The US first became heavily involved in Sudan in the 1970s, forging an alliance with the rightward-turning dictatorship of Jafaar Nimeiri, who Washington came to see as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, Libya and the region’s moves towards pan-Arabism.
George H. W. Bush, then the US ambassador to the UN, shared satellite imagery with the Nimeiri regime indicating possible oil reserves in the country’s south, and obtained approval for the US-based energy giant Chevron to do the exploratory work.
The Sudanese government’s desire for the oil money to flow into the central government’s coffers, instead of to the country’s south, reignited a north-south civil war, which would last 22 years and take some 2 million lives, mostly civilians in the south.
(...) With Khartoum having demonstrated its acquiescence towards Washington’s dictates by being the only Arab country to support the Camp David peace agreement between Israel and Egypt in 1978, Sudan by the early 1980s was receiving more economic and military aid from the US than any other country in sub-Saharan Africa.
(...) As a series of famines beset Sudan in the ’80s, Washington demonstrated the depth of its purported humanitarian concern by using its influence to ensure, with few exceptions, that Western aid organisations did not operate in rebel-controlled zones — keeping food provisions from starving people who lived in the “wrong place”.
(...) In fact, though the US alliance with Sudan cooled after Nimeiri’s overthrow in 1985, and broke down entirely subsequent to Khartoum’s verbal backing of Iraq in the 1990-91 Gulf War, Washington’s disregard for Sudanese lives has continued unimpeded to the present.
(...) Soaring rhetoric aside, the US cannot even be bothered to fully fund humanitarian operations in Darfur. In June, the World Food Program had to cut its aid flights to the region due to a lack of funding from wealthy donor nations.
Showing posts with label darfur. Show all posts
Showing posts with label darfur. Show all posts
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Sunday, May 25, 2008
why darfur intervention is a mistake:
His are good intentions but they pave the way to a problem from hell. Darfur is a war - a horrible war, but first and foremost, it is a war. Ninety per cent of the deaths occurred four to five years ago and the government and its militia proxies were the main culprits.
His are good intentions but they pave the way to a problem from hell. Darfur is a war - a horrible war, but first and foremost, it is a war. Ninety per cent of the deaths occurred four to five years ago and the government and its militia proxies were the main culprits.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
destination darfur:
Eighty per cent of the oil reserves discovered between 2001 and 2004 come from West Africa, where the U.S. currently procures only 12 per cent of its total supply. West Africa is a crucial site for U.S. interests, so much so that the U.S. is willing to be openly hypocritical about its promotion of democracy and human rights when it comes to the region.
(...) In April 2006, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warmly welcomed her “special friend”, Equatorial Guinea’s man of all seasons and many decades, Teodoro Obiang. Her own department annually chastises Obiang’s regime for corruption, human rights violations and electoral fraud. Despite being home to some of the poorest people in Africa, Equatorial Guinea is the third largest oil producer in the continent, whose oil the U.S. government hopes will flow across the Atlantic to power the U.S. The U.S. has been loath to put pressure on Nigeria for the very same reasons.
(...) Resource wars in the Congo (over diamonds and coltan) and in West Africa (over oil) have set the continent on fire. The U.S. has thus far engaged with these conflicts through Africa’s national armies, who have increasingly become the praetorian guards of large corporations. None of this can be justified directly as protection of the extraction of resources, so it has increasingly been couched in the language of the War on Terror.
(...) The Heritage Foundation lobbied for the creation of AFRICOM for several years, and arguably its work moved Donald Rumsfeld to consider an African Command. In a 2003 study entitled “U.S. Military Assistance for Africa: A Better Solution”, the Heritage Foundation argued: “Creating an African Command would go a long way towards turning the Bush Administration’s well-aimed strategic priorities for Africa into a reality.” Rather than engage Africa diplomatically, it is better to be diplomatic through the barrel of a gun. “America must not be afraid to employ its forces decisively when vital national interests are threatened,” the study said. Nevertheless, the U.S. will not need always to send its own soldiers. “A sub-unified command for Africa would give the U.S. military an instrument with which to engage effectively in the continent and reduce the potential that America might have to intervene directly.” AFRICOM would analyze intelligence, work “closely with civil-military leaders”, coordinate training and conduct joint exercises. In other words, the U.S. would make the friendly African military forces “inter-operatable” not only with U.S. hardware but also with U.S. interests. When AFRICOM became a reality, Heritage’s Brett Schaefer welcomed the “long overdue” move.
(...) In January, the Chinese Foreign Ministry released a White Paper that pointed out that unlike U.S. and European investment, Chinese finance for Africa would be driven by equity and sustainable development. Technology transfer, the entry of African goods into the Chinese market without barriers, and the entry of Chinese finance for development projects are the main elements of the Chinese strategy (also the main features of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the Addis Ababa Action Plan of 2004-06). With the U.S. and European aid at a low point and with resistance from the U.S. and Europe to compromise on the debt burden of African states, the Chinese proposal was welcomed in many parts of Africa.
(...) For people in the Heritage Foundation and in the White House, AFRICOM is as much a response to China as it is to the increased anti-terrorist efforts in the continent.
(...) China is not in Africa for altruistic reasons. A quarter of China’s crude oil imports already come from Africa. African governments are well aware of the competition between the US and China, and they have used that standoff to their partial advantage (when the U.S. would not act fast enough to get Nigeria’s armed forces 200 patrol boats and funds, the Nigerian government turned to China).
(...) China blocked votes in the United Nations Security Council on the ongoing violence in Darfur, although global pressure has now forced Beijing to appoint a special envoy to Darfur and put some modest pressure on Khartoum. The close relationship between the US and the leaders of Equatorial Guinea or Nigeria is repellent but not half as dubious as that between the Chinese and Sudanese governments. The U.S. government has, therefore, a potent weapon to wield against Beijing’s claim to be in favor of African development.
(...) Since 1984-85, the western Sudanese province of Darfur has been in a prolonged crisis. The drought of those years made it hard for pastoralists to find grazing ground for their camel herds. Battles over land went on for two decades before an embattled and split Islamist government in Khartoum armed the most impoverished of the tribes (who had begun to regain their self-respect through a virulently supremacist ideology promoted by a group called Tajamu al Arabi, or the Arab Gathering).
(...) These tribes began an onslaught against their settled neighbors, with Khartoum’s support. In a few years over a million people were driven out of their homes to neighboring Chad (the U.N. estimates that around 70,000 have been killed). (These numbers, incidentally, are dwarfed by the death toll and the population displacement forced by the U.S. occupation of Iraq.) The U.N. called the Sudan situation a “crime against humanity”, while the U.S., uncharacteristically, labeled it genocide. For a while the African Union was able to stabilize the situation, although it did not succeed in crafting a political solution to the problem. The African Union, created in 1999, has neither the financial ability to pay its troops nor the logistical capacity to do the job. The European Union, which paid the troops’ salaries, began to withhold funds on grounds of accountability, and this gradually killed off the peacekeeping operations.
(...) Professor Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University (one of the world’s leading experts on contemporary Africa), says of this: “There is a concerted attempt being made to shift the political control of any intervention force inside Darfur from inside Africa to outside Africa”. In other words, the U.S. and Europe are eager to control the dynamics of what happens in Africa and not allow an indigenous, inter-state agency to gain either the experience this would provide or the respect it would gain if it succeeds. The African Union has been undermined so that only the U.S. can appear as the savior of the beleaguered people of Darfur, and elsewhere.
(...) Meanwhile, it suits the U.S. that the campaigns to save the people of Darfur concentrate on the role of China and on what is often framed as an “Arab” assault on “Africans.” The Save Darfur Coalition in the U.S., for instance, has a report on the “Deadly Partnership” between Sudan and China but says nothing of the role of the U.S. in undermining the African Union’s attempts. The Coalition is more sophisticated than can fit into the Arab-African stereotypes, but its members include groups that are less careful (the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, for instance, is an organizational member; it has not yet tried to distance itself from its parent organization's role in the Gujarat pogroms).
(...) The Save Darfur Coalition, which is the largest U.S. umbrella organization, was formed in 2004 through the work of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Jewish World Service. People who have been motivated by the efforts of the group are aware of what is happening in Darfur. This is a worthwhile goal, particularly if it is able to bring a ceasefire and an eventual peace settlement in Darfur. But, the movement seems to have no viable strategy to do this beyond putting pressure on China and pleading with the U.S. government to take “tough” stands against Khartoum. The complexity on the ground is irrelevant.
(...) The heads of the Save Darfur Coalition and the Genocide Intervention Network (set up by the Center for American Progress) are all liberal Democrats who played some kind of a role in the Bill Clinton administration. The Darfur campaign enables them to distance themselves from the excesses of the Bush regime and yet preserve an essential element of the Clinton foreign policy arsenal, “humanitarian intervention” (as in the Kosovo war of 1999). For that reason, these groups have begun to offer the slogan, “Out of Iraq and Into Darfur”. At a forum in New York City on July 15, a young woman asked why the U.S. could not use its superior firepower to defeat the Janjaweed in Sudan. At the same event, the documentary film The Devil Came on Horseback shows the former U.S. Marine Brian Steidle photograph a band of Janjaweed militia leave a village and wish he could exchange his telephoto lens for a gun-scope to “end it now”. Private mercenary armies such as the International Peace Operations Association and DynCorp International clamor to cross the Chad border and conduct operations against the Janjaweed.
(...) That the first head of AFRICOM is the former commander of the battalion that led Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1993 is an ominous sign. Would a cruise missile strike on Khartoum (a replay of 1998) and an invasion of Darfur create a solution to the current crisis, or would it only create an Iraq in Africa?
Eighty per cent of the oil reserves discovered between 2001 and 2004 come from West Africa, where the U.S. currently procures only 12 per cent of its total supply. West Africa is a crucial site for U.S. interests, so much so that the U.S. is willing to be openly hypocritical about its promotion of democracy and human rights when it comes to the region.
(...) In April 2006, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warmly welcomed her “special friend”, Equatorial Guinea’s man of all seasons and many decades, Teodoro Obiang. Her own department annually chastises Obiang’s regime for corruption, human rights violations and electoral fraud. Despite being home to some of the poorest people in Africa, Equatorial Guinea is the third largest oil producer in the continent, whose oil the U.S. government hopes will flow across the Atlantic to power the U.S. The U.S. has been loath to put pressure on Nigeria for the very same reasons.
(...) Resource wars in the Congo (over diamonds and coltan) and in West Africa (over oil) have set the continent on fire. The U.S. has thus far engaged with these conflicts through Africa’s national armies, who have increasingly become the praetorian guards of large corporations. None of this can be justified directly as protection of the extraction of resources, so it has increasingly been couched in the language of the War on Terror.
(...) The Heritage Foundation lobbied for the creation of AFRICOM for several years, and arguably its work moved Donald Rumsfeld to consider an African Command. In a 2003 study entitled “U.S. Military Assistance for Africa: A Better Solution”, the Heritage Foundation argued: “Creating an African Command would go a long way towards turning the Bush Administration’s well-aimed strategic priorities for Africa into a reality.” Rather than engage Africa diplomatically, it is better to be diplomatic through the barrel of a gun. “America must not be afraid to employ its forces decisively when vital national interests are threatened,” the study said. Nevertheless, the U.S. will not need always to send its own soldiers. “A sub-unified command for Africa would give the U.S. military an instrument with which to engage effectively in the continent and reduce the potential that America might have to intervene directly.” AFRICOM would analyze intelligence, work “closely with civil-military leaders”, coordinate training and conduct joint exercises. In other words, the U.S. would make the friendly African military forces “inter-operatable” not only with U.S. hardware but also with U.S. interests. When AFRICOM became a reality, Heritage’s Brett Schaefer welcomed the “long overdue” move.
(...) In January, the Chinese Foreign Ministry released a White Paper that pointed out that unlike U.S. and European investment, Chinese finance for Africa would be driven by equity and sustainable development. Technology transfer, the entry of African goods into the Chinese market without barriers, and the entry of Chinese finance for development projects are the main elements of the Chinese strategy (also the main features of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the Addis Ababa Action Plan of 2004-06). With the U.S. and European aid at a low point and with resistance from the U.S. and Europe to compromise on the debt burden of African states, the Chinese proposal was welcomed in many parts of Africa.
(...) For people in the Heritage Foundation and in the White House, AFRICOM is as much a response to China as it is to the increased anti-terrorist efforts in the continent.
(...) China is not in Africa for altruistic reasons. A quarter of China’s crude oil imports already come from Africa. African governments are well aware of the competition between the US and China, and they have used that standoff to their partial advantage (when the U.S. would not act fast enough to get Nigeria’s armed forces 200 patrol boats and funds, the Nigerian government turned to China).
(...) China blocked votes in the United Nations Security Council on the ongoing violence in Darfur, although global pressure has now forced Beijing to appoint a special envoy to Darfur and put some modest pressure on Khartoum. The close relationship between the US and the leaders of Equatorial Guinea or Nigeria is repellent but not half as dubious as that between the Chinese and Sudanese governments. The U.S. government has, therefore, a potent weapon to wield against Beijing’s claim to be in favor of African development.
(...) Since 1984-85, the western Sudanese province of Darfur has been in a prolonged crisis. The drought of those years made it hard for pastoralists to find grazing ground for their camel herds. Battles over land went on for two decades before an embattled and split Islamist government in Khartoum armed the most impoverished of the tribes (who had begun to regain their self-respect through a virulently supremacist ideology promoted by a group called Tajamu al Arabi, or the Arab Gathering).
(...) These tribes began an onslaught against their settled neighbors, with Khartoum’s support. In a few years over a million people were driven out of their homes to neighboring Chad (the U.N. estimates that around 70,000 have been killed). (These numbers, incidentally, are dwarfed by the death toll and the population displacement forced by the U.S. occupation of Iraq.) The U.N. called the Sudan situation a “crime against humanity”, while the U.S., uncharacteristically, labeled it genocide. For a while the African Union was able to stabilize the situation, although it did not succeed in crafting a political solution to the problem. The African Union, created in 1999, has neither the financial ability to pay its troops nor the logistical capacity to do the job. The European Union, which paid the troops’ salaries, began to withhold funds on grounds of accountability, and this gradually killed off the peacekeeping operations.
(...) Professor Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University (one of the world’s leading experts on contemporary Africa), says of this: “There is a concerted attempt being made to shift the political control of any intervention force inside Darfur from inside Africa to outside Africa”. In other words, the U.S. and Europe are eager to control the dynamics of what happens in Africa and not allow an indigenous, inter-state agency to gain either the experience this would provide or the respect it would gain if it succeeds. The African Union has been undermined so that only the U.S. can appear as the savior of the beleaguered people of Darfur, and elsewhere.
(...) Meanwhile, it suits the U.S. that the campaigns to save the people of Darfur concentrate on the role of China and on what is often framed as an “Arab” assault on “Africans.” The Save Darfur Coalition in the U.S., for instance, has a report on the “Deadly Partnership” between Sudan and China but says nothing of the role of the U.S. in undermining the African Union’s attempts. The Coalition is more sophisticated than can fit into the Arab-African stereotypes, but its members include groups that are less careful (the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, for instance, is an organizational member; it has not yet tried to distance itself from its parent organization's role in the Gujarat pogroms).
(...) The Save Darfur Coalition, which is the largest U.S. umbrella organization, was formed in 2004 through the work of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Jewish World Service. People who have been motivated by the efforts of the group are aware of what is happening in Darfur. This is a worthwhile goal, particularly if it is able to bring a ceasefire and an eventual peace settlement in Darfur. But, the movement seems to have no viable strategy to do this beyond putting pressure on China and pleading with the U.S. government to take “tough” stands against Khartoum. The complexity on the ground is irrelevant.
(...) The heads of the Save Darfur Coalition and the Genocide Intervention Network (set up by the Center for American Progress) are all liberal Democrats who played some kind of a role in the Bill Clinton administration. The Darfur campaign enables them to distance themselves from the excesses of the Bush regime and yet preserve an essential element of the Clinton foreign policy arsenal, “humanitarian intervention” (as in the Kosovo war of 1999). For that reason, these groups have begun to offer the slogan, “Out of Iraq and Into Darfur”. At a forum in New York City on July 15, a young woman asked why the U.S. could not use its superior firepower to defeat the Janjaweed in Sudan. At the same event, the documentary film The Devil Came on Horseback shows the former U.S. Marine Brian Steidle photograph a band of Janjaweed militia leave a village and wish he could exchange his telephoto lens for a gun-scope to “end it now”. Private mercenary armies such as the International Peace Operations Association and DynCorp International clamor to cross the Chad border and conduct operations against the Janjaweed.
(...) That the first head of AFRICOM is the former commander of the battalion that led Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1993 is an ominous sign. Would a cruise missile strike on Khartoum (a replay of 1998) and an invasion of Darfur create a solution to the current crisis, or would it only create an Iraq in Africa?
Monday, July 16, 2007
stop trying to 'save' africa:"Don't you want to help us save Africa?" she yelled.
(...) Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."
(...) Why do the media frequently refer to African countries as having been "granted independence from their colonial masters," as opposed to having fought and shed blood for their freedom? Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned? How is it that a former mid-level U.S. diplomat receives more attention for his cowboy antics in Sudan than do the numerous African Union countries that have sent food and troops and spent countless hours trying to negotiate a settlement among all parties in that crisis?
(...) Last month the Group of Eight industrialized nations and a host of celebrities met in Germany to discuss, among other things, how to save Africa. Before the next such summit, I hope people will realize Africa doesn't want to be saved. Africa wants the world to acknowledge that through fair partnerships with other members of the global community, we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth.
(...) Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."
(...) Why do the media frequently refer to African countries as having been "granted independence from their colonial masters," as opposed to having fought and shed blood for their freedom? Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned? How is it that a former mid-level U.S. diplomat receives more attention for his cowboy antics in Sudan than do the numerous African Union countries that have sent food and troops and spent countless hours trying to negotiate a settlement among all parties in that crisis?
(...) Last month the Group of Eight industrialized nations and a host of celebrities met in Germany to discuss, among other things, how to save Africa. Before the next such summit, I hope people will realize Africa doesn't want to be saved. Africa wants the world to acknowledge that through fair partnerships with other members of the global community, we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth.
Monday, May 28, 2007
imperial interventionism:
The UN estimates that 3 million to 4 million Congolese have been killed, compared with the estimated 200,000 civilian deaths in Darfur. A peace deal agreed in December 2002 has never been adhered to, and atrocities have been particularly well documented in the province of Kivu - carried out by paramilitary organisations with strong governmental links. In the last month alone, thousands of civilians have been killed in heavy fighting between rebel and government forces vying for control of an area north of Goma, and the UN reckons that another 50,000 have been made refugees.
(...) How curious, then, that so much more attention has been focused on Darfur than Congo. There are no pressure groups of any note that draw attention to the Congolese situation. In the media there is barely a word. The politicians are silent. Yet if ever there were a case for the outside world to intervene on humanitarian grounds alone - "liberal interventionism" - then surely this is it.
(...) The key difference between the two situations lies in the racial and ethnic composition of the perceived victims and perpetrators. In Congo, black Africans are killing other black Africans in a way that is difficult for outsiders to identify with. The turmoil there can in that sense be regarded as a narrowly African affair. In Darfur the fighting is portrayed as a war between black Africans, rightly or wrongly regarded as the victims, and "Arabs", widely regarded as the perpetrators of the killings. In practice these neat racial categories are highly indistinct, but it is through such a prism that the conflict is generally viewed.
(...) Humanitarian concern among policymakers in Washington is ultimately self-interested. The United States is willing to impose new sanctions on the Sudan government if the latter refuses to accept a United Nations peacekeeping force, but it is no coincidence that Sudan, unlike Congo, has oil - lots of it - and strong links with China, a country the US regards as a strategic rival in the struggle for Africa's natural resources; only last week Amnesty International reported that Beijing has illicitly supplied Khartoum with large quantities of arms.
(...) Highly seductive though the rhetoric of liberal interventionism may be, it is always towards hubris and disaster that it leads its willing partners.
The UN estimates that 3 million to 4 million Congolese have been killed, compared with the estimated 200,000 civilian deaths in Darfur. A peace deal agreed in December 2002 has never been adhered to, and atrocities have been particularly well documented in the province of Kivu - carried out by paramilitary organisations with strong governmental links. In the last month alone, thousands of civilians have been killed in heavy fighting between rebel and government forces vying for control of an area north of Goma, and the UN reckons that another 50,000 have been made refugees.
(...) How curious, then, that so much more attention has been focused on Darfur than Congo. There are no pressure groups of any note that draw attention to the Congolese situation. In the media there is barely a word. The politicians are silent. Yet if ever there were a case for the outside world to intervene on humanitarian grounds alone - "liberal interventionism" - then surely this is it.
(...) The key difference between the two situations lies in the racial and ethnic composition of the perceived victims and perpetrators. In Congo, black Africans are killing other black Africans in a way that is difficult for outsiders to identify with. The turmoil there can in that sense be regarded as a narrowly African affair. In Darfur the fighting is portrayed as a war between black Africans, rightly or wrongly regarded as the victims, and "Arabs", widely regarded as the perpetrators of the killings. In practice these neat racial categories are highly indistinct, but it is through such a prism that the conflict is generally viewed.
(...) Humanitarian concern among policymakers in Washington is ultimately self-interested. The United States is willing to impose new sanctions on the Sudan government if the latter refuses to accept a United Nations peacekeeping force, but it is no coincidence that Sudan, unlike Congo, has oil - lots of it - and strong links with China, a country the US regards as a strategic rival in the struggle for Africa's natural resources; only last week Amnesty International reported that Beijing has illicitly supplied Khartoum with large quantities of arms.
(...) Highly seductive though the rhetoric of liberal interventionism may be, it is always towards hubris and disaster that it leads its willing partners.
Friday, May 18, 2007
darfur:
Darfur is typical in terms of the traditions and culture of Sudan's vast regional backwaters: liberal voices seldom penetrate this hermetically sealed world in which women are systematically gang-raped. The women of Darfur have emerged as the most downtrodden victims of violence in the Sudan's westernmost province.
(...) What is clear is that Khartoum is urging Arab states to play a more prominent part in the resolution of the Darfur crisis. "Saudi Arabia has the biggest share in the humanitarian effort in Darfur and there should be no misunderstanding between Arab countries over the way to bring a solution to the problem in Sudan's westernmost region," said Special Advisor to Sudanese President Mustafa Othman Ismail.
Darfur is typical in terms of the traditions and culture of Sudan's vast regional backwaters: liberal voices seldom penetrate this hermetically sealed world in which women are systematically gang-raped. The women of Darfur have emerged as the most downtrodden victims of violence in the Sudan's westernmost province.
(...) What is clear is that Khartoum is urging Arab states to play a more prominent part in the resolution of the Darfur crisis. "Saudi Arabia has the biggest share in the humanitarian effort in Darfur and there should be no misunderstanding between Arab countries over the way to bring a solution to the problem in Sudan's westernmost region," said Special Advisor to Sudanese President Mustafa Othman Ismail.
Monday, May 7, 2007
darfur and intervention:
The Darfur crisis is not that of black and white, Arabs and Africans. This is nonsense. They are all Africans. They are all Muslims, almost to the last one. Reductions and oversimplification might be useful to the media and short-sighted or self-serving politicians and governments, but deceptive and simply inaccurate. Even the two main rebel groups--The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem)--are now fighting one another following the mid 2006 Abuja agreement. Chad is arming Sudan's rebels and Sudan is doing the same.
(...) Muslims learned bitter lessons from the Kuwait episode when foreigners invaded Muslim lands," he told me, proposing "an internal political settlement within Sudan using African and Muslim resources." When I suggested to Abdullah that such a proposal is useless considering its repeated failures, and considering the urgency of the situation in Sudan, he responded: "failure of the part of Muslims on more than one occasion shouldn't negate the notion that Muslims must not to try to resolve the situation internally and present their own alternatives."
(...) Dr. Abdullah knows more than anyone else I know how Sudan "is prone to fragmentation." He said the country "was put together in the 19th century (in a political concoction) that has left it in constant struggle and civil war. The country is hardly in need for further fragmentation."
The Darfur crisis is not that of black and white, Arabs and Africans. This is nonsense. They are all Africans. They are all Muslims, almost to the last one. Reductions and oversimplification might be useful to the media and short-sighted or self-serving politicians and governments, but deceptive and simply inaccurate. Even the two main rebel groups--The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem)--are now fighting one another following the mid 2006 Abuja agreement. Chad is arming Sudan's rebels and Sudan is doing the same.
(...) Muslims learned bitter lessons from the Kuwait episode when foreigners invaded Muslim lands," he told me, proposing "an internal political settlement within Sudan using African and Muslim resources." When I suggested to Abdullah that such a proposal is useless considering its repeated failures, and considering the urgency of the situation in Sudan, he responded: "failure of the part of Muslims on more than one occasion shouldn't negate the notion that Muslims must not to try to resolve the situation internally and present their own alternatives."
(...) Dr. Abdullah knows more than anyone else I know how Sudan "is prone to fragmentation." He said the country "was put together in the 19th century (in a political concoction) that has left it in constant struggle and civil war. The country is hardly in need for further fragmentation."
darfur and intervention:
The Darfur crisis is not that of black and white, Arabs and Africans. This is nonsense. They are all Africans. They are all Muslims, almost to the last one. Reductions and oversimplification might be useful to the media and short-sighted or self-serving politicians and governments, but deceptive and simply inaccurate. Even the two main rebel groups--The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem)--are now fighting one another following the mid 2006 Abuja agreement. Chad is arming Sudan's rebels and Sudan is doing the same.
(...) Muslims learned bitter lessons from the Kuwait episode when foreigners invaded Muslim lands," he told me, proposing "an internal political settlement within Sudan using African and Muslim resources." When I suggested to Abdullah that such a proposal is useless considering its repeated failures, and considering the urgency of the situation in Sudan, he responded: "failure of the part of Muslims on more than one occasion shouldn't negate the notion that Muslims must not to try to resolve the situation internally and present their own alternatives."
(...) Dr. Abdullah knows more than anyone else I know how Sudan "is prone to fragmentation." He said the country "was put together in the 19th century (in a political concoction) that has left it in constant struggle and civil war. The country is hardly in need for further fragmentation."
The Darfur crisis is not that of black and white, Arabs and Africans. This is nonsense. They are all Africans. They are all Muslims, almost to the last one. Reductions and oversimplification might be useful to the media and short-sighted or self-serving politicians and governments, but deceptive and simply inaccurate. Even the two main rebel groups--The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem)--are now fighting one another following the mid 2006 Abuja agreement. Chad is arming Sudan's rebels and Sudan is doing the same.
(...) Muslims learned bitter lessons from the Kuwait episode when foreigners invaded Muslim lands," he told me, proposing "an internal political settlement within Sudan using African and Muslim resources." When I suggested to Abdullah that such a proposal is useless considering its repeated failures, and considering the urgency of the situation in Sudan, he responded: "failure of the part of Muslims on more than one occasion shouldn't negate the notion that Muslims must not to try to resolve the situation internally and present their own alternatives."
(...) Dr. Abdullah knows more than anyone else I know how Sudan "is prone to fragmentation." He said the country "was put together in the 19th century (in a political concoction) that has left it in constant struggle and civil war. The country is hardly in need for further fragmentation."
Sunday, May 6, 2007
climate change:
I wonder how much more anxious they might be if they depended on the cycle of mother nature to feed their families. How much greater would their concerns be if they lived in slums and townships, in mud houses, or shelters made of plastic bags? In large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, this is a reality. The poor, the vulnerable and the hungry are exposed to the harsh edge of climate change every day of their lives.
(...) Even in places such as Darfur, climate change has played a role. In the semi-arid zones of the world, there is fierce competition for access to grazing lands and watering holes. Where water is scarce and populations are growing, conflict will never be far behind.
(...) People who work for bodies such as the UN World Food Program are finding their work is a humanitarian “growth industry”. Indeed, the numbers of people who know what it’s like to go hungry stands at more than 850 million, and they are still growing by almost 4 million a year. The increasing frequency of natural disasters makes the fight against hunger even more challenging. The World Bank estimates that the number of natural disasters has quadrupled from 100 a year in 1975 to 400 in 2005.
I wonder how much more anxious they might be if they depended on the cycle of mother nature to feed their families. How much greater would their concerns be if they lived in slums and townships, in mud houses, or shelters made of plastic bags? In large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, this is a reality. The poor, the vulnerable and the hungry are exposed to the harsh edge of climate change every day of their lives.
(...) Even in places such as Darfur, climate change has played a role. In the semi-arid zones of the world, there is fierce competition for access to grazing lands and watering holes. Where water is scarce and populations are growing, conflict will never be far behind.
(...) People who work for bodies such as the UN World Food Program are finding their work is a humanitarian “growth industry”. Indeed, the numbers of people who know what it’s like to go hungry stands at more than 850 million, and they are still growing by almost 4 million a year. The increasing frequency of natural disasters makes the fight against hunger even more challenging. The World Bank estimates that the number of natural disasters has quadrupled from 100 a year in 1975 to 400 in 2005.
Friday, April 27, 2007
child malnutrition figures:
A 2006 national survey conducted by Unicef says 21 percent of Iraqi children are chronically malnourished. Figures for Darfur alone are not available. For all of Africa, however, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) says child malnutrition in Africa has increased from 27% of the child population in the 1970s to over 33 percent in recent years. According to IFPRI "Child malnutrition is on the rise in Africa. By 2025, hunger could be a daily reality for nearly 42 million children. No estimate is available as to how many children in Iraq will be chronically malnourished by 2025. By then the war may be over. )
A 2006 national survey conducted by Unicef says 21 percent of Iraqi children are chronically malnourished. Figures for Darfur alone are not available. For all of Africa, however, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) says child malnutrition in Africa has increased from 27% of the child population in the 1970s to over 33 percent in recent years. According to IFPRI "Child malnutrition is on the rise in Africa. By 2025, hunger could be a daily reality for nearly 42 million children. No estimate is available as to how many children in Iraq will be chronically malnourished by 2025. By then the war may be over. )
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