So there's this problem in Sudan. Crisis, some might say, genocide is a term I've heard used. So where's the international response? Is it comprised solely of the 14,000 humanitarian aid workers and 70 NGOs in Darfur? What happened to the resounding (and once again unfashionably late) proclamations after the Holocaust and Rwanda of "never again"? Is the world being outsmarted and outplayed by one man sitting in Khartoum? I'm beginning to think we are....
Bashir is a genius. Really. He'll move into history alongside the Maos and the Hitlers for his calculating ability to manipulate and strategically twist every single attempted intervention in his favor. Case in point: where, pray tell, is the UN? They are not peace keeping, they are not intervening. No air strikes, no sanctions. So UNHCR is there, barely, and with the UN's genius plan of integrated missions they are stifled, by their own supervising organization, in their tasks. Bashir has nothing to do with the UNHCR's failures. His moves, however, have played an enormous role in the lack of intervention.
The situation on the ground in Darfur is bad. But it's not quite bad enough. It sounds weird, doesn't it? Bashir's plan, his agenda, is to make the situation on the ground so uncomfortable for the residents of Sudan that they will be propelled to flee--to leave the country, seemingly by their own volition. As long as there is not mass starvation, as long as they can walk that invisibly fine line, the government is sitting pretty. As long as they are allowing some humanitarian aid in there is less of an argument for the UN to intervene. So this leads me wonder (and I assure you, I am not the only one)--are the humanitarian actors the ones actually preventing an escalated response in their stoicism and devotion to stick it out regardless of the number of aid workers who have been shot in the head?
There have been 12. 12 workers in 6 months gunned down purposefully. That is 2x as many as in the previous two years combined. So what would it take for the UN or anyone else to get in there? Currently there are 7,000 AU peace keeping forces on the ground. Bashir has refused to allow for more. The UN Charter allows for intervention when there is serious instability of forced migrants (Am I alone here in seeing Chad flashing in large red letters?) or if there is a significant breach in peace and security. Umm. No comment. Under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter the Security Council can authorize action. However, the UN Charter also provides for the ability of any permanent member of the Council to veto and thus kill these authorizations. Who likes Sudan's oil?? CHINA! Who's a permanent member of the UN Security Council?? CHINA! I think you can see where I'm going with this.
Member states can invoke their own right to intervene unilaterally or as a coalition, but we have all seen how well that worked out for the U.S. in a small country named Iraq. Without the backing of the Security Council the problem won't be touched with a 100 foot pole by anyone else. I shake my head in disappointment and frustration at the continued reverberations of Iraq. Sudan disintegrates into two civil wars covering the entire country, government sponsored torture and murder, mass exodus that is poised to drag Chad and the Central African Republic into the turmoil and the rest of the world sits idle.
I amend my question--how humanitarian SHOULD humans be? CAN humans be? I'm sick of reading and writing about this. I am tempted to take a semester off and go there with one of the NGOs--I'm 100% confident I could find a 6 month internship. I hesitate, knowing it would make my mother cry and affect any offer (most likely) I might be lucky enough to get after this summer. But it makes me sad to sit here and just wax poetic to an audience possibly of none, and whoever is left reading is most likely kind of tired of such similar topics over and over. Patience, zen and hope is all I got now.
