Last night I attended an invitational dinner in Boston to discuss the crisis in Sudan, hosted by Amnesty International. The wisest council was offered by Robert Rotberg, of Harvard's World Peace Foundation.
"The United States still has a play in Sudan. One helpful thing would be to positition a US destroyer or even a submarine off the coast of Sudan, off Port Sudan, and turn off the oil spigot. There is a single thousand-mile-long oil spigot [that is funding the regime].
My thoughts, not Bob's: Continuing to negotiate with the regime under current conditions is tantamount to appeasement. Of course we want to continue negotiating, but without any credible intervention negotiation with such a cynical, manipulative, and skillfull government will get nowhere--and indeed, has gotten nowhere to date. Not one Janjaweed has been arrested, not one promise has been kept.
Here are simple military actions that require essentially no troops, and no UN approval if the Bush administration is willing to take the heat in order to save lives: 1. Enforce a no-fly zone in Darfur, by means including (as the French did recently in West Africa) destroying Sudanese aircraft on the ground, as well as using radar monitoring and interception. 2. Use cruise missiles to destroy known Janjaweed camps. For months Human Rights Watch has been able to identify such camps, which are well-known and continue to grow. 3. Position naval force off of port Sudan and impose a total embargo on Sudanese oil exports. 4. [This one is obviously more dicey]. Destroy the Chinese-build arms manufacturing plants in Sudan, as well as oil refining capacity.
No, these actions don't solve the longer term problem of how to construct peace. What they do is weaken the killing machine, and demonstrate to the government that it will no longer be simply allowed to continue is merciless destruction of lives.
"Never again" sometimes requires action.
Jim (ps, this is why I'm glad Passion is not a mainstream organization--sometimes we need to have a more candid discussion of options that are not currently thinkable.] Email me your comments, [email protected]
Whr
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