April 24, 2006
Darfur: Contradiction facing those wanting intervention; OBL warns Crusaders
They say someone must intervene but only if the UN Security Council approves. And the UNSC won't.
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Just as the shadow of darfur loomed over policymakers a decade ago, generating excuses for inaction in Bosnia and Rwanda, the trauma of Iraq may now doom the rescue of Darfur. Even the most committed progressive activists seem confused about what exactly should be done next...
As their criticism of the particulars of the Iraq war has hardened into a broader indictment of U.S. foreign policy, the mostly progressive voices calling for action in Darfur [the Save Darfur Coalition] have become caught in a bind of their own devising. Even as they demand intervention in Sudan, they excoriate Washington for employing U.S. military power without due respect to the opinion of the international community and against nations that pose no imminent threat to our own — which is to say, precisely the terms under which U.S. power would have to be employed in the name of saving Darfur.
Then again, the use of unilateral U.S. military power isn't the solution most Darfur activists have in mind. Even as western Sudan burns, Darfur advocates such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) argue that the U.S. must employ its military power only on behalf of — and, more important, in concert with — international organizations such as the United Nations...
...will the African Union put a halt to the killings in Darfur? Absolutely not. Its Arab members have stymied the force at every turn. Will the U.N. solve the crisis? That seems extremely unlikely as well. The organization amounts first and foremost to a collection of sovereign states, many of them adamantly opposed to violating Sudan's own sovereignty. Can NATO save the day? Not really, given the fears of entanglement expressed by its European members. As in Bosnia before it, the victims of Darfur can be saved by one thing and one thing alone: American power.
Unfortunately for the victims of Darfur, too many of their advocates have come to view that power as tainted, marred by self-interest and by its misapplication in Iraq...
I wish the Canadian media and our politicians who demand we "do something" would read this column.
And, as Damian has pointed out, Osama bin Laden has now
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...urged Muslims to go to the war-torn Darfur region of western Sudan to fight international peacekeepers, saying their real mission was "to occupy the region and steal its oil under the cover of maintaining security there," according to a translation of the audiotape by the BBC.
The United States and other Western countries are supporting a plan to send U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur, where Arab militiamen backed by the Sudanese government are fighting rebel groups. Both sides are Muslim. Tens of thousands of people have died in the conflict, and 2 million have been displaced...
It is curious that the Washington Post, in the story above, does note quote Mr bin Laden's more flamboyant "Crusader" rhetoric.
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"I call on the mujahideen and their supporters in Sudan ... and the Arabian peninsula to prepare all that is necessary to wage a long-term war against the Crusaders in western Sudan," bin Laden said, accusing the West of seeking to divide Sudan.
Sudan hosted bin Laden in the 1990s, but on the tape he criticised Khartoum for not enforcing Islamic sharia law throughout the country and made clear his call to arms in Darfur was in spite of his differences with the Sudanese government.
Criticising a U.S.-backed peace deal between Khartoum and southern rebels, bin Laden accused the United States of planning to send "Crusader troops to occupy the region and steal its oil under the cover of preserving security there"...
So it's OK for Muslims to slaughter Muslims--as in Iraq--and no-one should interfere with this internecine killing. That also appears to be the view of those in Canada opposed to our mission in Afstan. Strange (?) bedfellows.
Mark C.