Jonathan Steele: Darfur was not genocide. posted by Richard Seymour

Jonathan Steele in The Guardian this morning will probably have set a few liberal imperialist teeth gnashing with this:

In fact, the UN secretary general's latest report to the security council points out that the influx of 12,500 aid workers has "averted a humanitarian catastrophe, with no major outbreaks of disease or famine". Patrols by the hundreds of AU monitors have reduced violence and other human-rights violations.

The report attacks the government for not disarming the Janjaweed or holding enough people accountable for last year's atrocities, but it blames the rebels for most of this year's abductions of civilians and attacks on aid convoys.

He criticises the coverage and commentary about the violence in Darfur for indulging "another Arab-bashing crusade" - correctly, it seems to me.

Of course, Steele isn't saying anything new. Over a year ago, when the Bomb Sudan cries were at their shrillest, I reported that Mercedes Taty of Medicins Sans Frontieres was disputing the 'genocide' interpretation of the violence in Darfur. She said:

I don’t think that we should be using the word "genocide" to describe this conflict. Not at all. This can be a semantic discussion, but nevertheless, there is no systematic target — targeting one ethnic group or another one.

It doesn’t mean either that the situation in Sudan isn’t extremely serious by itself. But, I think it’s important not to mix things and not to standardize our words. So, I would say no, I can not speak about genocide.

But if the situation was not genocidal, it was a hugely needful one:

In fact,I can only [call] it a huge, huge emergency. In the sense of the population figures, when I speak about figures, I am talking about people, persons, population — they are huge, huge numbers.

We are talking about displaced people living in miserable conditions, displaced from their homes, just regrouped in the middle of nowhere and absolutely dependent on any assistance that can be provided to them.

They’ve left their villages of origin, due to violence and burning of these villages. So now they are gathering at some crossroad points and they are absolutely dependent on any assistance that can be provided.

So, if no drinkable water, no drug supply and healthcare, no food is provided, these people have very little chance of surviving.

Just to give an example, but in other situations, when we speak about 5,000 people, we estimate that is already an emergency. Right now I am talking about almost 300,000 people that have been seen by Doctors Without Borders teams.

Daniel Brett also took apart some of the crusaders' mythologies about Sudan well over a year ago.

You can read the UN's latest Monthly Report on Darfur here and the Report of the Secretary-General on Sudan here.