At The New Republic online, James Forsyth, assistant editor at Foreign Policy makes a compelling realist's case for greater involvement in the Sudan crisis. The gist of his case is that our inaction in the Sudan appears to lend credence to the idea that countries that seek shelter under "the China umbrella" will have free rein to be as dastardly as they choose. Forsyth acknowledges the virtue of humanitarian arguments for intervention while at the same time introducing a fairly compelling argument for intervention based on geopolitical interests.
Meanwhile, in a tail-wags-dog story, the Times reported yesterday that the Sudan has withdrawn its support for UN peacekeepers to take the place of African Union troops doing their best to control the situation in Darfur. One can easily debate this move on the merits -- in the wake of previous peacekeeping fiascos in which the UN was ineffectual in the face of African tyranny, such news might give pause -- but that Sudan should have a say in the matter is, to say the least, not reassuring. On a somewhat related note, Smith English professor Eric Reeves has been one of the leading voices drawing attention to the Sudan, and in a recent Mail & Guardian piece he addresses some of the problems of the AU forces, South Africa's inaction, and the need for stronger leadership, whether from South Africa, the AU or elsewhere.
All the while, Darfur refugee spillover into Chad runs the risk of turning the Sudan situation into yet another international (in the most literal sense of the word) miasma in Africa. Just consider what happened in the wake of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 or how the Congo/Zaire became a tinderbox a few years later. Once this becomes a cross-border problem, the potential for explosive conflict expands exponentially. This Sudan spillover may pose the worst refugee crisis in Africa (and the world) since the aftermath of the one hundred days of mayhem in Rwanda a dozen years ago.
In more hopeful news, South Africans flock to the polls today in what may be the stiffest challenge the ANC has yet faced. Thus far things seem to be going smoothly. In yesterday's Times Padraig O'Malley sounds a note of caution in the context of discontent over how the ANC has handled relocating certain communities from Gauteng to less prosperous provinces. I do not quite buy the most dire interpretations from the article, and would point out that while there are aspects of the ANC that seem bent on grasping more power than most (myself included) find comforting, the very existence of what should be fairly well-turned out voters who may challenge the ANC ought to be reassuring. The sentiments of one member of a Northern Cape opposition party member may indicate the tone of discontentment but not vitriol many in South Africa feel about the current state of the ANC: "I pray that the ANC will lose. We feel that you failed us. I was part of the people who helped the ANC win in 1994." What this indicates may be that a short-term setback for the ANC might cause the party to take a long look at itself, and perhaps to win back, to earn back, those who are concerned with what they see. Then again, some of the dissatisfaction appears pretty deeply seeded, as a quotation from a Shangase headman, Phenyamadoda Mchunu, indicates: "Tell me one reason why I should vote. We always vote but our lives don't improve." If enough South Africans begin to feel this way, things could grow very difficult for Mbeki's ANC.
Finally, according to the Mail and Guardian and observers, "things don't look good for Uganda." President Yoweri Museveni of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) is facing its stiffest challenge yet, and the one-time darling of a west that only half-pays attention to Africa at the best of times (Presidents Clinton and Bush have both heaped praise on Museveni since he came to office in 1996), looks to be resorting to typical "Big Man" tactics that have become frustratingly commonplace across Africa.
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