Preventing the last genocide
(Part Two of Two)
In 2011, a trio of cases have tested the concept of genocide prevention. In Libya, Mohamar Qaddafi did himself no favors by explicitly threatening a segment of his own citizenry with destruction, and using the Rwanda-evoking epithet “cockroaches” to do so, to boot. The response of the United States, the United Nations, and NATO began with a commitment to protect those whom Qaddafi had threatened, and culminated in the fall of the Qaddafi regime. In Côte d’Ivoire, supporters of the defeated-but-recalcitrant incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, organized youth wings to patrol the streets of Abidjan. Their seeming readiness to defend the capital from supporters of the presidential victor, Alassane Ouattara, whom they denigrated as non-Ivoirian, also elicited parallels to the Rwandan experience – although in the latter’s case it was a negotiated peace agreement rather than an election that gave the predominantly Tutsi RPF [Rwandan Patriot Front] a claim to at least a shared seat in the government. The United States appeared to defer in its Côte d’Ivoire policy to France, which interceded on behalf of Ouattara and eventually captured Gbagbo. Although mass violence against civilians did occur in the west of the country, similarities between Gbagbo supporters and the interhamwe [a Hutu paramilitary organization] stopped well short of organized killing sprees in Abidjan. (Nevertheless, the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Gbagbo, who now sits in the Hague awaiting trial).
Government-organized violence against civilians in Syria, meanwhile, has continued throughout the year. The United Nations’ current estimate is that over 5,000 government opponents have been killed. Objections and outrage have been growing. Although a number of western envoys have condemned the Syrian government, international protests from within the region (i.e., Turkey and the Arab League) have been more strident than those from outside of it. As the violence continues, almost literally on a weekly basis, and as the death toll rises, the time for a concerted, robust international response from non-regional actors may soon be at hand. It is an as-yet-unanswered question as to whether Syria’s hand in international politics resembles that of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan, replete with trumps and face cards, or those of Gbagbo and Qaddafi.
Another question is what lessons we can take for the enterprise of genocide prevention. Although there may be many reasons to find fault with the international community’s handling of the conflicts in Cote d’Ivoire and Libya, it may nevertheless be true that the aggressive interventions on the part of France and NATO, respectively, helped to avert genocide. Yet, if that is true, both episodes also reveal a high cost of genocide prevention. Popular sentiment turned against both for being heavy-handed, overly militaristic, and possibly illegal. Many, whether gleeful or doleful, see in the ventures the end of the Power-esque genocide (and mass atrocity) prevention doctrine known as ‘the Responsibility to Protect.’
2012 may not give the prevention community much time to draw back and take stock. Border conflicts between Sudan and South Sudan threaten to assume the form of the worst of the Darfur conflict and the Sudanese Civil War. The recent elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo might exacerbate, rather than abate, the ongoing oft-ethnicized conflict in the east of that country. Syria and Yemen may escalate further, with co-ethnics of the current respective governments becoming increasingly at risk. Likewise, Libyans (along with immigrants from the south) identified with Qaddafi have already faced threats on grounds of ethnicity alone.
Each of these cases continues to challenge the notion of genocide prevention, as well as the playbook developed to put the concept into operation. They should also challenge the temptation to conclude that a doctrine put in place to prevent genocides is in some way misguided. The risk is that just as a fixation with fascism and anti-Semiticism failed to prevent genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, and as over-attention to popular mobilization at home failed to prevent genocide in Darfur, the denigration of robust and multilateral operations will contribute to a failure to prevent the next genocide.
