Darfur: it's more complicated than you think

Tue, 03/25/2008 - 2:00pm

As Mark Leon Goldberg notes, Mark Helprin's call for a strategic bombing campaign against the Sudanese regime (or at least the threat of one) is bizarrely out of touch with present realities on the ground in Darfur:

Ever since the Darfur Peace Agreement in May 2005, the conflict has proliferated from the government and janjaweed vs three distinct rebel groups to a conflict that pits a panoply of over 15 rebel groups fighting the government, former janjaweed, each other, and sometimes humanitarian workers and peacekeepers. Some of the janjaweed have joined the regular Sudanese armed forces, some have joined the rebels.

We like to impose a narrative of "good guys" vs. "bad guys" in such situations, but sometimes there are only bad guys vs. bad guys -- and the innocent people caught in the middle.

Blake Hounshell | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register
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and....

by Lure D. Lou on Tue, 03/25/2008 - 1:54pm

does the world just stand by and do nothing? Complexity is not an excuse, it's a challenge. There are still reporters and aid workers and other observers who know what's happening on the ground. Your message suggets throwing in the towel.

Here is the narrative on Darfur: World governments admit it's a genocide but do nothing. World protestors go bananas every six-months and accomplish little. History looks back and wonders why the US sent 150,000 troops to Iraq to get the oil but none to the Sudan which also has oil...but oh yes, the Chinese own Sudan's oil don't they? And we wouldn't want to upset the people who are financing our war in Iraq.

Rather than bomb the Sudanese I suggest first that we boycott the Olympics...and then bomb the Sudanese, maybe just for the hell of it.... let them sort the bad guys out from the worst...at leastthe innocents will have the small satisfaction of watching the monsters suffer. That's about as much as they'll likely get. History will also wonder where we hid our moral compass.

what about helicopters for UNAMID?

by savoheleta on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 11:01am

The international community can’t find 24 helicopters for the UNAMID mission so they can start protecting civilians in Darfur, yet there are some who would like to bomb Sudan.

Even though NATO members together possess over 18,000 military helicopters, Western countries that like to promote "human rights" and "democracy" around the world could not give at least one helicopter for Darfur.

At the same time, they are willing to spend billions on Bosnia and Kosovo.

This shows that, in the eyes of the Western leaders, some people are more important than others.

SAVO HELETA
Author of "Not My Turn to Die:
Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia"
http://www.savoheleta.com