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Originally posted by trancaholic It's been a while since I last read of it (a single month! - there goes my memory ), but I vaguely remember that the US have done quite a lot on this issue. They were the ones pushing for a UN resolution condemning the Sudanese government, and labelling the events as "genocide". When this one failed to get through the security council (because of France and Russia AFAIR), Colin Powell went ahead and used the label anyway, thereby commiting the US to isolate Sudan economically. Of course, it's nothing like the full scale operation in Iraq, and it seems to be the neighbouring countries who bear most of the burden of refugees, but in this case I think that the Bush administration should recieve the credits they deserve.

This is i don't understand

First the US Ignores the UN so they went to war for stupid reasons.

But now for the good reasons the US starts to use the UN ..

so whats the deal? is it just because iraq has oil? and don't give me we are freeing iraq crap, because sudan is in a worse shape than iraq even when saddam had power.

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Originally posted by Octanesyco Greetings. My name is Casey. You can call me Moose. -Moose

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Originally posted by Massive84 This is i don't understand First the US Ignores the UN so they went to war for stupid reasons. But now for the good reasons the US starts to use the UN .. so whats the deal?

Maybe - just maybe - the Bush administration has learned a lesson from the Iraq mess. Even if Bush is stupid, I wouldn't rule out that some of his advisors are capable of learning from past experience.

Don't forget Sudan has large resources of oil as well so the oil argument might just not work here. Also Nigeria has vast amounts of oil, and is one of the largest exporters to the US, yet we haven't intervened there where rebels are threatening to take over their oil industry. Everything the US does isn't based on oil...

Also Sudan is a different situation than Iraq. Iraq had a dictator who was known to cause harm to his own people, was a threat to the region and I honestly think Bush thought there were WMD's there or he wouldn't have been dumb enough to show the pictures in front of the U.N.

Sudan is an internal problem with religious factions, not threatening the region but more of creating an influx of refugees in the region and a humanitarian crisis. It is not a direct cause of the government of Sudan but their government hasn't done anything to solve the problem either which is just as bad when it is in your own country.

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Right. The JAE and Liberation factions demanded gov't support in the impoverished regions, yet the govt ignores them. So the two attack a govt taget, and now the govt is 'striking back'. Claims of the govt recruiting the Janjaweed Arab militia to help secure the region with the numnerous accounts of the Janjaweed slaughtering innocent people kinda seems sketch.

Alright, my two cents on this conflict...I'll post sources and such later, most of this is from memory and from being involved in humanitarian organizations that are working on this mess.

The fist and most important thing that people in this thread have (willfully or otherwise) ignored is the larger context in which the Darfur crisis has occured: The 21 year civil war that the Sudanese government has been waging againt the South of Sudan and it's main opponent, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (S.P.L.A.) and it's N.D.A. allies, not to be confused with the Sudan Liberation Army (S.L.A.) which has been getting most of the press lately. This civil war, which is usually called the 2nd civil war is a continuation of the 1st civil war that started in 1955 and ended in 1972 with the Addis Abeba accords.

Without going too much into details, Sudan can be more or less split along the following lines: A Muslim Arab north and a Black African Christian and Animist South. The fist civil war was a result of the Southerners being excluded from government, and the South in general being denied control and autonomy over it's own region. The second civil war, which is a continuation of the first, incorporated unsettled gripes from the first one, a power sharing issue over Sudan's Southern oil reserves, but also and very importantly was triggered by an Islamization campaign in 1983 by the Khartoum government where they wanted to introdude Shria Law elements into their penal code, among other things. Anyway, over 2 million people have died in this conflict, most of them Southern Sudanese, who mostly belong to the Dinka, Nuba, and Neur tribes (amongst others). The Sudanese government, which I consider to be a quasi if not a fully Islamic fundamentalist regime, has committed innumerable crimes against the South and continues to do so till this day.

One of the main issues in this civil war and the Darfur crisis remains the issue of oil, whether we like it or not. In the late seventies/early eighties, after Chevron discovered major oil reserves in the South of Sudan, the Sudanese government visciously started "clearing" Southern land (and people - the genocide began then, not now) for the oil companies to set up camp. The US was allied with the Sudanese government during the entire eighties, even while atrocities were being committed in the South not only because of the aformentioned oil reasons but also because of Cold War issues (Sudan backed Eritrea's independance against Ethiopia who had publicly aligned itself with the U.S.S.R.). It's only after Sudan refused to join the Persian Gulf War and started harboring known Islamic fundamentalists (Osama Bin Laden - from 1991 to 1996), not to mention extreme pressure being exerted by Christian fundamentalist groups, that Bush Sr. and then Clinton reversed their policy towards Sudan, culminating with the US imposing sanctions agaisnt Sudan in 1997 because of Sudan's harboring of terrorists.

However, under the reign of Dubya, and unlike Clinton, the current administration led by the neo-cons wanted to resolve the Sudan issue with negociations and talks that would ultimately and hopefully culminate in a peace deal between the North and South. The reasoning is rather straighforward: China during this period had established very strong oil connections in Sudan while the leading US oil companies couldn't go into Sudan because of the sanctions that were to be imposed until a peace deal between the South and the North was consumated. The Bush government pressed the S.P.L.A. very hard over the last two years to go to the negociation table, and on May 26th of 2004, a peace deal was finally struck between the two sides.

This finally brings us to Darfur (won't go over the details of the crisis here, links were already posted). The catch with the peace deal is that it hasn't been implemented yet and is (unofficially) contingent on the resolution of the growing Darfur crisis. On October 7th, the Sudanese government and the South will convene again to start discussing implementation of the deal, but it's implementation will depend (againt unoffically) on the resolution of Darfur. So, there is no way that the US can lift sanctions right now under the current circumstances in Darfur, for all the obvious reasons (and of course hasn't). Cries of genocide by Colin Powell are simply his way of insuring that this crisis is solved as fast as possible, by making sure the US applies as much pressure on Khartoum (through the UN and other means) to solve this issue internally so that the implementation of this peace deal can take effect sooner rather than later (and no, I don't believe the US will intervene militarily anytime soon - or ever - in Sudan simply cause it's in their interest to see this situation solved as fast as possible).

So in conclusion, though the US is right to declare that a genocide has occured in Darfur, and has tried to mobilize the international community to do something about this problem, there are ALWAYS self-interested reasons (and no, defending liberty and human rights are not of them) why any nation, especially the most powerful ones (the US and others), are motivated to action.

To be fair, since I've bashed the US enough on this issue, I must say that though they have their own vested interests at heart to a large extent, at least these interests happen to coincide with positive ramifications to the only thing that matters in this conflict: the people that are being slowly but surely exterminated in Sudan. China has threatened to veto any resolution with the word genocide on it (for obvious reasons), the E.U. claims it doesn't have sufficient evidence to determine whether a genocide has occured (it's been occuring for 21 years now!!!!), Pakistan would also vote against it, the Arab governments have suppoted Sudan throughout this entire saga and throughout the Civil War, and the U.N. is being indecisive again (Rwanda anyone).

Blahhhhhhhh....cynicism is always in order.

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Don't forget Sudan has large resources of oil as well so the oil argument might just not work here. Also Nigeria has vast amounts of oil, and is one of the largest exporters to the US, yet we haven't intervened there where rebels are threatening to take over their oil industry. Everything the US does isn't based on oil...

Ummm, ya, think again. Discussed Sudan oil in previous post, and here's a brief article about possible US intervention to protect Nigerian oil.

US offers military support in Nigeria to protect oil

wow thanks Epicurus, very informative post

Beautiful post Epicurus

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