Western Sudan - what is to be done?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Last night on NPR, they (NGOs) said there were "only" 150,000 refugees from Darfur.

apparently thats the number of refugees in Chad. There seem to be plenty of refugees still on the Sudan side of the borders, and some(Many?) who are still in their homes, having not yet been ethnically cleansed.


Legal note : yes, there are obligations to intervene under the Genocide convention, if this is officially called a genocide, and so states are reluctant to do so. I think we can agree that ethnic cleansing involving the deliberate infliction of starvation comes close enough to genocide to make the prevention of said urgent. I want states and the UN to act, I dont really care what they call it.

[RGBVideo]

It's been going on for the better part of a decade or more. Who the hell really cares?

There's no genocide, so I don't.

Originally posted by Ramo
Peacekeepers.

I agree.

[Edan]

Originally posted by Sava
If the US is so concerned about human rights we should intervene.

I thought we did.

Sudanese peasants will be naming their sons ``George Bush'' because he scored a humanitarian victory last week that could be a momentous event around the globe -- although almost nobody noticed. It was Bush administration diplomacy that led to an accord to end a 20-year civil war between Sudan's north and south after 2 million deaths.

If the peace holds, hundreds of thousands of lives will be saved, millions of refugees will return home, and a region of Africa may be revived.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/8808070.htm?1c

That's not to say this won't fail, or that we can't do more, but we've certainly done something

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Spiffor

That would be good.

Here, the TV media started talking about Darfur only 3 days ago, as a team of journalists sent their report after a week there or so. The tone of the article was far less accusatory as what it should have been. Sure, we only got to see the vsurvivors of the ethnic cleansing, and not the perpetrators, but it really didn't insist on the blatant: a government-made ethnic cleansing.

It may have to do with Sudan giving us something in the past (renowned terrorist Carlos), traded for France's neutrality in Sudan's internal affairs.

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The US has tended to look away, as Sudan has helped in the fight against Al Qaeeda, and has pursued a peace in the South.

That to me, is why this is important. We need to make clear that even help on other issues wont make us look away from genocide. The US govt has started to make some noises in this direction, but IMHO wont go far enough unless pressed.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Edan


I thought we did.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/8808070.htm?1c

That's not to say this won't fail, or that we can't do more, but we've certainly done something

But the concern is that to keep the accord in the South, we might ignore whats happening in the West. The parallel is with the Balkans, where we we overfocused on an accord in Bosnia, and ignored Kosovo till it was almost too late.

[Imran Siddiqui]

So because there are some incidents where it really is not feasible to take out a dictatorship, we should not try to do when it is much more likely chance for a successful intervention?

Again, the question is do we go and take out all dictatorships 'which are feasible'. There are a ton out there. Which do we decide first? What, the ones which have Sharia law? That'd go far to convincing Muslims that the War on Terror isn't simply a War on Islam. You have to be smart about it. Look at Iraq, it takes a LOT of work to supplant a dictatorship with a functioning democracy (which I assume to be the goal). We can't go around willy nilly doing it without being totally prepared for the aftermath.

[MrFun]

Who said anything about going about it "nilly-willy?"

Who said anything about changing the entire world overnight?

[Kuciwalker]

Anyone just saying "oh, we should invade".

[Imran Siddiqui]

So answer me this... why Nigeria? When there are plenty of other areas much worse.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
So answer me this... why Nigeria? When there are plenty of other areas much worse.

Political agendas, political interests -- you know how ulterior motives and interests get in the way.

[lord of the mark]

I would like to keep humanitarian intervention against genocide seperate from democracy promotion. The former while still controversial, is accepted by many as a point of international law. The latter, as motive by itself for regime change, is not going anywhere anytime soon. This does not mean the US and others cant concern themselves with democracy promotion, or that there isnt a concern with, say, the issues of sharia in Nigeria - but theres no prospect of intervention by force solely on that basis.

But genocide, is , fortunately, fairly rare. Even there it may not be possible to establish a universal standard of intervention - but we can go far in that direction, and should.

[Ramo]

Because they are doing such a bang up job in the Congo loosing control of whole cities?

I seem to recall a couple cities we'd lost control of in our current adventure, and we've (including the rest of the coalition) had over 150,000 troops in the country.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Political agendas, political interests -- you know how ulterior motives and interests get in the way.

If that were the case, then Nigeria would be far down on the list, where it is now.

[MrFun]

There are always exceptions to the rule -- sometimes we value human life more than material resources but that is usually not the case.

[lord of the mark]

more infor on legal status, from interview with Powell.

also some clarification in numbers -200,000 in Chad, 1 million internally displaced.

Also some evidence govt of Sudan is responding, in limited ways, to international concerns.http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?R...tCountry=SUDAN