In Sudan, War Is Around the Corner
What can the United States do to help prevent a war after the referendum in South Sudan?
From 2001, the United States worked to end the war between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. In this war more than two million people died and four million were forced from their homes in southern Sudan.
In 2005, a comprehensive peace agreement was granting South Sudan three crucial things:
- robust participation in the central government while ruling the south semi-autonomously;
- a 50-50 split of all oil revenues (the country’s oil is largely in the south);
- and the ability, in 2011, to vote to secede via referendum.
But all signs indicate that the Khartoum government will undermine the voting process or not recognize its results. Both sides have been arming themselves since the peace agreement. And if war resumes in the south, the conflict in Darfur, in the west of the Sudan, will surely explode again.
Read more: In Sudan, War Is Around the Corner by Dave Eggers and John Prendergast (New York Times)
Eggers and Prendergast propose that the threatened pressures should include
- placing sanctions on key ruling party officials;
- blocking debt relief from the International Monetary Fund;
- supporting International Criminal Court arrest warrants (including the one issued on Monday for Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for three counts of genocide in Darfur) and
- tightening the United Nations arms embargo and providing further support to the south.
Dave Eggers is the author of “What Is the What”
John Prendergast of the Enough Project is the co-author with Don Cheadle of “The Enough Moment: Fighting to End Africa’s Worst Human Rights Crimes“
If YOU want to take action on this serious matter, visit the website of the Enough Project, and con the pages of the “Sudan Now”-campaign where you may find your very personal way to support the South Sudanese people’s quest for peace and self-determination.
by atsil
