By Nicholas D. Kristof
IN THE NUBA MOUNTAINS, Sudan
| There's the ring of authority right there... |
WHEN a government devours its own people, as in Syria or Sudan, there are never easy solutions.
| The solutions may not be easy but they can be straight-forward... |
That helps explain President Obama's dithering, for there are more problems in international relations than solutions, and well-meaning interventions can make a crisis worse.
| As Champ amply demonstrated in Libya... |
Yet the president is taking prudence to the point of paralysis.
| As in Libya, but we repeat ourselves... |
I'm generally an admirer of Obama's foreign policy, but his policies toward both Syria and Sudan increasingly seem lame, ineffective and contrary to American interests and values.
| Since even Mr. Kristof is reluctant to cozy up to murderous thugs. He should have a conversation with his colleague Tom Friedman sometime... |
Obama has shown himself comfortable projecting power -- as in his tripling of American troops in Afghanistan.
| Followed by his yanking the rug out from under those very same troops, which the world watched and interpreted correctly -- for Champ it's about a favorable headline, never about staying to get a tough job done. |
Yet now we have the spectacle of a Nobel Peace Prize winner in effect helping to protect two of the most odious regimes in the world.
| Let us not quibble between 'helping' and mere dithering... |
Maybe that's a bit harsh. But days of seeing people bombed and starved here in the Nuba Mountains have left me not only embarrassed by my government's passivity but outraged by it.
| Other than writing a column, what will you do about it? |
The regime of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is dropping anti-personnel bombs full of ball bearings on farming villages. For one year now, Bashir has sealed off this area in an effort to crush the rebel force, blocking food shipments and emergency aid, so that hundreds of thousands of ordinary Nubans are now living on tree leaves, roots and insects.
What should I tell Amal Tia, who recently lost a daughter, Kushe, to starvation and now fears that she and her four remaining children will starve to death, too? "We'll just die at home if no food comes," she told me bleakly.
Perhaps I should tell her that Nuba is an inconvenient tragedy, and that the White House is too concerned with Sudan's stability to speak up forcefully? Or that Sudan is too geopolitically insignificant for her children's starvation to matter?
You reap what you sow, Mr. Kristof. You and the Left hammered Dubya for his willingness to depose odious thugs. Is what Sudan is doing to its people any worse than that Saddam did to the Iraqis? What Pencilneck is doing in/to Hama?
Yet you excoriated Mr. Bush for putting American prestige, soldiers and money into stopping Saddam, and even stopping the Taliban in Afghanistan. You did everything you could to lower the man in the world's eyes, to lower him in the eyes of your fellow Americans, to tear down his presidency in order to advance your own partisan agenda.
And now with Champ in charge, you wonder why he and others in government today are unwilling to go after odious thugs who are murdering their own people. Perhaps they understand the lesson of 2002-2008 even better than you?
You thought you were lowering Dubya's prestige. But what you really were doing was lowering America's. Now there's a new debt to pay and our present government doesn't have the will or the means to do so. |
Nothing moved me more than watching a 6-year-old girl, Israh Jibrael, tenderly feed her starving 2-year-old sister, Nada, leaves from a branch. Israh looked hungrily at the leaves herself, and occasionally she took a few. But, mostly, she put them into her weak sister's mouth. Both children were barefoot, clad in rags, and had hair that was turning brown from malnutrition.
Their mother, Amal Kua, told me that the family hasn't had regular food since the Sudanese Army attacked their town five months ago. Since then, she said, the family has lived in caves and subsisted on leaves.
| One most sincerely hopes Mr. Kristof didn't visit them empty handed. A nice box of chocolates, a bottle of multivitamins and another of high protein wafers would not go amiss under the circumstances. |
Yet the Obama administration's special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, Princeton Lyman, generally a smart and hard-working diplomat, said in a December newspaper interview: "We do not want to see the ouster of the regime, nor regime change."
| That's pretty much in line with the rest of the civilized world, isn't it? Are the French demanding intervention? The Germans? The Chinese? Please. They're all lined up to do business in Khartoum. |
Huh? This is a regime whose leader has been charged with genocide, has destabilized the region, has sponsored brutal proxy warlords like Joseph Kony, has presided over the deaths of more than 2.5 million people in southern Sudan, in Darfur and in the Nuba Mountains -- and the Obama administration doesn't want him overthrown?
| Nor does anyone else. Though we at the Burg wouldn't mind a few well placed rounds... |
In addition, the administration has consistently tried to restrain the rebel force here, led by Abdel Aziz Al-Hilu, a successful commander who has lived in America and projects moderation. The rebels are itching to seize the South Kordofan state capital, Kadugli, but say that Washington is discouraging them. In an interview in his mountain hide-out, Abdel Aziz noted that his forces have repeatedly been victorious over Sudan's recently.
"Their army is very weak," he said. "They have no motivation to fight." He seemed mystified that American officials try to shield a genocidal government whose army is, he thinks, crumbling.
| He would say that; it's in his interest to portray Khartoum as weak. They may very well be but that doesn't make the rebels strong... |
Likewise, in Syria, the United States has not only refused to arm the opposition but has, I believe, discouraged other countries from doing so. Yes, there's an underlying logic: the Syrian opposition includes extreme elements, and the violence is embedded in a regional sectarian conflict.
| There are also the examples of Libya, Tunisia and Egypt... |
Nonetheless, the failure to arm the opposition allows the conflict to drag on and the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, to massacre more people. The upshot is that the violence spills over into Lebanon, and sectarian poisons make Syria less and less governable.
In both Syria and Sudan, the Obama administration seems stuck behind the curve.
| No, they're just stuck in the worldview that you've advocated over the last two decades... |
So what could be done? In Syria, we should make clear that unless the security forces depose Assad in the next 30 days, our Middle Eastern allies will arm the Syrian opposition. We should work with these allies, as well as with major powers like Russia and China, to encourage a coup, or a "retirement" for Assad.
Oh snicker: 'work with these allies'? What makes you think they want to work with us? And Russia has already made clear their intent: they're in with Pencilneck all the way. They're shipping the Syrian government weapons. They and the Chinese are helping the Syrians evade sanctions. Oh enlighten us, Mr. Kristof: how exactly would we 'work' with Russia and China?
Clueless git. |
In Sudan, we should disable the military runways that bombers take off from to attack civilians in the Nuba Mountains, or destroy an Antonov bomber and make clear that we'll do the same to others if Sudan continues to bomb its people. Then we should support efforts by private aid groups to bring food and seed into the Nuba Mountains, by airdrops in this rainy season when roads are impassible.
The United States and other powers are helping to pay for the Yida refugee camp in South Sudan. But without the bombings, the Nubans would be able to farm and feed themselves and wouldn't need a refugee camp.
| If we armed the Nubans, and the South Sudanese, Khartoum would rapidly find something else to do. If we helped South Sudan build a pipeline to ship their oil to (say) Mombasa, the Khartoum government would rapidly find a way to 'moderate' itself. |
As Andrew Natsios, a former special United States envoy to Sudan, has argued in The Washington Post, we should also provide South Sudan with a modest antiaircraft capability. That would prevent Sudan from escalating its air war on South Sudan.
| We should also provide the South Sudanese with arms and training. |
These measures may or may not work.
| That covers all the possibilities. |
Stopping a government from killing its own is an uncertain business.
| Unless you're willing to take out that government. Then it becomes certain but bloody... |
But our existing policies in Syria and Sudan alike are failing to stop the bloodshed, and they also are putting us on the wrong side of history.
| I thought the 'right side of history', as explained by that famous American philosopher Cindy Sheehan back in 2005, was for us to bring all our troops home and leave everyone alone. When did that change for the Left? |
Obama was forceful in demanding that President George W. Bush stand up to Sudan during the slaughter in Darfur, so it's painful to see him so passive on Sudan today.
| He was forceful because he knew for certainly that Dubya was so constrained by the Democrats, the MSM, and most of the rest of the world that he couldn't act on Darfur. It was cheap theater. |
When governments turn to mass murder, we may have no easy solutions, but we should at least be crystal clear about which side we're on. That's not too much to expect of a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
| It's not enough to be 'crystal clear' about which side you're on. You have to do something about it, or else it's all just talk. |
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