Obama’s Weakness, Sudan’s Tragedy
Darfur, Nuba, and Blue Nile — separate but interconnected conflicts — are all fueled in part by failure to address the North-South relationship. But these conflicts pale in significance to what happened between the Sudanese and South Sudanese militaries at the Heglig oil field in April 2012. The fighting there followed months of bickering over pipeline fees and payment arrearages that led to the shutdown of oil production. In a desperate game of brinksmanship, South Sudan and allied Darfur rebels invaded, looted, and occupied the most productive field in north Sudan.
President Obama urged South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir to pull back, but the damage was done. The return to war in the borderlands and the collapse of the oil economy brought severe humanitarian consequences. The population of the north’s Blue Nile state, forcibly displaced, experienced mortality rates more than double the emergency threshold level. In the Nuba Mountains, thousands of people died of malnutrition and preventable diseases. In both countries, racial hatred — peaking in the moment of crisis — pushed tens of thousands into desperate transit camps.
The Obama administration has watched passively. Not even its vaunted support for the UN has held up under fire. When Sudanese forces invaded Abyei and looted UN warehouses there in May 2011, the White House responded delicately that the move “could set back the process of normalizing relations between Sudan and the United States, and inhibit the international community’s ability to move forward on issues critical to Sudan’s future.” And a month later, just as the next crisis broke in South Kordofan, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) was hurriedly expelled.
This was accepted by the Obama administration as a matter of course, as bases in the north closed and the remnant of the mission in the autonomous south adopted an additional ‘S’ to its name, UNMISS, denoting the reduced scope of its mandate.
The concession is all the more remarkable because of the reports of atrocities that were making their way out of South Kordofan in the days just before the pullout. The president’s own press secretary on June 10 cited “accounts of security services and military forces detaining, and summarily executing local authorities, political rivals, medical personnel, and others.”
“We call on the UN to fully investigate these incidents,” the White House stated, apparently confused as to the impending end date of the mission.
At no point did the United States unilaterally investigate and publicly document these reports, as it had done for Darfur in 2004 using survey information from witnesses and refugees in eastern Chad. Under Secretary Colin Powell, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research published a major report on “Documenting Atrocities in Darfur,” whereas comparable research recently carried out by USAID among the refugees from Blue Nile state has been covered up.
Most significantly, the administration failed to bring food into the conflict zone despite repeated warnings of a “severe emergency” by FEWS-NET, a U.S.-funded famine watchdog. The administration made demand after demand for humanitarian access to the Nuba Mountains. Khartoum at first said no, then dissembled over “modalities” — and to this day Obama has yet to get his way.
In the Nuba Mountains case, the administration appears to have enjoyed a number of policy options. The favored choice was in support of a tripartite proposal by the UN, African Union, and Arab League, which would guarantee access through logistically superior northern routes but required Khartoum’s consent. But American diplomats also deliberately leaked plans for an unauthorized aid intervention into rebel-held territory, which would have created political complications with Khartoum potentially damaging to existing aid efforts in Darfur. This option was on the table until seasonal rains made the access route from South Sudan impassable.
Although it is difficult to imagine the current U.S. president making the brazen call for such an intervention, it is worth noting that the previous president faced similar hard calls on Sudan and is known to have favored the strong option at least once. As reported by Rebecca Hamilton in her book Fighting for Darfur, Bush weighed the deployment of U.S. or NATO troops and he actually convened a White House meeting with anti-genocide activists to discuss the option. They advised him against U.S. military intervention.
Bush understood the dilemma in classic hard power terms: war or diplomacy. Later official articulations of the strong option would always be a shade more abstruse: “robust,” “sticks,” “pressure,” “consequences.” But where the president stood was clear: unilateral military intervention — in other words, invasion — he perceived as morally justified, just not practical. From this position of moral principle a policy took shape.
Africans fighting Arabs is nothing new in Africa. Neither is Christians and others fighting Muslims. BHO will support the Arabs/Muslims every time.
Help spread this story, it is a problem for Obama and his pals.
As Obama’s cover story comes down, the curtain goes up on the USAO’s cover-up of J.J., Jr.’s role in the Blago story
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/10/05/as-obamas-cover-story-comes-down-the-curtain-goes-up-on-the-usaos-cover-up-of-j-j-jr-s-role-in-the-blago-story/
To fill in some of the details, the following link has my embedded policy paper on this very subject.
If interested, please see within the link – ‘Sudan:Getting It Right…A Western & Israeli Strategic Imperative’ – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/08/14/fungible-definition-of-who-is-a-terrorist-invariably-leads-to-support-of-islamists-in-syria-sudan-elsewhere-when-politicsideology-trumps-morality-embedded-policy-paper-commentary-by/
NO doubt, Barack HUSSEIN Obama, through benign neglect, as well as purposeful mishandling, is setting the region ablaze. There is a method to his madness…and it is anti-American in its scope!
What? No scheduled London rock concert to save Darfur? Where are all of those ankle bitters and heel nippers blaming the “genocide” in Darfur on the Bush administration? Where’s Michael Moore? Samantha Powers? Oh, that’s right, she’s busy, she just got the ambassador to Libya killed leading from behind, and Mikey’s working on a new movie, Romney 911:The Return of The Racists.
“militant political Islam”
Like there is any another kind of Islam?
“militant political Islam”
I suppose most Nazism wasn’t really militant or political either, just some small number of misunderstanders of Nazism and Mein Kampf.
America in a death spiral of terminal decline, “fundamental transformation” indeed.
Obama’s crimes and calamities regarding Dar ul Islam are an opportunity in disguise. It was high time for the Western world to reevaluate its entire relationship with the Islamic world. For decades we sought peace and stability in the ME, mainly in the hopes of securing a stable supply of affordable oil and gas. But long ago that hope went up in smoke. We have no stability, we have no peace, and we certainly don’t have affordable oil from this sewer of hatred.
There is plenty of oil and gas in the Western Hemisphere. The nations surrounding us are for the most part benign, and it would be far better to invest in securing peace and stability locally. Let the Muslim world expend their limitless rage and hatred on their fellow Muslims. Let Islamic wars deplete Islamic coffers, not ours. Strangling them of our money, our technology, and our protection would mean that the Islamic world could no longer wage Jihad globally. Leave Muslims to wallow in the sewer of their own creation. Or let the Russians and the Cinese manage these savages for a spell.
After 9/11, it was high time for the Western World to seriously reevaluate its entire relationship with Islam. But we failed to do that, and through sheer inertia, and through insane delusions and boondoggles like Responsibility To Protect, “Winning Their Hearts and Minds”, and idiotic nation building in hellholes like Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, we have little to show but tens of thousands maimed, a trillion in debt, newly minted Jihadi nations, and ongoing, shattering betrayals.
Let Muslims rot. Let their evil house go up in flames.
That is precisely what ought to happen. The middle east oil is no longer a first order strategic concern for the US and really hasn’t been since the navy went nuclear half a century ago. Just as you say, let the Chinese administer the region and secure their own fuel supply. What other reason to stay? If the Israelis choose to survive rather than be annihilated good for them but it is their problem not ours. They are perfectly capable and amply equipped to do what has to be done to survive.
Genocide in Africa is not a problem under democrat administrations; just when there’s an R in the Oval Office. It’s no different than overseas military action, the plight of the homeless, AIDS, unemployment or high gas prices.
Meanwhile, flights of surveillance drones over the heartland have increased dramatically, in order to ensure American ranchers don’t allow their stock to encroach on protected wetlands.
It’s all about priorities.
Good comment.. dry wit here !!!
Good comment.. dry wit here !!!
We should just stay out of the mess in the Sudan. Half of these “countries” in Africa are just artificial representations on a map and never take into consideration tribal, ethnic, or religious divisions within those same “countries.” So unless you want to go into all of these homicidal basket cases and force governments on them that nobody in those countries seem to want (as in the Sudan), then just leave them alone and let them work it out. If they end up slaughtering each other, well then that’s really not our problem. It gets expensive being the world’s policeman and the war in Iraq should have taught us that bitter lesson. These people have been killing each other for literally hundreds of years. You’re not going to stop it with some scrap of paper from the United Nations. Let them, for once, solve their own problems. Personally, I’m sick and tired of seeing American diplomats trying to solve the world’s problems. That didn’t work out too well for us recently in Libya, and it’s not going to work much better in the Sudan.
Liberty, the mess in what is now the SUdan began under British COlonial rule, mid nineteenth century. It was they who scrmbled boundaries and people groups in their quest to subjugate (their favourite hat trick, if you read any history of their empire at all). There are a number of distinct ethnic groups in that “nation”, and at least three major representatioins of different religious faiths. The moslems are relatively late on the scene, have managed to usurp the lion’s share of power in the old capital, and have succeeded in conscripting huge numbers of tribesmen, many by simply pressing them into service.. many of them as young as fourteen. The recent “secession” of South Sudan fell along ethic and faith lines, pretty much, separating them from the violent moslem north, politically, more or less a return to pre-British conditions. It took them years to ward off continual military assaults upon their homes, lands, people, by the moslem north. The largel christian south sudanese, large numbers of them living in the Nuba Mountais for generations, were the first to have even a hint of success driving the moslem hordes back. I’ve seen photographs, narrated by their maker, depicting the insane atrocities of these wild animals in their attacks….. trying to eliminate them from off the face of the earth as they refused to “convert” to the moslem ways. Sorry, but the US government did little to really support these people. Darfur was mainly known because of the huge refugee camps there, their ossupants haveing fled from their generational homelands to the north, driven by the bloody swords of the moslem pillagers. It may well be that US withdrawal entirely from the region would lessen the level of “blowback” against the southerners for the temerity to “secede” from the “north”, taking their oil rich lands with them. Now they’ve got their independence, the moslem north are again tormenting them by denying them access to the transport of that oil to the world market. What WOULD be a profitable move for all involved would be for some private firm (as opposed to government with their ever-present agenda) to engage in building an alternate means of transport for that oil. Leave the rotten northerners to complete their rotting. The UN have consistently denied or frustrated any foreign relief efforts, seemingly taking up the cause of the moslem north.. no great surprise, given the members of the councils that decide such things. Some theory, that the UN is to protect the underdogs against the bullies, enforce treaties lawfully entered upon, and be neutral as regards things like religion, ethnicity, and so forth. The reality is rather “other”. And the South Sudanese suffer for it. And the US government seem to uphold whatever policies, however twisted, the UN put forth.
While I admire people like George Clooney who speak out in behalf of the people of Darfur, he is ultimately a coward because he won’t speak the truth as to the cause of the conflict. The truth is Sudan is another example of Muslim aggression. Clooney is also very naive if he thinks Obama cares a lick about the plight of the South Sudanese. Until he sheds the light on what actually happened in Sudan, Clooney will continue to be just another Hollywood Looney!