darfur
 

i stumbled across this excellent blog with detailed information about what is going on around darfur, and political processes involved with trying to stop it:

http://passionofthepresent.org/

lots of links to information from multiple political perspectives.

i am still sorting through this, so havent got a particular debating point--perhaps one will emerge if others read the material and consider what is happening.

Could you give us some additional info about the situation at hand here?

i am hardly an expert in this area, but this is what i have been able to put together:

it appears that the sudanese government has been complicit in arming militias in the darfur region, which have been accused of acts that are in the strange zone that separates "ethnic cleansing" and genocide. these militias have been engaged in a campaign of astonishing brutality--the blog has a significant amount of information on them--and the idea seems to be to drive the southern sudanese population off the land--there are something on the order of 60,000 (i think) refugees from teh region over the border with chad, for example, and raids have been going over the border--food and medical supplies are running very low already--and it is turning into one of the major humanitarian catastrophes is the world in recent years.

there is a good argument that what is at stake here is control over the region in the context of a post-civil war sudan---because the region apparently has considerable oil reserves.

there are lots of problems with this situation: not least is the link between the sudanese government and the janjawid militias--which creates lots of problems for state-to-state negociations.

one clear point is that something needs to be done, but then the immediate questions are by whom and through what channels.
and this is where everyone seems to be stuck at the moment.

there was an earlier thread about this but it started with surface information and quickly got diverted into unrelated matters and was locked--when i found this site--which has lots of information on it, i figured i would post it here as a source for better information.

but seriously, i am not an expert on this, so i would hope that folk who read this far will spend some time looking at the site and--particularly--the network of links. and maybe would think about what the hell could or should happen there.

this is one of those situations where nothing appears straightforward.
except that alot of people die.

If you want to know more about what's happening in Sudan, I suggest these links:

http://www.pbs.org/now/thisweek/index_061804.html#video

http://www.democracynow.org/article....4/06/23/140223
http://www.democracynow.org/article..../06/30/1514237
http://www.democracynow.org/article..../07/14/1411202

http://hrw.org/reports/2004/sudan0504/

http://allafrica.com/sudan/

It's an unfortunate situation, and those of you who are concerned should definitely start contributing money to AI/RC/DWB to help. The US, however, should absolutely not start sending troops to fight their civil war for them.

my impression is that the situation is far too incoherent for the americans to entertain direct intervention--even if bush's wart did not already have the military stretched pretty thin, that is eve if it were possible. what seems to be happening is pressure from all sides to get the sudanese government to both stop arming the janjawid and to get them to stop the massacres. the problem is bad faith on the sudanese govts part.

meanwhile lots of people die.

These kinds of situations help clarify the terms "strategic self-interest" and "hypocrisy".
Its a sad commentary on the human race that no other government in the world is willing to step in and really do something to stop this madness. You'd think Rwanda a few years back would have shaken some people into action; now almost exactly the same thing's happening again, and STILL no one gives a shit.

still more information about atrocities surfacing variously:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3906039.stm

The UN's already agreed to start a preliminary mission there, so peacekeepers will probably be brought in within a couple months if the problems continue - and it looks like they will. The Sudanese government was supposedly trying to crack down on the militias but it's still not meeting international standards.

Plus no country is in the process of labeling the killings a "genocide" because that term mandates action within the UN; since they have strict guidelines of what meets genocide level their response would be serious.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3918765.stm

but if the information is true that is available from a wide range of sources and is collected together in the blog that began this thread, and in a number of others--not to mention from other sources readily available---that the sudanese government is actively arming and supporting the janjawid---then what is the u.s. doing?

here you have an actual humanitarian crisis.

but in this case the administration chooses to accept at face value pronouncements they know to be false from the sudanese government.

it looks like--again--a direct consequence of the pointless colonial war in iraq. resources stetched thin for no good reason, political consequences of the iraq war blossoming the world round--uk, australia, the us--and yet somehow there is no wolfowitz to create and sell fantasy scenarios about flower-strewing locals greeting their liberators.

and here we are: since we now know that every other justification for war in iraq has turned out to be false, what we are left with is the human rights argument.

the americans invaded iraq because of their great concern for human rights.

and yet here we sit.

the americans, such stalwart heros in the defense of human rights, do nothing.

in this case, a un sanctions regime, should it be implemented, will be perfectly fine. in this case, there will be no alternative sources of "intelligence" to call it into question.

george w bush, who were were told on television was willing to risk everything politically to rescue the iraqi people from oppression, has his secretary of state being as mollifying as possible in this situation.

how do you explain this discrepancy?
it cant be oil--the sudan has LOTS of it.
then what is the problem?



no wonder most of the planet hates this administration.

I think today's cartoon by Ted Rall pretty well sums it up:

http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com.../ltr040722.gif

I strongly disagree with your point Roachboy.

To blame the Bush administration for not acting in Sudan is absolutely ridiculous! Bush has been ridiculed for acting in Iraq without the UN and a "coalition." First of all our military is spread thin, we can't go into the Sudan alone. Now Bush has left it up to the UN and the rest of the world, they sit back and they do nothing. To blame the Bush administration for this is laughable at the least.

There's no doubt in my mind that genocide is taking place and the entire world should take action. I know the US would do our part but we can't take the lead on this one, we already have our work cut out for us in Iraq.

Look, all the Bush administration needs to do is call it a "genocide" which would invoke the 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and get the balls rolling in the Security Counsel. This could then be an international effort which need not be lead by us. People have every right to blame Bush until he stops stonewalling this process.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa/07/24/sudan/

This is exactly what happened with Rwanda during the Clinton administration when they refused to call it "genocide" even when they privately knew it to be the case and nearly a million people were subsequently slaughtered.

http://www.democracynow.org/article..../04/01/1621233
http://www.democracynow.org/article..../04/01/1621238
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB117/index.htm