Link Banana

Not quite sure why — perhaps because the topics been on my mind recently — but I feel compelled to link to Gary Bass’s passable summary of the concept of humanitarian intervention.

I haven’t been following too closely, but I found both of these pieces on the (recommended) indictment of the Sudanese president to be useful:

• John Boonstra clarifies a few points — like that Bashir hasn’t yet been “indicted” — that don’t come across clearly in most reporting of the story.
• Richard Goldstone considers whether this will help or hinder the prospects for peace.

Mark Helprin says that that’s the solution to the crisis in Darfur.

Which would the regime in Sudan prefer? To be annihilated, or to discontinue its campaign of mass murder in Darfur? Given Sudan’s record, very few nations would be willing to come to its aid with other than a pro forma whimper, and given the geography and the air and naval balance, no nation could. Though many a repressive dictatorship would protest, and Sudan’s patron, China, might determine to speed up the formation of the blue-water navy it is already building, little else would change except for the better.

Also of note, a damning rebuttal from Mark Goldberg.

In case you’d forgotten the mess of Darfur, this photo’s likely to snap you to attention.

(via UN Dispatch)

Perhaps mistakenly, I shrugged off Nicholas Kritstof’s first attempt to convince the world that the Sudanese government is ready to restart hostilities in the south of their country. (For those who are wondering, Darfur is in the west, and their had been a long war in the south that ended a few years ago.) After a second column on the same idea, I figured it at least beared mentioning.

Since late November, there have been repeated clashes in the Abyei area between South Sudan’s armed forces and a large tribe of Arab nomads, the Misseriya, which is armed and backed by the Sudanese government in Khartoum. Mr. Paguot said that several hundred people had been killed in these clashes, and that some of the gunmen were government soldiers who had taken off their uniforms to masquerade as tribal fighters.

On Feb. 7, gunmen from the Misseriya shot up and looted a bus arriving in Abyei and began blockading the road that leads into the town from the north. That has cut off supplies, so shops in the town market are running out of fuel and food, and prices are rising.

Nicholas Kristof’s latest column is worth perusing. He makes a rather cogent argument for both the repudiation of torture and swift justice for all detainees at Guantanamo.

The most famous journalist you may never have heard of is Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who is on a hunger strike to protest abuse during more than six years in a Kafkaesque prison system.

Mr. Hajj’s fortitude has turned him into a household name in the Arab world, and his story is sowing anger at the authorities holding him without trial.

That’s us. Mr. Hajj is one of our forgotten prisoners in Guantánamo Bay.

If the Bush administration appointed an Under Secretary of State for Antagonizing the Islamic World, with advice from a Blue Ribbon Commission for Sullying America’s Image, it couldn’t have done a more systematic job of discrediting our reputation around the globe. Instead of using American political capital to push for peace in the Middle East or Darfur, it is using it to force-feed Mr. Hajj.

Not only has there been increased rebel activity in Chad, says The Economist, but it may be coming from a different situation nearby.

The violence this weekend in Chad’s capital on the western edge of the country—and also in smaller towns farther east—is really a symptom of a conflict spreading from Darfur which has already caused instability in neighbouring Central African Republic and in the east of Chad. The timing of this particular outbreak of hostilities may be explained by efforts to install a European Union peacekeeping force in Chad in an effort to contain the conflict in Darfur. The force of 3,700 soldiers EU troops, plus a few hundred UN policemen, was ready to deploy but has been prevented from doing so by the latest fighting. Rebels—and their backers in Sudan—may have decided to act before the Europeans at last got their boots on the ground.

For the new year, the Christian Science Monitor put together a quick-and-dirty run down of some of the world’s most interesting and important trouble spots. The list is neither exhaustive — Zimbabwe, Somalia, Sri Lanka, and (sadly) now Kenya are all worthy candidates, as is the suppressed conflict in Burma — or deep, but for those looking for a reminder of or introduction to international problems, it’s a great place to start. The quick list is: Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Kosovo, Turkey, Colombia, Darfur. (Single-page printer-friendly edition, if that’s your preference.)