West falls for Sudan’s tricks
By Becky Tinsley, The Anniston Star
Jan 19, 2006 — There is a running gag in the Peanuts cartoon that brings to mind the West’s relationship with the butchers who rule Sudan. Lucy persuades Charlie Brown to kick the football she holds in place. Just as he approaches the ball, she pulls it away and Charlie Brown ends up on his back, staring at the sky, wondering why he has fallen for Lucy’s promises yet again.
Recently, the government of Sudan condemned a plan to have the United Nations assume a peacekeeping role in its Darfur region, where civil war and ethnic cleansing have left hundreds of thousands dead and at least 2 million homeless.
Sudan rebuked the interfering busybodies in the United States and Europe for failing to help the African Union soldiers currently monitoring a crumbling cease-fire in Darfur. As it has so many times before, the West accepted the tongue-lashing without comment. Just like Charlie Brown, we keep trusting the professional liars known as diplomats rather than learning from experience.
The government of Sudan supports and pays for mainly Arab militias to kill, rape and steal from the black Africans in Darfur. So far the Sudanese armed forces and their proxies, the janjaweed militias, have ethnically cleansed 90 percent of the black villages in Darfur. As many as 400,000 have been killed. Women survivors face rape on a daily basis when they venture out of overflowing refugee camps for firewood.
The West is keen to stop the killing in Darfur, but it doesn’t want to send its own soldiers. As a compromise, there are 6,000 African Union “monitors” trying to cover an area the size of France.
The dictators running Sudan initially opposed the AU deployment. Even now, they make it hard for supplies to reach the displaced people of Darfur, encouraging the janjaweed militias to harass and threaten the AU force. They restrict the AU monitors’ movement and even prevent them getting water and vehicles.
Frustrated by the lack of progress in stopping the slaughter in Darfur, the United Nations has finally set the wheels in motion to send peacekeepers to Darfur. This welcome development comes nearly three years after the worst of the violence, but it could still save the millions who face starvation and disease in the camps. Confronted by the prospect of a UN force arriving, the junta in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, has suddenly become a booster for the AU monitors, whom it believes it can control.
What is curious is why anyone believes a word the Sudanese regime says. For 20 years they waged war on black Africans in southern Sudan, resulting in 2 million deaths. Sudan is a country still plagued by slavery, and virtually every 6-year-old girl is forcibly mutilated to keep her “pure” and “virtuous” for her future husband. The rulers in Khartoum have attempted to force extreme Sharia Islamic law on everyone, whether Christian, animist or Muslim. There are no elections or freedom of speech.
Sudan also gave shelter to Osama bin Laden for five years, helping him develop a global terror network. In addition, Khartoum protected Carlos the Jackal, the terrorist believed to have masterminded the attack on Israel’s Olympic team in 1972.
Will the international community trust Sudan yet again? Or will we finally threaten to kick Lucy rather than believing she will hold the football for us?
* Becky Tinsley is director of the Waging Peace campaign for Darfur. She visited Darfur in October 2004.