Perspectives

As of late, some of the rebel factions have started using the threat of violence to recruit kids from refugee camps to fight the Janjaweed that first forced them into the camps (nestled in the paradise we westerners call "Chad"). So with countless people dying of starvation and "genocide" every month, the natural thing to ask is why nothing is being done. Colin Powell visited Sudan and made a powerful case to Congress that they ought to take action. Sure enough, nothing has happened. Recently the UN passed a resolution to let a UN team oversee the peace process, in the hopes that Sudan won't resist letting the UN take command of the 7,000 man force (currently led by the AU) by September.

Finally, some progress. Not only that, but it seems that the government has managed to sign a peace agreement with some of the rebel factions. Troublingly, the Sudanese foreign minister has decided that this recent peace agreement has "rendered the issue of the transfer of AU mission to the UN no longer relevant." Well, I don't think it does, because there are still rebel groups who have not weakened their resolve against the government and their militia. As a matter of fact, they're still recruiting 13 year-old kids to fight. No, I think that the UN is still pretty relevant, even though the Sudanese leadership has threatened to block the incoming UN team.

But just how relevant, you may wonder? So relevant, that the resolution promises "strong and effective measures" against people that oppose the peace-keeping process. CNN suggests that this could mean "bans on travel or freezing of assets". Ya know, for a group of rebels that are resorting to recruiting children out of refugee camps in neighboring countries in order to keep their cause alive, the SLA loves to travel, and would hate to see their credit cards revoked. Sarcasm aside, this threat is hardly intimidating to anybody fighting a desperate civil war. We can only hope that the potential ban on travel would be as well enforced as the ban on genocide.

The US ambassador doesn't think so. He suggests that he "think[s] the government of Sudan would find itself in a very difficult position if it didn't cooperate with this transition." "Difficult" how, Bolton? "Difficult" like trying to fend off bloodthirsty rebels while sustaining your own campaign of ethnic cleansing? Maybe you mean "difficult" like decades of starvation and poverty. I don't think there's much the UN can do to make the situation more "difficult" in Sudan at the moment, least of all for the people that are still galvanized by genocide and the threat of slow starvation.

As a matter of fact, why is the UN asking permission from the state before taking action in a country where they suspect that there have been "acts of genocide"? That seems a bit counter-intuitive to me. I think that if there are two things that the UN should be handling at the moment, it's the genocide in Sudan and the Iranian nuclear weapons program, but they're not exactly doing a bang-up job on either.

I know I'm going to sound like some kind of war-monger, but I'm disappointed in the UN. There's a time for diplomacy, and a time for action. How many more people have to die in Sudan before the UN decides that we've come to that transition? The weak threats that they make and delayed action (all the while being careful to respect the Sudanese government) has made the UN a glaring failure on this issue. If they can't decide to do something about situations like the one in Sudan, and take some kind of effective, decisive, and timely action, then what good is the UN anyway? Here we have a perfect instance of the total breakdown of civilization, and they're threatening to ban travel for certain people, just in case they ever get around to being in such a position to ever do that.

I wish I had some answer to the problem in Sudan. I'm sure that deploying neutral troops pronto with aide and supplies might be a good start, though. Too bad we've no interest in doing that, or else Sudan might already be the pillar of democracy that Iraq has become.