WORLD JUNE 23, 2011
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It seems that widespread atrocities are yet again taking place in Sudan. Of course, there is much we do not know about precisely what is happening; but the reports coming out of the country are nauseating, and they sound all too similar to reports that emerged from South Sudan during the 1990s or from Darfur during the early days of that genocide. Could it be that we are witnessing the early stages of yet another slaughter perpetrated by the government in Khartoum?
The roots of the current killing go back decades, to the long civil war between South Sudan and the central government in the North. That war was brought to a formal close in 2005, when the Bush administration helped to negotiate a peace treaty between the two sides. One stipulation of the agreement was that the South would eventually be able to hold a referendum on independence. A vote was finally held this past January, and South Sudanese opted by an overwhelming margin to form a new country. The date for the South to declare independence was set for July 9.
Then, several weeks ago, the North began an assault on Abyei, located along the North-South border. The town is home to Ngok Dinkas, an ethnic group that has historically been allied with the South. The Sudanese military first fired into the town, and the next morning troops began to move in. There were reports of killings and rapes. Following the attack, according to a U.N. report obtained by Foreign Policy, the town of Abyei was “virtually empty and deserted”—over 30,000 people had fled. A significant portion of the town has been destroyed.
But Abyei was just the beginning. Next came a Sudanese military assault on South Kordofan. This area is located in the North, but its inhabitants are Nuba and they too have traditionally been aligned with the South. The Sudanese military has begun to move into Kordofan amid what U.N. officials call “a growing sense of panic.” It has blocked aid workers from entering the region and destroyed local airstrips. Perhaps 500,000 Nuba have been displaced; another 3,000 have disappeared. “They take the young men,” a U.N. official told the Guardian. “Are they going to detain them and feed them and give them water for months? I don’t think so.” Recent reports from the area tell of at least two new mass graves around South Kordofan’s capital; one was filled with nearly 1,000 bodies.
Because of the limited information coming out of Abyei and Kordofan, we do not have a complete picture of the situation. We also realize that it does the cause of human rights no benefit when observers cry genocide following any outbreak of violence. At the same time, we cannot ignore the history of this regime. We know the cruel techniques that the government in Khartoum has long used to preside over its fractious country. Whenever an outlying region of Sudan has launched a rebellion, the government has responded not only by fighting the rebellion itself, but by using genocidal tactics against the ethnic groups to which the rebels belong. These campaigns killed millions in the South and hundreds of thousands in Darfur. We may not know whether this is the start of a similar episode, but we know it is a possibility.
This is not an easy moment for President Obama. With the United States already engaged in three wars, going to war in Sudan is not a realistic option. But doing nothing in the face of these serious crimes is not a moral option. This is one of the most difficult situations a president can possibly face. There are no simple solutions to this dilemma, and we do not envy President Obama having to confront it. We would only say this: Throughout his presidency, Obama has often appeared to give the problems of Sudan short shrift, despite the extraordinarily evil nature of its regime. Moreover, during the crises that have engulfed the Middle East over the past several months, Obama has often taken the right steps but taken them too late. He has been content, in Washington’s phrase of the moment, to “lead from behind.”
These patterns must not repeat themselves in Sudan. Whatever Obama decides to do, he must be at the forefront of efforts to bring this killing to a halt. Whether it is arming the South Sudan government with surface-to-air missiles—as the Enough Project, an anti-genocide group, has proposed—or leaning on China, a close ally of Sudanese leader Omar Bashir, to use its influence to stop the violence, Obama must take this unfolding crisis seriously. Otherwise, the worst could very well happen once more.
This article originally ran in the July 14, 2011, issue of the magazine.
23 comments
It's a nightmare beyond our comprehension. But there are a over a billion Muslims on this planet. For the most part they share none of our Western values. To them genocide isn't the ultimate horror.. It what one does to one's enemies. Islam and Western Civilization are mortal enemies. The idea that that the followers of Mohammed can be appeased is as stupid as the idea that the followers of Hitler and Stalin could be appeased. It's time we quit trying to civilize the uncivilizable and let them Muslims know that any Muslim terrorist attack on our country will be met by the full wrath of the United States Air Force.
- bulbman1066
June 25, 2011 at 12:40am
It's also time to quit coddling Islamic groups in this country, many or whom who are allied with Islamofascist terrorism. It isn't a violation of civil liberties for the FBI to keep a close eye on mosques and on Islamic "charities" in this country, any more than it was a violation for the FBI to keep watch on the German-American Bund in the late thirties and early forties.
- bulbman1066
June 25, 2011 at 1:02am
As for Sudan, liberals could not care less. There is no anti-American, anti-Israel angle. The situation is embarrassing for the left, given the left's defacto alliance with Islamofascism, so the left keeps silent about it. TNR tries to escape from this moral rat trap, but it can't really do it, committed as it is to to our Islamophilic, anti-Israel, anti-Western president.
- bulbman1066
June 25, 2011 at 1:19am
Genocide in the Sudan is one of the projects of Chinese imperialism in Africa. They are the chief enablers of the Arab Muslim regime in Khartoum.
- amidut
June 25, 2011 at 6:36am
"Obama must..." Who do you think you are? Obama get's his marching orders only from The Arab League or from the UN controlled by Arab states. Where have you been in the past 4 years? Isn't it interesting to notice that President Bush cared more about the non-Arab Black people of Sudan that President Obama does? Does Obama know that people with his skin color are called Abed in the Arab world? (Abed means slave in Arabic)
- Poupic
June 25, 2011 at 10:26am
These comments are all rot, every one of them. The Chinese trade infrastructure and aid for resources--oil and minerals--in Africa. They have influence, but if that's imperialism, it's an absurdly low definition of it. You know what, I'm done. There's no point responding to the rest. There's only so much paranoid delusion I can deal with on one day.
- Curran1
June 25, 2011 at 1:28pm
I agree with Curran - unbelievable comments. You guys need to take an aspirin and go back to bed.
- Sophia
June 25, 2011 at 2:21pm
ditto Sophia and Curran, I find it hilarious that bulbman actually spends money on a subscription to TNR when he is obviously a rightwing crackpot. I also find the article by TNR to be disappointing, with no real suggestions as to what to do except encourage there to be more guns in the area and that the war restart in full force. I have no idea what can be done there besides sending aid to South Sudan to help resettle the refugees and whatever additional sanctions we can apply, but bombing Khartoum isn't the answer, war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, quasi wars in Yemen and Pakistan...there is only so much we can do.
- blackton
June 25, 2011 at 6:48pm
Yea, most posts here are pretty bizarre. Still nothing is more bizarre than this story: Iran opens int'l anti-terrorism conference Here is the concluding paragraph to the predictable comments at the conference: "Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, Afghani President Hamid Karzai, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani arrived in Tehran on Friday to attend the conference. Also, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir arrived here on Saturday." "Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir arrived here on Saturday." This is rich.
- arnon
June 25, 2011 at 7:27pm
To Curran: Nicholas Kristoff, a reputable liberal columnist for the NY Times wrote "Blood and Oil, China and Sudan" http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE3D9153FF930A15757C0A9609C8B63 where he discussed how Beijing provides political cover for Sudan's genocidal regime.
- amidut
June 25, 2011 at 8:27pm
Actually there are many serious problems concerning resources, corporations and even nations supporting or covering for oppressive regimes. There was a documentary on TV yesterday, "Shadow of the The Holy Book," about Turkmenistan - rich in petroleum resources - and its dictator who saw himself as a great leader, perhaps even a holy prophet, and who wrote his musings in a book. Giant multinationals like Siemens and even nationstates have been tripping over themselves trying to get a piece of the action in Turkmenistan and in the process have translated this not-quite-as-bad-as-Mein-Kampf into many languages and thus reinforced the power of the dictatorship - which has survived Saparmurat Niyazov's iron rule. Altogether lacking in this sad story is any apparent morality on the part of the primarily Western commercial concerns, which run the gamut from the oil industry to construction giants and of course include the nationstates which host and represent these industries. The latest irony: Delta's partnership with Saudia Airlines. The oil industry has never paid much attention to moral niceties so maybe the Delta situation will bring some attention to the Arab boycott of Jews which predates the birth of Israel in 1948 by many years, and also Saudi Arabia's highly oppressive religious and sexual ideology. This, note, is an American national ally (Saudi Arabia, not Delta:) Seriously, it is not funny and accusing China of bad business practices in Sudan overlooks the West and our own horrendous human rights record when it really comes down to making a buck particularly where the oil industry is concerned. Also, we could go back a bit in history and look at slavery, government licensed piracy, and of course, capturing entire continents and stealing their stuff and murdering the natives; the point being, our morals go right out the window when confronted with a good business opportunity and we have no room to accuse the Chinese of what we ourselves tacitly condone. For that matter many Western corporations and national leaders somehow managed to miss the point of Mein Kampf and continued to do business with Hitler long after his philosophy was well known. So. What was that you guys were saying? More to the point: what exactly is the US supposed to do here? We can't do battle effectively until we examine our own corporate and national practices on the one hand and on the other, we need some help. We are already fighting how many wars? in which it isn't entirely clear who the good guys are in at least a couple of cases.
- Sophia
June 25, 2011 at 9:33pm
I agree, amidut, that the Chinese are one of the players aiding the mass killings in the Sudan but they are hardly the chief cause. Sudanese history has been a bloody one. The country is a collection of diverse regions that do not form a coherent country. The ruler al Bashir is under indictment for mass murder but no one has bothered to arrest him. It makes ICC look impotent which it is.
- arnon
June 25, 2011 at 10:11pm
Sophia: “There was a documentary on TV yesterday, "Shadow of the The Holy Book," about Turkmenistan - rich in petroleum resources - and its dictator who saw himself as a great leader, perhaps even a holy prophet, and who wrote his musings in a book.” Almost every despot has his own “little book” meant to glorify him. Calling oneself a “holy prophet” is one way to get legitimacy in a Muslim country. It’s for internal consumption and we don’t need to take it seriously.
- arnon
June 25, 2011 at 10:14pm
It's not just the ICC, arnon. The black African nations are not looking good on this issue either.
- scrubby
June 25, 2011 at 11:00pm
Amidut: perhaps it was unfair of me to lump your comment in with the others. Imperialism still seems to me the wrong word for what China's doing, but I agree with you that they're a bad actor and an enabler; like Arnon, though, I'd still place the blame on the Sudanese regime and its associated militias. Respectfully, C
- Curran1
June 25, 2011 at 11:20pm
As Conrad said, "The Horror. The Horror." Pointing fingers at people to blame in the past (no matter how justified) does not help much. We are already suffering from "rescue exhaustion," in places such as Libya and Syria (where we are already mostly impotent already). Once in a while, we make a little dent in human monstrosity (Ivory Coast, for example), but on the whole we are a horrid species, and even with the best of intentions, it is difficult to oppose monstrous behavior without becoming almost as bad as what we struggle against. And it's not as if we don't hapve plenty of horror (though usually in smaller increments, such as the pharmacy shooting of four people in Medford, New York. How do you prevent or stop that, much less the horror in Sudan? We are not the policeman of the world, though the world needs one. Or a few million.
- skahn
June 25, 2011 at 11:38pm
Skahn, I'm pretty sympathetic to most of what you've written, but I think you overstate the case--isn't there a huge difference between four dead in a pharmacy shooting, or the 500 people murdered on US streets each year, and the hundreds of thousands murdered in a collapsing Yugoslavia, or a South Sudan, or, perhaps, here? Yes, wars and interventions are nearly always messy, yes there will be moral compromises, yes even when you're using force to stop something evil, a military is going to end up doing things that are less than utopian...still, though, I think that interventions, military or otherwise, can lead to situations that are markedly less bad--hundreds or thousands dead, rather than hundreds of thousands. Still, it takes diligence, care, and luck. (See: Iraq War, 2003-2006, Afghanistan, 2002-now). Even though our military is currently overstretched already...can't something be done? Anything? Mightn't arming and supplying (via air, if necessary) the south sudanese and the peoples of Abyei and Kordofan be the least bad option? I might take civil war over one-sided slaughter and genocide.
- Curran1
June 26, 2011 at 12:17am
The moral issues in regard to intervention are vexing. But we must realize that Islam shares none of our belief in freedom, progress, or the intrinsic value of human life. Until the Islamic world moves from the Dark Ages into some equivalents of the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment our main method of dealing with it will of necessity be military. We are faced with a pre-modern civilization which understands only the language of force. The question is whether humanitarian interventions do any good. The results so far are not encouraging. There's no need to panic. Instead there is a need to look within and realize that the real threat to our country and our civilization is not so such Islam as it is the decadence and neurotic self-hatred of the Western elites.
- bulbman1066
June 26, 2011 at 1:41am
blackton -- I'd argue bombing Khatorum is the answer even if it's not officially "we" who do it. The one constant in Sudan's genocides has been the Arab ruler's military superiority - it may get bogged down some of the non-Arab parts of the country but its never been militarily threatened and only has felt internal pressure when the economy in the north has weakened. The exception of course was Clinton's bombing, and even that failed mission had the effect of sending OBL to Afghanistan. The reason we're not doing anything has less to do with our being stretched in Libya and more to do with who the victims are and the collective world's disinterest in what happens to them. That said, will President Obama even take the smaller steps urged in the editorial (I'm not getting your "disappointment" - they call for the same steps you say are all that are available)? And as some of the right wing commenters note, what price does Obama pay from his supporters if he doesn't?
- Lymon1
June 26, 2011 at 7:32am
Lymon1 “I'd argue bombing Khatorum is the answer even if it's not officially "we" who do it. The one constant in Sudan's genocides has been the Arab ruler's military superiority - it may get bogged down some of the non-Arab parts of the country but its never been militarily threatened and only has felt internal pressure when the economy in the north has weakened.” I am sympathetic to the view that Al-Bashir and his cohorts ought to be punished and that bombing military and other strategic and economic assets in Khartoum is the way to go. I doubt it’s going to happen though. Al Bashir has become an ally of China and the Chinese will protect him: “Al-Bashir commends China as "strategic partner", hopes to boost ties through visit” http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2011-06/26/c_13950833.htm Then there are House Republicans who just rebuked Obama for supporting the campaign against Khadafy. In an election year and with a weakened economy it will be hard for Obama to involve us in another military campaign no matter how just the cause.
- arnon
June 26, 2011 at 12:04pm
Arnon, you're saying that one the reason we haven't bombed military installations and such is because we don't want to piss off the Chinese? I'm not disagreeing, just curious if we now that beholden to/in fear of China. You think if we didn't owe them so much we'd have bombed a while ago?
- MOLLYSIMON
June 26, 2011 at 9:48pm
MOLLYSIMON “Arnon, you're saying that one the reason we haven't bombed military installations and such is because we don't want to piss off the Chinese? I'm not disagreeing, just curious if we now that beholden to/in fear of China. You think if we didn't owe them so much we'd have bombed a while ago?” The other reason, Republican obstructionism, is probably the more important one. The President would need congressional appropriations to mount a bombing campaign. Not getting Chinese support is part of the problem, of course, but it’s that and the weak economy and the Republicans (all put together) that will make any forceful action at this time almost impossibility. I hope I am wrong.
- arnon
June 26, 2011 at 11:28pm
In light of the west's refusal to stand by the mantra "never again" repeatedly, even, in the case of Darfur mass calls from it's populace to do, I keep entertaining the idea of the following for these humanitarian crises; Creating humanitarian organizations to spread awareness and raise money, yes, as was done quite well in the Darfur case, but instead of using those funds to further 'raise awareness' or lobby home states, hire Private Military Firms and security contractors instead to protect, train, arm and provide air, ground and communications support. Such firms have been decisive in conflicts from Angola and Liberia to Croatia, so why should they be any less effective in a humanitarian conflict? I realize it isn't ideal to have a less accountable private group protecting these people, but given how chickenshit the west is even when facing a repeat genocide offender, and combined with considerable support from the western populace for humanitarian military aid, I think it could be worthwhile in a pinch, considering the alternative.
- SarabandeG
July 3, 2011 at 6:44pm