Sudan solution?

I don't know enough about Sudan to venture an informed opinion, but I will say that having a foreign power intercede against a single side of the conflict (in this case the Janjaweed) is the very definition of becoming "embroiled in the conflict".

This sounds very similar to Clinton's solution in Yugoslavia.

Except of course with long term troops still on the ground there.

This sounds very similar to Clinton's solution in Yugoslavia.

Indeed. And people slammed him for taking that action. But did he do what was feasible at the time? Again, what are the options? 'peacekeepers?'

is the very definition of becoming "embroiled in the conflict".

I'm not sure that's the very definition. Perhaps the very definition is Iraq - now THAT'S embroiled. At any rate, whatever phrase you chose to use to describe it, what is the solution? Continue to ignore it? And for those who do not wish to do that, simply call for the UN to move faster?

x

Mia Farrow told me that all we have to do is pressure the Chinese, using the Olympics as a carrot/stick, into pressuring the Sudanese gov't, with whom the Chinese are heavily involved in oil ventures, into ending their genocidally complicit assholery. If you can't trust a Woody-ex on matters political, who can you trust?

I have no other knowledge or wisdom to offer.

If you want to compare the fucked-up-ness of Rwanda to this you might want to read the book by the UN forces commander in Rwanda, Shake Hands with The Devil. It's pretty good at illustrating the many ways in which the UN dropped the ball. One of the best books I've ever read too.

It's tough to say how much the Olympics/world-image incentive really compares to the 70-odd percent of Sudan's oil production that China's still buying -- there's just way too much of an investment/dependence there.

Mia Farrow told me that all we have to do is pressure the Chinese, using the Olympics as a carrot/stick, into pressuring the Sudanese gov't

There was once a country called Tibet.

At any rate, the Chinese already have the olympics. Even if we could take it from them, do you think they would rather have the Olympics (a symbol thing of little consequence) over Sudanese oil (a black thing of a little economic consequence)?

Mia Farrow needs to spend less time in Beverly Hills. IMHO.

It's pretty good at illustrating the many ways in which the UN dropped the ball.

And does the book suggest that UN intervention could actually do something in Sudan if the intervention was carried out properly? Can there be effective intervention without use of force?

Agree with Nabisco x.

Liu Guijin, China's newly appointed Darfur envoy who has just returned from the region, said: "I didn't see a desperate scenario of people dying of hunger." Darfur requires investment, he argued, not sanctions. "Only when poverty and underdevelopment are addressed will peace be there in Sudan," he said.

This put a chill up my spine yesterday.

BNW - agreed. I wonder how long he thinks this process of investment will take, and how many human lifes will be lost in the interim?

Again, didn't they do the same thing in Tibet? It's got malls now ...

Some nation with a capable military warns the Janjaweed to stop conflict immediately. When (and that's when) it doesn't happen, they send a force down there and f*&# them up. Then they leave, and say - "if you don't shape up in a month, we'll be back."

I suspect that these Janjaweed fellows do not have installations that you can readily fly in and blow up, being essentially a bunch of armed skangers. You talk about an air war, but I reckon that to actually fuck them up you would have to send guys in on the ground.

what do you mean when you say "fuck them up"? do you mean, like, kill them? or do you mean kill their wives and children and blow up their homes?

what do you mean when you say "fuck them up"? do you mean, like, kill them? or do you mean kill their wives and children and blow up their homes?

Agreed, it's a pretty simple model and it was a matter of when not if it would be attacked.

Certainly you're right - you'd probably need troops on the ground to do anything really effective.

But we're talking political feasibility here. If it's not feasible to get the UN to move, and it's not feasible to get any nation to commit to troops on the ground, then ... what? It's an easy out to say, 'if you do it, you'll kill women and children. But what, then, is your solution?

Chinese nationalism has been on the rise for the past 10 or so years, Beijing does kind of care about the Olympics, insofar as any attempt to prevent them from having it/complaints about them having it are viewed as expressions of anti-Chinese sentiment (see the US Congress' declaration condemning the decision to hold the Olympics in Beijing and the subsequent Chinese reaction). So using the Olympics as the "carrot on the stick" to force involvement in Darfur negotiations isn't really feasible--the gov't (and, maybe more importantly, the people) will view it as the West trying to stick it to the emerging nonwestern power because the West wants to maintain its hegemonic status. Additionally, China has no ambitions to be some great protector of human rights; to put it bluntly, they probably don't really care what happens in Sudan.

Pre-Iraq, the solution would probably be a NATO/coalition force. Post-Iraq, I think a lot of people are pretty wary of this kind of action because I think there is a fear that the US is always secretly pushing some pro-US/neocon agenda. This fear has a pretty strong foothold in Africa (see attitudes towards the Bretton Woods Institutions, etc.). I think we'll probably end up with economic sanctions (which seriously do nothing ever) for a while and some AU troops eventually, and while regionalism isn't entirely a bad thing, I think AU troop involvement will probably lead to a situation like we saw in the Congo. And if it gets that bad, the UN probably won't send peacekeepers until/unless the situation can be stabilized enough to guarantee they won't just get killed. The UN is terrified of another Rwanda, Yugoslavia didn't go so hot, and a lot of NAM countries are worried about another Iraq-style meltdown due to (real or imaginary) US agendas.

Also just to be nitpicky: the UN's impotence in these kinds of situation arise from the fact that the countries within the UN won't give it the resources/authority to act. The UN Charter has provisions for a standing army, but no one wants to actually let them have one. It's easy to blame Rwanda on the UN because they were on the ground, but I think in reality it's everyone's fault.

Agreed, and good posts.

Now here's the problem I have.

Those on the 'left,' (if I may begin stereotyping just to make a point), want something to be done. But they want UN peacekeepers, and they don't want aerial bombardment, and in the end what they want is simply not politically feasible.

Those on the 'right,' (at least here in the US), don't give a crap about Africa.

Now, don't go picking apart those statements too much, it's just a simplified story to get my point across.

At any rate, I predict that the Darfur genocide will carry on, and we will continue to shake our heads and wonder why the world didn't learn anything from the first holocaust.

But what we won't do, on both sides, is really ask ourselves the question - what, exactly, can we practically do in the future? We can wish the UN was strong. We can continue to ignore Africa. Done. What next?

troops on the ground are pretty costly and inferior if you have good satellite photos and a clear shot from the coast with a destroyer

I imagine occasionally the janjaweed forces do transport things and people via truck

I imagine occasionally the janjaweed forces do transport things and people via truck

Agreed. Shall we warm up the Tomahawks, then?

that would be my idea but I don't work for those people anymore

Just don't bomb the blue helmets.

Those on the 'right,' (at least here in the US), don't give a crap about Africa.

Doesn't really fit with Bush's sanctions though. This administration had made some attempts to broker cease-fires in the Sudan.

Well, the thing about UN peacekeepers is that when people are calling for them in these kinds of situations they're usually not really calling for what the technical definition of a UN peacekeeper is, they're usually calling for an international force to rid the world of evildoers, which we don't actually have. The thing that makes people want to use the UN in this is because the UN is not (well, not supposed to be) under the control of any one country so something that would be seen as aggressive and arguably out-of-bounds (like invading another sovereign state because they just won't stop that darn genocide) looks a little better than if one state or a coalition of states did it. The problem is, if the UN actually did go in and kill everyone in Janjaweed at the protest of the Sudanese government (btw, UN peacekeepers can only enter a country if that country's government allows them to enter), the UN suddenly wouldn't be so impartial. Does the UN have the right to violate a country's sovereignty if human rights are being threatened? Should it? These aren't questions that have been definitively answered. The fact is most countries value their sovereignty far too much to give the UN that kind of authority--because, remember, this is a precedent-setting thing. There are theories around developing a "third generation" of UN peacekeeping that possibly could handle this kind of situation but we've never actually seen it in action and I seriously doubt it's a realistic proposition.

My opinion boils down to this: the UN is not the World Police. I don't know if they SHOULD be the World Police. If we (and other countries) care about this enough to do something about it, we shouldn't be using the UN as a front for our actions (or using its limitations as an excuse NOT to act). Take it to NATO or a situation-specific coalition--this hemming and hawing about the UN is either naive idealism or stalling, depending on who's talking.

Re: sanctions. Economic sanctions do nothing. They are a political move designed to make it look like you're doing something when you aren't.

Take it to NATO or a situation-specific coalition--this hemming and hawing about the UN is either naive idealism or stalling, depending on who's talking.

Agree. So should George Clooney really be more specific? "Could the US neocon government, which is the only government that would even think of doing this, launch a few cluster bombs over there? I'd ask for ground troops, but I know it won't happen."

I really see private individuals/NGOs as more suitable for publicizing situations and supporting aid/relief/refugee efforts. I don't really care about their big plan for fixing the world they came up with while stoned.

My opinion boils down to this: the UN is not the World Police. I don't know if they SHOULD be the World Police. If we (and other countries) care about this enough to do something about it, we shouldn't be using the UN as a front for our actions (or using its limitations as an excuse NOT to act). Take it to NATO or a situation-specific coalition--this hemming and hawing about the UN is either naive idealism or stalling, depending on who's talking.

Very OTM. Let's not forget that the prosecution of "genocide" and the birth of the UN, roughly coincide, wiht the implicit understanding that it takes collective action to declare that genocide has happened and then to prosecute it. As Bosnia and Rwanda proved, however, it's not often in a sovereign nation's interests to agree, so what's the point? A NATO force seems to be the only possible solution, but Kosovo-style airstrikes aren't practical either.

I think the problem we run into in Africa isn't that we're uninterested, it's that we're disinterested -- we lack economic/political incentives to involve us, which means we also lack economic/political leverage to use. (Compare with our involvement a couple borders over in the horn of Africa, which has been deemed "strategic.")

xpost: UN peacekeeping tends to work mainly as a stall while some central government, weak and beleaguered, brokers with whatever opposing faction is out there -- ceasefire enforcement and whatnot. The problem here isn't just that no major force has any interest in stopping this (hence it's a "genocide" more than a "conflict"), it's that the central government's collaboration with militias lets them avoid being pinned down into any kind of plan or agreement -- even a lip-service plan -- that anyone can push to enforce.

I really see private individuals/NGOs as more suitable for publicizing situations and supporting aid/relief/refugee efforts. I don't really care about their big plan for fixing the world they came up with while stoned.

To some extent I agree with you, but all of us private individuals can publicize the hell out of something without anything getting done. There has to be some kind of direction to the publicizing, some kind of desired action, otherwise it's all just hot air. X

well, what about publicizing public officials' inaction? NGOs have used public shaming to encourage action on other issues.

also we all love a good public shaming.

well, what about publicizing public officials' inaction? NGOs have used public shaming to encourage action on other issues.

It's interesting. I talked to a British ambassador once and he said that the UK and US had absolutely no interest in Somalia, but that CNN really forced their hand.

So, if the media ... nevermind. How long is Paris Hilton's prison sentence again?

30 DAYS OF ROFFLES.

Instant Karma Save Darfur is out on iTunes now, from Amnesty International. If you can stomach Avril Lavigne doing 'Imagine,' you might enjoy this.

A British school teacher has been arrested in Sudan accused of insulting Islam's Prophet, after she allowed her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad.
Colleagues of Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, said she made an "innocent mistake" by letting the six and seven-year-olds choose the name.

Ms Gibbons was arrested after several parents made complaints.

A spokesman from the British Embassy in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, said it was unclear whether she had been charged.

Embassy officials are expected to visit Ms Gibbons in custody later.

"We are in contact with the authorities here and they have visited the teacher and she is in a good condition," an embassy spokesman said.

The spokesman said the naming of the teddy happened months ago and was chosen by the children because it is a common name in the country.

"This happened in September and the parents did not have a problem with it," he said.

The BBC's correspondent Amber Henshaw said Ms Gibbons' punishment could be up to six months in jail, 40 lashes or a fine.

The school has been closed until January for fear of reprisals.

Fellow teachers at Khartoum's Unity High School told Reuters news agency they feared for Ms Gibbons' safety after receiving reports that men had started gathering outside the police station where she was being held.

The school's director, Robert Boulos, said: "This is a very sensitive issue. We are very worried about her safety.

"This was a completely innocent mistake. Miss Gibbons would have never wanted to insult Islam."

Mr Boulos said Ms Gibbons was following a British national curriculum course designed to teach young pupils about animals and this year's topic was the bear.

So Ms Gibbons, who joined the school in August, asked a seven-year-old girl to bring in her teddy bear and asked the class to pick names for it, he said.

"They came up with eight names including Abdullah, Hassan and Muhammad," Mr Boulos said.

"Then she explained what it meant to vote and asked them to choose the name."

Twenty out of the 23 children chose Muhammad as their favourite name.

Mr Boulos said each child was then allowed to take the bear home at weekends and told to write a diary about what they did with it.

He said the children's entries were collected in a book with a picture of the bear on the cover and a message which read, "My name is Muhammad."

The bear itself was not marked or labelled with the name in any way, he added.

It is seen as an insult to Islam to attempt to make an image of the Prophet Muhammad.

Mr Boulos said Ms Gibbons was arrested on Sunday at her home inside the school premises after a number of parents complained to Sudan's Ministry of Education.

He said police had seized the book and asked to interview the girl who owned the bear.

The country's state-controlled Sudanese Media Centre reported that charges were being prepared "under article 125 of the criminal law" which covers insults against faith and religion.

No-one at the ministries of education or justice was available for comment.

One Muslim teacher at the school, who also has a child in Ms Gibbons' class, said she had not found the project offensive.

"I had no problem with it at all," the teacher said.

"I know Gillian and she would never have meant it as an insult. I was just impressed that she got them to vote."

Unity is an independent school for Christian and Muslim children and is governed by a board representing major Christian denominations in Sudan.

Cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad printed in several European newspapers sparked violent protests around the world in 2006.

"They came up with eight names including Abdullah, Hassan and Muhammad," Mr Boulos said.

http://sabbah.biz/mt/images/mohammedhassanWWE_01.jpg

"E-laj-eee-lah-el-la-li-la"

He said police had seized the book and asked to interview the girl who owned the bear.

There are so many things wrong here that it feels wrong to spend even a moment taking it seriously, but millions of men (including five Sudanese presidents) are themselves called Muhammad. Is that alright then?

Oh wait, Hassan got booted out of/left WWE two years ago, didn't he?

"Millions" = most common name in known universe

if anything happens to her, we withdraw all aid?

obviously that's an exaggeration, but srsly, talk about biting the hand that feeds.

??? WTF, Louis, are you okay over there?

this will end well

Like, you realize ... umm, where to start here

xpost umm

hah, i realised that i'd rather put my foot in it pretty much instantly. i have issues with ungratefulness, that's all. i don't think teachers will want to go over and help out if this is what happens. bring up the question of withdrawing all aid was merely a measure of how appalled i am that this could happen to an innocent person. it's not something i'd actually want to see happen. the rhetoric of exaggeration and all that.

i'm sure most of the aid comes from the UN rather than GB, anyway. for britain to at least cut down on supplies to sudan for a limited amount of time would probably be proportional retribution should the lady be killed or maimed by the state. my initial response came before i read that the punishment will probably only be a jail term.

Umm Louis I think you have still not figured out quite how you have put your foot in it here ...

... short version being that the humanitarian aid coming from the west is mostly headed toward the south of the Sudan -- i.e., the exact people the Kharthoum government is condoning/assisting genocide/displacement of -- so cutting it off would just be doing the regime a great big favor, basically

"release this teacher, or else those people you are trying to kill will die"

as far as i can see, my suggestion that britain might consider temporarily withdrawing aid should one of its citizens be harmed by a foreign state was hasty and ill-judged, but i can't find anything else wrong. if there's any implicit prejudice in my rhetoric i assure you it's completely unintentional.

ohhh shit xxpost

:(

next time i'll fact-check before spouting off

if anything happens to her we create a memorial fund to further her work?

tbh i feel schooled

Hahaha it's okay, I'm just a little mystified -- when you heard about "genocide" in the Sudan, who did you think was behind it??? It's not like a famine we're talking about!

xpost - just so you know, this isn't some arcane "I schooled you" point -- it's, like, the whole issue

I know. I don't mean that you've gone out of your way to catch me out; I just feel a bit silly, and glad that you've set me right. I'm aware that there is a genocidal regime in charge, but I assumed the aid was somehow being routed through it. Which, in retrospect, was a lazy piece of thinking.

The situation in the likes of Sudan and Somalia is so very saddening. I can't think of a way out.

Yeah, "pay Ethiopia to invade" is not going to work on the Sudan.

the only winning move is not to play

dude is completely, utterly, depressingly OTM. The West, hell, what do we want? A bit of oil, perhaps, protection for our people, economic gain, yeah, possibly brought about through corrupt and reprehensible means, but we're not actively setting up camps to indiscriminately destroy those who don't follow our ways. I mean, the article may be painting a doomier, more pessimistic picture than it could, and I am willing to bet that with a few key figures removed the fundamentalist Islamic movement would suffer major body-blows, but in principle it is spot-on.

-- Space Gourmand (Haberdager), Monday, 18 September 2006 13:49 (1 year ago) Link

lol ken c. I thought about the other thread as soon as I saw this one !

ethan, i then realised i'd been had and refuted that about 2 minutes later, and then continued to refute it. you're painting me in colours no way reflective of my attitude towards, well, anything.

i.e. I'M ON YOUR SIDE. i merely have a habit of saying things about international politics that are ill-informed. among students or other less scrupulous judges i get away with it. among people who know what they're talking about i get rightly taken to task. i mean i ADMITTED i was wrong! isn't that enough for you?

lol who are you talking to?????????

what ever happened to humansuit?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/piles-and-piles-of-bodies-in-s-sudan-slaughter/2014/04/22/98ad7616-ca1e-11e3-b81a-6fff56bc591e_story.html?tid=pm_world_pop

https://apnews.com/article/sudan-war-military-rsf-conflict-khartoum-f12975eb72c830ed86ed6a7a49e9658d

Many dying as military and paramilitary fight it out

6 months of war

https://reliefweb.int/report/sudan/sudan-reeling-after-six-months-war-statement-martin-griffiths-under-secretary-general-humanitarian-affairs-and-emergency-relief-coordinator-enar

Sorry Sudanese people

Those waters had upended her life, but also provided a food option — not a desirable one, but one of the few left.
Water lilies. They’d been keeping her family alive for two years.

They were bitter. Hard to digest. They required hours of manual labor — cutting, pounding, drying, sifting — just to be made edible. Nyaguey could still remember her initial shock at eating them, figuring they’d be a short-term measure. And now, with the floodwaters holding their ground, she could trace a two-year arc of distress in what the lilies had become: sustenance so vital that people were slogging farther and farther into the waters to find them, before someone else did

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/11/02/south-sudan-climate-floods-war/

Heartbreaking

the number of displaced people there, and the number of refugees, are just devastating, overwhelming even. it's just a terrible situation. and of course the Wagner Group made sure to be involved.

Very sad

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67450204

The evil rebels have gained more ground, but now another group is saying they will help the government