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 June 1, 2004 03:02 PM | TrackBack