My Take: U.S.'s talk of normalizing ties with NIF government of Sudan: Rationale or Conspiracy?
April 20, 2008 (Trail, BC, CA) - The good Americans are at it again. Talks attended by high level delegations from the US and the Sudan just ended this week in Rome, Italy. Their topic of discussion? That [the] time was right for the US to get into complete romance [normalization of ties] with the National Islamic government of the Sudan. In the past, they have had a few sweet encounters during their cooperation in “the war against terror.” And the Bush administration has found out that the Sudan is an irresistible partner! Before I take you down this path, you may want to review my previous article on this cooperation(http://www.newsudanvision.com/opinion/carrying-knowledge-palm-tree-my-ta....)
Why does the Bush administration want to normalize ties with the Sudan government? It has been reported that the US is ready to normalize relations with Khartoum if Sudan accepts deployment of units from Thailand and Nepal in the United Nations - African Union Peace Mission.
“We see this process of potential improvement in the United States/Sudan relationship as a holistic one, covering the entirety of Sudan,” said the text of the American negotiating document, leaked to The New York Times.
What a lame reason! Given this kind of logic, many South Sudanese will be obliged to find answers elsewhere. If you take the horrors of Guantanamo Bay and put them together with the horrors committed by Khartoum against her own citizens in Southern Sudan, the Blue Nile, the Nuba Mountains, Abyei and now Darfur, you will find that these areas have suffered enough such that the thought of U.S. planning to let Khartoum off the hook is inconceivable.
If the U.S. is ready to sell the cause of the marginalized Sudanese for the simple reason of letting Thai and Nepalese peacekeeping units into Darfur, then that is what can be a good point of conspiracy – the powerful ganging up against the weak! The West is so obsessed with Darfur that it is making them get out of their mind. Recently, Al Gore, the fellow driving debates on Climate Change said that Global Warming is the reason behind the chaos in Darfur! And a few days ago, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president echoed the same sentiments saying "In Darfur, we see this explosive mixture from the impact of climate change, which prompts emigration by increasingly impoverished people, which then has consequences in war." Global warming is in deed a threat but linking it to Darfur is a very bad comedy!
Could Climate Change also have been the reason driving Southerners out of the Tropical and Equatorial rain forests of the South? No, it's Khartoum doing it. Or, perhaps, the argument is that global warming puts the Janjaweed on horsebacks and sends them to Darfur to burn villages?
This is not the first time the world is trying to sell our cause. The British and the Arabs in Khartoum ganged up against South Sudanese in 1947: they decided that Sudan was homogeneously Arab and Islamic; it didn’t matter that Africans were 61% of the population. Again over the last four decades, some of the regimes we have defeated in Khartoum have reportedly had American moral and financial support. This last regime of Omar Hassen Al Bashir has had and still has support from China, Russia, all Arab states and now seemingly the U.S. administration. But we have kept on with the good fight because we don`t have any other option. The late Dr. Garang used to say, "When the enemy thinks we are finished, we pop up somewhere in the bush and say, 'hey, not yet.'"
On the whole, nothing has changed to warrant normalization of ties with the Sudan government. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement is hanging by the thread. The Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement has not picked up steam. The Darfur Peace Agreement (of SLM – Minnawi) is a complete sham. The NIF`s cunningness continues unabated. They have just tricked the SPLM led government in the South into accepting the Census to go on. Tomorrow, they will say, "our official records show that Sudan is an Islamic nation. The Southern population is 5 million." Of course that will be true because most people won't be counted. And one will appear the most dumb to argue against figures.
It seems to me that the only rationale that can make the Bush administration to normalize relations with the Sudan government is a conspiracy of interests. And we say to you: do your thing but that will never deter the marginalized masses of the Sudan to stand up tall for their rights. We may be fighting with sticks and stones but we shall conquer – Aluta Continua!
Jok Gai Anai is a columnist for The New Sudan Vision.
*jokgai@hotmail.com*
