In a recent speech in front of the United Nation's General Assembly, Sudan's vice-president, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, said that his government was fully committed to the Darfur peace process, stressing "complete commitment to achieving a peaceful and political settlement to the Darfur issue."
Taha said that a possible arrest of the country's president, General Omar al Bashir, and a trial for the crimes committed against the civilians in Darfur at the International Criminal Court (ICC) would definitely "derail the peace process" in Darfur, Sudan's western province.
General Bashir came to power in a military coup in 1989 and has ruled Sudan ever since.
The ICC's prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo recently filed ten charges against Sudan's president - three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. The ICC accuses Bashir of orchestrating a campaign in Darfur since 2003 that killed 35,000 people, while at least 100,000 died through starvation and disease and 2.5 million people were forced to flee their homes.
The African Union (AU) has asked the UN Security Council to "freeze the ICC case against Bashir, which the UN can do so if it deems the prosecution as a threat to peace and security."
This campaign by the African Union would make sense if there were any peace and security to protect in Darfur. Darfurians have had none for many years now. They are murdered, raped, starved, and forced to flee their homes by the government forces and their militias.
Instead of helping the ordinary people who are suffering, the African Union is doing all it can to protect those who organized the persecution of Darfurians. The Arab League joined the African Union, urging the Security Council to block moves to indict Bashir in order to prevent "shattering the peace process."
What peace process?
After years of fighting between the mainly "African" rebels and the government forces and their proxy "Arab" militias, the government of Sudan and one faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) in 2006, while the Justice and Equality Movement and another faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement refused to sign it.
The Darfur Peace Agreement, instead of bringing peace, only intensified the fighting and deteriorated the humanitarian situation in the region. The International Crisis Group argues that the DPA, "too limited in scope and signatories" has in fact "hurt the peace process."
Article comments
1 - Ruvy
This article gave me a good laugh, Savo. Not because I disagree with you. You are 100% on the money. And I shouldn't laugh at death and murder dressed up as a pig with lipstick and a rotten wormy apple called "peace".
No.
The reason is that one could look at the situation here and ask the exact same question - "what peace process?" The Oslo Death Process, under all of its various names, is only designed to bring death and misery to Jews and Arabs alike.
This baloney being tossed around to fool people that there is "peace" in either place - or a process to obtain peace - when all there is is war and death is a travesty and a bald-faced lie. It is more proof that what we live in is ha'olám hashéqer - the world of lies. The other proof of all this is that the god of money is finally being knocked over like an idol in Gath or Ashqelon.
Notice, though, that when it isn't some white skinned fellow being murdered off, it isn't important. The disgusting racism prevalent in news services - that denies non-whites human status - is just as much a travesty as the lie of a "peace process".
2 - Ruvy
Savo,
Your article is four days old, and not a peep on it has been heard from the prominent black commenters at this magazine, Heloise or Zedd. None of the black writers at Blogcritics seem to have noticed it either.
What this says to me is that "African-Americans" are just Americans with Negroid racial features - if anything from Africa remains with them, it is as vestigial as the remnants of the hominid tailbone (usually a blue mark found just aboove the buttocks at birth) found in Asiatic children.
It looks like it is just you and me, Savo. Why I alone see fit to comment on this well crafted piece is a mystery to me.
3 - Savo Heleta
Thanks for your comments Ruvy!
I just don't understand why no one in the mainstream media doesn't talk about this. They all talk about the "Darfur peace process" without even stopping for a second to ask themselves "what peace process???" It's pathetic.
And I also agree with you that Darfur does not really matter that much, at least to the governments in the West, as the people who suffer are poor, black, African, not having any natural resource that the West needs...
I currently live in South Africa, the country that promotes African Renaissance. It's really hard to find anyone who knows or cares about the things that are happening in Darfur. I don't understand this ignorance...
4 - Ruvy
I just don't understand why no one in the mainstream media doesn't talk about this.
It's called censorship, Savo. White folks getting murdered off in Bosnia-Hercegovina was news. THEY WERE WHITE. Black getting murdered off in Darfur - or South Africa's incredibly high crime rate - is not news - THEY'RE BLACK.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to lessen the pain and suffering that folks like you underwent a decade or so ago in Europe. But because you are white, your folks got reported on in excruciatingly careful detail. The black folk in the Sudan do not rate "news" status.
That is the racist bigotry of the MSM, and it makes them far worse than the vicious bastards who perpetrated apartheid in South Africa. They self-righteously lecture you and I, and purposely ignore the bloodletting going on in Africa and Asia. They ignore the eslavement of young women in the Philipines, Thailand, Indonesia and India - it might cut into the revenues or pleasures of the sex tourists who travel there.
Ah, what a filthy world. What a place that needs cleaning up....
5 - Savo Heleta
Ruvy, I agree with you about Bosnia. The West cared so much about the war in Bosnia and people suffering and dying there. At the same time, when in Rwanda almost a million people were killed in 100 days, no one cared.
It's easy for the media in the West to cover wars where white people suffer. Their viewers can associate with them. When there is a war in Africa, then it's tribal, it's a way of life in Africa. People in America and Europe can't understand that. They don't get people in "uncivilized" world.
It's indeed a filthy world!
6 - Savo Heleta
Gerard Prunier, a well respected African scholar and the author of Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, has confirmed my argument expressed above.
I said that "no one should fear that a possible indictment of Sudan's president could shatter the current Darfur peace process. There is no peace process to shatter. Without Bashir in power, peace in Darfur may get a chance at last."
Prunier writes in an open Democracy article (October 16, 2008) that, "when the "realist" camp uses the "Darfur peace process" as an argument against Omar al-Bashir's indictment, what exactly is being referred to? For such a process, active or even latent, does not exist."
7 - Cannonshop
There isn't a lot that commenting can add-at least, for me. The Sudanese government is butchering people in Darfur, and nobody really wants to address that-any more than they want to address the active slave-markets in the Sudan, or the massacres a decade ago in Rwanda.
I submit to thee that the reason is, indeed, hypocrisy. A Genocide only matters to the activist left in the West if it's white people, hence the yawns some seventeen years ago when Sarin Gas was used on the Kurds, the sleepy 'so what' attitude over Rwanda, and the gaping uncaring over Darfur in the nineties.
In fact, it only hit the general airwaves in the U.S. beyond some fringy mags like Soldier of Fortune because of Iraq. Yep, Iraq. One of the older opposition positions to the war in Iraq was "...but what about Stopping the genocide in Darfur?" The Left only cared briefly about Darfur when they thought maybe they could use it as a wedge to delegitimize the war in Iraq. When it failed to do so, they lost interest in Darfur.
The truth is, nobody in the Industrialized West gives a rat's ass what happens in Africa unless they can use it in some way to attack their political rivals at home.
South Africa's in a death-spiral, Zimbabwe's imploding, villagers are being rounded up, butchered and sold in Sudanese territory, and Somalia has a thriving piracy business funding their thriving massacre business, and it's three guesses which is going to draw anything remotely serious as a response (and then, only because the Piracy business threatens Western Corporate interests).
8 - Ruvy
Finally, Cannonshop, someone other than me and Savo commenting here. All the limousine liberal types on this list have stayed away from truth, bitter truth, brought to light from all the way at the bottom of the world in South Africa.
No, there isn't much to say - except to point out the lies in the media (peace process my ass!) and its inherent racism. But the fact that out of thousands of readers, only three people give enough of a damn to type something - is a damned shame.
9 - Cannonshop
Ruvy, it goes back to something I've said before...
Liberals PRETEND to care about the poor because it makes them feel good, similarly, they PRETEND to care about the rest of the world, but only so far as they can use it to try and guilt others. A REAL solution to the genocide in Darfur, in my opinion, would be to arm and train the locals and cut off ordinance supply to Khartoum, and let the situation play out to a closure. Brutality, historically, only listens to brutality. Violence only ends when the victim is no longer an easy target for violence.
If Cease Fires created Peace, if Peace Processes created Peace, then the Middle East would be the most peaceful place on earth. It isn't, and the same can be said of Africa, Asia, and other places where war is a daily occurrence.
10 - Mark Saleski
Liberals PRETEND to care about the poor because it makes them feel good, similarly, they PRETEND to care about...
this is a perfect example of the "cliche blanket". does it make you feel better to wrap yourself in it? that your believes are somehow intrinsically superior because the other side is SO ignorant?
i see this kind of thing on both sides and it's nauseating. "conservatives are all hard-hearted bastards who care about nothing except their money"...."liberals are "...well, you did a fine job yourself already.
11 - Lisa Solod Warren
Cannon, really. YOu are so much better than that comment. Give it a rest, willya?
12 - Ruvy
Lisa,
Is all you can manage a pathetic whine about what Cannonshop says? No comments on the inherent racism of the media? No comments on the fact the the mass media lies about a peace process that does not exist? Whattsa matta, cat got your tongue? You can't bring yourself to look the bitter truth in the face?
You "J-Street" types seem addicted to delusory rhetoric like "peace process", don't you? So much so that you would be willing to endanger my life, and that of my family and neighbors by pushing that shit through. It's disgusting and pathetic how wedded to lies you are.
13 - Dan(Miller)
Ruvy,
There. Does that explanation help? If so, you might apply it to other aspects of modern, politically correct, U.S. society.Re comment #12, Permit me, please, Kind Sir, to call to your attention certain absolute truths which have apparently escaped your notice:
1. Peace is good.
2. Process is really good.
3. Peace Process is really, totally good.
Therefore, it would be politically incorrect, and grossly so, to speak ill of anything labeled Peace Process. Even to suggest minor flaws would be anathema. It does not have to be real; it just has to have a label which sounds and feels good. Reality does not matter, and besides things over there in the Middle East, Africa and Asia are just peachy. The glorious Peace Process is working! You of all people should know that. How dare Cannonshop argue (Comment #9)
I recall a bumper sticker (we love bumper stickers) from years ago, "Visualize whirled Peas." Sounds good to me.
Have a tranquil Sabbath and be well.
Dan(Miller)