The Board Blog
Additional commentary, background information and other items by Times editorial writers.
The joint force took over this month from an earlier African Union force of 7,000 that was too small and too poorly equipped. The new one was supposed to be the largest international peacekeeping force ever authorized, with nearly 20,000 more soldiers and police officers, modern helicopters and other advanced equipment.
By the start of this year, barely a tenth of those additional forces were in place, and much of the needed new equipment had not arrived. When the peacekeepers were quickly attacked by Sudanese forces, they had to withdraw without returning fire.
While claiming that it will cooperate, Khartoum has repeatedly tried to hobble the force: refusing to accept some non-African peacekeepers, trying to limit the peacekeepers’ use of helicopters and demanding other untenable restrictions. Last week, Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, chose a notorious leader of the janjaweed, the militias that have carried out most of the killing, to be a senior government adviser.
Nobody pretends that bringing a stable peace to Darfur will be easy. The conflict involves not just the janjaweed and the Sudanese Army but also rival Darfur rebels and militias. Underlying it all is a desperate competition between nomads and farmers for land and water in a parched region. There is no hope at all until a credible and credibly armed peacekeeping force is deployed.
The world’s leaders say they care desperately about Darfur’s suffering. But caring is not enough. What is needed is troops, equipment and a lot more diplomatic pressure on Sudan. The word of the United Nations is on the line, and so are the lives of Darfur’s people.
(Article courtesy of The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com )
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“The world’s leaders say they care desperately about Darfur’s suffering. But caring is not enough. What is needed is troops, equipment and a lot more diplomatic pressure on Sudan. The word of the United Nations is on the line, and so are the lives of Darfur’s people.”
America and the rest of the world care about what happens in Darfur? America and the United Nations care about black-skinned people as opposed to caring more for the minerals buried underneath their land, more than the strategic location it could afford America’s military interests?
President Bush, the American Congress care about the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died due to rape/murder, starvation, being beaten and hacked to death, mutilated for life?
America really…………..care?
I don’t think so.
Sudan is not Iraq, it is not even Yugoslavia, therefore, America has and will continue to drag its feet concerning Sudan, especially when push comes to shove in putting boots on the ground. The women and children of Darfur need for their concerns to be met. They are suffering the worst atrocities of this genocidal conflict. They need people who will be unbiased in implementing help for those most devastated by this colossal tragedy. But, expecting America to really go to bat for Sudan/Darfur, will be a miracle. If America can get no economic/political interest out of Sudan, it will not give Sudan the time of day.
It has not so far, and America has shown clearly its policies towards Sudan:
Sudan is a part of Africa, not the Middle East, especially not Saudi Arabia or U.A.E. It has no respectful standing in the eyes of America as well as the UN, so why should those two entities (America and the UN——-as well as Arabs, or China, which supports the Bashir-led government of Sudan) care what happens to the black people of Darfur? I hear no outcry from the Muslims around the world against the Islamist-led government of Bashir in his atrocities against non-Muslims. Why are the world’s many Muslims so silent on the crimes against humanity being done in the name of Islam? Were are their voices against Bashir and Sudan? Why does not the rest of the world care of what Islamist fundamentalists are doing to destroy the black people of Darfur/Sudan?
If anything America/the West/the UN/the followers of Islam are hopefully waiting in the wings for Sudan to completely destroy itself so that the West/non-Islamists can swoop in and like vultures to spoils grab up what it can from the dying remains of Sudan.
Talk is cheap, and America and the UN’s and the rest of the world’s cheap treatment of Sudan speaks loud and clear.
Don’t make promises you cannot keep, America, United Nations.
Promises not kept, eventually turn into lies that live on forever.
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