The Education of an Idealist

The young man who showed us the wells then took us on a short drive outside Furawiyah to the base of a slope. We climbed out of our Land Cruiser and started to ascend on foot. The stench of decomposing flesh hit us before the rotting bodies, in gullies on either side of the hill, finally came into view.

Fourteen men, in bloodied traditional white djellabas or in shirts and slacks, were lying dead in the sand. I counted seventeen bullet casings scattered around them. It looked as though the men had been divided into two groups and lined up in front of the ditches. They had all been shot from behind, except for one man. His body lay not in a ditch, but in the center of the slope. One of his palms was outstretched, as if he had been pleading for mercy.

WHEN JOHN AND I RETURNED to the United States, we publicized what we had learned as widely as possible. He wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, and several weeks later, I contributed a long article to The New Yorker called “Dying in Darfur,” which opened with Amina’s story. Together, we also did a TV segment that aired on 60 Minutes. We each had full-time jobs—I was still teaching at the Kennedy School, and John was writing reports for the International Crisis Group on a broad range of African conflicts. But we joined others in trying to pressure the Bush administration to take meaningful action to do more for the people of Darfur.

Thanks in part to John’s relentless activism, which brought him to college campuses, churches, and synagogues around the country, an unusual coalition of students and religious groups began to coalesce. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum strived to be a “living memorial” that would use the history of the Holocaust to educate—and motivate—future generations. The museum had already hosted me, John, Nick Kristof, and other speakers to talk about Darfur. In July, it officially issued a “genocide emergency” warning on Darfur, the first time it had ever made this designation. The same month, the museum and the American Jewish World Service teamed up to establish a broad network of faith-based, advocacy, and human rights organizations, which eventually included 190 groups and operated under the banner of “Save Darfur.”

John and I donated the children’s schoolbooks and backpack, the toothbrushes, and the crumpled prayer to the Holocaust museum. We were not sure the people who owned these items were still alive, and, if they were, we assumed they would not be returning to their razed homes anytime soon. The museum staff turned our photos and artifacts into a gripping exhibit, which generated additional public interest.

Evangelical Christians had a history of protesting mass atrocities in southern Sudan (which was home to a substantial Christian population), and now they began raising money for Muslim survivors in Darfur. In August of 2004, thirty-five evangelical leaders, representing fifty-one denominations and 45,000 churches, called for “swift action” from President Bush to “prevent further slaughter and death.” When I reached out to a prominent evangelical leader to better understand what was driving the community, I received a refreshingly straightforward response. “Killing is wrong, whether you’re killing a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim,” he said. “God made the people there in Darfur. For us to ignore them would be a sin.”

Private citizens and students across the country threw themselves into the Darfur campaign. A piano teacher in Salt Lake City donated two weeks’ of her earnings. The pastor of a Methodist church in Ohio asked congregants to spend half as much on Christmas presents as they usually did, and to contribute the rest—raising $327,000 for relief efforts. At Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, a group of students heard reports that a tiny African Union monitoring mission in Darfur didn’t have the budget to afford flak jackets. They raised $300,000 to help equip the beleaguered African Union personnel. Other college students formed an organization called Students Take Action Now for Darfur (STAND), which, within three years, had established chapters at six hundred universities and high schools across the United States.

Back in 2001, I had written an Atlantic article describing the Clinton administration’s inaction during the Rwandan genocide. I later heard from a US official that President Bush had scribbled “Not on my watch” on a memo summarizing the article. Having always hoped to reach senior policymakers with my writing, I was moved by this, even as I wondered what it would mean practically. Inspired by the Livestrong anti-cancer bracelets, a group of activists created green wristbands inscribed with “Not On Our Watch,” which John and I joined thousands of people in wearing in an effort to raise awareness about Darfur. The year 2004 also happened to be the ten-year anniversary of the Rwandan slaughter, and, when the film Hotel Rwanda hit theaters, powerfully telling the story of Paul Rusesabagina, the hotelier who sheltered thousands during the genocide, many viewers looked to apply the lessons of Rwanda to the crisis under way in Darfur.

In September of 2004, as this pressure was building and the killings in Darfur continued, Secretary of State Colin Powell testified before the Senate that the Sudanese government’s actions amounted to “genocide.”[6] (#litres_trial_promo) This was the first time that the US government had issued such a finding. Far from satisfying the activists, however, Powell’s genocide declaration inspired them to push even harder.

The Bush administration responded, appointing a special envoy and imposing new sanctions on the Sudanese government. It also greatly increased aid to displaced Darfuris and support for the peacekeeping forces deployed by the African Union and the United Nations. Unfortunately, because the war in Iraq was going so poorly, the administration had lost substantial influence abroad, which weakened its ability to mobilize a united, global coalition to pressure Khartoum to end its atrocities.[7] (#litres_trial_promo)

Darfur exposed the limits of what one country could do—even one as powerful as the United States. The perpetrators of genocide knew they could still rely on powerful players in the international community, like China, to defend them. Nevertheless, the outpouring of attention forced the Sudanese government to allow food aid and foreign peacekeepers into their country. The movement also kept Darfuris fed and sheltered with the donated funds. This unique network of students, faith groups, and others, in which I had only a small role, helped save lives.

WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH WAS REELECTED in November of 2004, I was despondent. The result seemed to affirm Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, his introduction of torture, and his use of the Guantánamo Bay prison for indefinite detention of prisoners of war, among other deeply problematic, harmful policies. A few days after the election, I had coffee with Peter Galbraith, whom I had profiled in my book. He urged me not to wallow, but to do something constructive.