E-mail a friendJohn Prendergast
airdate November 2, 2006
African affairs expert and human rights activist, John Prendergast has spent nearly two decades focusing on conflict resolution in Africa and shaping U.S. foreign policy toward the region. He's a senior advisor to the president of the nonprofit International Crisis Group. Prendergast worked for the Clinton administration and a variety of think tanks, including the U.S. Institute of Peace. He has authored/co-authored several books and Op-Ed pieces and is currently co-authoring a book with actor Don Cheadle.
John Prendergast
Tavis: John Prendergast is a senior advisor at the International Crisis Group who's authored several books on Africa, including an upcoming text with actor Don Cheedle. He's traveled extensively throughout the continent, including the Sudan and the Darfur region, most recently with a crew from '60 Minutes.' He joins us tonight from Washington. John, nice to have you back on the program.
John Prendergast: Thanks for having me, Tavis.
Tavis: President Bush addressed the Sudan issue, the Darfur issue specifically on Tuesday in a meeting with his special envoy to the region. Did the President have anything to say on Tuesday that made you feel better about the situation?
Prendergast: Well, three and a half years into this crisis, two years after he's called it genocide, he finally decided to actually come up with a plan to respond to the horrors that are occurring in Darfur. So he's tasked his special envoy, Andrew Natsios, to put that plan together, sell it internationally, and then bring it to the Sudanese. So they're in that process now, and too little, never too late.
There's still two and a half million Sudanese Darfurians who are in camps whose lives will literally depend on the actions that the Bush administration takes in the coming months. But it is, so it's heartening that we finally got some traction in Washington, but it took long. A long, long time.
Tavis: Why so long, John, from your perspective, between finally getting around to calling it genocide, and now taking some action?
Prendergast: I think that the principle - usually with Congo and northern Uganda, Liberia, Somalia, these kinds of places, it's usually indifference and ignorance and policy inertia, basically, that leads Africa to be at the bottom of the totem pole. Sudan is different, because we have this relationship. The Bush administration has this relationship with the Sudanese government, where they cooperate with us on counterterrorism measures.
They have a lot of information about Bin Laden, because he lived there for six years during the nineties. So they turn that information over, drips and drabs, to us when we need it. And I think that's basically handcuffed the administration in Washington from taking a more robust stand in response to what it itself calls genocide. So I think we're up - it's the new Cold War.
During the eighties and seventies, when a country sided with us against the Russians, the Soviets, they could do whatever they wanted. They could abuse human rights, they could ensure that there was no elections inside the country. It's the same thing now. And I think Sudan has been a great beneficiary of that. The Sudanese has been a great beneficiary of that. And at the horrible expense of the Darfurian people.
Tavis: Let me ask you what's happened over the last six months to put this issue a bit more, never enough, but a bit more front and center. Rallies in Washington, in New York, and other cities across the country. Every other day, it seems, I'm looking at a full page ad in 'The New York Times' and other papers, drawing attention to the crisis. What's happened over the last six months to kind of light a fire under this issue, as it were?
Prendergast: Well, it's really great. As somebody who's worked on African issues for now two decades, to watch the organic sort of uprising of American citizens who care about human rights, who don't wanna see genocide happen in the twenty-first century, saying enough is enough. You can't call this a genocide, you can't invoke the genocide convention, and then stand idly by while people get slaughtered.
So citizens are taking matters into their own hands all across the country. And it's happening in three key constituencies. You're seeing student groups, which provide sort of the person power. All over the country, student groups are forming just like during the Vietnam War, and they're the sort of vanguard of social change anyways throughout our history. So they've been very, very key in developing and generating interest in the U.S.
Secondly are Jewish groups. And they're saying basically the adage never again, which they have invoked, of course, since the Holocaust. They're saying, we can't allow this to happen in Darfur. And then the evangelical Christian groups have been very, very key. They originally were interested in southern Sudan because of discrimination and persecution of Christians. But now they've turned their attention to Darfur. Those three key constituencies, I think, have generated a momentum that has gotten the attention of the White House.
Tavis: Let me press you on that, because given that these persons caught up in this genocide happen to be people of African - persons who look like me, let me be blunt about it, people who look like me, I note in those three constituencies that you suggest that have taken up this issue, you did not say African Americans.
Prendergast: I think that there have been a number of African American groups that have picked up the mantle, as well, and within the Congressional caucus, it's been the Black caucus that has been - the Congressional Black caucus that's been the most outspoken from the beginning, led by Congressman Don Payne and others. And so at the national level, African American organizations, particularly led by the Black caucus, have been leaders in the issue.
But we haven't seen a grassroots element to that yet. Though at the last few rallies that you were mentioning earlier, you're seeing increasing numbers of African Americans showing up for the rallies and becoming a part of it. The NAACP has made this an investment, a priority, and they're rallying their forces to be able to come out and turn out for events.
So slowly but surely, I think we're gonna have four constituencies now, including the African American groups that have been at the forefront of this effort to try to stop the genocide in Darfur.
Tavis: Just want to make sure we didn't leave that part of the conversation out.
Prendergast: I appreciate that.
Tavis: That said, the '60 Minutes' crew that traveled with you back to Darfur discovered what?
Prendergast: Well, we went in from Chad in the refugee camps, then we cut across the border illegally into rebel-controlled areas of Darfur. Just at the time when the government of Sudan was initiating another offensive against the areas that are either controlled by the rebels, or they believe people living in these areas are supportive, somehow, of the rebels. And they're basically doing what they did over the last couple of years.
They're bombing villages, they're bombing particularly water points, because of course if you don't have access to water in the Sahara, you're condemned to death. So it's basically genocide by remote control. You just press a button, drop a bomb, hit the water point, and thousands of people have to move, because they have to search out a new place where they can get water.
And so what we're seeing, what we saw on this trip, and we talked to so many people who had been newly displaced, so many women who had just been gang raped by these Janjaweed militias, so many young people whose lives and whose families and whose communities have been destroyed of this tidal wave of institutional violence that is emanating from Khartoum.
Tavis: All right, so, the question. What to do?
Prendergast: Yeah, it's really, it's come to the sort of tipping point. If we just keep on doing nothing, which is basically what the administration's policy in Washington has been, and the United Nations Security Council response, hundreds of thousands of people are gonna die in the coming months. But if we take a stand and start to confront this regime directly, and when I say confront I mean impose a cost for committing genocide.
Three and a half years have gone by, not one punitive measure has been imposed on the government of Sudan. If we hit them with sanctions, particular sanctions on the leadership, they have companies that are associated with the leaders that are doing business in Europe, doing business in Asia and Middle East. We gotta start freezing their assets. We gotta turn over information that we have.
We got all this intelligence about who's doing what to whom, who's orchestrating this genocide. We gotta turn that information over to the International Criminal Court, speed up the indictment process to start indicting these guys for crimes against humanity. Get their attention, force them to change their calculations, force them to stop the genocide themselves, and allow for the deployment of a large force, an international force, led by both the African Union and the United Nations, that can stabilize the situation in Darfur.
But really, the bottom line is we gotta make them pay for what they've been doing. And so far, they've gotten off scot-free for committing genocide.
Tavis: Finally, John, on an issue like this, what do everyday Americans do?
Prendergast: Well, I think 15-20 minutes a week, 10 minutes, you sit down at your desk and you write a letter to your member of Congress and say, when are you gonna stand up for the people of Darfur? Are you gonna allow genocide to occur in the twenty-first century? Just challenge members of Congress to stand up and be champions on this issue. And then take the other 10 minutes of your 20 minutes a week on Darfur and ask your friends and family members to do it.
And it's really something where I've worked in Congress, in the administration, and all these other things in the past. Letters, emails, phone calls matter. If they come in large numbers, if they come in waves, and you say hey, this issue matters to us as voters, you gotta do something, you will get action.
Tavis: It's a critical moment. Are you hopeful?
Prendergast: I'm becoming hopeful. I think the fact that the President finally has heard, I think Karl Rove has heard, that it matters to key constituencies within the American public that they do something about this in the context of elections. Not only the November ones now, but two years from now. They gotta pay attention to these constituencies, and that's what's gonna be in our benefit. That's why we gotta turn up the heat now. Because they're listening.
Tavis: from the International Crisis Group, John Prendergast joining us tonight from Washington. John, thanks for your insight. Nice to have you on the program.
Prendergast: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: My pleasure. Up next on this program, Nobel laureate and a member of Kenya's parliament, Wangari Maathai. Stay with us.
Back to November 2, 2006