There doesn't appear to be

There doesn't appear to be much of that in Darfur right about now.

NOT a single Sudanese child refugee under the age of five
will be alive in six months unless there is immediate and dramatic
international intervention, a senior United Nations official warned
yesterday. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have poured over the
border from Sudan into Chad in the past few months, driven out by a
genocidal campaign against black African inhabitants of the Darfur
region. Many are living in makeshift shelters, unable to get into
established refugee camps, facing the constant threat of attack from
the government-backed Janjaweed militias that have burned villages,
killed thousands of people, raped women and girls and taken young
children as slaves. The UN has described the situation in Darfur -
where something in the region of a million people have been driven from
their homes and estimates have placed the potential death toll at
300,000 - as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and the imminent
arrival of the rainy season threatens to trigger a fresh catastrophe
among the refugees who have sought shelter in Chad. Aid experts
estimated that around a quarter of the refugees in Chad would die
before the end of the year unless aid could be put in place before the
imminent rains begin in earnest. That figure includes 38,600 children
under the age of five and 10,000 other vulnerable people, including
pregnant women. It's believed 25,000 would suffer severe malnutrition.
Yesterday, the deputy director of the UN World Food Programme in Chad,
Jean-Charles Dei, warned that the rains would make roads impassable for
aid lorries bringing in food, leading to malnutrition and ultimately
starvation for thousands of the refugees. He said the rains would also
bring inevitable outbreaks of disease, including cholera and measles.
"There will be a tragedy if nothing happens," Mr Dei said. "I don't
think any of the children under the age of five will make it, and the
pregnant women too. For those who are under five there is no chance.
They will die from starvation."
The UN has appealed, so far unsuccessfully, for more than $30 million
before the end of this year to prevent a catastrophe. UNICEF, which
alone says it needs $1.6 million to tackle the immediate crisis, has
warned that with the rainy season about to start in earnest, the
situation is now critical. Aid agencies working with refugees along the
border say that about 200,000 people have crossed into Chad, driven
from their homes in the Darfur region of Sudan by the murderous
onslaught of the Janjaweed militia, backed by Sudanese government
forces, including jets and helicopters, which have bombed villages. The
influx has overwhelmed the existing resources and appeals for fresh
financial assistance to buy food and medicines have been unsuccessful

(my emphasis}
Granted, it is possible that Mr. Dei is overstating things in the hope
of getting people to act, but God, if it's true...
There are times when I really wonder about human beings and what causes
us to act and our rationalizations for taking the path we've chosen.
Our humanity. That is what I wonder about. What makes us human beings;
what we find deserving of our empathy and what falls short; and
ultimately our utter cruelty, because human beings are not kind unless
it's in our best interests to be so. We look out only for ourselves. We
make sure we're the ones who reach the top of the heap and damn
everyone to hell who tries to stop us. It's the overwhelming big
picture that frightens me as a human being and makes me not so very
proud to be one at times. Particularly when it comes to a place like
Sudan.
Why does Sudan interest me so much when most people can't find it on
map, let alone care what is going on there? Mainly because this country
is central to the plot of my most recent manuscript. I've done a lot of
research on the civil war between the South and the North and, more
than anything, I've come to realize that while religion may have caused
the spark that blew the powderkeg, this civil war is about nothing more
than the natural resources that will enable the victor to live in
prosperity. And that's it. But different people will tell you different
things about this civil war in an attempt to sway your opinion about
how best to stop it. Christian activists will tell you it's about the
forced adoption of Shari'a Law on the peoples of the south, who are not
Muslim, but mainly follow Christian and Animist religions. Anti-Slavery
activists and human rights organizations will tell you that you should
care because southerners are forced by circumstances or by the barrel
of a gun into slavery by those in the north. The United States
government will tell you that, for all the multitude reasons the war is
raging, only one thing is important: if the war rages on, it will
further exclude the recognized Sudanese government from the
International Community and the north will still be a safe harbor for
terrorist organizations. The SPLA (The Sudanese People's Liberation
Army---the main opposition group in the south) will tell you that the
north wants to oppress them; to shove a set of beliefs that the south
doesn't share down their gullets. The north, well, they won't tell you
anything at all, just that they need to put down the uprisings. All of
these groups try to inveigle you into their arguments, knowing that
your humanity will further help them in their goals. Whatever the
reasons, though, it's the one that's rarely mentioned that should be
given the most credit: the natural resources. It's all about that
particular part of land and what lies beneath it and what can be grown
out of it, in other words. The northern part of Sudan is being
swallowed up into the Sahara and Nubian deserts---two deserts which
used to have distinct boundaries but now do not. It's called
desertification and it's been happening for years. The north does not
have a great abundance of natural resources. They cannot grow their own
food because their land is not arable for the most part. The south,
however, has all that they do not, and due to the idiocy of Colonial
Cartography, the boundaries were shaped a hundred years ago to form one
homogenous country called Sudan. The only problem is that Sudan is not
homogenous. The peoples are wildly different. They believe different
things. They act differently and they want to live under a different
set of laws. The British bugged out in the mid-1950's and were it not
for a ten year breather in the 1970's it would be easy to say that this
civil war has been raging on for almost fifty
years. The people may be different, the official reasons given may be
different, but when you whittle it all down the reasoning for the
earlier civil war and this one is exactly the same: it's the natural
resources---namely oil. But Darfur doesn't have any natural resources.
Bupkiss. It's has nothing. It's a wasteland for the most part. Why is
there a war raging in that province? Particularly when it's hell and
gone from the south? (Sudan is the largest country in Africa. It's
bigger than Texas---it would be as if there was a war between Austin
and Houston and the people in El Paso decided to start flaring up.) If
this is truly a separate humanitarian crisis, why isn't the world
acting? Why aren't they doing their utmost to help, particularly
because it cause problems with the newfound peace between the south and
the north? Mr. Dei is partially right about the fact there's no oil or
diamonds in the region that would cause donor nations to get involved.
However, he doesn't pay enough attention to the fact that this is all
about oil that's under the ground in another region in Sudan. That this
is what's making donor nations leery of getting involved. The northern
government just signed a peace accord with the SPLA. According to the
deal, there is a proportional power sharing arrangement. In the north,
displaced southerners will have a 30% stake in local governments, while
the north holds the majority stake. Reverse it for the southern
provinces. And in six years, God willing, there will be a referendum in
the south and if it is successful it will allow for the south to secede
entirely. In my opinion, there are two things that will prevent this
from ever taking place: one, the SPLA has little to no practical
experience with running a representative government (they're not an
entirely homogenous group, either---as many people in the south have
been murdered by the north as have been murdered by various SPLA
factions) and two, the north has no conceivable interest to keep the
peace and allow the vote: they'd be cut out of everything they've
worked so hard to gain. The southerners would overwhelmingly vote to
keep them the hell out of it. It would be almost as if you'd asked the
Palestinians, after six years of power sharing with the Israelis, if
they wanted to actually work with them, instead of kicking them the
hell out. Do you think that
would happen? Given their acrimonious history? Do you honestly think
that there would be a chance for that to work? I don't either. But who
do you think the various oil companies that have courted Sudanese oil
over the years have inked deals with? The SPLA or the northern
government? There is but one recognized government of Sudan, after all,
and it isn't the SPLA. It's in their best interests right now to keep
the north happy. If a cease fire is finally agreed to, that would allow
the western oil companies to get back into southern Sudan. The north
hasn't been idle during the war. They've built a pipleline and have
been pumping oil---just not at a level that will allow them to pay off
all their debt and really get moving. So, it's everyone's interest to
stop the civil war. And they're making strides towards that, but no one
(other than the United States government---who has pledged millions of
dollars in aid) seems to want to stop what's going on in Darfur. Not
the French. Not the Germans. Not the Russians---who, in fact, did some
manuevering to keep Sudan on the Human Rights council at the UN. No one
on the Security Council other than the US apparently gives a damn. It
still doesn't make any sense, does it? There is one thing that pulls it
all together and the answer is a very simple one: the rebels that are
doing all the slaughtering in Darfur are backed by the northern
government. Reportedly they've even received air support from the
government, and God only knows how many guns and other armaments the
government has supplied them with. It's only a matter of time before
Sudanese troops actively get involved. Knowing this crucial bit of
information, you don't have to be Henry Kissinger to connect the dots:
now that's there's a possibility of peace in the south, to play an
active part in stopping the government backed
rebels in Darfur, let alone helping the people they're killing, could
potentially futz up said peace---and all the oil that could potentially
flow as a result. Quid pro quo, in other words. You scratch my back,
baby, and I'll scratch yours. And millions of people are going to die
for this. The problem for me, in a strictly personal sense, is that I
can see both sides of it. I can see the big picture, the national
interests that lead countries to do what they will and
I can see the smaller, more personal picture. I can see the people
starving. I can see the women fleeing to try and avoid a fate worse
than death. I can see the babies crying for lack of food. And it bothers
me that I can see and understand both points of view, and to know that,
whatever the relative merits of their arguments might be, that it might
be the right thing to do to stay the hell out of Darfur; that the
"greater good" might be served by staying the hell out of it. It should
never be right to stand by and watch people be murdered. It just
shouldn't be. My conscience is giving me trouble. I am a human being. I
live by the Golden Rule: I do unto others what I would want them to do
unto me. I wouldn't want to starve or be raped or threatened into a
refugee camp, so it offends me as a human being that very little is
being done about this problem. We should be better than this. We can do better than this. It's within the realm of what is possible.
But I also know there are limitations to what we can do. We can ship
aid, and this we should be doing. But what can we do about the rest of
it? Can we jeopardize other things, namely the peace in the
south---just on principle? People over here are dying. We have to let you suffer through more war because of it. Sorry, that's just the way things go. It's not a black and white situation when it should be
a black and white situation. Unfortunately, the truth is that, when it
comes to world affairs, that life and death isn't black and white. And
we're all the worse for it as human beings.

Posted by: Kathy at 03:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 2286 words, total size 13 kb.