Two Sides to a War

I'm fairly certain I don't grasp the full complexity of the situation, but it continually strikes me that enthusiasts for military intervention in Darfur, insofar as they're not just poseurs eager to use the corpses of thousands as fodder for cheap UN-bashing (see also), are oddly in denial about the fact that there's an actual war happening with multiple sides. A feasible intervention against the government, it seems to me, would have to be an intervention on behalf of the rebels and their political agenda.

This is a course of action that nobody actually wants to explicitly endorse. Perhaps that's wrong. Perhaps Darfuri independence is a cause we should get behind. I'm skeptical that re-drawing all the lines on the map is the solution to Africa's problems -- seems more like a Pandora's Box to me -- but maybe someone can make that case. This other idea that an intervention could somehow proceed without us taking sides seems a bit daft.

Comments

To be fair, this would also have been an issue in Rwanda.

Posted by BruceR | October 23, 2006 10:58 AM

Exactly.

And instead of sending in the Marines, wouldn't it have been easier to send $100 million worth of weapons and training to the rebels including whatever sort of equipment they need to deal with the Sudanese army?

Alternatively, if the problem is a political problem in Khartoum, why send troops to Darfur at all? A few airstrikes on key government targets in the capital might get their attention better. That's exactly the approach we took with Kosovo. We bombed the hell out of Belgrade and Milosovich rapidly caved on Kosovo.

This is all very reminiscent of Bosnia. A lot of hand-wringing and silliness like arms embargos for all sides without actually dealing with the root issue. Namely an agressor that is out of control.

Posted by Kent | October 23, 2006 11:10 AM

Well, the fact that an anti-genocidal intervention objectively benefits the side that's getting slaughtered at the moment doesn't necessarily mean it's not neutral in the eyes of the rest of the world. It won't be neutral in the eyes of the people doing the slaughtering, but that's not necessarily a fatal flaw -- the Serbs never accepted the neutrality of NATO in Bosnia, either.

The question in Darfur is whether an intervention could bring a slow, grudging halt to the violence, or whether peacekeepers would simply become a mild obstruction to a continuing civil war, as were UN-approved forces (our own included) in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia (until Dayton). At the moment it looks most likely to resemble Somalia. On the other hand, very small numbers of well-trained, well-equipped Western forces can make a ludicrously improbable difference in African conflicts, for reasons I'm not sure I understand. A couple of thousand British troops were able to pretty much restore order to Sierra Leone. (Before that, a few hundred Executive Outcomes mercenaries had almost done the trick.) In Ivory Coast, a couple of thousand French troops brought a full-scale north-south civil war to a wary halt, and have kept it that way for almost four years. Somalia, obviously, provides an ominous counterexample.

Maybe a brave few Light Cavalry can pacify the heathens...except where the dastardly Muhammedans are involved...? Doesn't bode well for Darfur.

Posted by brooksfoe | October 23, 2006 11:11 AM

A couple of thousand British troops were able to pretty much restore order to Sierra Leone.

I have come across this bogus story in several places. Unfortunately, I think it's erroneously accepted as a fact by most. The British didn't restore order or end the civil war in Sierra Leone. Up to days before the British soldiers landed in Freetown, the British defense minister was making reassurance that the British were going in just to evacuate their citizens. The decision to keep the troops there and embark on a new mission was taken because the situation was changing for the better (most notably, the capture of Sankoh, the rebel leader). If the civil war had been raging on, like it did years earlier, the British troops wouldn't have stayed a day longer after the last Briton had been evacuated. Even when the British stayed, most of the work of pacifying the country was done by non-British UN troops that numbered close 20,000. Even the UN numbers only started to go up after the rebels started their retreat.

Posted by Jeff O. | October 23, 2006 12:45 PM

I agree. I definitely support the rebels in their struggle against the genocidal maniacs in Khartoum, but it's not the UN's place to pick sides in wars.

On the other hand, direct U.S. support for the rebels might be a good idea, since they're a plucky rebel group fighting to save their homes and families from annihilation by a baleful imperial aggressor. If France helped us win our revolution (and without the French blockade we would have lost), I don't see why we couldn't do the same for the Fur.

Posted by Mr. Noah | October 23, 2006 1:41 PM

A couple thousand Brits? More like 600 (1st Bn., Para Regt.).

Jeff O's comment above is kind of odd. The only way UN numbers could have gone up in May 2000 (for instance the sending in of another Indian battalion, in Canadian planes, which later rescued the cut-off Indian contingent in July in Operation Khukri) was because the prompt British move had retained control of the Freetown airport in UN hands.

Yes, I grant, if it had been a disaster, it would have been a disaster. The Brits were clearly preparing for the worst: but even if the Westerners had been saved, RUF control of Freetown and the airport in May 2000 would have led to the deaths of hundreds of UN peacekeepers in RUF hands, never mind the effects on Sierra Leoneans. Brig. David Richards and the British saw an opportunity and grabbed it. That's what professional soldiers are supposed to do.

As for Sankoh, I recall him being arrested on May 17, nine days after the British arrival, and evacuated to UN custody in an RAF helicopter.

The whole affair was a tidy little bit of frontier soldiering, halting what would otherwise have been a UN rout with a surgical application of a few professionally led troops to hold the door open for reinforcements. Wolseley would have been proud. Saying it was UN troops (almost all drawn from former British colonies and dominions, it should be noted) who did the heavy lifting afterwards is like saying it was mostly Indian sepoys, not white troops, who fought under the Union Jack in the various Afghan wars. True, but also somewhat beside the point.

Admittedly, it's probably not a feat that's easily replicated elsewhere. Still an admirable bit of soldiering, though.

Posted by BruceR | October 23, 2006 1:46 PM

I definitely support the rebels in their struggle against the genocidal maniacs in Khartoum ... direct U.S. support for the rebels might be a good idea, since they're a plucky rebel group fighting to save their homes and families from annihilation by a baleful imperial aggressor.

That's an interesting perspective, as the last rebel group of note fighting the government is the JEM, which is Islamist and is seeking imposition of Sharia on areas that do not currently enjoy that system of civil law.

The other rebel group, which is not Islamist, has now joined the Sudanese government forces, and is fighting the JEM.

Posted by double-plus-ungood | October 23, 2006 3:56 PM

One big difference between this and Rwanda is in this case, partition is geographically feasible, at least compared to Rwanda.

Posted by djw | October 23, 2006 6:08 PM

Matthew, you seem so genuinely perplexed by these irrational calls to intervene in Darfur and Sudan... I would think they rise out of some basic liberal moral imperative to selectively resolve conflicts in petroleum-exporting countries (by overturning the government and re-doing the oil contracts). No?

3 little notes about Darfur:

1. Although "Save Darfur" has "presented itself as 'an alliance of over 130 diverse faith-based, humanitarian, and human rights organization', [it] was actually begun exclusively as an initiative of the American Jewish community."

2. The U.S. and Israel have both armed Sudanese rebels over the past 30 years, mostly by proxy. Long-time SPLA rebel leader John Garang was (he's dead now) a distinguished graduate of the U.S.'s finest institution for spreading democracy at gunpoint, the infamous School of the Americas, and according to the WaPo of April 17, 1987, "visitors to [SPLA leader John] Garang's headquarters at Boma in the southeast reported seeing crates of weapons supplied by Israel. Israel aided an earlier generation of southern rebels during the 1955-72 civil war as part of a policy to destabilize Arab governments."

3. Despite the convictions of some of the more gullible here that this "genocide" is due to the "evil" of Arab leaders in Khartoum, more careful observers point out the root cause to this latest chapter of the Sudanese civil war is the expansion of the Sahara.

Posted by Murph | October 24, 2006 2:26 AM

funny, i wrote a pretty long comment here last night and it didn't get approved...

Posted by Murph | October 24, 2006 12:19 PM

Is there some Israel filter? Or is it a 3AM filter?

Posted by Murph | October 24, 2006 12:20 PM