Sudan
Today, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs committee reported that: “The security situation has deteriorated further in the six months since our last Report, with an alarming increase in the number of attacks in the approach to the handover of sovereignty. Although the handover was brought forward in an effort to forestall the threat of terrorist violence, no immediate cessation is expected. Shortly after the handover on 28 June, a US soldier who had been kidnapped in April was killed and a number of explosions rocked Baghdad.” And yesterday, because of the security situation there, Medecins sans Frontieres pulled out of Afghanistan after twenty-eight years work. On the same day the warmongering American press, as they did with Iraq, were accusing the Europeans, presumably those of the “old” variety, and the United Nations, of lacking backbone. Happily, with near enough 200, 000 troops engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, and an election in November the Bush administration are unlikely to do anything more than sit on their hands and mouth platitudes, while two Saharan tribes continue their age-old battle in Sudan. As the United States are unlikely to become involved, the Blair government will not want to send in a military force, even if the cash could be prized from Mr. Broon’s hands, unless it is backed by a specific United Nations Security Council Resolution. And there will of course be no such resolution. China will almost certainly use its veto in the Council. This did not, I hear you ask, stop Blair from his illegal invasion of Iraq. [Irony alert on] But surely the intelligence services would not produce a dossier confirming that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction had been flogged to the Khartoum government. Or they had decided to dig up “Chinese” Gordon’s bones and use them in some heathen ritual [irony alert off].What should we do? We should ensure that any military action, any peacekeeping, should be undertaken by Sudan’s neighbors. We should assist in humanitarian aid when it’s safe to do so. And that’s the lot. The idea of unilateral military invention in one of the largest countries in Africa has “Iraq” written all over it. t
posted by Tony @ Thursday, July 29, 2004
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