In contrast to the several very dubious high-profile choices of the Pulitzer committee for this year’s awards, Nicholas Kristof’s prize in recognition of his coverage for The New York Times of the Sudanese government’s genocidal campaign against the people of Darfur seems uncontroversial and well deserved. But Kristof, and the Times’s editors, have consistently failed to cover a key element of the story.
A recurrent theme in Kristof’s articles is the world’s failure to do enough to end the slaughter in Darfur, and he particularly targets President Bush for criticism. He has on occasion also mentioned the “international community” and has referred by name to several nations and world leaders other than the president who could do more. But a key factor in the impunity with which the Arab government of Sudan has been able to pursue its campaign of rape and mass murder in Darfur has been the virtually universal support it receives from the rest of the Arab world, and on this Kristof has been essentially silent. (He did break this silence in five sentences in the penultimate of some 40 op-eds addressing Darfur he published from March 2004 through April 2006; but that article is focused on China’s shameful role in Darfur.)
Other Arab nations not only defend Sudan’s government but actively lobby for it in world bodies and have successfully enlisted fellow Muslim states and additional allies to do the same. The travesty of Sudan being elected to the United Nations’ human rights commission is just one demonstration of that support. Blocking of greater UN efforts to aid the people of Darfur is another.
The impact of this support goes beyond international bodies. Many nations are reluctant to confront the Arab world in its backing of Sudan, and this has been a major factor in European foot-dragging on the Darfur issue. Even American policy is sensitive to Arab opinion and potential problems with being seen as attacking another Arab regime as the nation continues to pursue the difficult struggle in Iraq.
But this crucial factor in the world’s response to the Darfur crisis has, with the one recent exception noted, been absent from Kristof’s reporting. The extent and impact of Arab support for Sudan’s crimes in Darfur are also absent from the rest of the Times.
When the Arab League held its annual summit in Khartoum in late March, the Times published two stories on the proceedings. Neither made any mention of Darfur and no editorial addressed the significance, or questioned the propriety, of Arab foreign ministers choosing Sudan’s capital as their venue. A Timeseditorial on Darfur published on April 13 (“Fiddling While Darfur Burns”) took the United Nations to task for “dawdling” and complained of UN Security Council members “China, Qatar, Ghana and Tanzania, that continue to give diplomatic cover to Sudan,” but said nothing of the cover given by the Arab League and its membership.
This silence on the Arab world’s support for Sudan’s genocidal regime is part of a broader picture. While the Times did provide some coverage of Saddam Hussein’s murder of up to 200,000 Kurds in the late 1980’s, it again ignored the theme of broad Arab support for Saddam’s program of Arabizing northern Iraq. The Timeslargely failed to cover Sudan’s on and off again genocidal campaign against Christian and animist blacks in the south of the country that claimed about two million lives, and of course ignored as well Arab support for Sudan’s policies in the south.
The Timesprides itself in being a “liberal” newspaper, but it has also consistently ignored liberal voices in the Arab world that have sought to address that world’s genocidal attitudes toward religious and ethnic minorities in its midst.