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An experiment. Your the leader of a country and these are the things that are happening in Darfur and the Sudan. Your a wise leader that recognizes all angles. How do you approach these problems? Bear with me, while I set this up.
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The problem in dealing with rebel groups is that it is often difficult to know who is on which side on any given day. The Arab government in Khartoum-the government of Sudan-makes false promises to make temporary peace with one rebel group and then another to keep the non-Arab people fighting one another. The government makes deals with ambitions commanders who are crazy enough to think the government will promote them after the war, when in fact they will be discarded if not killed then. These breakaway commanders are sometimes told to attack other rebel groups , or even to kill humanitarian workers and the troops sent from other countries to monitor compliance with cease-fire treaties. This is done so the genocide can carry on and the land can be cleared of the indigenous people. History may prove me wrong in some of these perceptions, but this is how it seems to most people who are there.
It is also believed that the government pays some of the traditional Arab people, many tribes of whom are otherwise our friends, to form deadly horseback militias called the Janjaweed to brutally kill the non-Arab Africans and burn our bridges.
This is my prediction: When the government has removed or killed all the traditional non-Arabs, then it will get the traditional Arabs to fight one another so they too will disappear from valuable lands. This is already happening in areas where the removal of non-Arab Africans is nearly complete.”
(P12 The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari Random House:New York 2008)
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A U.S. firm, Jarch Management Group, Ltd, had purchased a 70% interest in the Sudanese company Leac for Agriculture and Investment and leased approximately 400,000 acres of land claimed by General Matip, according Philippe Heilberg, the U.S. investor behind the deal.
Jarch has a long history of partnering with General Matip in a bid to exert rights over oil in Unity State, which lies on the disputed border region between North and South Sudan. Heilberg’s firm, which is registered in the Virgin Islands, is managed by commodities traders and former State Department and Central Intelligence Agency officials, among others.
-- The Sudanese government has leased 1.5 million hectares of prime farmland to the Gulf States, Egypt and South Korea for 99 years. Paradoxically, Sudan is also the world's largest recipient of foreign aid, with 5.6 million of its citizens dependent on food deliveries.
China's interest in oil is no small thing. With a GDP growth of 7% and 8% a year, China in 2003 became the largest oil consumer in the world after the United States. It imported 2 million barrels a day in 2001 and is projected to need 8.6 million barrels a day by 2025. Looking for sources of oil not already locked up by the U.S., Europe, and Japan, Peter Takirambudde said that China's strategy "is to favor trade with resource-rich countries with repressive regimes that many Western countries refuse to do business with. China will not raise any human rights issues." For example, he said, the Canadians withdrew their oil company from Sudan in response to domestic and international pressures. The Chinese took their place.
"China has been supplying arms to Sudan for decades," Takirambudde said. "Shipments have included ammunition, tanks, helicopters, fighter aircraft, and antipersonnel landmines." In 1996, China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) purchased a 40% share in Sudan's dominant oil exploitation consortium, the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company. In 2001 China acquired a 41% share in Petrodar, a consortium that has lease rights on an important part of Sudan's main oil field, the Melut Basin. In August 2003 the CNPC won the contract to build a 730 kilometer pipeline from the Melut Basin to Khartoum.
Life for women in Darfuri refugee camps in Sudan and neighboring Chad is extremely hard. Many have no access to any public authority that will investigate violence against women, and medical facilities are scarce to non-existent. While rape is rampant, and has allegedly been used as a “weapon of war” by the Khartoum backed militia engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, women are seldom able to find safety in seeking help from local authorities.
Uprooted from their homes, often relegated to ad-hoc communities where male elders are dispersed or involved in conflict, women victimized by corrupt camp guards or Sudanese police or militia risk serious physical attack or punishment for reporting rape. The Darfur refugee crisis has exacerbated the crisis levels of violence against women, and ongoing conflict and an apparent government cover-up campaign help to conceal the crimes.
Two Sudanese workers for AMI were killed in Darfur in February and two foreign aid workers -- Claire Dubois from France and Canadian Stephanie Jodoin -- were kidnapped in April and held for three weeks before being released.
"The mission has always had operational difficulties linked to security, such as transport difficulties, access (to certain areas), travel and finding (suitable) people," said Le Grand, whose organisation has worked in Darfur for five years.
"But the kidnappings were the last straw. We said: 'We cannot easily recover from that, we will no longer be able to provide care for the people'," he said.
In March Sudan expelled 13 international aid agencies and closed three local organisations following the International Criminal Court (ICC) decision to issue an arrest warrant against President Omar al-Beshir on war crimes charges.
They enter your country. If you have a severe problem with Israel then make up your own. The same basic problems are going to exist.
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But the sudden influx outstripped the ability of the UNHCR and the government to process them, officials in both bodies said, resulting in stopgap policies that critics say make Israel inhospitable.
Those arriving now are detained for an average of five months — and some more than a year. They then receive release papers that must be renewed every three months but give them no right to work, though the government usually looks the other way when they take under-the-table jobs.
...At the same time, Israel has pressed Egypt to do more to stop refugees from slipping in. Egypt has cracked down in recent years, arresting more than 1,300 would-be migrants and shooting more than 30 to death at the border in 2008, raising an outcry from human rights groups.
For Bomkos, 10, the son of refugees from Sudan, the summer vacation started out calm and boring. He has been staying at home or going to the library to play on the computer. Bomkos is going into fourth grade, and, he says in unaccented Hebrew, "what I like best are Torah lessons and playing basketball." A passerby in the Arad commercial center overhears him and says angrily: "What are you talking about, basketball? Go back there, where you came from. We don't want you here."
...The native Israeli, who identifies himself as David Dahan, is not mollified: "You fled to Egypt, right?" he retorted, in English. "So why didn't you stay there? You're not even refugees, you don't belong here."
...Rivka Frey-Panchard is siding with the refugees. She is distributing a leaflet in the shopping center calling on people to help the Sudanese stay in Arad, and intends to distribute a petition to counter the petition calling for their expulsion, because, she says, "I'm embarrassed that they're treating them this way in my city. These are people who in Egypt were beaten in the streets, and here they're being treated like 'dirty Negroes.'"
I can't speak from a Darfurian's POV, but I'll say that sending US troops over there at this point would be a huge mistake. It's ironic that some of the same people against invading middle-eastern countries feel that invading Darfur would help.
Military intervention should be well thought out and used only in extreme situations.
People also need to realize that African countries to this day are still trying to get some sort of nationalism instilled in the populations, rather than being arbitrary post-colonial borders filled with people's of various languages, alliances, and cultures.
The Darfur situation is fundamentally about water, cattle, and land. Sudan itself is a patchwork country with a semiautonomous southern region and a motley assortment of tribes and militias which the government often has loose or no control over.
In fact, it makes little sense to apply any single policy to all of "Sudan." A blanket prohibition on investment in "Sudan" would legally apply to the deep south of the country as well, a very impoverished region desperately seeking foreign investment to help recover from 30 years of civil war.
So, basically, nothing should be done in any area.
Personally, I didn't say that. Just that I don't know enough about the country to make any real contribution. THe information presented is great, but it takes more than that to understand how to solve a crisis.
Do nothing from a US POV? Yeah, probably. These days we lack any moral authority. Even if we did manage to be able to "do all the right things" people, and especially Muslim people, have a negative view that we likely wouldn't be able to pull anything successful off. I prefer to stay out of business we are not embedded in at the moment. We have enough global civil strife we are already involved in and are already perceived as imperialists.
The basic problem is that if we interfere we are now "taking over for white imperialists" and if we don't we allow the extermination of humanity and propping up of another corrupt government that will raid the treasury. It's a lose lose situation to even really deal with the problems. You see so many times where the US has gotten involved with get chased off just to pick another corrupt government, again and again.
Until political corruption in these countries is not tolerated any more I can't see the situation ever getting better. Even though it's a humanitarian nightmare, if the people don't want the help of other countries to stop it then they will get their wish.
The basic problem is that if we interfere we are now "taking over for white imperialists" and if we don't we allow the extermination of humanity and propping up of another corrupt government that will raid the treasury. It's a lose lose situation to even really deal with the problems. You see so many times where the US has gotten involved with get chased off just to pick another corrupt government, again and again.
Until political corruption in these countries is not tolerated any more I can't see the situation ever getting better. Even though it's a humanitarian nightmare, if the people don't want the help of other countries to stop it then they will get their wish.
Also, in the past have been responsible for installing and propping up corrupt dictatorships in place of democratically elected officials with socialist or communist leanings.
I realize this was supposed to be a different angle, looking at what we would do as a Darfurian leader. bu I honestly think we couldn't approach that without a long study of the country. So here's this: 'We Can't Just Do Nothing' | The New Republic
No matter what decision the U.S would make, it would be heavily criticized and seen as the wrong one. To sum it up, IMO, let them fight their own battles. The U.S has it's own troubles.
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