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Award winning journalist and director of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Jon Sawyer, recently returned from Darfur where he spent a week traveling with African Union troops. He discusses patrols with the African Union, the attacks near the Chad border, the capabilities, limitations, and morale of the troops, and the mission of the newly founded Pulitzer Center.
TRANSCRIPT:
NARRATOR: Welcome to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Your host is Jerry Fowler, Director of the Museum's Committee on Conscience.
JERRY FOWLER: Our guest today is Jon Sawyer. He is director of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Before becoming the Pulitzer Center’s founding director, he was with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for thirty-one years. Among other positions with the Post-Dispatch, he was Washington Bureau Chief from 1993-2005. He was selected three years in a row for the National Press Club’s award for best foreign reporting. He recently spent a week in Darfur with the African Union monitoring force. Jon, welcome to the program.
JON SAWYER: Thank you Jerry, it is great to be here.
JERRY FOWLER: Jon, give us a sense of your trip with the African Union. What did you do with the African Union?
JON SAWYER: In essence, I was embedded with the African Union for a week in January. I went to El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur; I spent several days staying at the base in the tents with the soldiers. Each day we would go out by helicopter to different regions of North Darfur; out to the Chad border in Tine in northwest Darfur, and then to Tawila in central north Darfur. Then we went down to Nyala, the capital of South Darfur for the last four days that we were in Darfur and again stayed at the African Union base in Nyala, went out into the region, went out on patrol with the African Union forces and it was an attempt to get a sense of what their life is like and what their work was in the region.
JERRY FOWLER: Maybe you could explain a little bit. When you say you went on patrol, what type of unit was it? Who was it that was going out on patrol?
JON SAWYER: In El Fasher it was Rwandans that we went with, a Rwandan protection force. Most of the protection force is coming from Rwandans and from Nigerians. There are many people from all over Africa who are represented in smaller numbers, particularly in the command and the support sections. There is also a contingent of 1,500 or so police in the African Union force, and again they come from all parts of Africa, so it depended on where we were. In Tine, out on the Chad border, we went out, and we were there for a briefing in the morning. In that part of the country, the African Union is really protecting itself because the people have all left. They have gone across the border. There was something like 71,000 people who lived in Tine. On the Sudan side of the border, you see the town of Tine, Chad in the distance—it is across a wadi, a dry riverbed—and everyone has gone into Chad or elsewhere in Darfur because of attacks over the past three years. What has happened is that the African Union is trying to reestablish security in that area. That particular unit has had three different attacks in the last four months, and of increasing severity.
JERRY FOWLER: Attacks on itself?
JON SAWYER: Attacks on itself. The first significant one was back in late September. There were thirty-eight members of the African Union out on patrol, south of Tine. They were kidnapped; they were held for the better part of a day, stripped of their vehicles—I think four trucks and all of their weapons, of course all they have are their AK-47s, automatic rifles—and then left on the side of the road, and then eventually they made their way back.
JERRY FOWLER: Who did this?
JON SAWYER: That was done by a rebel group; by one of the anti-Sudan government groups. The two subsequent attacks that happened in late October and January, just before we were there, were more serious, and they still do not really know who is responsible. I talked to the commander; exchanged emails with him just this week of the Tine sector and they are still investigating, still trying to figure out who was behind attacks that took place in October and in January. In those attacks—the one in October—there were I think five soldiers, again the vehicles were taken, weapons were taken, and five soldiers were wounded in the October attack. In January, a soldier was killed, nine were wounded, five seriously, again the vehicles were taken, and the weapons were taken. It is a kind of stark reminder in that area that the African Union really does not have the equipment, the weaponry, the manpower to go up against either the government Janjaweed or rebel factions. They are all more heavily armed than the African Union in that area. We did that in Tine, and we got a sense of what the region was like.
In Tawila, that is in central north Darfur, sixty or one hundred miles south of El Fasher, the capital, we saw another interesting demonstration of the African Union’s strengths and weaknesses. They have a base established there, next to the town of Tawila, there is a very large camp called Dali camp for internally displaced persons. It has 18,000 or 19,000 people housed, just outside of Dali. Just outside of Tawila, the other side of the town from the African Union base, and we went over to see Dali, and Dali is completely deserted. It is a sea of empty tents and tarps. Everybody left after the government of Sudan, plus some army and some Janjaweed attacked Tawila. They attacked the mosque, they shot up the mosque, they shot up in the town of Tawila, and then they went into Dali; some people were shot in Dali. Everybody then fled. They have been gone since end of September. Most of them went south, and in that area of North Darfur the Janjaweed is strong just north of Tawila. The rebels have more of a presence south of Tawila. Most of the people fled south into the hills and in that direction, but about 5,000 people went to the African Union base which is just a couple miles north of the Dali camp. The African Union base is sitting out on the edge of the town in the desert, and people just started building grass huts and using what plastic they could. They created their own ad hoc displaced persons camp, literally on the fence of the African Union base because they thought there was some security that they could get from being as close as possible to where the African Union folks were, and they have been there since, and that has now become the base. The African Union has accommodated, they put up some latrines and toilets for the people there, and they are trying to work as best they can, but the other problem they have in Tawila is that the NGOs have pretty much pulled out. This has been the story many places in Darfur, that as security has gotten worse, the NGOs have left, so the African Union commanders in the sectors talk about it as a kind of chicken and egg thing. They are trying to encourage people to come back to their villages, to their home areas, but the people are not coming back because there are no services, there are no humanitarian services available. The humanitarian folks say that they cannot come back because there is not security and the people are not there.
JERRY FOWLER: It would seem to me that it is kind of a pretty stark illustration of the limitations of the African Union force that an attack was launched on an internally displaced person’s camp in a town that was just a couple of miles from an African Union base.
JON SAWYER: The African Union police witnessed the attack; they were there. Some of the African Union police were in the mosque when the Sudan police came in and opened fire, and the African Union police—people may not realized this—are all unarmed. They do not have any weapons. They are there to work with the Sudan government police to give some assurance to the displaced persons and the general population that there is neutral law enforcement, but they have no fire power. They have no weaponry on their own so that when that happened in September, in Tawila, what the police did is that they got back to their base as quickly as they could, they kind of scurried back to their base to protect themselves because that was all that they could do.
JERRY FOWLER: Presumably there were African Union soldiers that were back at that base, but they did not have any capability or inclination to go and stop the attack?
JON SAWYER: Right. I think the feeling that they had was that there was no way they could stop the attack. They did not have enough force to respond to what happened. Also, I think the incident happened quickly, and I think as in many places in Darfur, it was a warning to the populous that worse could come. One of the things that surprised me when I was flying around the countryside by helicopter—and we covered a good bit of North and South and West Darfur—is that you see all of the burned out villages that you see—and there are many of those—but there were many more, at least where I was traveling, abandoned villages. I described them as like stepping stones across the desert, where you will have open country, and then, in the middle of nowhere you will have a circular settlement of thatched roof houses. Of the ones that are burned, all that is left is the mud-brick structure of the house, no roofs, but there are many where the roofs are still there, and it is an intact village, but the people are gone because they have fled in fear of attack.
JERRY FOWLER: That is interesting in the sense that it was presumably the intent of the attackers, to create a climate of fear that would cause people to displace themselves and be gone. Let me ask you about the mood of the African Union soldiers. What you have described and what is consistent with what you hear is that they are out-gunned; they are out-manned; they do not have much ability to affect the situation. What is their morale like?
JON SAWYER: I think their morale is better than you would think. Perhaps this is a function of the time that I was there because I was there in mid to late January and right at the point where there seemed to be an agreement that the United Nations would come in, and the African Union personnel were all in favor of that. They said, “Absolutely. That is fine. We will re-hat; give us blue hats.” The expectation was that many of them would stay or that other Africans would come, but you would have a United Nations force, and with a United Nations force you would have access to the dues that United Nation’s members pay, and you would have perhaps a Chapter 7-type mandate under the United Nations charter where you could actually have a strong mandate to protect civilians and go after bad guys. They thought that was a good idea. There was not much debate about that among the African Union. Others said that the important thing was—did not really matter if it was the United Nations or the African Union—that they need a lot more resources. They needed heavier weaponry; they needed much better vehicles, a lot better communications equipment, and they said that that should come in. They were hopeful in January that maybe some of that was coming. Of course, the sense in the last couple months, what we have seen is that the United Nations—there was a lot of talk that the United States was going to have the presidency of the Security Council in February, and that was going to be the month that we were going to push through this resolution and this hand-over would be made and we would be in process toward all of that happening. That did not happen. In the meantime you also had the government of Sudan which had initially, grudgingly seemed to accept the idea that there would be a handover; then they began to jet up these protests around the country saying that the United Nations was the equivalent of the United States and European white people coming in and then doing something like Iraq in Sudan. We saw the beginning of that. I was in Nyala at the United Nations headquarters when there was one of three demonstrations in Darfur that took place late January. There were several hundred people who came, and it was clearly a staged demonstration; lots of young people; lots of Sudan police who were shepparding them down the street; all anti-United States, anti-European slogans that they were shouting; banners that they had conveniently put in English as well as Arabic so that it would play well for my camera and for everybody else’s camera. I take that, but it was interesting to the Swiss man who was the head of Office of Coordinating Humanitarian Assistance for South Darfur. He was very respectful of the fact that this was a real feeling in the region--this concern about Europeans and Americans and the whole legacy of colonialism in Sudan and the fact that it is an overwhelming Muslim country and that it sees itself as part of the Muslim world and is hyper-conscious of what United States policy towards Muslims has been in the past ten or fifteen years. While there is no doubt that the government of Sudan is cynically manipulating public opinion, there is something there that can be manipulated and I think it can turn into something real and we have to be very careful about how we go in, how we approach the rhetoric surrounding any type of United Nations or United States further intervention because it could easily tip where you would have people, even in Darfur, even in the region itself, who can be turned against intervention because they would perceive it as white European and Americans—particularly Americans—coming after yet another Muslim country.
JERRY FOWLER: Although, I know on my two trips to the region, talking to refugees, the people on the receiving end of the violence, almost everyone—without exception—everyone who expressed an opinion about intervention, said that they wanted Western troops, that they did not trust the African Union, and they did not think that the African Union could protect civilians, and they wanted Western troops in.
JON SAWYER: Right, and I heard a little bit of that, and I think that is to be expected because those people are in the most extreme situation and they have witnessed, they have experienced first-hand, just how savage the treatment has been from either local Arab militias, the Janjaweed, or from the government of Sudan. They do not trust the government of Sudan. It reminds me a bit, this whole issue of how they are responding now, how they might respond in the future to a foreign intervention, particularly an American intervention, to the experience that I had in Iraq just before the war in Iraq. There you could also find many people who said, “Bring them on. We cannot wait for the invasion,” and then others, a little bit cooler headed with a longer view and a sense of some history, would say, “Maybe it will be ok to take out Saddam, but you better not stay here long because the moment you are here, the moment you are perceived as an occupier, the people are going to turn against you.” That is human nature. None of us want to be occupied by somebody we perceive as foreign from us.
JERRY FOWLER: Changing gears just a little bit; you have covered Sudan for many years, and I know that in the early part of this century you were particularly covering Senator Danforth when he was the special envoy for peace in Sudan and working to negotiate the end to the conflict in Southern Sudan. Now there is increasing talk, including by the Secretary of State and by minority leader Pelosi about the possibility for a new special envoy for Sudan. From your experience covering Danforth, what affect did his intervention and his activities have on pushing forward the prospects for peace in the South?
JON SAWYER: I think he had an extraordinary affect. I think he was really important, and it is amazing to me even today, four years after you did most of that work and a year after he has left the United Nations job, that in Sudan so many people on all sides talk about wanting him to come back. He is not going to come back. He has not expressed any interest in doing that, but he is held in very high regard by both the government side, by the Southerners, and by the people in Darfur who know about him, who have had experience with and knowledge of what he did. I think that is because he was perceived as a true mediator that was willing; he was practical minded, he worked with the British, the Norwegians, the church groups here, the church groups there, the Muslims in Sudan, and the Kenyans, the Egyptians, and all of that played in 2001, 2002, 2003, at precisely the time that we were embarked on this highly unilateral initiative in Iraq, in defiance of just about everybody, in defiance of what people in the region thought that we should be doing, in defiance of what the United Nations thought we should be doing ultimately, and yet here you had Danforth, quietly, at the same time, with the support of President Bush, pursuing a very different track in Sudan. I know that the results, the outcome of the North-South peace initiative have been overshadowed in coverage of Darfur in the last two and a half years, and it is one of the many tragedies of Sudan that this emerged as that was ending and we did not talk about what the interplay of that was there. It is a multi-layered thing as to why Darfur emerged at that moment. The North-South thing, when you think back to how many people died, and the two million or so people who are estimated to die over the course of that 20 year war, and the deep divisions where you had religion as well as race and ethnicity that was dividing North and South, even more so than in the case of Darfur; that you were able to bring that off, at least for now, the fighting in the South has stopped, I think it remains a very fragile thing, but it is an important achievement. As we talk about what to do about Darfur and how to hold that whole country together, it is worth remembering the approach that someone like Danforth took. Your question about should you have another envoy; I think it is possible if you had somebody of that stature who was willing. People have talked about Colin Powell or someone like that, but it is heavy lifting. I know Danforth himself had no idea in September, 2001 when he agreed to do this how consuming it would prove to be over the next three years of his life.
JERRY FOWLER: On this trip, you went under the auspices of this new Center that you have created, the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. You left your longtime gig with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. What is the mission of the Pulitzer Center, and what are you looking to achieve?
JON SAWYER: I am very pleased that Darfur is the first story, the first subject that we chose. I chose that with a lot of thought. The Pulitzer Center is created with the idea of encouraging the American mainstream media to do more reporting on foreign policy issues; issues of moment in the world at a time when the mainstream media seems held in on cutting back its coverage of the world. Whether you are talking about regional newspapers, major newspapers, or broadcast, it is just fewer and fewer people who are out in the world covering these stories at a time when they are more important than they have ever been for the United States and for the people of the world. I hope that they will do several things. One is that we will provide the Journalism; the Pulitzer Center is created to fund journalism projects; we offer travel grants to reporters, either staff reporters at existing newspapers or broadcast outlets, or freelance reporters to go out and do reporting either on topics that are not being covered or topics that we think are not being covered in an adequate way, and to do that reporting and then we work with those reporters to place the product of their work as widely as possible. We are trying to be very nimble in terms of somebody goes out and does a project that we can find broadcast outlets, print outlets for—magazine as well as newspapers and the Internet. The Pulitzer Center is housed at the World Security Institute here in Washington. The World Security Institute itself is devoted to this type of work and has its own broadcast division within it Azimuth media. One of the things we produce is, through Azimuth is a foreign exchange television program with Fareed Zakaria. So, in the case with Darfur, for example, I had a cameraman from Egypt with me and we made a video of what we were seeing. I wrote an article about my experiences, but we also produced a video, a portion of which was shown on the foreign exchange program. The World Security Institute also has an electronic publication division that publish material in Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Farsi, so that we have access through them, if we have topics that are relevant to those parts of the world, to putting it out on the Internet and getting it out into the media of those vast parts of the world audience. My hope is that there is a future for non-profit journalism, that we can get away from the worry about the delivery of a newspaper, the redesign of a front page, how to market to an evermore evanescent, younger readership, and use new media and produce stories and content that we can put out into both new media and old media, and promote a fuller debate on foreign policy issues here in America.
JERRY FOWLER: I wonder if the mainstream media’s response would be that they do not cover these things not just because there is some expense and danger involved, but because there is not an audience for it? Of course then, when they do not cover it, they do not create an audience. Do you think there is an audience for this type of material, or is it just going to go to a very narrow segment that is already getting information from National Public Radio, Public Broadcasting?
JON SAWYER: I think there is a broader audience than that. That is what we are trying to show. Newspapers are notoriously bad at measuring who reads what stories. It is very difficult to do, but one of the things that I am hoping to do by these kind of side production things that we are doing—whether it is radio interviews or podcasts like this or doing a town meeting; we have had meetings in St. Louis and I am speaking at several colleges next week around the country on Darfur and the Middle East—I think if I can show that not only on my projects, but on the projects we fund by other reporters, that there is this interest. If 200 people come out on an evening in the middle of the week to hear people talk about history and current policy in Darfur, that is interest. If that is happening and that is replicated in communities all over the country, then I think the media eventually takes notice of it. It is kind of happening out there beyond the notice of our mainstream media. One of the things that I hope to do is to get them to pay attention to that.
JERRY FOWLER: Jon Sawyer, thank you so much for being with us.
JON SAWYER: Thank you Jerry, for having me.
JERRY FOWLER: Our guest has been Jon Sawyer. He is the director of the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about the Museum’s Committee on Conscience, visit our website at www.committeeonconscience.org.
