A Split Sudan? It’s Spelled “Darfur”

Mohammad Ali Salih’s analysis of what has brought about the USA and the rest of the world to do nothing at all to prevent the splitting of Sudan in two halves, is singularly unimpressive (“My country divided“, IHT, Feb 17, 2011).

What is impressive is Mr Salih’s inability to spell “DARFUR”. Genocide or not, hundreds of thousands have been killed or forced into fleeing from their villages in Darfur, and even those that don’t want to believe in a direct support for those shameful actions against civilians by the Sudanese government, will have to admit it’s hard to win friends when you cannot guarantee the safety of your own citizens.

Compound with that the fact that the Darfur crisis was started just as the Sudanese civil war North vs South was drawing to an end at last.

Note also how the US government had no qualms in trying to help the displaced Darfurians, Muslims driven away from their normal lives by other Muslims. It is therefore apparent that it wasn’t Islamophobia the driver of outside intervention supporting the separation of South Sudan. It was Khartoum’s obviously pernicious policies in “dealing with” internal affairs.

And since even Northern Sudanese people with an international outlook like Mr Salih cannot even mention Darfur, the separation of South Sudan sounds like a very good idea indeed.

Troubled Times At The U.S. Capitol

With President Obama fully back on the campaign trail (will he ever thank his colleague Bill C enough?), shouting out loud “It’s my responsibility” often enough to convince everybody that it is not, it’s those poor Senators and Congressmen that find themselves in uncomfortably hot seats. When oh when will they learn to beware of clever guys?

Darfur Conflict Heralds Era Of UN Stupidity Triggered by Climate Change

The behavior of the UN regarding Darfur and the whole of the Sudan is nothing short of scandalous:

(1) The UN were unable to broker a peace between North and South Sudan, and had to rely on non-UN negotiators

(2) The UN could then do nothing at all apart from chatting, to prevent the Darfur civil war and genocide, started not by chance almost exactly when the North-South Sudanese civil war ended

(3) And now, the UN is trying to blame (global) climate change when it has nothing to do with Darfur, where the conflict is about the local vast, untapped underground resources, something that has bloodied Sudan for more than 24 years now (one wonders if this would be news for the “diplomatic editor” of a major British newspaper?)

There is absolutely no need to shove in “climate change”: look no further than the Sahel area in Niger, where rains have come back after the local government has finally decided to take care of its trees.

The downside of the absurdity of the UN intervention, its stupidity, is that time and money will be spent to tackle a non-problem, whilst the real culprits will get an easier ride simply by pointing out “climate change” is somebody else’s fault.

And so, as the actual issues are not taken care of, we can only expect failure about Darfur.

The Darfur Conflict From a Different Perspective

The Dirty Political Underbelly of the Darfur Conflict by Ayesha Kajee – April 25, 2007, Pambazuka News

[…] Darfur possibly has undiscovered reserves of uranium, bauxite and copper. Geological surveys also imply that Darfur has unexploited oil reserves, which may go some way to explaining the intense and sustained global interest in Darfur over the past few years.

There is indubitably a massive humanitarian disaster in Darfur, and the mobilisation of civil society around the globe is warranted and welcome. But it is worth questioning why this tragedy receives concentrated attention from the world’s media and why advocacy for multilateral intervention in Darfur has managed to mobilise millions, including celebrities from every sphere, when similar situations in northern Uganda or Central African Republic get far less coverage […]

Given the complex internal and external political implications of the Darfur conflict, the biggest losers are the Darfuris who have been killed, maimed and driven from their homes and livelihoods.

They are the ‘dispensable’ pawns of political manipulators from within and outside Sudan.

There is a crying need for multilateral intervention in Darfur, and an enhanced peacekeeping force with a strong mandate to protect citizens would bring much needed stability to the region as a whole. But the potential ramifications of such an intervention merit careful consideration as to the composition of the deployed force and its mandate. […]

There are several things I never understood about Darfur, including why there would be several rebel movements none of which able to protect civilians, and why would the Sudan government embark into such an awful adventure immediately after freeing itself from decades-long war in the South Sudan…the above is a good start to understand the situation.