Watch the War Child trailer, the story of Emmanuel Jal, a Child Soldier turned Hip Hop Artist

Much attention at the 58th Berlin Festival has been on 'War Child', a documentary by first-time director Christian Karim Chrobog. It relates the stunning story of singer Emmanuel Jal who, in the space of a decade, made a remarkable transition from child soldier in Sudan to international hip-hop musician.

Jal, now 28, was seven when his mother was killed. Soldiers raped his sister, and he was hauled off for military training by Sudanese Liberation Army forces in the late 1980s, and given an AK47 taller than himself.

Trapped in the midst of a civil war, he survived front-line action before escaping after five "lost" years with 300 other boys. They endured a three-month trek before reaching safety.
[...]
Today, Jal is famous throughout Africa as a rapper, and for his work with the UN, Amnesty International and Oxfam in campaigning against employment of child soldiers and the illegal trade of arms. His first song Gua, which means "power" in Arabic, streaked to the top of the charts in Kenya. <IPS>

Here's the War Child Trailer:

Jal is fantastically talented. If you're a fan of hip-hop or African music, definitely listen to some of his tracks, try on his YouTube channel (I love this). A couple of songs are also streaming at Warchildmovie.com. Warning: the music starts automatically (and loudly).

Darfur and Iraq: The Politics of Naming

The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency by Mahmood Mamdani

The similarities between Iraq and Darfur are remarkable. The estimate of the number of civilians killed over the past three years is roughly similar. The killers are mostly paramilitaries, closely linked to the official military, which is said to be their main source of arms. The victims too are by and large identified as members of groups, rather than targeted as individuals. But the violence in the two places is named differently. In Iraq, it is said to be a cycle of insurgency and counter-insurgency; in Darfur, it is called genocide. Why the difference? Who does the naming? Who is being named? What difference does it make?

Hmm... could it be that the West names conflicts differently depending on who is the perpetrator? If we are the perpetrators, it is definitely Insurgency/Counterinsurgency not genocide. What about the participation of Arabs? Caveman voice: "Ug. Us Good. Them Bad."

As compared to the near blackout about Iraqi suffering in the American media:

Newspaper writing on Darfur has sketched a pornography of violence. It seems fascinated by and fixated on the gory details, describing the worst of the atrocities in gruesome detail and chronicling the rise in the number of them. The implication is that the motivation of the perpetrators lies in biology ('race') and, if not that, certainly in 'culture'. This voyeuristic approach accompanies a moralistic discourse whose effect is both to obscure the politics of the violence and position the reader as a virtuous, not just a concerned observer.

The scariest thing is the call for military intervention in Darfur.

What would happen if we thought of Darfur as we do of Iraq, as a place with a history and politics - a messy politics of insurgency and counter-insurgency? Why should an intervention in Darfur not turn out to be a trigger that escalates rather than reduces the level of violence as intervention in Iraq has done? Why might it not create the actual possibility of genocide, not just rhetorically but in reality? Morally, there is no doubt about the horrific nature of the violence against civilians in Darfur. The ambiguity lies in the politics of the violence, whose sources include both a state-connected counter-insurgency and an organised insurgency, very much like the violence in Iraq.

It is as if military intervention would somehow purge American guilt over not intervening in Rwanda. But:

What the humanitarian intervention lobby fails to see is that the US did intervene in Rwanda, through a proxy... Instead of using its resources and influence to bring about a political solution to the civil war, and then strengthen it, the US signalled to one of the parties that it could pursue victory with impunity. This unilateralism was part of what led to the disaster, and that is the real lesson of Rwanda.

Terrible crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide arise and are worsened in the context of war. War is the problem, or at least the catalyst. It is not the answer. "Strengthening those on both sides who stand for a political settlement to the civil war is the only realistic approach. Solidarity, not intervention, is what will bring peace to Darfur."

Read the Article or listen to an interview with Mahmood Mamdani

Also see Iraq is a Humanitarian Disaster, Too

Iraq is a Humanitarian Disaster, too

Photo: Wathiq Khuzale/Getty, from IraqSlogger. An Iraqi man looks at blood-stained shoes of the victims of a car bomb explosion on March 10, 2007 near Sadr city Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, Iraq.
Iraq:

• ...is the worst refugee crisis in the world, nearly one in five Iraqis is dead or displaced
  
• ...is a destroyed economy. 50-70% unemployment. Shortages of all basic necessities affect everyone: food, water, fuel, electricity
  
• ...has increasing levels of violence. October 2006 had at least 6000 civilian casualties (double Oct 2005). The number of daily attacks on US troops has also doubled in the same time frame.
  
• ...is blamed for its own problems
  

Happy 4th Birthday, Iraq Occupation.

...it's worth thinking about what all those horrific figures will look like next March, on the fifth anniversary of the invasion, and the March after, on the sixth, and the March after that…

From Electronic Iraq and TomDispatch, Billboarding the Iraqi Disaster.

Anthony Arnove looks at the numbing numbers four years into the war and puts them next to the better known - and equally numbing - numbers in Darfur, comparing the response in US progressive circles to both tragedies.

Why is it that we are counting and thinking about the Sudanese dead as part of a high-profile, celebrity-driven campaign to 'Save Darfur,' yet Iraqi deaths still go effectively uncounted, and rarely seem to provoke moral outrage, let alone public campaigns to end the killing? And why are the numbers of killed in Darfur cited without any question, while the numbers of Iraqi dead, unless pitifully low-ball figures, are instantly challenged -- or dismissed?

Looking at what the US attack on Iraq has unleashed, and at widespread appeals for US military intervention in Sudan, Arnove notes: "The focus on Darfur serves to legitimize the idea of US intervention at the very moment when the carnage that such intervention causes is all too visible and is being widely repudiated around the globe."
Read the Whole Article

Darfur as a Resource War

David Morse eloquently demonstrates the connections between the Sudan's oil resources and the genocide in Darfur.

He juxtaposes our "giddy assumption" that the narcissistic automobile/celebrity obsessed culture can continue indefinitely when we know it can't" with the horror that is occurring in places like Darfur in order to keep us flush with oil. Why doesn't the media show this? Perhaps we aren't willing to make "the connections that would threaten our petroleum-dependent lifestyle."