Clifford Bob

36 Foreign Po l icy

Clifford Bob is an assistant professor of political science atDuquesne University.

Which global injustices gain your sympathy, attention, and money? Rarely themost deserving. For every Tibetan monk or Central American indigenousactivist you see on the evening news, countless other worthy causes languish inobscurity. The groups that reach the global limelight often do so at dear cost—by distorting their principles and alienating their constituencies for the sake ofappealing to self-interested donors in rich nations. | By Clifford Bob

F or decades, Tibet’s quest for self-deter-mination has roused people aroundthe world. Inspired by appeals tohuman rights, cultural preservation,

and spiritual awakening, tens of thousands of indi-viduals and organizations lend moral, material, andfinancial support to the Tibetan cause. As a result,greater autonomy for Tibet’s 5.2 million inhabitantsremains a popular international campaign despite theChinese government’s 50-year effort to suppress it.

However, while Tibet’s light shines brightlyabroad, few outsiders know that China’s bordershold other restive minorities: Mongols, Zhuang, Yi,and Hui, to name only a few. Notable are the Uighurs,a group of more than 7 million located northwest ofTibet. Like the Tibetans, the Uighurs have foughtChinese domination for centuries. Like the Tibetans,the Uighurs face threats from Han Chinese in-migra-tion, communist development policies, and newlystrengthened antiterror measures. And like theTibetans, the Uighurs resist Chinese domination withdomestic and international protest that, in Beijing’seyes, makes them dangerous separatists. Yet the

Uighurs have failed to inspire the broad-based foreignnetworks that generously support and bankroll theTibetans. International celebrities—including actorsRichard Gere and Goldie Hawn, as well as Britishrock star Annie Lennox—speak out on Tibet’s behalf.But no one is planning an Uighur Freedom Concertin Washington, D.C. Why?

Optimistic observers posit a global meritocracyof suffering in which all deserving causes attractinternational support. Howard H. Frederick, founderof the online activist network Peacenet, has arguedthat new communications technologies help createglobal movements in which individuals “rise abovepersonal, even national self-interest and aspire tocommon good solutions to problems that plague theentire planet.” And Allen L. Hammond of the WorldResources Institute recently wrote that the combi-nation of global media, new technologies, and altru-istic nongovernmental organizations (ngos) maysoon empower the have-nots of the world, bringingthem “simple justice” by creating a “radical trans-parency” in which “no contentious action would gounnoticed and unpublicized.”

But even while a handful of groups such as theTibetans have capitalized on the globalization ofngos and media to promote their causes, thou-

Merchantsof Morality

[ G L O B A L I Z A T I O N A T W O R K ]

March | Ap r i l 2002 37

sands of equally deserving challengers, such as theUighurs, have not found their place in the sun.While the world now knows about East Timor, sim-ilar insurrections in Indonesian Aceh and Irian Jayaremain largely off the international radar screen.Among environmental conflicts, a small number ofcases such as the Brazilian rubber tappers’ struggleto “save” the Amazon, the conflict over China’sThree Gorges Dam, and the recent fight over theChad-Cameroon pipeline have gained globalacclaim. But many similar environmental battles,like the construction of India’s Tehri Dam, thedestruction of the Guyanese rain forests, and theconstruction of the Trans Thai-Malaysia gas pipelineare waged in anonymity. Whole categories of otherconflicts—such as landlessness in Latin America andcaste discrimination in South Asia—go likewise littlenoticed. To groups challenging powerful opponentsin these conflicts, global civil society is not an openforum marked by altruism, but a harsh, Darwinianmarketplace where legions of desperate groups vie forscarce attention, sympathy, and money.

In a context where marketing trumps justice,local challengers—whether environmental groups,labor rights activists, or independence-minded sep-aratists—face long odds. Not only do they jostle forattention among dozens of equally worthy com-petitors, but they also confront the pervasive indif-ference of international audiences. In addition, theycontend against well-heeled opponents (includingrepressive governments, multinational corporations,and international financial institutions) backed bythe world’s top public relations machines. Underpressure to sell their causes to the rest of the world,local leaders may end up undermining their originalgoals or alienating the domestic constituencies theyostensibly represent. Moreover, the most democraticand participatory local movements may garner theleast assistance, since Western ngos are less likelyto support groups showing internal strife and moreinclined to help a group led by a strong, charismaticleader. Perhaps most troubling of all, the perpetua-tion of the myth of an equitable and beneficentglobal civil society breeds apathy and self-satisfac-tion among the industrialized nations, resulting in theneglect of worthy causes around the globe.

P ITCH ING THE PRODUCT

The ubiquity of conflict worldwide creates fiercecompetition for international support. In a 2001survey, researchers at Leiden University in the Nether-

The Beastie Boys perform at the Tibetan Freedom Festival (Washington, D.C.).

Antiglobalization activist José Bové protests genetically modified foods (France).

Hollywood director Oliver Stone skips the 1996 Oscarsto meet with Zapatista rebels (Mexico).

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[ Merchants of Mora l i ty ]

lands and the Institute for International Mediationand Conflict Resolution in Washington, D.C., iden-tified 126 high-intensity conflicts worldwide (definedas large-scale armed conflicts causing more than1,000 deaths from mid-1999 to mid-2000), 78 low-intensity conflicts (100 to 1,000 deaths from mid-1999 to mid-2000), and 178 violent political con-flicts (less than 100 deaths from mid-1999 tomid-2000). In these and many other simmering dis-

putes, weak challengers hope to improve theirprospects by attracting international assistance.

Local movements usually follow two broad mar-keting strategies: First, they pitch their causes inter-nationally to raise awareness about their conflicts,their opponents, and sometimes their very existence.Second, challengers universalize their narrowdemands and particularistic identities to enhancetheir appeal to global audiences.

Critical to the success of local challengers isaccess to major Western ngos. Many groups fromlow-profile countries are ignored in the developedworld’s key media centers and therefore have diffi-culty gaining visibility among even the most transna-tional of ngos. Moreover, despite the Internet andthe much-ballyhooed “cnn effect,” repressiveregimes can still obstruct international media cov-erage of local conflicts. In the 1990s, for example,the government of Papua New Guinea did just thaton Bougainville island, site of a bloody separatiststruggle that cost 15,000 lives, or roughly 10 percentof the island’s population. During an eight-yearblockade (1989–97), foreign journalists could enterthe island only under government guard, while therebels could dispatch emissaries abroad only at greatrisk. India has used similar tactics in Kashmir, pro-hibiting independent human rights monitors fromentering the territory and seizing passports ofactivists seeking to plead the Kashmiri case beforethe U.N. General Assembly and other bodies. Lesseffectively, Sudan has tried to keep foreigners fromentering the country’s vast southern region to reporton the country’s 19-year civil war.

Even for causes from “important” countries, mediaaccess—and therefore global attention—remains high-ly uneven. Money makes a major difference, allowingwealthier movements to pay for media events, foreignlobbying trips, and overseas offices, while others canbarely afford places to meet. For example, long-termsupport from Portugal helped the East Timorese even-tually catch the world’s attention; other Indonesianseparatist movements have not had such steady

friends. And international prizessuch as the Goldman Environ-mental Prize, the Robert F.Kennedy Human RightsAward, and the Nobel PeacePrize have become importantvehicles of internationalization.In addition to augmenting aleader’s resources, these awardsraise a cause’s visibility, facilitate

invaluable contacts with key transnational ngos andmedia, and result in wider support. For instance,Mexican “farmer ecologist” Rodolfo Montiel Flores’sreceipt of the $125,000 Goldman Prize in 2000boosted the campaign to release him from prison onfalse charges stemming from his opposition to locallogging practices. Not surprisingly, such prizes havebecome the object of intense salesmanship by localgroups and their international champions.

Local challengers who have knowledge of globalngos also have clear advantages. Today’s transnationalngo community displays clear hierarchies of influenceand reputation. Large and powerful organizationssuch as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International,Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth have theresources and expertise to investigate claims of localgroups from distant places and grant them legitimacy.Knowledge of these key “gatekeeper” ngos—theiridentities, goals, evidentiary standards, and opennessto particular pitches—is crucial for a local movementstruggling to gain support [see sidebar on oppositepage]. If homegrown knowledge is scarce, local move-ments may try to link themselves to a sympathetic andsavvy outsider, such as a visiting journalist, mission-ary, or academic. Some Latin American indigenousgroups, including Ecuador’s Huaoroni and Cofán,Brazil’s Kayapó, and others, have benefited from thekindness of such strangers, who open doors and guidetheir way among international networks.

Small local groups with few connections orresources have more limited options for raising inter-national awareness and thus may turn to protest. Yetdomestic demonstrations often go unseen abroad.

Global civil society is not an open forum marked by

altruism, but a Darwinian marketplace where legions of

groups vie for scarce attention, sympathy, and money.


If the Cause Fits

T he world’s largest international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) often developdocuments detailing their criteria for selecting the local causes, clients, and movements towhich they will lend support. Herewith are two examples: The first is from Human Rights

Watch (HRW), a New York–based organization founded in 1978 and dedicated to “protecting thehuman rights of people around the world,” and the second is from the Sierra Club, a San Francisco–basedenvironmental group with some 700,000 members worldwide and founded in 1892.

Excerpt From Human Rights Watch’sWorld Report 2001

The failure to include a particular country or issue often reflects no more than staffing limitationsand should not be taken as commentary on the significance of the problem. There are many serioushuman rights violations that Human Rights Watch simply lacks the capacity to address. Other fac-tors affecting the focus of our work … include the severity of abuses, access to the country and theavailability of information about it, the susceptibility of abusive forces to outside influence, the impor-tance of addressing certain thematic concerns, and the need to maintain a balance in the work ofHuman Rights Watch across various political divides.

“General Sierra Club Criteria for Involvement in Human Rights Cases”(A high-level Sierra Club staffer described this document as an “informal … starting point [includ-ing] some of the factors we weigh.”)

The Sierra Club’s Human Rights and the Environment Campaign is particularly interested in pro-tecting the fundamental civil liberties of individuals worldwide who wish to advocate nonviolentlyfor environmental protection. Such liberties are more closely related to our mandate as a grassrootsenvironmental organization. The kinds of rights that are most involved with providing these criti-cal assurances are those: guaranteeing rights of political participation; guaranteeing personal secu-rity; and guaranteeing personal autonomy (e.g., freedom to speak, organize, etc.)

The Sierra Club prefers to confine its involvement in the human rights area to pursuing civil and politi-cal rights of this sort for all people in all places who are advocates for environmental protection. Wewould pursue these as rights to be recognized and guaranteed under international law.

As a corollary, we would not involve ourselves in promoting—as rights under international law—“social, economic or cultural rights.” While these deal with important human concerns, they lackthe same character as pre-conditions for our work.

General Human Rights and the Environment Campaign Support Questions1. Is there a local grassroots organization that we can work with? [...]2. Does this individual or community group wish our assistance?3. Would the Sierra Club’s involvement help or harm this individual/community? Will our involve-ment make a positive difference?4. Is the environmental cause in keeping with Sierra Club policy on that issue?

If the above are answered affirmatively, then …5. Do we expect this to be a long or short term campaign? How winnable is it?6. Will Sierra Club members be sympathetic to this issue/country/community?7. Is there a U.S. government or corporate hook?

–C.B.

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Only spectacular episodes—usually violent ones—draw international media coverage. And since violenceis anathema to powerful international ngos, localgroups who use force as an attention-grabbing tacticmust carefully limit, justify, and frame it. For exam-ple, the poverty and oppression that underlay the1994 uprising by Mexico’s Zapatista National Lib-eration Army went largely unnoticed at home andabroad for decades. In the face of such indifference,the previously unknown Zapatistas resorted to armsand briefly seized the city of San Cristóbal on Janu-ary 1, 1994. Immediately tarred by the Mexican gov-ernment as “terrorists,” the Zapatistas in fact carefullycalibrated their use of force, avoiding civilian casualtiesand courting the press. Other tactics also contributedto the Zapatistas’ international support, but withoutthese initial dramatic attacks, few people beyondMexico’s borders would now know or care about thestruggles of Mexico’s indigenous populations.

THE NGO I S ALWAY S R IGHT

To improve their chances of gaining support, localmovements also conform themselves to the needs andexpectations of potential backers in Western nations.They simplify and universalize their claims, makingthem relevant to the broader missions and interests ofkey global players. In particular, local groups try tomatch themselves to the substantive concerns andorganizational imperatives of large transnational ngos.

Consider Nigeria’s Ogoni ethnic group, number-ing perhaps 300,000 to 500,000 people. Like otherminorities in the country’s southeastern Niger delta, theOgoni have long been at odds with colonial authori-ties and national governments over political repre-sentation. In the late 1950s, as Royal Dutch/Shell andother multinationals began producing petroleum in theregion, the Ogoni claimed that the Nigerian federalgovernment was siphoning off vast oil revenues yetreturning little to the minorities who bore the brunt ofthe drilling’s impact. In the early 1990s, an Ogonimovement previously unknown outside Nigeria soughtsupport from Greenpeace, Amnesty International, andother major international ngos. Initially, these appealswere rejected as unsubstantiated, overly complex, andtoo political. Ogoni leaders responded by downplay-ing their contentious claims about minority rights ina poor, multiethnic developing state and instead high-lighting their environmental grievances, particularlyShell’s “ecological warfare” against the indigenousOgoni. Critical to this new emphasis was Ogoni leaderKen Saro-Wiwa’s recognition of “what could be done

Uighur children celebrate the 30th anniversaryof the Uighur Autonomous Region (China).

Acehnese pro-independence protesters (Indonesia)

Popular Revolutionary Army rebels hold a press conference (Mexico).

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by an environment group [in the developed world] topress demands on government and companies.”

The Ogoni’s strategic shift quickly led to supportfrom Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the SierraClub. These and other organizations provided fundsand equipment, confirmed and legitimated Ogoniclaims, denounced the Nigerian dictatorship, boy-cotted Shell, and eased Ogoni access to governmentsand media in Europe and North America. In thesummer of 1993, as the Ogoni’s domestic mobiliza-tions brought harsh government repression, humanrights ngos also tooknotice. The 1994 arrest and1995 execution of Saro-Wiwa ultimately made theOgoni an international sym-bol of multinational depre-dation in the developingworld, but it was their initialrepositioning as an environmental movement thatfirst put them on the global radar screen. (For its part,Shell countered with its own spin, attacking Saro-Wiwa’s credibility as a spokesman for his peopleand denying his allegations against the company.)

Similar transformations have helped other localcauses make global headway. In drumming up world-wide support for Guatemala’s Marxist insurgency inthe 1980s, activist Rigoberta Menchú projected anindigenous identity that resonated strongly with left-leaning audiences in Western Europe and NorthAmerica. Her book I, Rigoberta Menchú made her aninternational symbol of indigenous oppression, help-ing her win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, year of theColumbus quincentenary, despite her association witha violent rebel movement. As anthropologist DavidStoll later showed, however, Menchú and the guerrillasmay have enjoyed more backing among internationalsolidarity organizations than among their country’spoor and indigenous peoples. According to Stoll,external support may have actually delayed the guer-rillas’ entry into domestic negotiations by severalyears, prolonging the war and costing lives.

Mexico’s Zapatistas have also benefited abroadfrom their indigenous identity. At the beginning of their1994 rebellion, the Zapatistas issued a hodgepodge ofdemands. Their initial call for socialism was quicklyjettisoned when it failed to catch on with domestic orinternational audiences, and their ongoing demands forMexican democratization had mainly domestic ratherthan international appeal. But it was the Zapatistas’“Indianness” and their attacks first on the NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement (nafta) and then on

globalization that found pay dirt in the internationalarena. (Little coincidence that the day they chose tolaunch the movement—January 1, 1994—was also theday nafta went into effect.) Once the appeal of theseissues had become clear, they took center stage in theZapatistas’ contacts with external supporters. Indeed,the Zapatistas and their masked (non-Indian) leaderSubcomandante Marcos became potent symbols forantiglobalization activists worldwide. In February andMarch 2001, when a Zapatista bus caravan traversedsouthern Mexico and culminated in a triumphant

reception in the capital’s central square, dozens ofItalian tute bianche (“White Overalls”), activists promi-nent in antiglobalization protests in Europe, accom-panied the Zapatistas as bodyguards. Even the Frenchfarmer and anti-McDonald’s campaigner José Bovéwas present to greet Marcos.

Focusing on an internationally known and noto-rious enemy (such as globalization or nafta) is a par-ticularly effective way of garnering support. In recentyears, multinational corporations and internationalfinancial institutions have repeatedly served as stand-ins for obscure or recalcitrant local enemies. Evenwhen a movement itself is little known, it can projectan effective (if sometimes misleading) snapshot of itsclaims by identifying itself as the anti-McDonald’smovement, the anti-Nike movement, or the anti-Uno-cal movement. Blaming a villain accessible in thedeveloped world also forges strong links betweendistant social movements and the “service station onthe block,” thus inspiring international solidarity.

Such strategies are not aimed only at potentialsupporters on the political left. The recent growth ofa well-funded Christian human rights movement inthe United States and Europe has helped many localgroups around the world. One major beneficiary isJohn Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Army, madeup mostly of Christians from southern Sudan fight-ing against the country’s Muslim-dominated north.Rooted in ethnic, cultural, and religious differences,the conflict has been aggravated by disputes over con-trol of natural resources. Since fighting broke out in1983, the war has attracted little attention, despitethe deaths of an estimated 2 million people. As late

Despite the Internet and the “CNN effect,” repressive

regimes still obstruct global coverage of local conflicts.

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as September 1999, then Secretary of State MadeleineAlbright reportedly stated that “the human rights sit-uation in Sudan is not marketable to the Americanpeople.” However, in the mid-1990s, “slave redemp-tions” (in which organizations like Christian Soli-darity International buy back Christians from theirMuslim captors) as well as international activismby Christian human rights organizations began toraise the conflict’s profile. The start of oil extractionby multinationals provided another hook to attract

concern from mainstream human rights and envi-ronmental organizations. Joined by powerful African-American politicians in the United States angeredover the slave trade, conservative ngos have throwntheir support behind Garang’s group, thereby feed-ing perceptions of the conflict as a simple Christian-versus-Muslim clash. These ngos have also found areceptive audience in the administration of U.S. Presi-dent George W. Bush, thus boosting Garang’s chancesof reaching a favorable settlement.

By contrast, failure to reframe obscure localissues (or reframing them around an issue whosetime has passed) can produce international isolationfor a struggling insurgent group. Two years after theZapatista attacks, another movement sprang fromthe poverty and oppression of southern Mexico,this time in the state of Guerrero. The Popular Rev-olutionary Army attacked several Mexican citiesand demanded an old-style communist revolution.But these rebels drew little support or attention,particularly in contrast to the Zapatistas and theirfashionable antiglobalization rhetoric. Meanwhile,Brazil’s Landless Peasants Movement and smallermovements of the rural poor in Paraguay andVenezuela have suffered similar fates both becausetheir goals seem out of step with the times andbecause their key tactic—land invasions—is toocontroversial for many mainstream internationalngos. In the Niger delta, radical movements thathave resorted to threats, sabotage, and kidnappingshave also scared off international support despite thesimilarity of their grievances to those of the Ogoni.

LEADER S FOR SALE

If marketing is central to a local movement’s gain-ing international support, a gifted salesman, onewho identifies himself completely with his “prod-uct,” is especially valuable. Many individual leadershave come to embody their movements: Myanmar’s(Burma) Aung San Suu Kyi, South Africa’s NelsonMandela, as well as the Dalai Lama, Menchú, andMarcos. Even when known abroad only through

media images, such leaders canmake a host of abstract issuesseem personal and concrete, thusmultiplying a movement’s poten-tial support. For this reason, inter-national tours have long been acentral strategy for domesticactivists. In the late-19th andearly-20th centuries, for example,Sun Yat-sen crisscrossed the world

seeking support for a nationalist revolution in China.Attracting international notice when he was brieflykidnapped by the Manchus in London, Sun foundhimself in Denver, Colorado, on another lobbyingtrip when the revolution finally came in 1911. Today,for well-supported insurgents, such roadshows arehighly choreographed, with hard-charging promot-ers; tight schedules in government, media, and ngooffices; and a string of appearances in churches,college lecture halls, and community centers. InNovember 2001, for example, Oronto Douglas, aleader of Nigeria’s Ijaw minority, embarked on a six-city, seven-day tour throughout Canada, where hepromoted the Ijaw cause along with his new SierraClub book Where Vultures Feast: Shell, HumanRights, and Oil in the Niger Delta.

What transforms insurgent leaders into interna-tional icons? Eloquence, energy, courage, and single-mindedness can undeniably create a charismatic mys-tique. But transnational charisma also hinges on a hostof pedestrian factors that are nonetheless unusualamong oppressed groups. Fluency in a key foreignlanguage, especially English; an understanding ofWestern protest traditions; familiarity with the inter-national political vogue; and expertise in media andngo relations—all these factors are essential to giv-ing leaders the chance to display their more ineffablequalities. Would the Dalai Lama appear as charismaticthrough a translator? For his part, SubcomandanteMarcos has long insisted that he is but an ordinaryman, whose way with words just happened to strikea responsive chord at an opportune moment.

Major international NGOs often look for a local

leader who neatly embodies their own ideals or

fulfills romantic Western notions of rebellion.


Most of these prosaic characteristics are learned,not innate. Indeed, many ngos now offer trainingprograms to build advocacy capacity, establish con-tacts, and develop media smarts. The Unrepresent-ed Nations and Peoples Organization in the Hagueregularly holds intensive, week-long media and diplo-macy training sessions for its member “nations,”replete with role plays and mock interviews, helpingthem put their best foot forward in crucial venues.(Among others, Ken Saro-Wiwa praised the pro-gram for teaching him nonviolent direct action skills.)One of the most elaborate programs is the Wash-ington, D.C.–based International Human RightsLaw Group’s two-year Advocacy Bridge Program,which aims to “increase the skills of local activists toamplify their issues of concern globally” and to“facilitate their access to international agenda-settingvenues.” Under the program, dozens of participantsfrom around the world, chosen to ensure equal par-ticipation by women, travel to Washington for oneweek of initial training and then to Geneva for threeweeks of on-site work at the U.N. Human RightsCommission. In their second year, “graduates” helptrain a new crop of participants.

Successful insurgent leaders therefore often looksurprisingly like the audiences they seek to capture,and quite different from their downtrodden domes-tic constituencies. Major international ngos oftenlook for a figure who neatly embodies their ownideals, meets the pragmatic requirements of a “testcase,” or fulfills romantic Western notions of rebel-lion—in short, a leader who seems to mirror theirown central values. Other leaders, deaf to the inter-national zeitgeist or simply unwilling to adapt,remain friendless and underfunded.

THE H IGH PR ICE O F SUCCES S

Many observers have trumpeted global civil societyas the great last hope of the world’s have-nots. Yetfrom the standpoint of local challengers seeking inter-national support, the reality is bleak. The internationalmedia is often myopic: Conflicts attract meager report-ing unless they have clear relevance, major impor-tance, or huge death tolls. Technology’s promise alsoremains unfulfilled. Video cameras, Web access, andcellular phones are still beyond the reach of impov-erished local challengers. Even if the vision of “radi-cal transparency” were realized—and if contendersinvolved in messy political wrangles in fact desiredcomplete openness—international audiences, floodedwith images and appeals, would have to make painful

The Dalai Lama (Tibet)

Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos (Mexico)

Indigenous activist Rigoberta Menchú (Guatemala)

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choices. Which groups deserve support? Which caus-es are more “worthy” than others?

Powerful transnational ngos, emblematic of globalcivil society, also display serious limitations. Whilealtruism plays some role in their decision making,ngos are strategic actors who seek first and foremosttheir own organizational survival. At times this priorityjibes nicely with the interests of local clients in far-flunglocations, but often it does not. When selecting clientsfrom a multitude of deserving applicants, ngos must

be hard-nosed, avoiding commitments that will harmtheir reputations or absorb excessive resources. Theirown goals, tactics, constituencies, and bottom linesconstantly shape their approaches. Inevitably, manydeserving causes go unsupported.

Unfortunately, the least participatory local move-ments may experience the greatest ease in winningforeign backing. Charismatic leadership is not nec-essarily democratic, for instance, yet external supportwill often strengthen a local leader’s position, reshap-ing the movement’s internal dynamics as well as itsrelations with opponents. Among some Tibetancommunities today, there are rumblings of discon-tent over the Dalai Lama’s religiously legitimatedleadership, but his stature has been so bolstered byinternational support that dissident elements areeffectively powerless. Indeed, any internal dissent—if visible to outsiders—will often reduce interna-tional interest. ngos want their scarce resources tobe used effectively. If they see discord instead ofunity, they may take their money and clout elsewhererather than risk wasting them on internal disputes.

The Internet sometimes exacerbates this problem:Internecine feuds played out on public listservs andchat rooms may alienate foreign supporters, as hashappened with some members of the pro-Ogoni net-works. And although much has been made abouthow deftly the Zapatistas used the Internet to get theirmessage out, dozens of other insurgents, fromEthiopia’s Oromo Liberation Front to the WesternSahara’s Polisario Front have Web sites and use e-mail. Yet they have failed to spark widespread inter-national enthusiasm. As the Web site for Indone-sia’s Papua Freedom Organization laments, “We

have struggled for more than 30 years, and the worldhas ignored our cause.” Crucial in the Zapatistas’case was the appeal of their message (and maskedmessenger) to international solidarity activists, whoused new technologies to promote the cause to broad-er audiences. In fact, for most of their conflict withthe Mexican government, the Zapatistas have not haddirect access to the Internet. Instead, they have sentcommuniqués by hand to sympathetic journalistsand activists who then publish them and put them on

the Web. Thus the Zapatistas’seemingly sophisticated use of theInternet has been more a result oftheir appeal to a core group ofsupporters than a cause of theirinternational backing.

Perhaps most worrisome, thepressure to conform to the needs

of international ngos can undermine the originalgoals of local movements. By the time the Ogoni hadgained worldwide exposure, some of their backers inthe indigenous rights community were shaking theirheads at how the movement’s original demands forpolitical autonomy had gone understated abroadcompared to environmental and human rights issues.The need for local groups to click with trendy inter-national issues fosters a homogeneity of humanitar-ianism: Unfashionable, complex, or intractable con-flicts fester in isolation, while those that matchor—thanks to savvy marketing—appear to matchinternational issues of the moment attract dispro-portionate support. Moreover, the effort to pleaseinternational patrons can estrange a movement’s jet-setting elite from its mass base or leave it unpreparedfor domestic responsibilities. As one East Timoreseleader stated after international pressure moved theterritory close to independence, “We have been sofocused on raising public awareness about our causethat we didn’t seriously think about the structure ofa government.”

The quest for international support may also bedangerous domestically. To gain attention may requirerisky confrontations with opponents. Yet few inter-national ngos can guarantee a local movement’s secu-rity, leaving it vulnerable to the attacks of enragedauthorities. If a movement’s opponent is receptive torhetorical pressure, the group may be saved, as theZapatistas were. If not, it will likely face its enemiesalone. The nato intervention in Kosovo provides arare exception. But few challengers have opponents asnotorious and strategically inconvenient as SlobodanMilosevic. Even in that case, Albanian leader Ibrahim

The need for local groups to click with trendy interna-

tional issues fosters a homogeneity of humanitarianism.


Rugova’s nonviolent strategies met years of interna-tional inaction and neglect; only when the Kosovo Lib-eration Army brought the wrath of Yugoslavia downon Kosovo and after Milosevic thumbed his nose atnato did the intervention begin.

Historically, desperate local groups have oftensought support from allies abroad. Given geo-graphical distance as well as political and culturaldivides, they have been forced to market themselves.This was true not only in the Chinese Revolution butalso in the Spanish Civil War, the Indian nationalistmovement, and countless Cold War struggles. Butthe much-vaunted emergence of a global civil soci-ety was supposed to change all that, as the power of

technologies meshed seamlessly with the good inten-tions of ngos to offset the callous self-interest ofstates and the blithe indifference of faraway publics.

But for all the progress in this direction, an openand democratic global civil society remains a myth,and a potentially deadly one. Lost in a self-con-gratulatory haze, international audiences in thedeveloped world all too readily believe in this mythand in the power and infallibility of their own goodintentions. Meanwhile, the grim realities of theglobal morality market leave many local aspirantshelpless and neglected, painfully aware of interna-tional opportunities but lacking the resources, con-nections, or know-how needed to tap them.

The leaders of local movements around the world have authored numerous first-person chroniclesof their battles and causes. For a fascinating account of the Ogoni struggle, see Ken Saro-Wiwa’s AMonth and a Day: A Detention Diary (New York: Penguin, 1995). José Ramos-Horta describes theearly years of East Timor’s struggle for international support in Funu: The Unfinished Saga of EastTimor (Trenton: Red Sea Press, 1987). Aung San Suu Kyi explains her experiences in Burma in Free-dom From Fear (New York: Penguin, 1991). Many of Subcomandante Marcos’s communiqués areavailable in Spanish and English on the Web site of the nonprofit group ¡Ya Basta!

For a critical account of Rigoberta Menchú’s projection of the Guatemalan revolution, see DavidStoll’s Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999).Donald S. Lopez’s Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1998) explores the price Tibet has paid for going international. Alison Brysk explainshow Latin American indigenous groups deal with the global community in From Tribal Village toGlobal Village: Indian Rights and International Relations in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford Uni-versity Press, 2000). See Clifford Bob’s “Marketing Rebellion: Insurgent Groups, InternationalMedia, and NGO Support” (International Politics, September 2001) for a discussion of how the Ogoniand Zapatista movements fit into the academic literature on civil society and nonstate actors.

Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink examine global nongovernmental organization (ngo) net-works in Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-versity Press, 1998). P.J. Simmons describes the growing role of activist groups in world affairs in “Learn-ing to Live With NGOs” (Foreign Policy, Fall 1998). For recent comprehensive surveys of the globalinfluence of nongovernmental activism, see Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, and Mary Kaldor, eds.,Global Civil Society 2001 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) and Sudipta Kaviraj and SunilKhilnani, eds., Civil Society: History and Possibilities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

A special issue of Peace Review: A Transnational Quarterly (Vol. 13, No. 3, September 2001) exam-ines the Internet’s impact on social justice movements. For the role of media in global politics, see RoyceJ. Ammon’s Global Television and the Shaping of World Politics: CNN,Telediplomacy, and ForeignPolicy (London: McFarland & Company, 2001).

»For links to relevant Web sites, access to the FP Archive, and a comprehensive index of relatedForeign Policy articles, access www.foreignpolicy.com.

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