I found this an interesting take on the effort to help out Darfur, perhaps one most people don't consider:[quote]Celebrities like Mia Farrow and George C..."/>

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Darfur: Where celebrities love to tread

POSTED BY: NIKI2
UPDATED: Saturday, February 13, 2010 12:00
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Friday, February 12, 2010 11:45 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


I found this an interesting take on the effort to help out Darfur, perhaps one most people don't consider:
Quote:

Celebrities like Mia Farrow and George Clooney may have done more to prolong the suffering of Darfur than resolve the crisis in Sudan's war-torn region, a new book argues.

"The Save Darfur movement with its celebrity supporters came down very clearly on one particular side of the debate," says Rob Crilly, author of Saving Darfur, Everyone's Favourite African War.

"This very simple straight-forward narrative which demanded our intervention was the only view being heard," he told the BBC.

Crilly arrived in East Africa as a foreign correspondent for the London-based Times newspaper in 2004, a year after the insurgency in Darfur began.

His brief was to cover all of the region's brutal conflicts - Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the end of the civil war in south Sudan.

'Sexy conflict'

"But it became very clear very quickly there was only one conflict that my editors wanted me to cover," he says.

"As soon as I arrived I was getting calls asking me to go to Darfur - there was something very different about Darfur, something that was sexy and people were interested in."

Compared with other conflicts in Africa, Darfur seemed simple: In September 2004, then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell used the word "genocide".

Crilly says the conflict was portrated as "An evil government intent on destroying the rebels and their supporters.

"They'd unleashed this fearsome Arab militia, the Janjaweed on a scorched-earth campaign against villagers who were supporting the rebels, so it was a very simple, clear war to understand - of good guys against bad guys.

"You compare that with Somalia, where there are countless warlords and Islamist militias all fighting against each other, or the Democratic Republic of Congo which has been rumbling on for 10 years and anyone who understands those wars frankly is just boasting."

But the longer he reported on the conflict, the more Crilly understood that there was nothing simple about Darfur and what he was witnessing was a tragic, complicated conflict, rather than a simplistic genocide.

Unsurprisingly, Mia Farrow says she disagrees with Crilly's analysis but does commend the book for providing "a solid journalistic account of his first-hand experiences in Darfur".

"The war is no longer a conventional war in the sense we'd understand - that there's one side against another," says Crilly.

"It's banditry, it's insecurity, it's fractures within the Arab tribes - they've turned on each other, there are issues of grazing routes, there are issues of water desertification," he says.

But it is not the publicity that celebrities bring that is the problem, he says, rather their agenda.

"My concern is when they get too involved in proposing solutions and they become too wedded to one way of doing things.

"I think that's a lesson for future coalitions and future advocacy campaigns - we've already starting to see coalitions for Haiti.

"I think [it] is wonderful that people want to have concerts to raise awareness, raise money - but I think they shouldn't get too bogged down in policy prescriptions because they can run into trouble."

He blames the Save Darfur Coalition in part for the failure of the 2006 Darfur peace agreement, which only one of the many rebel factions signed up to.

"Some of the rebel leaders were very much emboldened by the support of this lobby and they still believe that the Save Darfur movement can deliver them much greater benefits."

A gathering of all the different communities to discuss their grievances - while it may sound boring - would have the best hope of finding a solution, he says.

"If you understand it as a black and white war between rebels and the government then all these other players are left out of the negotiations and you can't really have peace in Darfur."






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Friday, February 12, 2010 12:25 PM

GINOBIFFARONI


" Celebrities like Mia Farrow and George Clooney may have done more to prolong the suffering of Darfur than resolve the crisis in Sudan's war-torn region "


Well other things have also contributed to the prolongation of the problems here...


Forcing all Western company's to cut business in Sudan...

What influence do you expect to have when they have nothing in stake to continue relations with us ?


Sending arms and advisors to the rebels... this built up the animosity we see today

" US support

In 1996 the US sent nearly $20 million worth of military equipment through Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda to help the Sudanese opposition to overthrow Bashir (president of Sudan). US officials denied that the aid was destined for the SPLA, but there were reports elsewhere that elite US forces were working with the Sudanese rebel army.[2][3] "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan_People%27s_Liberation_Army

big surprise


The vilification we see in the media...


I said the same thing when NATO was bombing Serbia over Kosavo...

The evil Serbs were sending in the troops after the " good " KLA

only after the conflict it becomes common knowledge that the KLA were burning the houses of and driving out Serbian familys, as well as financing themselves by entering the drug trade across Europe.

I wonder if one looked into the conduct of the SPLA, how clean their hands are ?



Either you Are with the terrorists, or ... you Are with the terrorists

Life is like a jar of Jalapeño peppers.
What you do today, might Burn Your Ass Tomorrow"

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Friday, February 12, 2010 12:46 PM

FREMDFIRMA



Gino's beaten me to the punch here, but one bit I feel the need to add...

Most folk think of arabic irregulars as loosely organised local groups operating on a general theme rather than in close coordination with each other, which is mostly true, sure.

DO NOT make that assumption of the janjaweed, those bastards are very, very good at what they do, and what they do, is make people dead, they're like a semi-modernized variation on the friggin Saracens, using hit and run tactics followed up with a storm rush and the absolute obliteration of their target, usually a base or village, right down to scorched earth.

A large part of the problem is that there *IS* no force in the region which can stand up to them for any length of time militarily, cause they won't fight head to head, but use superior area knowledge and swift movement to cut off and isolate a unit, then wear it down before hitting at the weakest point and annihilating it - there's good reason folks are scared shitless of those goons, people.

And yes, they commit atrocities as casually as swatting a fly, which is a serious morale breaker and causes even UN troops to be seriously reluctant to provoke them, which one can hardly blame them for being that they're outnumbered besides.

I'd be real hesitant to intervene whatever without a sufficient force base of well trained, disciplined troops who aren't stuck in the mire of rank politics and trying to fight with a piss poor combination of tech toys on top of civil and second-gen war tactics, which lets us out right there.

There's a couple ways to do it, but even handling them wouldn't solve the OTHER problems Darfur has, noteably the lack of resources to support it's population, which is the root cause of most conflicts in that region to begin with.

Just pointing out where the danger lies, cause were we to try sticking our fingers in that one militarily, we'd lose most of our point force within a month, quite horribly, and as screwed over as our troops are with psychological casualties at the breaking point already, I'd not condemn them to such a fate without a very damned good reason - if the rest of the world thinks it's important, send in the blue helmets, and send ENOUGH of them, from the right countries to be experienced with the region and tactics involved.

-F

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Friday, February 12, 2010 1:14 PM

GINOBIFFARONI


Problem is there is currently no force that would be successful...

Most African countrys want an African solution, hence the African Union troops being deployed...

But most African countrys that are uninvolved, simply do not have the money to finance this, and/or have troops with the necessary training to do any good. ( The exception being South Africa, but that would open up another can of worms )


Perhaps engagement with Sudan, and having them reign their own people in is the answer.
Offer a substantial enough carrot, quit sending arms into Southern Sudan, drop the ICC charges against al-Bashir and we might have a beginning.

I know some will object to the last, but why stick on bringing al-Bashir to trial, when Cheney, et all walk away without even a real investigation... Justice is either blind and equal or non existent, so if it is a non existent as I suspect, why let it get in the way of ending this conflict.










Either you Are with the terrorists, or ... you Are with the terrorists

Life is like a jar of Jalapeño peppers.
What you do today, might Burn Your Ass Tomorrow"

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Saturday, February 13, 2010 8:35 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Gino, apparently your suggestion of divestment is already in the works...I don't know enough about the situation to guess how much good it might do, but it's all over the internet as a way to help Darfur. Certainly money talks, so maybe it will help:
Quote:

Fidelity Investments is a major holder of PetroChina, a Chinese oil company that is one of the highest offenders in helping fund the genocide in Darfur.

Divestment offers a powerful way to put economic pressure on the Sudanese government to cooperate with international efforts to end the violence in Darfur.

Help cut off financial support for the government-sponsored violence in Darfur by urging Fidelity and other investment institutions to divest their holdings from any companies doing business with the government of Sudan.

http://action.savedarfur.org/campaign/fidelitydivestment existing bans prohibiting U.S. companies from conducting business operations in Sudan, public and private institutions and individuals throughout the United States are indirectly fueling the genocide by investing in foreign companies complicit in the bloodshed. Economic pressure by selling investments in the companies that benefit from genocide known as targeted divestment is a serious step to take, but the declaration of genocide in Darfur and the crimes against humanity that continue today warrant such action.

http://divestut.org/

Here's hoping the movement works, or at least helps.



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Saturday, February 13, 2010 10:03 AM

GINOBIFFARONI


Quote:

Originally posted by Niki2:
Gino, apparently your suggestion of divestment is already in the works...I don't know enough about the situation to guess how much good it might do, but it's all over the internet as a way to help Darfur. Certainly money talks, so maybe it will help:
Quote:

Fidelity Investments is a major holder of PetroChina, a Chinese oil company that is one of the highest offenders in helping fund the genocide in Darfur.

Divestment offers a powerful way to put economic pressure on the Sudanese government to cooperate with international efforts to end the violence in Darfur.

Help cut off financial support for the government-sponsored violence in Darfur by urging Fidelity and other investment institutions to divest their holdings from any companies doing business with the government of Sudan.

http://action.savedarfur.org/campaign/fidelitydivestment existing bans prohibiting U.S. companies from conducting business operations in Sudan, public and private institutions and individuals throughout the United States are indirectly fueling the genocide by investing in foreign companies complicit in the bloodshed. Economic pressure by selling investments in the companies that benefit from genocide known as targeted divestment is a serious step to take, but the declaration of genocide in Darfur and the crimes against humanity that continue today warrant such action.

http://divestut.org/

Here's hoping the movement works, or at least helps.





Actually I was suggesting the opposite,

if they reigned their guys in, we would promise not to arm the rebels trying to overthrow their government any more, we wouldn't jump into their affairs the way we have... and charges would be dropped and restrictions with trade would be lifted.

I doubt PetroChina really cares about Fidelity Investments anymore... They are likely in a position to buy itself back if they pull out.

If the US and the West had not of piled arms to the rebels since... the 80's or maybe earlier

perhaps this wouldn't be such a mess today, after all... if I were fighting a civil war over three decades, it would cause some animosity... I can't see it being any different with these guys.





Either you Are with the terrorists, or ... you Are with the terrorists

Life is like a jar of Jalapeño peppers.
What you do today, might Burn Your Ass Tomorrow"

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Saturday, February 13, 2010 10:11 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Ooops, sorry about that, saw the sentence but didn't see the one above it, about divestiture CONTRIBUTING to the problem. Duh!

Oh, well...



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Saturday, February 13, 2010 10:43 AM

GINOBIFFARONI


After all, if you want to honestly deal with someone...

dictating to them doesn't seem to work

talking to them often has better results


Unfortunately Foreign Policy the last fifty years has been about putting folk into corners... with disastrous results following either right away, or a few decades later.


If we want Sudan to listen to us, pushing more of their interests to China will not help.






Either you Are with the terrorists, or ... you Are with the terrorists

Life is like a jar of Jalapeño peppers.
What you do today, might Burn Your Ass Tomorrow"

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Saturday, February 13, 2010 12:00 PM

OLDENGLANDDRY


bump

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