There is a great concern among those parties interested in bringing help and aid to the suffering people of Darfur that the response of the U.S. may be compromised by the fact that Khartoum is now an "ally" in the global war on terror. As incredible as this assertion may sound when one considers the Sudanese government's past role as a state sponsor of terrorism and Islamic radicalism (they harbored Osama bin Laden for some time), as well as the atrocities perpetrated time and again against its own people, the fact is that when President Bush declared that states must be "either for us, or against us" Khartoum shrewdly decided that it could not afford to count the U.S. as a public enemy in the war on terror.
Sadly, it seems that the War on Terror may, in this regard, bear resemblance to one of the most regrettable aspects of the Cold War: the support (or at least tolerance) of regimes with horrendous human rights records by the U.S. goverment, simply because they offer some strategic interest or potential. It makes me shake my head in despair when I learn of my governments' support for regime's such as Mobutu's in Zaire, a "friendly tyrant" who lived in the most oppulent luxury imaginable while his country was slowly strangled by his megalomaniacal rule. All the while, Mobutu recieved billions in U.S. aid for one sole reason - he could be counted on to oppose Soviet influence.
Today, I see history repeating itself. Sudan has been called the worst dictatorship currently in the world by independent study groups. General Bashir has stated openly since his takeover of power of his intentions to "cleanse" Sudan, and to assure the ascendency of radical Islam. For years, Khartoum waged war against the south, bombing hospitals and schools, raping women, and killing civilians en masse. Today, the litany of horrors continues in Darfur, and while the U.S. has, of course, not supported the genocide directly, it has, by its unwillingness to take action against Khartoum, allowed the killing to continue. This is not acceptable.
Such lack of initiative is unacceptable on moral grounds. Yet even beyond this, if one examines the political logic behind tacit support for Khartoum, the current position must be viewed as untenable. What reliable anti-terrorism intelligence can we possibly hope to gain from a government which calculates the death toll in Darfur to be 9,000, while the rest of the world calculates the loss of life to have topped 200,000? Is any intelligence which such a self-serving, immoral, and duplicitous regime could offer us worth the cost of such complicity, even if we somehow had reason to believe it was reliable?
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2 comments:
I think the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury's recent comments on US imperialism show that the so-called "war on terror" is simply a cloak for this imperialism, a ruse to gain the uncritical support of US voters.
But, as someone said, you can't fool all the people all the time.
You write very well.
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