Not on Our Watch

by Don Cheadle

  But more recently, did news footage of the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia play any role in the United States’ decision to intervene? 50 years after the rise of the Nazis, we were as a people familiar with the existence of ethnic cleansing, even if we didn’t know the particulars of the Bosnian conflict. Did the 1992–1995 audiences of news watchers in any way shame policy makers around the world to action, the echoes of Russia and Germany reverberating in their hearts and minds?

  Perhaps it is a quantitative question, however, and the numbers of dead and dying in this current ethnic cleansing are perceived as being simply too small to get involved. Or could it be the Darfurians’ international position that is the real impediment to action? The government of Sudan has simultaneously been labelled by the US an ally in the war on terror as well as a purveyor of modern genocide; the extreme opposition these viewpoints occupy has created a skewed impression. The US and other Western nations have also claimed that it is loath to interfere in the affairs of a sovereign state, a fair-weather policy at best when, no matter the possible implications and political intricacies, the West does choose to intervene when a boon can be derived. What boon then beyond justice can be derived from Darfur? In the face of all this, what good could images really do?

  Cindy’s question also got me thinking about the 1935 movie Triumph of the Will, which Leni Riefenstahl shot, documenting the Nazi Party’s rise to power. Intentionally or not, that work promoted the perceived and then fully realised power of the Nazis. But could it in some way work in reverse? Could genocide footage from Darfur and Chad showing that the strength these purveyors of death enjoy lies in their ability to act with impunity—not from their power as a truly formidable force—could this inspire other nations to act? Would we challenge cowardice as readily as we were emboldened to face down tyranny?

  Though it seemed like only seconds I had been ruminating on all this, it must have been longer.

  ‘You falling asleep?’ Cindy asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where’d you go?’

  ‘Everywhere.’

  9am now, post shower and cold cereal, and it’s time to make my way downstairs to load my pillowed-under eyes and oversized boxes into the waiting van. I board the already full bus that would be shuttling us to the airport and on to our private military escort plane. Several members of Congress are in attendance. Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington State, has spent much of his time in Congress dealing with African affairs. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, is sitting near the back. Over her shoulder sits Diane Watson, another Democrat from California. Both of them are on the House Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Africa. Betty McCollum, Democrat from Minnesota, is here as well. She also has a seat on the Committee on International Relations, where she promotes US leadership to confront the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

  Last but not least is California Republican Ed Royce, the then vice-chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa. He is a strong supporter of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which reduced import quotas on African goods as large parts of the continent began moving toward free markets and political democracy. And then there’s me, starring in the grown-up version of Sesame Street’s ‘one of these things is not like the others.’ I hope to God nobody asks me a question about Chad or Darfur and my answer reveals my absolute ignorance on the subject. Just in case, I’ve front-loaded the complimentary response: ‘I’m here to learn.’ It’s hardly a lie.

  The trip had been described as a fact-finding exercise, which was exactly the type of trip a neophyte like me needed. I had only just begun to investigate the situation and was familiar with only a few of the players involved in the conflict. I knew I had much to learn. But then something happened as I began to take stock in my travelling companions. My seeds of fatalism began searching for purchase: ‘What knowledge could this fact-finding trip really yield, and to what end?’

  The die had already been cast for Darfur policy-wise, hadn’t it? Weren’t we actually going to bring back incontrovertible evidence of ‘genocide,’ so named by the US government because of the mountain of evidence, of an incontrovertible nature, that already existed to support the finding? It was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma of diplomatic doublespeak. Yet here we were, on our way. It didn’t add up. The congressional members couldn’t have been counting on free publicity to highlight their empathetic and compassionate souls, given that the trip had been planned for months and Nightline had only recently agreed to accompany us (cutting it very close to the wire, in fact). So why were they going? Maybe what made the trip inviting was the fact that it was politically safe for the representatives on both sides of the aisle; these people hailed from a government that had used the word ‘genocide’ while referring to Darfur yet ignored all international conventions that called for direct action against it. This mission could be the perfect opportunity for a politico to pick up compassion points without being saddled with the need for results. For a fledgling fatalist, scepticism was as comfortable as an old shoe, and I had gone from enthusiastic participant on our journey to pessimistic passenger in only the time it took to walk down the bus aisle. Dammit! Now I gotta take this long-ass trip with these people who aren’t really looking to change the game, they just want to assuage their guilt and have the opportunity to claim the moral high ground come election time. ‘At least we’ve gone to Africa to see the horror up close.’ I can hear them now. Whoa. I can hear me now. I had just ‘themed’ them. I let their new moniker roll around in my mind for a hot second. I was good with it, but I always allow for the fact that I could be wrong.

  After the short bus ride, ‘them’ and I board a military charter, rounded out by an automatic weapon–toting security force. Nice. We’re headed first to Entebbe, Uganda, and eventually to Chad.

  Before long the film The Battle of Algiers begins to play over the cabin’s television screens. It is an amazing movie about the Algerians’ fight for freedom against the French in the 1950s, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why we were watching it on this trip. True, the CODEL was going on to Algiers after Chad and Sudan, but the subject matter of this film jangled greatly out of tune with the mental profile I had compiled of my travel companions. We were flying to be witness to the ravages of genocide in Darfur, accompanied by sound and pictures of young, brown men and women, not cardboard caricatures but human beings depicted evenly, preparing bombs to explode in markets, restaurants, and bars. I thought my head would explode. Maybe the people on this CODEL were different. Maybe they were about opening their eyes to seek understanding, to move toward positive change. Maybe these people were actually trying to do something here. Could they be ‘Us’s?

  When we landed in Entebbe to refuel, our group went into the airport’s waiting area, where we met a marine unit stationed in the region, shocked as hell to see ‘that guy that came out in Boogie Nights’ ambling around trying to get cell phone reception. We took some pictures together; I finally found a T-Mobile–friendly corner, and a short time later we hopped back on the plane to finish the last leg of our trip.

  January 2005

  Chad

  As our transport slowly taxied down the runway, I peeked out the window and found two things that stood in stark relief against the dusty tarmac: the Nightline camera crew filming all the proceedings and a long, stringy-haired, six-foot-and-change white man strolling casually up to the plane like he was walking down the street to the local convenience store to get the paper. John Prendergast looked right at home.

  I first met John in November of 2004 at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, which was hosting a screening of Hotel Rwanda. Sophie, Paul, Tatiana, and Terry had all assembled for the event, with hundreds in attendance. Bonnie Abaunza, a seriously dedicated human rights advocate working with Amnesty International, was navigating us through the maze of people and making sure we were meeting the folks we needed to, when she brough
t me over to John, hanging out with his running buddy, and US ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, Pierre-Richard Prosper. I only mention height because within five minutes of our meeting these two ‘important’ people, the conversation devolved into a healthy round of trash-talking about basketball. They’d heard tell of my basketball prowess—a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing—and proceeded to look down on me (literally), recounting tales of hardwood heroism, challenging me and any other human being I knew to a game of two-on-two. I told them that I knew Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and many of the Lakers and Clippers but would only need to pull somebody from my weekend crew to face down a couple of Beltway braggers who clearly only had height going for them. Needless to say, we were fast friends. Segueing out of ball and back to matters at hand, John downloaded me on his extensive experiences in Africa and said he wanted me to consider him an ally-in-service for whatever Africa-related task I might take up. I pocketed the info, and when the Darfur trip arose, he was an early call.

  Now, seeing him confidently rolling up, throwing his arms open wide with a ‘Buddy!’ and no apparent worry clouding his mug, I was sure I was in the company of another ‘Us.’ Seconds later our ‘Us’ would be complete as Paul Rusesabagina, smartly dressed as always, stood nearby with a ‘My friend!’ of his own to welcome me. I’d known he would be accompanying us, but I was still completely blown away. This man had come through a fire that most would greatly resist even mentally replaying, never mind reliving through the experiences of these people we were about to meet. If he could bring himself to this task, who was I to entertain fatalism? I was humbled in the company of all that had made this journey—people committing much more than empty sentiments to try to change for the better the world in which they lived. It would most probably be a thankless job and one with a most uncertain outcome. But standing on the ground in Chad, I found myself smiling, happy to be among doers, lucky to be pulled into the current of Us.

  John’s Path

  I hate waking up early. I’m an unapologetic, unreformed vampire, hard-pressed to lay my head on the pillow before 3am. Let’s just say it isn’t easy to get me out of bed anywhere in the vicinity of the crack of dawn. So when I first heard the sound of banging on my hotel door on a scorching July morning in Khartoum in 2003, I wasn’t pleased. I knew the zealous housekeeping staff liked to finish their work before it got too hot, but they knew from experience that my room was usually the last one they would have access to on any given day. But when the knocking persisted and even got louder, I knew I had to surrender and find out the reason for the urgency of the knuckles on my door.

  I opened the door and my friend the bellhop practically tumbled into the room, breathlessly proclaiming that this time I had gone too far. ‘You’ve been declared an enemy of the state,’ he blurted, with a mixture of satisfaction and concern. ‘The foreign minister is saying your security cannot be guaranteed. That is decidedly not good.’

  My first reaction was logistical. Having been in more than a few jams over two decades travelling in war zones, I usually liked to make sure I had a good escape plan, just in case the temperature rose a little too fast. Over the years, I’d been shot at, bombed, mortared, imprisoned, beaten, threatened (credibly, I would hasten to add), deported, surveilled, chased, and defamed a hundred ways till Sunday. (My mother’s prayer group saying the rosary for me is probably the main reason I am still alive today.) But this ‘enemy of the state’ thing was a new one, and I didn’t know for sure what the next move would be.

  The bellhop wasn’t finished. Apparently, my appearance on the Arabic television equivalent of CNN, Al-Jazeera, went over like a lead balloon with the authorities. I had emptied my rhetorical chambers into the camera the day before, saying that the leaders of the regime should be tried for war crimes in front of an international tribunal for what they were doing in Darfur and what they had done in the south of the country. This was an unwelcome message at the time, as the regime was doing its best to clean up its image around the world and trying to keep what it was doing in Darfur under the radar screen. My eyewitness account to Al-Jazeera, broadcast live from Khartoum, appeared like a rabid skunk at a white linen picnic. The daggers were drawn quickly. The bellhop was sure my life was in danger, even though he was clearly pleased with the message I’d delivered, given that his own family had been victimised in a village raid a year earlier by government-backed militia in Darfur.

  My second reaction was one that I had unfortunately had a few too many times in my life: ‘Another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, JP!’ It was hard to imagine the chain of events that led me to that moment. I will try, however, starting with the ideas and influences that eventually came to shape my character. They originated early on, in the dark basements of the houses I lived in as a kid, where I would voraciously consume comic books about my heroes who took on evil to protect the helpless. The Mighty Thor, Captain America, Batman, Daredevil, and the Silver Surfer were all guys who hated injustice and put their lives on the line for it. They all had certain powers that they used in the service of others, often to the detriment of their own lives. When I was a kid, I used to read about these superheroes like there was no tomorrow. I wanted to be like them somehow, wanted to stand for something good. I was especially drawn to the darker characters, the ones with significant personal flaws, those who were running from something yet throwing themselves into their mission. Their humanity, their vulnerability, made their commitment all the more appealing. I always felt that many of their powers were just exaggerations of things certain human beings were capable of under extreme pressure (with the possible exceptions of flying, shooting spiderwebs out of hands, turning green, and picking up entire buildings). When I would hear about things like floods in Bangladesh or famines in Africa, I wondered why someone like my superheroes couldn’t save the victims.

  But of course there are no superheroes in that sense and we don’t really ‘save victims’. It is about working with others in defence of justice and human rights. And that means some element of sacrifice, even if it is just a few minutes on a computer to write a letter. After the Al-Jazeera interview, the correspondent asked me, ‘Aren’t you worried for your safety? I keep hearing about you running into trouble. Why do you do it?’ My response: ‘Anger. I can’t accept that we just stand idly by while entire peoples are being extinguished because of the actions and advantage of a few people. Every time I think I will walk away from this and become a sportswriter, focusing on my beloved Kansas City Chiefs, I see something like this and it just flames me up again. I’m doomed to do this for as long as I live.’

  But last I checked, the contract for this book doesn’t say ‘autobiography’, so I will spare you the details of my childhood. Save that one for some future movie of the week. The far distant future. Or maybe my baby brother Luke can write it; he remembers everything. I mean everything. For the purposes of this story, however, the journey really begins later, in my early 20s, when I was a somewhat clichéd rebel without a cause and a crusader in search of a mission.

  After bouncing around the United States and going to four different universities, I ended up back in my adopted hometown of Philadelphia, working for a congressman and going to Temple University at night for my fifth and final undergraduate stop. (Papa was a rolling stone, a frozen food salesman to be exact, and this apple didn’t land too far from Jack’s tree.) I was doing all kinds of stuff focused on urban problems in the United States: my job with the congressman allowed me to get involved in many things. I also was a Big Brother to kids in the Big Brother/Little Brother programme, as well as to kids I met in the homeless shelters where I was volunteering. (That’s the next book.)

  I loved my work and loved what I was studying at school on urban policy, but in 1983 a story broke that changed my life forever. The famine in what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea emerged into the public consciousness very slowly, as these kinds of issues do, if they e
ver do at all.

  The ‘Ethiopian Famine’ of 1983–1985 resulted from the tactics of war pursued by the Ethiopian regime at the time against Eritreans fighting for independence and Ethiopians fighting for a more inclusive government; these tactics were exacerbated by drought. Many of the war tactics used by that regime have been replicated by the Sudanese government in Darfur. For more information and a cheap plug, see John Prendergast and Mark Duffield, Without Troops and Tanks, Red Sea Press (Lawrenceville, 1994).

  I kept seeing these pictures of mass starvation (mostly on those post-midnight fund-raising paid programmes that organisations buy to highlight the horrors they are trying to ameliorate with their food and medicine) and reading into them messages of a world that just didn’t care enough to do whatever was necessary to end the suffering of those people. There were images of hundreds of thousands of homeless Ethiopians and Eritreans in makeshift camps—people living and dying in the worst circumstances humanly possible. I was overwhelmed by the pictures; all of my empathetic and protective tendencies went into overdrive. I hadn’t studied any of these issues, but I knew at the bottom of it all there must lie a massive core of injustice, overlaid by a blanket of apathy.

  In 1984, I decided to go to Africa to investigate for myself. After reading all those comic books and believing in the ultimate triumph of good over evil, it was time for Captain America’s number one fan—naive but determined—to spring into action. I believed very innocently then that if the United States would just get involved, we could fix everything.