Back to Square One. Again.
Need we, however, be surprised? Given the background, given the reluctance, the foot-dragging, the anguished attempts of the western world, slapped back time and again in its rescue attempts by the United Nations' delicacy and tact directed toward the feelings of the Khartoum government?Now there's an interesting bit of values-weighing on a humanitarian scale; the aggrieved feelings of the Sudanese Islamist government, tipped heavily in favour over the plight of millions of black Sudanese condemned to upheaval, rape, death.
But there it is. Deal. No deal. Hand over the money, thank you very much.
Oil-rich Sudan, encouraged by its patron China, more than willing to assist with marketing and vital infrastructure, is deigning to accept funds from United Nations and just incidentally western sources, to pay for the upkeep of African Union troops. Those same ill-trained and under-funded and incapable African Union troops who had initially pleaded with the UN for additional troops to assist them in their peace-keeping role in Darfur.
"After the commitments we have received (from African countries), we will not have to resort to non-African forces"; thus saith Alpha Oumar Konare, the African Union Commission chairman, after meeting with Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir. It is the fear, after all, that non-African troops posted with the UN may not be averse to using force against Sudanese militias and the Janjaweed as they pursue the horribly victimized Darfurians, while African Union troops are always ready to stand back and helplessly observe the ongoing carnage.
After four years of internal conflict leaving hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, and refugees living in squalid camps where they are still being attacked at will both by government troops in aerial bombing attacks and mounted Janjaweed, nothing has yet been put in place to assure protection for black Darfurians. While the world watches, in fascinated horror.
We do have a duty to protect. This is what the United Nations functions on behalf of; world stability, protection of the vulnerable.
The situation is so unstable, so volatile, so fraught with ongoing danger for these displaced and helpless people that, should the deployment of UN troops, to augment those of the existing AU troops, for a total of 26,000 take place, it would represent the world's largest peacekeeping mission. But then, the catastrophic carnage that has been occurring, undeterred, in Darfur also represents the world's greatest humanitarian crisis - for the time being.
But then, huff-huff, there's a principle of sovereignty at stake here. A country should be free to administer its own internal problems, and settle dissent by whatever means come to hand. And a UN force of any significant numbers could be construed as a blatant violation of the country's sovereignty. Paramount, after all, over the mere matter of what has been variously named a humanitarian disaster of immense proportions, or variously, a deliberate genocide.
Just desserts, after all, for a proportion of a country's population which, having perceived themselves and their needs being neglected by their government, and spurred on by a growing incidence of raids on their farming communities by herding Arabs, took up arms in the demand for an equal share of national resources.
A minority population in such countries is expected to be neither seen nor heard. And expected too, to suffer the indignities inherent in neglect and the violent wresting away of what few resources they have historically possessed.
And the world looks on.
Labels: Justice, Troublespots, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Monday, August 13, 2007
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