First there were conflict diamonds made famous in the movie ‘Blood Diamond’, and then there were conflict minerals and (apparently) conflict chocolate, and now there is conflict booze. Don’t throw away your precious bottle of vintage red or amber scotch just yet, but in Darfur we’re witnessing this conflict driving trade unravel in a most unusual of ways.
Technically alcohol is illegal in Sudan, and you won’t see much of it – especially in the aircon humming capital of Khartoum. Yet aid workers are famous for being some the heaviest drinkers on earth. So how does one live up to the emergency-sex-and-other-desperate-measures lifestyle that they’re famous for? They get a fixer.
Unlike the recent NYTimes debate, these kind of fixers aren’t valiant local journalists fighting injustice, they’re more likely a local guy with a straight business- and relatives in a rebel movement. So maybe you can’t buy beer and spirits in Darfur, but you can certainly buy them in Chad. And who crisscrosses the border more than a proxy rebel movement waging war in a neighbouring country!
But therein lies the dilemma. By purchasing smuggled poison from these hardened desert fighters, are we do-gooder peaceniks actually prolonging the conflict in a neighbouring country? Is it possible that by cracking open a cold Castel beer on a Thursday afternoon I might be funding someone’s war?
‘Blood Liquor’ starring George Clooney and Angelina Jolie with a fake Chadian accent? Ha, I’d pay to see that…
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Can you find any fair-trade booze? Maybe something that’s been ethically smuggled in?