EL FASHER, SUDAN — What if the conflict many call the "first genocide of the 21st century" weren't one at all?
In the United States, many see the six-year war in Darfur as a bloody campaign by a Sudanese Arab-dominated government against rebellious "African" tribes in western Sudan. Two consecutive American presidents and several activist groups have defined it as genocide.
But others, while acknowledging the severity of the violence, question whether it meets the legal definition of genocide. The United Nations determined in 2005 that the Sudanese government wasn't committing genocide in Darfur. Human Rights Watch and Doctors Without Borders avoid the G-word too.
The International Criminal Court renewed the debate in March when it issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir. Judges said his counterinsurgency tactics in Darfur may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, but that there was no evidence of genocide.
The debate raises touchy and politically explosive questions: What constitutes genocide? Why does -- or doesn't -- Darfur fit the mold? Has the label helped, or hurt, the people of Darfur? And what does it matter anyway if what has occurred in Darfur is viewed as genocide rather than, say, war crimes or "ethnic cleansing"?
Most agree that it has mattered a lot.
When former U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell first described Darfur as a case of genocide in 2004, a $1-billion-a-year international aid effort quickly followed, elevating the crisis above other African conflicts, including those in Somalia and Congo, where the mortality rates in recent years have been higher and the displacement greater.
"The word 'genocide' has so much power," said Neha Erasmus, program coordinator for Justice Africa in London. "Darfur really took hold of the American psyche after it was called genocide."
But the global attention also brought heightened politics and at times led to resources being misdirected, aid workers say.
A misconception that hundreds of people are dying each day in Darfur has led many in the West to push for emergency security measures such as military intervention, U.N. peacekeepers and no-fly zones, and to overlook larger issues such as stalled peace talks and millions of people dependent on foreign aid, said Thierry Durand, director of operations for Doctors Without Borders.
