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Devil’s Advocate: When to STAND and when to sit

March 12, 2010

by Garik Lawson Asplund

Students Against Genocide (STAND) has been making a fuss about the investing policies of the College by fervently interrupting students eating dinner or going to class and asking them to sign a petition. It is their hope that LC will divest from companies who are unjust, and, more specifically, support genocide.

Regrettably, their logic is severely flawed. Let’s review the argument: LC invests its money in hopes of making returns to fund the school’s operations. These mutual funds invest in big oil companies. PetroChina is an oil company. PetroChina does business in Sudan. The Sudanese government collects fees from PetroChina as a part of doing business. Some government funds are used to buy weapons, and some members of the Janjaweed kill people from opposing groups in Darfur with those weapons. Therefore, LC is supporting these killings and should divest from PetroChina.  

Yet, the way that this is presented to students, administrators, and the public is, “PetroChina and other big oil companies are supporting the genocide in Sudan.” Nevermind the fact that PetroChina has no business in Sudan—its parent company China National Petroleum Corporation has that distinction—or that any money spent in Sudan is not directly “supporting” genocide. In addition, very few people or countries actually recognize the current Darfur conflict as genocide.

Almost everyone knows that there is genocide in Darfur, yet few know where exactly Darfur is in Sudan, and fewer still understand the root causes of the conflict. Darfur was independent until an Egyptian businessman, mostly concerned with ivory, forcibly took control of the country after a power struggle for sultan in the mid 1870s. Under colonial rule, present-day Darfur was first subjected to domination from Egyptian Arabs and Englishmen. Later, after Britain established Sudan, things changed, but in name only; bloody resistance fighting and rebellions continued. In 1899 Darfur was again allowed to be a sultanate, but was quickly reabsorbed 17 years later lest it take sides with the Ottoman Empire in WWI.  

The most recent conflict—skipping over a civil war in the south during the 1980s and ongoing tensions with Eritrea to the east— has arisen because of tensions between the nomadic Baggara, Arab cattle herders, and the Fur-settled agriculturalists. Essentially, water, land, and other important resources are being fought over because of changes in the Sahel, the ecoborder that separates the northern Sahara desert from the southern Sudanese savannas.

Furthermore, in the Black Book, a 2000 book akin to Paine’s Common Sense, the transgressions of the northern Arabs are listed in detail. The book spread like wildfire, and a second book came out two years later. Rebel groups under this persuasion then took up arms to rebel against the government in 2003. Notice how it is the rebels who instigated fighting, and not the government that swept in to eradicate them.  Since the fighting is more along the lines of dissatisfaction with government domination and qualms over property rights, it is inappropriate to label the killings as genocide or ethnocide.

Another blow to the genocide argument is that the statistics on the death-count are severely misleading. Different sources estimate the death-toll to be as low as 50,000, while others claim that over 400,000 have died. The vast majority of all of these deaths comes from starvation and disease, not at the hand of another human. Yet, when the press reports these numbers, they fail to mention this, and instead give the impression that all 400,000 have been slaughtered maliciously. Of course, the humanitarian’s response to this will be that there needs to be more food, medicine, and overall goodness showered upon the people. This is said without investigating how past humanitarian efforts have encouraged killing, increased starvation, and showered money to Westerners.

Isabel Patterson once wrote, “The humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.” Harsh words. The problem with aid programs is that they distort, and later destroy, any markets for food that were there in the first place. Farmers are undercut by free food shipments that the West pays for (UN budget for Sudan refugee camps in 2010? $175 million), meaning their livelihoods disappear. Wednesday’s New York Times cover story reported that over half of food aid for Somalia is stolen or misused. This is not a breaking story—in fact, this has been the norm for over 30 years. And for those who were nomads, the very idea of sanitation is as alien as those who bring them free food. Since there were vast expanses in which to do their business, the cramped quarters of refugee life are quickly degraded to utopias for disease and death. Any semblance of civilization is thus ruined.

Will STAND make the logical extension of their beliefs and protest paying taxes to the US government because of its involvement in the Iraqi genocide? Or better yet, will it decide to simply refuse to pay taxes in line with their touted super-morality? Probably not. Yet the transgressions of US foreign policy—Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo, Somalia, Panama, Iran-Iraq, Vietnam… —are far worse than any contributions from PetroChina or other “immoral” companies. Tracking the money you pay in taxes is much easier than running through the murky investments of the College, anyhow. Four cents of every dollar you spend will end up going towards the US’s current war efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Following STAND’s logic, we may as well stop using money altogether so that we can save the lives of Iraqi and Sudanese citizens.

Stopping genocide or other armed conflicts by attempting to cut off the money spigot either in divestment of sanctions is not productive. The killing will continue with or without oil money, no matter how smug we may feel that none of our money is funding murder. The true problems that are being fought over—property rights to land, racial discrimination, oppression—do not go away when we in America decide to place our funds elsewhere, and often the murders become more inhuman (Cambodia, anyone?). Depressing as it sounds, the citizens of Sudan, Chad, and the Central African Republic will have to sort their shit out on their own.

“Help” from outsiders will interfere with claims of sovereignty or independence, drastically distort a myriad of incentives, and only make things worse.