A Journey to Darfur
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DVD Reviews of A Journey to Darfur
DVD Review: Short and Flawed
Summary: 2 Stars
The short film, "A Journey to Darfur," is far from the best documentary on the Darfur crisis. Its principle distinctions are that it features George Clooney and can be watched in less than half an hour. The film is intended as a quick introduction to the situation and, as such, is barely serviceable and should come with several important caveats.
One does not hear the voices of Darfuris front and center. Moreover, the analysis of why the crisis is occurring and what can be done is crude indeed. Instead of "A Journey to Darfur," I recommend Darfur Diaries: Message From Home, which showcases the voices of the refugees and displaced, and "All About Darfur," where we hear extensively from Sudanese in Khartoum and Darfur, as they discuss the politics and realities behind the conflict.
For expert geopolitical analysis, "A Journey to Darfur" enlists Princeton N. Lyman from the Council on Foreign Relations, the premiere foreign policy think tank of the American establishment. As expected, the man's views sound as elite-friendly as his name. What a spokesperson from a body with strong historical ties to Henry Kissinger has to contribute to a discussion of crimes of state is doubtful. No other experts or outside viewpoints are consulted. Clooney made the film with his father, Nick, and the two of them are the principle voices.
In a sense, A Journey to Darfur encapsulates in 24 minutes all that is wrong with the Darfur activist movement, with its naïve advocacy.
Nick poses the question, "Would Americans let this go on [atrocities in Darfur], if they knew what was happening?" In fact, huge numbers have mobilized around the issue. But the question leads to others.
Namely, what would Americans do if they knew that even more people were dying as a result of the foreign policy of their own government? The invasion and occupation of Iraq has led to the deaths of upwards of one million people (directly or indirectly), several times the number killed in Darfur. It is therefore shocking that a poll of the U.S. population found that the average estimate of the number of Iraqi deaths was only about 10,000.
Why then focus laser-like on Darfur, where Washington can only ameliorate the suffering (and isn't even expending much effort to do that), when so little is known about tragedies elsewhere in which we need only stop our government from participating in the crimes?
To his credit, George says at one point that U.S. policy on Sudan is failing. But the depth of that criticism does not extend very far. So for instance, Nick calls a rally organized in Washington D.C. "a success" because the Bush administration placed greater attention on pushing through the Darfur Peace Agreement, which was then signed only a few days later. Nick's narration implies that the only hitch in this successful agreement was that "Bashir, still, would not agree to let a United Nations peacekeeping force into Sudan." In fact, because the agreement was quickly rushed through at Washington's behest, it had very little support in Darfur and did not halt the violence. Indeed, the most apparent effect was to push the only rebel faction that signed the agreement into the arms of the government. As the only two parties to the agreement, they were united in opposition to the non-signatories. This faction that did sign was soon being called the "Janjaweed 2" by Darfuris now witnessing their atrocities.
Another segment of the film features Elie Wiesel testifying before the UN Security Council at the invitation of John Bolton. Wiesel tells the UN that if Khartoum does not grant consent, the peacekeepers should invade. In his words, "If they [Khartoum] give it, good, if not, go in anyway." The film does not countenance the possibility that an invasion, even with the best of intentions, would have disrupted the supply of aid. More to the point, Washington and other military powers are not at the beck and call of humanitarians. There is something very wrong with a political culture that does not laugh out of the room anyone who calls for an army knee deep in two brutal occupations to come to the rescue in a situation somewhere else. The film's failure to situate Darfur in global realities becomes all the more dramatic in this context.
George does, near the end of the movie, indicate awareness that all of the rhetoric coming out of Washington about not allowing atrocities to continue in fact rings quite hollow. But the viewer is left to wonder if the good people in Washington simply have no way of helping, or if there is some other, unspecified problem.
Conversely, when Nick asserts that "if the legendary know how and goodwill of the American people are unleashed, these brave Darfuris will go home to live their lives out in peace," he patronizes Americans and overstates what is possible, thereby setting budding activists up for disappointment.
There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the Clooneys' concern. However, their reliance upon figures like Lyman to understand the conflict seriously hampers their analysis. George can also be prone to dramatizing, as when he says of his April 2006 trip through the region, "there wasn't a minute that I didn't think we were going to get killed."
Throughout, the savagery in Darfur is referred to as "genocide." In fact, the legal applicability of this label is debatable, a fact not evident in the film. This however, is a minor quibble in a film with bigger flaws.
--Steve Fake, coauthor of The Scramble for Africa: Darfur-Intervention and the USA (Black Rose Books)
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