Darfur: colonised by ‘peacekeepers’

Excerpt:

The UN’s latest peacekeeping plan for Darfur is designed to quell the strife that erupted in the province in 2003, when local rebels took up arms against the central government in Khartoum. The conflict is complex, with a variety of interlocking factions and ethnic groups whose political antagonisms and struggle with the central government gird longstanding rivalries over the region’s depleted resources (2). But it is not only regional politics and economics that represent a barrier to peace – the international community’s involvement in the conflict has served to prolong and escalate the bloodshed.

Evading the bloody involution of the American crusade to liberate Iraq, a swathe of Western politicians, human rights groups and liberal intellectuals have tried collectively to regroup around Darfur (3). Dictated by a desire to cohere the agenda of international interventionism, these groups have systematically portrayed the conflict in Darfur as a genocide launched by racist, fanatical ‘Arabs’ against victimised ‘Africans’ (4). For the incoming governments of Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy in Britain and France, a joint focus on Darfur – complete with a promise to visit the refugee camps – has helped to dissociate them from the disaster of Iraq, while simultaneously affirming their moral authority to dictate affairs around the globe (5). Link

db: Nothing can possibly go wrong ... indeed one would hope that the UN force will leave the area without firing a single shot ... thankfully if things do become 'fruity' there is the option of a Chapter 7 authorised killing spree, which always works out well - for the 'enemy'.

Those with memories longer than a week may feel justified in being sceptical of this latest humanitarian intervention.