The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
It doesn't get more disheartening than that.
I've decided to use my coveted day off curled up on my sofa reading "The Blue Sweater" by Jacqueline Novogratz, about her experiences educating and lending to micro-finance groups in East Africa, focusing on Rwanda. Its incredible trying to grasp just how interconnected the world is today. I recently finished reading "Black Hawk Down" by Mark Bowden, which had nothing and everything to do with the 1994 events in Rwanda.
Black hawk down was a disaster and, with 20/20 hindsight, the book reviews where mistakes were made and where things could have gone better in the planning process, yet in the final chapter, the author reviews the events and despite setbacks, the Somalis took a higher toll during the mission than the rangers did. Despite this, Clinton withdrew troops following the "failed" mission and the United States is no longer directly involved in Somalia. Horrifying images of American soldiers' bodies being dishonored in the streets of Mogadishu appeared in the media. With this fresh in the minds of politicians and the American public, there was a sense of reluctancy to involve ourselves in international affairs, especially those in Africa.
Only months later, on April 6, 1994 a plane carrying the Hutu president of Rwanda and president of Burundi back from peace talks in Arusha was shot down as it flew into Kigali, killing both men. That night, the genocide began to unfold. In 100 days, roughly 800,000 people were murdered by people whom may have been their neighbors, relatives, or coworkers.
To this day it seems that Rwanda serves as a guilty conscience upon the international community, especially the United States. Because of the delay in labeling the conflict as "genocide" and delay in international involvement, thousands of people were slaughtered.
It is now eighteen years later and, unfortunately, its seems that history has a cruel way of repeating itself. The United States is now working to finally withdraw troops from Afghanistan and have only recently officially "ended" our involvement in Iraq, after roughly a decade of heavy military presence in both countries. Our reasons as a nation for entering each nation were very different.
My knowledge of Iraq and its history are fairly limited, but I can say confidently that Saddam Hussain was not a good man and hundreds of his own people were killed under his watch. Post 9/11 the Bush administration played to our sentiments and even Democrats authorized the start of a new war in yet another Middle Eastern country. It took almost a decade before we officially withdrew troops and left; Americans had long growth tired of hearing of our involvement in a country that had initially posed little threat to ours and there had been a growing opinion that we should not have entered to begin with.
Not all international interventions have been this disastrous; in comparison, our involvement in Libya seems to have gone relatively smoothly, although I am gauging this on the fact that our involvement was short-lived and that I have not seen much about Libya in the news recently.
Libya aside, my question is, when is it right for the United States to involve itself in the domestic conflicts of other nations?
More recently has been the plight of the Sudanese. Sudan is (was) an astonishing large and diverse country. The north has an Arab majority which the south is predominantly tribal. In Julie Flint and Alex de Waals book "Darfur: a new history of a long war" the authors criticize the international community for labeling the conflict in this region "genocide" because, they argue, it is far more complex. Although Omar al-Bashir was most certainly aware of, and likely supported, the Janjaweed's atrocities, tribal conflict as well as conflict with neighboring Chad contributed to the suffering of the innocent. Again, the United States involvement was limited, if not non-existant, in this conflict.
In July 2011, South Sudan gained its independence (http://www.goss.org/). Tensions in Darfur have calmed and people are finally returning home and trying to rebuild (Darfur is located in Sudan, not southern). However there has been recent blasts from the media over a "new" conflict erupting in the Nuba mountains, just north of the South Sudan border. Unlike the ruling power in Khartoum, the Nubians are tribal and are targeted by the government for ethnic and religious reasons.
Today George Clooney was arrested for protesting outside of the U.S. Embassy for Sudan following the release of a youtube video made by Clooney and the ENOUGH project on March 13 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p89OuPODBMM. Op-Ed reporter for the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof, has also written a number of recent pieces on conflict in this area.
In the final shot of the Clooney video, Clooney stands over a dead body decaying in the sand and words appear on the screen: How many more bodies until the Nuba Mountains become the next Darfur?
Do I care? One-hundred percent. I think that the world is too connected to allow these kinds of atrocities to take place unnoticed by the global community and, as an American, I believe that every person on earth deserves the basic rights of food, health-care and free speech. However as the international community demands that Omar al-Bashir be overthrown and taken to international court for atrocities he committed, I can't help but think that if we did get involved, could this be another Iraq? Also, I think that there are more cultural complexities to the Sudan than even I can fathom, it may take more than removing Omar al-Bashir to establish peace.
The only thing I feel I know for certain is that I don't know what the solution would be.
It doesn't get more disheartening than that.
I've decided to use my coveted day off curled up on my sofa reading "The Blue Sweater" by Jacqueline Novogratz, about her experiences educating and lending to micro-finance groups in East Africa, focusing on Rwanda. Its incredible trying to grasp just how interconnected the world is today. I recently finished reading "Black Hawk Down" by Mark Bowden, which had nothing and everything to do with the 1994 events in Rwanda.
Black hawk down was a disaster and, with 20/20 hindsight, the book reviews where mistakes were made and where things could have gone better in the planning process, yet in the final chapter, the author reviews the events and despite setbacks, the Somalis took a higher toll during the mission than the rangers did. Despite this, Clinton withdrew troops following the "failed" mission and the United States is no longer directly involved in Somalia. Horrifying images of American soldiers' bodies being dishonored in the streets of Mogadishu appeared in the media. With this fresh in the minds of politicians and the American public, there was a sense of reluctancy to involve ourselves in international affairs, especially those in Africa.
Only months later, on April 6, 1994 a plane carrying the Hutu president of Rwanda and president of Burundi back from peace talks in Arusha was shot down as it flew into Kigali, killing both men. That night, the genocide began to unfold. In 100 days, roughly 800,000 people were murdered by people whom may have been their neighbors, relatives, or coworkers.
To this day it seems that Rwanda serves as a guilty conscience upon the international community, especially the United States. Because of the delay in labeling the conflict as "genocide" and delay in international involvement, thousands of people were slaughtered.
It is now eighteen years later and, unfortunately, its seems that history has a cruel way of repeating itself. The United States is now working to finally withdraw troops from Afghanistan and have only recently officially "ended" our involvement in Iraq, after roughly a decade of heavy military presence in both countries. Our reasons as a nation for entering each nation were very different.
My knowledge of Iraq and its history are fairly limited, but I can say confidently that Saddam Hussain was not a good man and hundreds of his own people were killed under his watch. Post 9/11 the Bush administration played to our sentiments and even Democrats authorized the start of a new war in yet another Middle Eastern country. It took almost a decade before we officially withdrew troops and left; Americans had long growth tired of hearing of our involvement in a country that had initially posed little threat to ours and there had been a growing opinion that we should not have entered to begin with.
Not all international interventions have been this disastrous; in comparison, our involvement in Libya seems to have gone relatively smoothly, although I am gauging this on the fact that our involvement was short-lived and that I have not seen much about Libya in the news recently.
Libya aside, my question is, when is it right for the United States to involve itself in the domestic conflicts of other nations?
More recently has been the plight of the Sudanese. Sudan is (was) an astonishing large and diverse country. The north has an Arab majority which the south is predominantly tribal. In Julie Flint and Alex de Waals book "Darfur: a new history of a long war" the authors criticize the international community for labeling the conflict in this region "genocide" because, they argue, it is far more complex. Although Omar al-Bashir was most certainly aware of, and likely supported, the Janjaweed's atrocities, tribal conflict as well as conflict with neighboring Chad contributed to the suffering of the innocent. Again, the United States involvement was limited, if not non-existant, in this conflict.
In July 2011, South Sudan gained its independence (http://www.goss.org/). Tensions in Darfur have calmed and people are finally returning home and trying to rebuild (Darfur is located in Sudan, not southern). However there has been recent blasts from the media over a "new" conflict erupting in the Nuba mountains, just north of the South Sudan border. Unlike the ruling power in Khartoum, the Nubians are tribal and are targeted by the government for ethnic and religious reasons.
Today George Clooney was arrested for protesting outside of the U.S. Embassy for Sudan following the release of a youtube video made by Clooney and the ENOUGH project on March 13 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p89OuPODBMM. Op-Ed reporter for the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof, has also written a number of recent pieces on conflict in this area.
In the final shot of the Clooney video, Clooney stands over a dead body decaying in the sand and words appear on the screen: How many more bodies until the Nuba Mountains become the next Darfur?
Do I care? One-hundred percent. I think that the world is too connected to allow these kinds of atrocities to take place unnoticed by the global community and, as an American, I believe that every person on earth deserves the basic rights of food, health-care and free speech. However as the international community demands that Omar al-Bashir be overthrown and taken to international court for atrocities he committed, I can't help but think that if we did get involved, could this be another Iraq? Also, I think that there are more cultural complexities to the Sudan than even I can fathom, it may take more than removing Omar al-Bashir to establish peace.
The only thing I feel I know for certain is that I don't know what the solution would be.
Some quotes I found interesting taken from a Robert Mackey article in the NYtimes http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/african-critics-of-kony-campaign-hear-echoes-of-the-white-mans-burden/
ReplyDeleteby Ugandan Rosebell Kagumire:
if you are showing me as voiceless, as hopeless… you shouldn’t be telling my story if you don’t believe that I also have the power to change what is going on. And this video seems to say that the power lies in America, and it does not lie with my government, it does not lie with local initiatives on the ground, that aspect is lacking. And this is the problem, it is furthering that narrative about Africans: totally unable to help themselves and needing outside help all the time.
by American Adam Branch:
how often does the US government find millions of young Americans pleading that they intervene militarily in a place rich in oil and other resources? The US government would be pursuing this militarization with or without Invisible Children—Kony 2012 just makes it a bit easier.