Sudan To Choose Who “Intervenes” in Their Crimes?
Posted November 17, 2006 on 3:24 pm | In the category Uncategorized, DARFUR, Genocide, China, Africa | by KiwiRoll over George Orwell, newspeak has reached a new high.
Earlier today the Chinese government said that it was up to the Sudanese if the UN would be permitted to prevent the Sudanese government from prosecuting its genocide in Darfur. If that weren’t sufficiently perverse, the Chinese added that Beijing promised to use its seat on the UN security council to “continuously play a constructive roll” in Darfur.
Now the Sudanese are so confident of their oil-for-genocide pact with the Chinese that they have just suggested negotiations begin for “…all financial, material, logistic or technical assistance from the UN in order to strengthen the AU mission in Darfur.”
Confused? Well, don’t be. The Organization of African Unity mission is unlikely to do anything to interdict the Sudanese government so why not make them comfortable? The Sudanese Foreign Minister has made it clear that “there should be no talk about a mixed [UN/AU] force”.
He also wants to discuss the AU missions size and composition. There is no agreement on anything until he’s satisfied. He told the BBC there would be no UN troops.
To drive home the point the Sudanese Defense Minister, Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, said Darfur would become an “invaders’ graveyard” if a UN peacekeeping force was sent there.
Well, surely the UN won’t tolerate being instructed by the very government it seeks to constrain? Yeah, right. It is a good bet that the UN will do the rolling over in this situation. They will try to put a good PR face on this and kick the can a further few months down the road.
Think not? Well, the UN’s head-dude-on-the-scene is no longer on the scene : “UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland has cut short his trip to Darfur after Sudan’s government told him it would be too dangerous for him to travel outside the region’s major towns.” according to the BBC.
And in a few months the death toll will be up from the current 200,000-plus and the refugee count will be more than the present 3,000,000-plus.
And the new UN Secretary General will announce that he is getting up to speed on what’s happening in Darfur.
Orwellian or what?
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Added to the “ambiguity” is the reports in the U.S. press that Sudan has agreed to joint UN/AU forces when it appears that is not really the case. This morning’s NY Times and Boston globe both ran pieces on the Sudanese “agreement” and they seem, at best, premature.
The role of the UN in all of this is sad, maybe even pathetic, but in some ways represents the difficulty (impossibility?) of acting coherently and strongly when one member of the Security Council holds the rest hostage. This is not the first time this has happened of course. The solution to the stalemate in the UN re: Serbia and Kosovo was a unilateral bombing attack by NATO, led by the U.S. Alas, it could also be argued that a similar stalemate led to the U.S. unilateral (ok ok - supported by the “coalition of the willing” or whatever it was euphemistically called) invasion of Iraq. And in some ways Israel’s continued bombing of Lebanon was enabled by the U.S.’s role in the Council.
Reinforcing Kiwi’s conclusion that the system simply does not work, but leaving the question of what to do to fix it - or the larger question - is it fixable???
Comment by Jeff — November 17, 2006 #