Guest column

Will president get tough with Sudan?

— On January 21, 2013, Barack Obama was inaugurated for his second term as president of the United States. Looking out at a crowd of hundreds of thousands, he laid out what has been referred to by the press as a “traditional liberal agenda.”

At one point he issued this fine sounding sentiment: “We will support democracy from Asia to Africa . . . because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom. And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice-not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity; human dignity and justice.” Lofty, even presidential sounding, words, but do they reflect reality?

We raise this uncomfortable question not because we look askance at Obama as a person or politico or believe he does not deserve to be president. Rather, we raise them because we, scholars of genocide studies, know only too well that his administration has played footsies with one of the most notorious regimes in the world today-the murderous regime of Sudanese President Omar al Bashir,a man who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide for the atrocities perpetrated in Darfur. Tellingly, that has not been enough to prod the Obama administration to apply the most rigorous sanctions possible on that murderous regime. And because of such laxity, al Bashir and his lackeys are now carrying out a new war in other parts of Sudan: the Nuba Mountains and in the Blue Nile.

Daily his bombers wreak havoc by dropping bombs indiscriminately on population areas where innocent women, children and others congregate. The constant bombings have forced people off their farms from fear of being killed and as a result hunger and malnutrition are now a fact of life for most citizens in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile. Not a few are suffering severe malnutrition and an untold number have starved to death. To exacerbate matters, Khartoum is resolute in its refusal to allow the formal opening of a humanitarian corridor in order to insert badly needed food.

One of the authors of this piece (Sam Totten) recently returned from a two week fact-finding mission in the Nuba Mountains during which he oversaw the insertion of some five and a half tons of food into the area, purchased by donations from good citizens of the United States, and he can unequivocally say that had those hungry and beleaguered people heard the president’s words, they would have been shocked.

For the past 20-plus years, including the last four of the Obama administration, al Bashir has carried out scorched earth policies against one group of people after another in Sudan (the Nuba Mountains in the 1990s, the black Africans of Darfur throughout the first decade of the 21 Century, and now again, in the Nuba Mountains, and the Blue Nile)-murdering them, destroying their abodes and farms, running them off their land by the hundreds of thousands and forcing them into internally displaced persons and refugee camps to eke out a meager existence.

“Why, Mr. Obama,” we can hear them asking, “have you done little to nothing concrete to stop the murder, destruction and utter terror visited upon our people on a daily basis?” (As a side note, during Totten’s short stay in the Nuba Mountains-December 25 through January 5th-55 bombs were dropped by government of Sudan bombers.)

These same people are also likely to wonder how both U.S. “interests and conscience” work, for they surely have not compelled the U.S. to get tough, once and for all, with al Bashir and his genocidal regime or to reach out in any concrete way to help those who long for freedom.

In light of the relentless attacks by bombers and MIGS and the constant ache of hunger in their bellies, the Nuba Mountains people also must wonder: “How does the U.S. truly serve as a ‘source for hope’ for the are poor, sick, marginalized?”

From 2003 to the present, the governor of Sudan has sneered at the concept of democracy, curtailed freedom, and killed its people at will. Dignity and human justice? Khartoum is all about denying both to its people-and has been for decades. Be that as it may, all the U.S. government has done is engage in talk, talk and more talk with the dictator and the minions of his totalitarian state. Governments call that diplomacy, but for the people on the ground, those facing the brunt of the policies and actions (death, destruction, terror and abject hunger) of Sudan’s government, it all adds up to a loss of hope.

Concluding his speech, Obama said: “[D]ecisions are upon us and we cannot afford delay.” But then he followed that up with many of the same bromides he made four years ago when he first ran for president-and then watched passively as literally thousands of people were murdered and untold numbers perished from starvation in Sudan.

Promises are important, but bereft of effective and sustained action they do not protect people from bullets and bombs and are not capable of putting food into peoples’ stomachs.

Indeed, words bereft of action are virtually meaningless. Promises void of action hardly serve as beacons of hope; indeed, promises sans actions end up being little more than vacuous notions constituting slivers of salt rubbed into already raw wounds.

Samuel Totten, professor emeritus at the University of Arkansas and author of Genocide by Atrocity: Nuba Mountains, Sudan, recently returned from two weeks in the war torn Nuba Mountains. Herb Hirsch, author of Anti-Genocide: Building an American Movement to Prevent Genocide, is professor of political science in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Perspective, Pages 80 on 02/24/2013

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