CSMonitor: France may block NATO efforts in Darfur

Can nations be assclowns?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0503/p08s03-comv.html

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NATO's Toe in the Darfur Crisis
The Monitor's View

Two years after civil war began in Sudan's Darfur region - leaving 1.8 million people uprooted and perhaps 160,000 dead - pieces of a solution are starting to fall into place.

International efforts to end this tragedy in Africa's largest nation, however, aren't thorough enough. Roving Arab militias still attack, although less often; and these armed men on camels and horses still appear to be receiving help from Sudan's government, although not direct Army support in the attacks.

Without peace imposed there soon by outsiders, the world will need to bear the costs of huge refugee camps in and near Darfur - one of the largest humanitarian crises in recent decades - because few refugees will want to return home.

The latest piece of a solution is a decision last week by the African Union (AU) to triple its troops in Darfur to 7,700 and ask NATO for logistical support. Even that additional foreign presence in a region the size of France wouldn't be enough, but it shows confidence is growing that outside intervention can be effective.

Sudan's government tacitly approves NATO's potential role in Darfur, but France, which has preferred a strictly European role in Africa's crises, may be ready to shoot down this request of NATO by African nations.

So far, France has preferred to deal with Darfur by weaker measures, such as UN Security Council steps to impose sanctions on Sudan and put Darfur's attackers on trial (if they can be caught). These have been inadequate. Only by backing AU troops with essential NATO planes and other equipment can the Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, be intimidated to give up for good.

NATO's post-cold-war role has yet to be defined. It wasn't included in the antiterrorism invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now it has a chance for a limited role in an African conflict. The US would like more NATO intervention on the continent - perhaps with the AU leading - to keep failing states from becoming home to terrorist groups. If France again fails to back the US in such ventures, NATO itself may wither and bilateral ties worsen.

Darfur can't be made whole without more money; troops,;and a more united, international effort. The UN can do only so much without the added might of Western powers and a bigger role for African troops.

 

it's hard to believe france doesn't know what's going on- this is a power play, contra NATO, and for the non-existent EU defense forces. so while france plays politics, more people die.

 

"clown d'abruti"

or, auf deutsch:
"Arschlochclown"

 

you'd think, but that's not what babelfish says...

 

sad that the board seems to care more for sexy highschool cheerleaders than for the victims of dafur. can't pin it on america, i guess the "liberals" just don't care...

 

so in iraq, you slam the admin for taking unilateral action, and ridicule the notion of taking any action at all if it was merely to "liberate" the country from saddam, a man who killed hundreds of thousands of his own people, yet in sudan you castigate the admin for working multilaterally, and for alrgely the same reasons. so which is it? is it wrong to act alone and liberate millions of people, or wrong to act in concert with other nations to avoid genocide?

 

is a renaissance man the liberal definition of a progressive?