Last week, Melissa Batchelor Warnke, an organizer for the Save Darfur Coalition, commented on a new study on the region in a letter to the New York Times. The study estimated that disease caused 80% of the deaths in Darfur. It is an unremarkable finding. Disease is most often the primary killer in conflict. And, as far as I know, nobody has claimed Darfur is the exception to the rule. Warnke’s letter attempted to preempt those that would argue the study weakens claims that genocide is taking place in Darfur. Warnke points out that “deaths by indirect means — starvation, diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria and infection — are as much a product of the campaign of destruction as direct physical violence”. In other words, the natural world can be a weapon of genocide.
This strategy is hardly new and appears in a number of variations. Take an example highlighted in Hugo Slim’s book, Killing Civilians: In 1904, the German colony of South West Africa experienced a revolt by the local Herero tribe. After the German Governor failed to put down the rebellion, the Kaiser sent General Lothar von Trotha to the territory with orders to crush the Herero tribe. The General’s strategy was both eloquent in its simplicity and total in its brutality. Outmaneuvering the rebels, he encircled them except for a small gap in the lines facing Omaheke sandveld. Left with little choice, the Herero people fled into the desert. Next, Trotha’s forces sealed all waterholes around the sandveld and blocked any escape from the desert with 250km of fences, guard posts, and patrols. The Herero tribe was trapped in the unforgiving sandveld with no means of survival or escape. Eventually, Trotha would order his forces on the border of the sandveld to kill all Herero on sight. Thomas Pakenham describes the effect of the General’s strategy: “German patrols encountered the remnants of the Herero people trying to break back west to their land and water, walking skeletons who were shot or bayoneted as a matter of course”. The environment was an effective weapon, before the 1904 rebellion Hereros numbered 80,000 in South West Africa. In 1911, that number was 15,000.
Source
Slim, Hugo. 2007. Killing Civilians: Method, Madness and Morality in War. C. Hurst & Company, Publishers, Limited.
Christopher Albon is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
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