Who Started It?

Two weeks back Alan Kuperman wrote an op-ed in the NYT:

Darfur was never the simplistic morality tale purveyed by the news media and humanitarian organizations. The region’s blacks, painted as long-suffering victims, actually were the oppressors less than two decades ago — denying Arab nomads access to grazing areas essential to their survival. Violence was initiated not by Arab militias but by the black rebels who in 2003 attacked police and military installations. […]

Advocates of intervention play down rebel responsibility because it is easier to build support for stopping genocide than for becoming entangled in yet another messy civil war. But their persistent calls for intervention have actually worsened the violence. The rebels, much weaker than the government, would logically have sued for peace long ago. Because of the Save Darfur movement, however, the rebels believe that the longer they provoke genocidal retaliation, the more the West will pressure Sudan to hand them control of the region.

Here’s a fairly convincing rebuttal at Coalition for Darfur, worth reading if you’re interested in some of the history of the conflict, which concludes that:

while the rebels can surely be blamed for a lot of things, they cannot rightly be blamed for setting off Khartoum’s brutal campaign as it was just this campaign – less systematic and widespread, to be sure – that helped give rise to the rebellion in the first place.