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GUEST: Mahmoud Mamdani, the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University

On Monday, a UN human rights mission accused the Sudanese government of atrocities and characterized the situation in Darfur as a “gross and systematic violation of human rights.” Human rights violations cited in an accompanying report include murder, torture, rape, arbitrary arrests and forced displacement. The Sudanese government has responded by dismissing the mission’s findings on several grounds and by attempting to block its consideration by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Now the US and other nations are considering imposing punitive measures against the Khartoum regime for what they have called “delay tactics.” To date the atrocities in Darfur have claimed the lives of an estimated 200,000 people while over two million have been displaced.

While many people the world over are calling the killings in Darfur a genocide, the same language has not been used in relation to Iraq, even though the numbers of deaths are comparable. My guest, Mahmoud Mamdani has just published an article in the London Review of Books comparing the two conflicts. His article is called, “The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency.”

Mamdani’s article can be found online at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n05/mamd01_.html