Genocide is Allowed

In Sudan, President al-Bashir has been left to condone and be complicit with genocide while the maladministration claims progress for achieving an agreement between his government and South Sudan, as I pointed out in a January 29th post, "Good Choices". The agreement has been generally ignored, but our GOP government is sure that the U.S. public will not know, and won't research, that aspect of their "achievements".

In Darfur, the Sudan government is now fighting against an agreement reached in hard-fought U.N. negotiations in November that established an African Union peacekeeping force would be sent in to seek an end to genocide there.

Thursday al-Bashir wrote to the U.N. that the agreement, an initial one, provided for control of the operation rather than technical assistance and lower level forces, and had overruled in unspecified ways an earlier agreement reached with one of the rebel factions. This is a written response which U.N. Secretary Ban has been pressuring for since November when al-Bashir said he would comply.

This is the pattern of Sudanese noncompliance after initial agreement, and so far it has kept international sanctions from being imposed. Meanwhile, the Darfur region is routinely subject to the attacks of janjaweed on the indigenous peoples, a darker race than the janjaweed.

This, of course, a result of longstanding racial discord that culminated in uprisings from the Darfur region that subsequently were quelled by official government attacks which are now perpertuated by the janjaweed. Originally, the janjaweed were officially an operating wing of the official al-Bashir government.

If by now you are aghast that we in the U.S., and the West, are allowing the genocide to go on, and not putting a stop to it at least by sanctions, think about the China angle. We are making nice with China, as I detailed in a January 31 post, "Where's The Love? For Human Rights", and theirs is the resistance to sanctions because of their important energy/trade relations with that region.

Ban has repeatedly urged al-Bashir to uphold his commitment to the U.N.-AU peacekeeping plan and warned that Darfur's deteriorating security situation is unacceptable.

Al-Bashir's response could prompt the United States and other Western countries to intensify a push for sanctions against Sudan.

U.S. officials have said Sudan's failure to fully comply with the U.N. plan could lead to the imposition of punitive measures against Sudan that have been approved by the Security Council but not yet implemented.

One such measure is the establishment of a no-fly zone over Darfur to spare its residents further attacks by Sudanese military aircraft. Britain has backed the idea, but sanctions could face resistance from China, which has business interests in Sudan.

These are the frustrating, enervating negotiating events that it takes to get anything done. These are the events that our GOP has downrated in order to carry on its war. While millions are displaced in Darfur and hundreds of thousands are murdered, we're too busy with the murder and displacement of the Iraqi people - and our newfound friendship toward communist China - to put in the effort required to stop it.