Introduction
An estimate of two to four hundred thousand people have been killed, and over two million displaced with fresh outbreaks of violence in Darfur, in 2006. If this is to be stretched back to 2003, then over two million black Africans have been killed. These statistics posit that the victims are black Africans, many of whom are Christians. The perpetrators of these spates of atrocities are the Islamic totalitarian rulers in Sudan, the Juntas and members of state sponsored Arab militia group called the Jajanja weed. The seriousness of the matter is clearly vivid since on the onset of the outbreak, there were numerous spates of protests on May 01, 2006 in Washington DC and in 17 other cities, urging the American government to intervene in the Darfur crisis and with a more renewed and intensified force (Flint and Dewaal, 2005).
Main body
On the onset of these outbreaks of attacks, President George Bush exhibited honest zeal to reverse the state of affairs in Sudan. In fact Bush was so zealous that he called the then United Nations secretary general Koffi Annan’s verdict on the massacres as “ethnic cleansing”, euphemism. To Bush, the issue was so serious, his administration was not going to tolerate gross portrayal of humanity’s greatest shame. Four years down the line, it is emerging clearly that the Bush administration has evaded tackling the Darfur issue seriously.
There are a lot of issues that undercut American affairs in relation to Darfur crisis. It is a fact that in international relations, the cardinal principle that governs the relation between or amongst states is interests. As states interact with each other, there are losers and winners in the quest of pursing interests. There is no other reason that could explain the inconsistencies that are being witnessed concerning the state of affairs in America’s intervention on Iraqi crisis and that of Sudan. Saddam was a high handed ruler who committed crimes ranging from human rights abuse especially by carrying out massive eradication of the Kurds to economic crimes. America’s intentions to wage war against Saddam were met by both international and local reprimanding labeling them as “wrong war”, “bad intentions” and “misplaced priorities”. The UN and the European Union (EU) expressed their reservations concerning the matter. Nevertheless, Bush went ahead to carry out the war plan.
Political pundits posit that it is true that the Saddam government was too feudalistic but at the same time, it had declined oil trade with the US despite its vast richness in oil resources. The Bush claim that he wanted to oust Saddam and his henchmen who were in possession of weapons of mass destruction and to entrench democracy was true in a sense, but it was just a means to an end. Democracy than any other form of government allows the liberalization of the market so that there be the open market or the free market. Free market in turn allows the free global flow of capital that would help America exploit the Iraqi oil through trade pacts. However, under Saddam, this was impossible, thus increasing the expedience of him being removed out of the way. Even after the toppling of the Saddam government and his execution, no single weapon of mass destruction has ever been found. On the other hand, Darfur does not have oil wealth. The only region in Sudan with oil wealth is southern Sudan which is stable (Marlowe, Bain and Shapiro, 2006).
To an extent America herself has her hands tied. External intervention by her requires consent from the elected leaders, and not the referendum. According to the doctrines of the just war, basing a war on general referendum amounts to mobocracy. It is unfortunate that these elected leaders are the ones divided amongst themselves with others agitating for the withdrawal of the American troops from Iraq. At the same time, the democrats are currently pushing for the cutting of the military funding. Eliciting unified consent from them again will be almost an exercise in futility. In the international spectrum, matters are not any easier since the UN conventions demand a majority vote. The UN is a conglomerate of many nations of whom some are trade partners with the autocratic government of Sudan and therefore are having vested interests to protect, while others especially Arabic and Islamic countries are simply sympathizers with the Sudan government.
It is these same sympathizers who labeled the 2006 America’s proposition that the Darfur crisis be tackled with renewed seriousness as “Jewish conspiracy”, “neo colonial plots” and “the destabilization of a Muslim country”. It is on this backdrop that although America has designated from her budget, 164 million dollars to go into the US plan of doubling the UN troop number in order to prepare them for the Darfur peace keeping mission, yet there are 70,000 African Union troops lacking mandate and strength, while the UN has not struck a consensus as touching the matter.
The Darfur crisis blows off at a time when America had invaded Afghanistan, and was then fighting Iraq- after which, it was clear that the next project was Iran since they all fell under the rubric of Bush’s “axis of evil”. This did not auger well with some players in the diplomatic field, specially the Moslem nations who interpreted these as wars against Islam. Another attack on a state perceived to be Moslem such as the Sudan was obviously going to elicit international furor.
According to reports by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), it is likeable that Islamic terrorist groups including the Al Qaeda and the Hamas have already taken advantage of the situation to hide in Sudan from where they operate. Weapons of mass destruction have also already been proliferated into Sudan. It is speculated that America’s heavily renewed direct intervention could subject her to terrorist attacks from the Islamist militias.
Conclusion
With many pacts having been signed and reneged by the Sudan government authorities, and the fact that the Sudan totalitarian regime has for a long time resisted and deluded the EU, the US and the UN’s efforts in peace brokering, it is clear that the only recourse is to work out towards a forceful regime change. However, adopting this methodology is a problem to the US since America is known to have been using at one time, the long historical cooperation between the CIA and the Sudan president Omar el- Basher (Daly, 2007). The after glows of this relationship became more apparent in October 17, 2006 when Chris Dodd announced that America was going to extirpate all forms of relations with Sudan. To this end, all American investors with Sudan were asked to quickly divest their assets. the event later on took a sudden twist when the state department proposed a delay in the legislation citing,”tampering with the presidential foreign policy.” It is therefore highly possible that apart from the issue of interests, El- Basher could have also accessed US secrets which America does not want leaked.
Reference
Daly, W. M. (2007). Darfur’s sorrows: A history of Genocide. US: Cambridge University Press.
Flint, J. Dewaal, A. (2005). Darfur: A short history of a long war. New York, NY: Zed Books.
Marlowe, J. Bain, A. Shapiro, A. (2006). Darfur Dairies. New York, NY: Nation Books.