Khartoum and the Language of War: Who’s Really Listening?

Eric Reeves May 11, 2012 Every day it becomes clearer that unless Juba buckles before Khartoum’s extortionate demands, on a range of issues, then the regime will settle matters militarily—as it did in Abyei precisely one year ago. Yet in a remarkable display of obtuseness, the international community, putatively concerned with peace between Sudan and South Sudan, refuses to hear what the regime is actually saying. This obtuseness is apparent in the toothless UN Security Council resolution of May 2nd, which contains a cease-fire demand that has already been repeatedly violated by Khartoum; in the African Union roadmap, which (though backed by the Security Council) Khartoum accepts only “provisionally,” claiming the roadmap is “full of shortcomings and outright bias in favor of the SPLM”; and in the vehement and geographically ill-informed condemnations of the Southern “invasion” of Heglig along the contested North/South border, a profoundly misguided effort to accommodate Khartoum’s tendentious territorial claims (April 10 – 20). The failure of comprehension is also apparent in the now increasingly perfunctory condemnations of Khartoum’s relentless bombing of civilian targets inside sovereign Southern territory, even as these bombings are meant by Khartoum to bring both political and military pressure on Juba. And perhaps the most telling sign of policy myopia is the refusal by the Security Council to do more than “urge” Khartoum to allow humanitarian access to those starving in Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains, where civilian bombings have been relentless for over eleven months. Without securing humanitarian access from the regime in the very near term, the international community is likely consigning tens of thousands of people to death by starvation as Khartoum continues its genocidal counter-insurgency tactics. A distorted narrative. Read more >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>