Alex de Waal and Nick Kristof come from relatively different ends of the Darfur advocacy spectrum. Yet last week de Waal’s Making Sense of Darfur piece asked “Can Sudan Activism Transform Itself for the Obama Era?”  and last month Kristof’s On The Ground blog began by saying “The Save Darfur movement seems to be losing steam. It is riven by internal debate, it is being ignored by the Obama administration, and it suffered a frontal attack from Mahmood Mamdani . . . ”  And I would add to this mix that quite apart from whatever is going on in the U.S. Administration, everyone I’ve been speaking with here at the AU is talking in terms of Darfur policy being “stuck” from the perspective of a way forward on the ground.

So how to get “unstuck”?

This week I’ll be running a series of reflections on the way forward. Assuming the answer to de Waal’s question of whether activism can transform itself is yes, the next question is if it should, how? Are we talking a radical shift, or has the extent of both the change needed to engage the Obama Administration, and the change needed to move the situation inside Sudan been overstated? And does this sense that the movement is floundering come from blockage at the activist end (do activists need new tactics to keep the movement going?) or is the real problem at the policy end? My money is on the latter, although invariably these things are related.

The first post will be from grassroots organizer, Tim Nonn, who has a proposal to pitch for a wholesale shift towards a strategy of civil disobedience. This very much focuses on the  – what does the movement need to keep itself going and thereby keep the attention of governments – end of things. Later in the week we will have people coming from the other end of the problem whereby the current impasse is primarily due to confusion at the policy end, regardless of the cohesion or otherwise of the advocacy movement.

Anyone who has other ideas is encouraged to either send them via the submit a question tab, so that I can post it, or use the comments function. However it has been usefully pointed out to me that this discussion could become a little difficult to manage(!) So a few parameters:

1. Let us start from a (rebuttable) presumption that anyone who can be bothered to take the time to write a thoughtful post on these issues has the concern of Darfuris at heart. Thus while we may disagree on tactics and strategies, we are all on the same side. I know there are people feeling strongly about the way forward and I want this to be a useful forum for people to reflect on different options and not head into the realm of personal attacks. If it turns out to be impossible, I’ll quit and head back to a one-way webspace for my own musings.

2. I will try to do a brief intro to each piece that identifies which of the two issues is primarily being addressed – i.e. tactics for keeping the movement going/increasing it’s power/building political will OR strategic questions of what policies to be pushing for. Of course these issues run in parallel and end up being inter-related, but clarification of which is the focus should help the structure of the discussion.

3. So the discussion doesn’t get too unwiedly, I’ll pose one or two questions with respect to each post for any subsequent discussion on the website to focus on.