Sudan's Big Lie and International Accountability

In keeping with the principle of the "Big Lie," tyrannies always seem to manage to muster the greatest outrage over responses to their very tyranny even as the events they perpetrate warrant extreme outrage. The latest ongoing example of this comes in the Sudan, where that murderous rogue regime continues to cry foul over objections to the placement of troops or even formal rebukes of the ongoing crisis in Darfur (which follows on the heels of the long-standing crisis in the South, which itself was part of a larger trend of ruthless warmongering from Khartoum).

But this time even the autocrats in Khartoum seem to realize they have gone too far, as they are backpedalling from a sternly worded letter to the UN, which the Mail & Guardian describes thusly:

On Thursday the Security Council held a special meeting to discuss a Sudanese letter sent to African and Arab countries on Tuesday warning them that providing troops for the UN force would be seen by Khartoum as a "hostile act" and "a prelude to an invasion of a member country of the UN."

The letter restated Khartoum's "total rejection" of a Security Council resolution passed in August mandating the deployment of up to 20 000 UN peacekeepers to Darfur to shore up the fragile peace accord.

But finally a few member states in the UN decided to call Sudan on its ruthlessness and perfidy, and the Sudanese representatives to the United Nations now insist that all along they have wanted cooperation and dialogue with the international community.

One would hope that the UN and the rest of the world would see Khartoum's transparent gambit for what it is: A tactic of delay intended to forestall both the extent and efficacy of international engagement in Darfur. One suspects that the world will instead fall victim to Khartoum's capacity to weave big lies and present absurd untruths as reality.