“Gration Must Go” is the call that has just been put out by some U.S.-based Darfur advocates – including people that, I should disclose, I respect the work of. They are sincere people, genuinely committed to improving the lives of people in Darfur. And yet I think that in making this call they are setting their considerable advocacy skills in the wrong direction.

I am drafting a proper piece on this issue now, and in the likely event it doesn’t get published anywhere else, I will post it here. But my concern is that we have been through all this before – – to the benefit of no one but Khartoum.

In part, the call for Gration’s removal comes from his statement before a press briefing on Wednesday that “What we see [in Darfur] is the remnants of genocide.” This launched the advocacy “twittersphere” into a debate on whether Darfur was an ongoing genocide – a fight that was played out between the U.S. and the rest of the world back in 2004. The result was a divided international community that couldn’t pull together with one voice against Khartoum.

However, the focus on Gration himself is also symptomatic of another recurring miscalculation by portions of the advocacy community – namely to put more value in the role of a Special Envoy than it really deserves. If President Obama disagrees with Gration’s approach, he has the ability to pull Gration back in line. If he doesn’t, then advocates should realise that their real beef is with Obama’s policy, not with Gration himself.