Devil Advocates

Brian Steidle says it takes more than talk to end genocide.

by Sam Adams

LENS CRAFTER: Former U.S. Marine Brian Steidle documented the crisis in Darfur during his time as a military observer. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

To Annie Sundberg, a documentary is no different than a feature film. It needs a plot, a character arc, a series of twists and revelations. And it needs a hero, a central figure through whose eyes the audience can forge a connection with a complex and sometimes confounding subject.

Sundberg could hardly ask for a better hero than Brian Steidle, the former U.S. Marine whose chilling photographs brought the horrors of the genocide in Sudan's Darfur region to the American public. A middle-class kid from a military family, Steidle was hardly a born activist. But the things he saw have turned him into the documentary equivalent of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.

The Devil Came on Horseback, which Sundberg co-directed with Ricki Stern, uses Steidle as a stand-in for Americans who have heard about the crisis in Darfur but have yet to take action. "Brian is perfect for an American audience as a way into an African affairs story," she says, perched on a seat in a Sundance hotel. "He's this everyday guy who happened to go over for a paycheck."

The paycheck in question was from the African Union, where Steidle took a job as an unarmed military observer in 2004, answering an ad that called for a "patriot, leader, soldier." Toward the beginning of his six-month tour, Steidle heard reports of clashes between government forces and janjaweed rebels — with high civilian casualties. But it wasn't until he relocated to western Darfur that he saw the carnage with his own eyes.

"I had never seen things like that before," he recalls. "A government bombing their own villages, burning and raping and killing. I had no idea I was going to be photographing dead bodies every day."

Officially forbidden to intervene, the former soldier chafed against the restrictions of his position. Instead, he took pictures, documenting the devastating loss of life and dignity.

Even then, Steidle didn't think much about his photographs. He assumed he was one of many documenting the escalating crisis, and that he would return home to an outraged country. Instead, he found silence. "I figured that somebody must have shared the information," he remembers. "But nobody was getting the news. No photographs had traveled out. There was absolutely nothing."

At the encouragement of a family friend, Steidle showed his photos to The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, whose column on Steidle was accompanied by several of his images. The response was instantaneous, but it was also fleeting. "We were everywhere for the first month and a half," Steidle says. "And then it died out." After months of hemming and hawing, Bush administration officials finally used the word "genocide" to describe the systematic killing and displacement of Darfur's population, a determination that, according to the U.N. Convention on Genocide, compels military intervention. But still, there was nothing. "I was hoping that when this stuff hit the media, our government would do more to stop it," Steidle says. "And it hasn't."

The Devil Came on Horseback's second half charts Steidle's growing loss of faith in his country's government, as months pass without decisive action. "They've done a really good job of making the movie go along with what I was actually feeling," he says. "At around 45 minutes, the audience begins to be frustrated, all this rage is building up inside of them, and that's exactly what I was feeling on the ground."

Sundberg says she and Stern "wanted people to have that kind of response, so they feel as Brian does. A certain sense of outrage, a compulsion to protect civilians on the ground."

Steidle says the options for action are numerous. Military intervention by a U.N. force is one, as are economic sanctions. He and Sundberg both stress the importance of petitioning companies and institutions to divest from companies whose proceeds fund the Sudanese government. Steidle names Fidelity, whose mutual funds are heavily invested in PetroChina, and international telecom funds that include Mobitel and Sudatel, which deactivate cell phone towers before government troops attack so that their targets cannot call for help. Public pressure is growing, but the Sudanese government has insulated itself by doling out historical information on al-Qaida's activities within the country in the 1990s, decreasing the U.S.'s willingness to antagonize them.

"I don't think there's been a social movement this large since apartheid in this country," Steidle says. "There's that much of a public outcry. But it's still not loud enough. So it has to be that much more."

(s_adams@citypaper.net)

The Devil Came on Horseback opens Friday at Ritz at the Bourse. See Sam Adams' review on p. 42.