Bernard-Henri Lévy

I first met Bernard-Henri Lévy in 1979 when we were both involved in founding the Un Bateau pour le Vietnam committee. Millions of Vietnamese were taking to the sea to flee the Vietminh regime that was supposed to liberate them. They were called the Boat People. With hindsight, they were the victims of the most simplistic kind of anti-Americanism. And if the abuses of the one do not excuse those of the other, I think our analysis of the Vietnam war was a bit short-sighted. We threw out the baby with the bath water, as it were.

Anyway, Bernard-Henri Levy was there and I must say that, like everyone, I was at once fascinated by his brilliant intelligence, his capacity for analysis, his culture and his charisma and irritated by the impression he gave of “having a mission” and being inevitably right, and the ego that, at least, he did not hide. I should add that there were also some obscure squabbles between people that were incomprehensible to me. Moreover, I still don’t always understand this pointlessness and vanity. Our nature immediately draws us to friends and sometimes makes us assume stances that are not always guided by reason and, even if they are, those reasons are clouded by the heart. I am a loyal in friendship, and it’s not always easy.

Then, came the publication of Le Testament de Dieu, which impressed me a good deal. Time passed, and I learned that he was in South Sudan. I myself had been in East Sudan, trying to assuage the terrible suffering of Ethiopian Jews who were hiding in refugee camps, and I had met Dr. John Garang, the man who was leader of the SPLM, a democratic liberation movement that was at that time fighting for the survival of non-Muslim Sudanese, in Khartum. BHL was there, too. A smile of complicity.

So it was in this general atmosphere that I received a call from Bernard-Henri Levy, which did not surprise me. He was in Chad with my friends, François Zimmeray, Simone Rodan and Dominique Sopo, accompanied by Laurent Fabius in his impeccable white suit. And so, Bernard-Henri Levy called me because he wasn’t satisfied with just this jaunt into a Chadian camp, he wanted more. He wanted to see what he had heard was happening. And he wanted to see it from the inside, with his own eyes. He wanted to be an actual witness. He wanted to be able to raise his voice in all conscience and in full knowledge of the facts. And so to begin, whatever the risks, by going into the field, to Darfur.

I had just made an initial clandestine trip of over 500 kms from Chad into Darfur with the men of the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Abdul Wahid al Nur. This movement, founded in 1992 at the University of Khartum, was fighting for a federal, democratic, and secular Sudan!! Bernard-Henri Levy wanted to profit from my experience and my contacts. He wanted to follow the same route that I had.

I warned him that it would be difficult and trying. That didn’t worry him. And I must say, he was not disappointed. First, an unexpected day’s wait, 24 hours at the border in a kind of Fort Sagane in the heart of the desert, an improbable place, with nothing to do, under a leaden sun, listening to a telephone that postponed the arrival of the promised escort from one quarter of an hour to the next. Even the heartiest of souls might find this discouraging. All the moreso since I learn, meanwhile, that a skirmish has taken place at the point where Lévy and his friends (Gilles Hertzog and photographer Alexis Duclos) were to cross, and the passage has to be “cleaned up” and security ensured, as much as possible. I transmit the news and assure him that I had been through more or less the same thing, He confirms the event with the French army, and so he waits some more.

Obviously, the travelling conditions are, to put it mildly, spartan. But that is not the sort of thing that bothers this great observer either. He will be able to make full use of his fame and his journalistic talents. Darfur, the real one, not the one presented in the guided visits of Potemkin camps, will finally be in the news. I know the energy of the man of commitment. He will tell this story throughout the world, and his articles will make a great splash. He is one of the very rare individuals who has seen villages go up in flames, little girls raped, mass graves, people wandering around because they refuse to go to refugee camps of dodgy security at the mercy of hordes of government reinforcement troops or even the army. He tells of his astonishment at seeing the men of the SLM pay for what they buy in zones that are still free, without taking any livestock. He tells of discussions in the evening, about democracy and what it means, and the will of the people to see religion separated from the State—even though all of them are Muslim. Sometimes he sees women commanding men. Supreme elegance, he turns the fees earned from his free-lance work over to the SLM, whose president lives with little means, to say the least, in Paris, sometimes obliged to take up residence in squats.

To overcome the heat, the solitude, the fear. Then the bombing of the road on the way back, fortunately just after his passage (just as my oasis of departure was bombed by the Sudanese). But that wasn’t the worst. The worst was yet to come.

Bernard-Henri Levy stands up to join us–François Zimmeray’s Medbride and SOS Racism, presided over by Dominique Sopo, in organizing a meeting at the Mutualité before the presidential elections of 2007. I had asked my friend Bernard Kouchner who, that day, sensed that a Darfuri victory was near, to attend. The democratic candidates will come to sign a commitment and Bernard-Henri, to our great surprise, will read a firm message from President Chirac.

The worst, to begin with, was a tight little band of experts in «Sudanology» and self-styled specialists in human rights railing in the press and the alternative media: he doesn’t know anything, and besides, the names of some of the villages are misspelled. (There isn’t any correct spelling for proper names, nor direction signs in Darfur.) The places are always 5 or 10 kms further (but from what point ?), etc. In short, no one is allowed to talk about Sudan. It’s forbidden for men to feel concerned with the fate of other men. And finally, don’t mess with President Béchir, he could become even nastier!! Already nearly three hundred thousand dead, over two million refugees, but no, one mustn’t pronounce the words ‘crimes against humanity’, nor ‘genocide’ said the supposed experts, picking nits as to definitions and quibbling over intentions. Ocampo, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, finally put them in their place, these so-called experts, in 2008, and again in 2010.

The worst is also the politicians of every cast, from everywhere, with their contortions, intentionally full of Byzantine finesse. There are no more terrorists in Sudan, because Béchir handed Carlos over to France and expelled Osama Bin Laden. But what of Béchir welcoming members of Hamas, providing them with houses and camps? And didn’t Osama exit alone, leaving his men here where they are? And what of the official military agreement with Iran, that left the Pasdarans here? Didn’t we have to bomb a convoy near Port Sudan, carrying arms destined for Hamas? Béchir wants peace, they said in the chancelleries—but then why does he continue to bomb villages? He doesn’t seek the death of his people—but then why does he block deliveries of aid and send the humanitarians away? While petrol resources reap a manna of money, why does he continue to send his barbarian reinforcement troops and leave the care and feeding of his refugees to the international community? On the lands whose inhabitants he has wiped out, Béchir installs «Arab» immigrants, and the diplomats talk of a national sovereignty that renders its citizens the property of executioners. Some even believe Béchir will accept to hold a referendum of self-determination that will grant independence to South Sudan, where most of the oil and gum Arabic can be found. These are manufacturers of war.

Bernard-Henri Levy will be there for every battle. He forms one body with his political friends, he defies those disparaging voices, he organizes meeting after meeting, writes, vituperates, opens the columns of his review, La Règle du Jeu, to me as well as to Abdul Wahid al Nur, for whom his door is always open and who continues to live in abject conditions and whose situation he works to improve. When a commander of the SLM passes through Paris, he always wants me to take him to see Bernard-Henri Levy to express his regards. When one has few friends on this earth, it is a pleasure to see them. On several occasions, France has threatened to expel this freedom fighter, Abdul Wahid al Nur, on the pretext that he does not wish to go here or there to participate in negotiations whose inanity he is fully aware of and that cannot take place while bombs are massacring civilians. Bernard-Henri Lévy has always defended him. He has always used his celebrity and his talent to create a rampart, even a means of leverage, for his Darfuri friends.

To have a friend and a supporter like him is more than a help, it’s also a comfort in battle. There are always many who sneer as they sit in their Parisian offices, but few, very few, who stand up and extend a hand. At least, he does. Sometimes we feel very tired and very much alone, but Bernard-Henri Levy is always there to keep the flame burning.

Richard Rossin

Doctor, orthopedic surgeon and above all, humanitarian Richard Rossin has been the General Secretary of “Medecins sans frontières”. He is currently general Delegate of the Collective Darfur Urgency. He is a writer as well, poet, and already published various works, as Aleph bet, l’univers est une histoire d’amour (éditions Sens et Tonka, 2000).

Translation Janet Lizop

Photo 1 :  Bernard-Henri Levy in Darfur, Sudan to the village of Birmaza, speaking with Rocco, chief of the Sudan Liberation Army. (C) Alexis Duclos.
Photo 2 :  March 20, 2007. Return of his clandestine trip to Darfur, Bernard-Henri Levy at the Mutualité in Paris. (C) AFP.
Photo 3 :  In the village of Loukoubeké village attacked by the Janjaweed. (C) Alexis Duclos.