photo courtesy of bbc news image:27557:0::0

In an interview with the Algemeen Dagblad, a leading Dutch newspaper, Ronny Brauman, the former director of Médecins Sans Frontières in France, says that the humanitarian situation in Darfur is serious and critical, but that the peak of the war occurred four years ago. Current circumstances are in no way comparable to what they were in 2003/2004. There is a lot less violence now. Nearly all victims are members of armed groups and the army that are fighting each other.

According to Brauman, there are about 13,000 relief workers in Darfur and another 2,000 in the Chad border area. Bernard Kouchner claimed earlier this year that about 10,000 people are killed every month in Darfur. "This is simply untrue," says Brauman. "There are about 100 deaths a month. That is still a lot, but it is not comparable to the picture of a genocide that people are painting."

Earlier this year, Bernard-Henri Lévy, a leading French intellectual, attacked Brauman, who was born in Jerusalem, by saying that nearly all Jews were exterminated in 1944 and asking if the world should have done nothing.

Brauman reacts by stating that mentioning Nazism always silences all critics but that this pictures Darfur as a type of "Auschwitz in the sand" and that this leads people to do all types of stupid things such as the action by "Arche de Zoé," an organization that went to Chad to collect 103 children they honestly thought they were saving from certain death. People like Kouchner and Lévy are morally responsible for such actions.

The real danger is even bigger. This climate leads directly to a military intervention in Sudan since all this talk about genocide and comparisons with the Holocaust can only lead to one response: intervene in order to prevent further bloodshed. Pressure is steadily increased until everybody believes that the military must be sent over there in order to save tens of thousands of innocent lives. However, that is simply not how the situation is.

According to Brauman, the propaganda comes from everywhere, for example from people such as actor George Clooney who turns Darfur into a "spectacle". Propaganda also comes from American organizations such as Save Darfur and from French intellectuals such as Kouchner and Lévy.

"This is mobilization for the sake of mobilization. We do it because we want to feel good; we want to know that we do not ignore Darfur, that we are talking about it. It enables us to look in the mirror and to say that we are still the most beautiful of all."

Brauman thinks that there is also a secondary political agenda. "There is an ideological coalition with the neo-conservatives in the United States. Intellectuals and neo-conservatives think that we must intervene in Sudan. The first want to save people, the second want to overthrow the Islamic regime. This way, the humanitarian disaster is used to prepare the public for an intervention."

"Such an intervention will be anything but beneficial," says Brauman. "Everybody knows that it is impossible. There are lots of small groups that are all conducting their own little wars, dozens of Arab groups, political militias, rebels, armed groups."

"Intervening in Sudan will make Iraq pale in comparison," says Brauman cynically. "If you liked Iraq, you will love Sudan."