I think it’s a stretch, however, to say that Mamdani is exploiting Darfur. I imagine his intellectual enthusiasm for the subject stems from the fact that American activism around Darfur illustrates an intersection of different political forces that are particular to the era of the GWOT. Has he skewed major facts in the service of this enthusiasm? My impression is no.

Also, you may be right that Darfur advocates are “doing nothing more objectionable than what hundreds, even thousands, of American civic activists do every day”. Still, the movement is different from other lobbies I can think of, in that the majority of people backing it have no direct stake in what happens in Sudan. (Maybe Free Tibet is comparable.) In most cases, foreign policy advocates have some sort of connection to the countries they talk about. I think that difference is very interesting and merits the kind of energy that Mamdani and everyone on this blog are devoting to it.

I read this thing of Alex Harmon Snow you referred to! It was interesting and refreshing to read such a biased piece, which often does not refer to the sources the conclusions are based on. But on the other hand, some of the conclusions have a core of truth. For example, the cargo ship hijacked by Somali pirates (that is what they are) which according to some sources was loaded with military hardware including tanks for the South Sudanese government (probably in order to strenghen its military capacity versus the army of Omar El Beshir’s Northerners). How come it was owned by an Israeli and the whole story behind it is very interesting and points (to my best knowledge) towards the grey zone where intelligence services wishing to cover their moves are operating. It could very well be one example of CIA clandestine operation supporting the Southerners against the North and Omar El Beshir’s government paid by the Americans. One example, maybe, of an American hidden hand playing in the quagmire of Sudanese entangled politics.