Will the Islamic hardline regime in Khartoum ratify the Sudan peace deal now that rebels in the South have given their blessing? Deliberations in the northern national capital begin Saturday, and the stakes are high, as the Associated Press reports.
Once ratified, the accord calls for the drafting of a new constitution and formation of a government in which insurgents will receive 30 percent of seats. In six years, southern states will have an opportunity to vote on secession.The 21-year war has pitted the Arab Muslim-dominated government in Khartoum against rebels fighting for greater autonomy and a larger share of the country's wealth in the largely African Christian and animist south. More than 2 million people have died, mainly from war-induced famine and disease, and at least twice as many have fled their homes.
U.N. and U.S. officials hope the deal will help end Sudan's other conflicts - a 23-month rebellion in the western Darfur region and a low intensity insurgency in the eastern Red Sea Hills.
Tens of thousands have been killed and nearly 2 million displaced in Darfur, where pro-government Arab militiamen have attacked African villages in a campaign of burning, looting, raping and killing. The conflict erupted in February 2003, when two African rebel groups began fighting for more power and resources in the arid region.
More than 70,000 of the displaced have died of hunger and disease since March, though no firm figures exist for the direct toll of the fighting.
The rebel leaders in the south have not exactly been Boy Scouts through the 21-year civil war: there have been rivalries and intra-necine power stuggles, violence and killing. But the southerners were put in the position of fighting for their lives, for their religious freedom, and for their economic self-determination by the despotic, hateful and greedy Arab Muslim regime based in the North.
The above-linked AP article - as it appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer at least - hardly makes that clear. Darfur is pinned on Khartoum, and rightly so, but the civil war is portrayed as morally neutral when it is not. Khartoum's atrocities against the South over the 21-year conflict have been rooted in: a) theological and racist assumptions of Arab Islamic supremacy over Christian and animist blacks; and b) keening obsession for control of revenues from oil fields in the South. Along the way, Khartoum managed to give cover to al-Qaeda and funnel business to Osama bin Laden. I still wonder if the parliament in Khartoum will really ratify the deal because there's only one outcome likely in the envisioned secession vote six years hence.
More background on Khartoum's bloody hands here, here and here; from previous Rosenblog posts.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at January 25, 2005 12:12 PM
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This is a 'shout out' to Blogger Extraordinaire James J. Na to weigh in on this subject.
China owns rights to petroleum exploration, and concessions for its development, in and around the Darfut region of Sudan.
Though the spillover consequences of the humanitarian issues involved in Sudan relate to impacts closer to the Ugandan border (among the Christian-Animist population of the south) - 'trouble follows money'(and vice versa), this is a crisis with its roots in thoroughly Muslim Khartoum. With 'enabling' by the Chinese interest in a conveniently ethnically-cleansed oil patch.
It is time to blow the whistle on China's complicity in the Sudan crisis.
It should come as no surprise due to the stakes involved (oil money combined with Muslim expansion focused on the spine of Africa), that a year from now this issue remains intractably stalemated - with a whiff of the stink of the Israel-Palestine problem beginning to pervade. There is zero Muslim motivation to resolve this issue. It ain't going away.
(Will that draw out the great Na? We shall see...)
Posted by: P. Scott Cummins at January 25, 2005 04:29 PMMr. Cummins:
First of all, thank you for the kind remarks.
About China... Where would you like me to begin? I find it ironic that the US gets blamed for guiding its foreign policy on securing access to oil when it is, in fact, the PRC that is now oil-mad as hell.
The leaders of the PRC think that continued access to petroleum (of which the PRC is now a net importer and a stupendously growing consumer) is vital to continued improvements in the economy.
So, the PRC has become almost downright predatory in its quest to secure sources of oil. This means Sudan. But it also means Nigeria, Venezuela and Russia. In fact, the several billion dollars in CASH needed to sew up the YUKOS deal in Russia reportedly came from China.
And the attractive thing about Chinese from the oil seller's point of view? They don't care about human rights, freedom or any of those moral constraints. They just want to buy oil.
Where is the wailing American Left to protest the PRC's behavior?
Posted by: Guns and Butter (aka James J. Na) at February 16, 2005 03:53 AM