islam; the Sudanese regime which, at the end of the 90s, gave asylum to Bin Laden, to intimidate Muslim populations who refuse Islamism; in the heart of Africa, in the darkness of what may become, if we do nothing, the first genocide of the XXIst century, there is another scene for the clash of civilisations, the only clash that really count, the one between the two Islams."

Zionists like BHL have seized the Darfur issue as the example of the struggle within Islam, as the example of the 'barbarity' of Arabs against dark skinned Africans, as a way of distracting attention from what is going on in Iraq and Palestine, while bigger tragedies can be found everywhere, some of them on the same continent as Darfur, in Congo. None of the main claims of 'Save Darfur' campaign are true. Both sides in the conflict have committed atrocities and both sides in the conflict are dark skinned, from the same religion and the same race. Yet, distortions are made in order to substantiate an offensive humanitarian intervention paving the way for a more firendly regime change in Sudan opening access to its oil reserves.

The zionist narrative for Darfur has joined the western colonialist narrative where in every military campaign the main claim is to protect and civilize.

"Now, as then, imperial interventions claim to have a dual purpose: on the one hand, to rescue minority victims of ongoing barbarities and, on the other, to quarantine majority perpetrators with the stated aim of civilising them."

Ken Silverstein's Facts and Darfur (Harper's Magazine).

Update November 1st: Children not orphans and not from Darfur says UN. They were living in communities and were lured from their village with sweets.

Darfur Groupies. Do-gooders gone bad.

Update November, 30, 2007: Ten reasons to suspect 'Save Darfur' is a PR scam.

Rony Brauman : "Une responsabilité morale très lourde pèse sur Bernard Kouchner"
LEMONDE.FR | 31.10.07