MAMDANI Mahmoud

Mahmoud Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and a professor of anthropology at Columbia University. His most recent book is Good Muslim, Bad Muslim : America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror.

The politics of naming : genocide, civil war, insurgency

> Essay first published by the London Review of Books on 8 March 2007

The similarities between Iraq and Darfur are remarkable. The estimate of the number of civilians killed over the past three years is roughly similar. The killers are mostly paramilitaries, closely linked to the official military, which is said to be their main source of arms. The victims too are by and large identified as members of groups, rather than targeted as individuals. But the violence in the two places is named differently. In Iraq, it is said to be a cycle of insurgency and (...) read

date of on-line publication : 21 March 2007