Read Online Not on Our Watch by Don Cheadle, John Prendergast - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Don Cheadle, John Prendergast
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was an extraordinary pull factor in influencing me to make my first trip to Africa. My basic humanitarian tendencies were certainly triggered massively by the level of helplessness of those who had been targeted and hunted in the context of the war-induced Ethiopian famine (one of the deadliest in the world during the last century). Simplistically, at that time I just wanted to help, wanted to figure out the best way to get life-saving aid to those most in need.
But it took me a few more years to figure out that while food and medicine were crucial, they were not the sole solutions. I began to see the political roots of the lack of response from my country and the larger Western world. I was greatly helped in seeing that, as a very naive 22-year-old, by the organisation of the Live Aid concert in 1985, but particularly by the organiser, a musician-turned-radical-politician, Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats, who would later help organise the Live 8 concerts in 2005.
Geldof appeared to me like a force of nature. He was on the cover of my beloved Rolling Stone magazine and many others, swearing at the political leaders who were obstructing a meaningful response to the famine and its roots. He took on the system; in fact he spat on the system, damning it for not caring in the face of such human deprivation. And he attacked our apathy and ignorance, swearing that he wouldn’t sleep until everyone woke up to the horrors that the people of Ethiopia were living on a daily basis.
Geldof helped shake up the status quo and force a larger response to the crisis. He slammed the issue of starvation into the face of the larger public in Europe and America. And he changed forever the face of celebrity involvement in crises.
With his long hair, huge ego, gutter mouth, irreverence, and unyielding passion for the people who were suffering so badly, Geldof was a heroic figure, perhaps unexpected, but a role model anyway for the ability of one person to make a major difference in the world. He challenged politicians to live up to their pledges, and challenged us as regular people to help him make a difference. I felt his call, and the call of the Ethiopian and Eritrean people, to respond to this emergency. They were dialling 999; Geldof was just a dispatcher, and I took it as a challenge and a responsibility to respond. I wouldn’t have missed that call for the world.
What I saw on the ground in Somalia, combined with what I perceived Geldof and his allies to be accomplishing, was a powerful combination for me, a catalyst for what became my lifelong commitment to promoting peace and human rights in Africa. Which leads me back to Sudan.
In mid-2003, before conferring upon me the title of ‘enemy of the state,’ Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail (aka ‘Mr Smile’) and I were in his opulent house in Khartoum, sitting by the Nile River. He insisted there was nothing wrong in Darfur, noting that the Americans concerned with Darfur were the same people that erroneously accused Iraq of having weapons of mass destruction. We argued over the basic facts of the Sudanese situation. I told him of emerging evidence of systematic crimes against humanity perpetrated by the militias in Darfur and of evidence that these militias were armed and supported by the government. He denied everything, with that patronising tone and ever-present smile that earned him his well-deserved nickname.
But having seen the early results of genocidal policies in Darfur, I felt compelled to speak truth to power, to Al-Jazeera, to the world. Damn the personal consequences.
I made it out of Khartoum in one piece, thanks to one of the Marines from the US embassy who rushed over soon after the bellhop rousted me out of my troubled reveries. He drove me to the airport and made sure I got out safely. In the three years since then, the regime hasn’t given me a visa to go to Sudan legally. Nonetheless I’ve gone back repeatedly into rebel-held areas of the country,
But it took me a few more years to figure out that while food and medicine were crucial, they were not the sole solutions. I began to see the political roots of the lack of response from my country and the larger Western world. I was greatly helped in seeing that, as a very naive 22-year-old, by the organisation of the Live Aid concert in 1985, but particularly by the organiser, a musician-turned-radical-politician, Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats, who would later help organise the Live 8 concerts in 2005.
Geldof appeared to me like a force of nature. He was on the cover of my beloved Rolling Stone magazine and many others, swearing at the political leaders who were obstructing a meaningful response to the famine and its roots. He took on the system; in fact he spat on the system, damning it for not caring in the face of such human deprivation. And he attacked our apathy and ignorance, swearing that he wouldn’t sleep until everyone woke up to the horrors that the people of Ethiopia were living on a daily basis.
Geldof helped shake up the status quo and force a larger response to the crisis. He slammed the issue of starvation into the face of the larger public in Europe and America. And he changed forever the face of celebrity involvement in crises.
With his long hair, huge ego, gutter mouth, irreverence, and unyielding passion for the people who were suffering so badly, Geldof was a heroic figure, perhaps unexpected, but a role model anyway for the ability of one person to make a major difference in the world. He challenged politicians to live up to their pledges, and challenged us as regular people to help him make a difference. I felt his call, and the call of the Ethiopian and Eritrean people, to respond to this emergency. They were dialling 999; Geldof was just a dispatcher, and I took it as a challenge and a responsibility to respond. I wouldn’t have missed that call for the world.
What I saw on the ground in Somalia, combined with what I perceived Geldof and his allies to be accomplishing, was a powerful combination for me, a catalyst for what became my lifelong commitment to promoting peace and human rights in Africa. Which leads me back to Sudan.
In mid-2003, before conferring upon me the title of ‘enemy of the state,’ Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail (aka ‘Mr Smile’) and I were in his opulent house in Khartoum, sitting by the Nile River. He insisted there was nothing wrong in Darfur, noting that the Americans concerned with Darfur were the same people that erroneously accused Iraq of having weapons of mass destruction. We argued over the basic facts of the Sudanese situation. I told him of emerging evidence of systematic crimes against humanity perpetrated by the militias in Darfur and of evidence that these militias were armed and supported by the government. He denied everything, with that patronising tone and ever-present smile that earned him his well-deserved nickname.
But having seen the early results of genocidal policies in Darfur, I felt compelled to speak truth to power, to Al-Jazeera, to the world. Damn the personal consequences.
I made it out of Khartoum in one piece, thanks to one of the Marines from the US embassy who rushed over soon after the bellhop rousted me out of my troubled reveries. He drove me to the airport and made sure I got out safely. In the three years since then, the regime hasn’t given me a visa to go to Sudan legally. Nonetheless I’ve gone back repeatedly into rebel-held areas of the country,
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