Is Sudan the next Iraq?

Various media sources have recently reported that Jan Pronk, the United Nations’ special envoy in Sudan, believes that there is a strong and growing anti-UN and anti-NATO sentiment in Khartoum which has been fueled by fear of a “conspiracy against the Arab-Islamic world.”

Recently Sudan’s president Omar el-Bashir was sounding very much like pre-invasion Saddam Hussein when he said that Darfur would become a “graveyard” for any foreign military contingent that entered the region without his government’s approval.

Meanwhile other Arab states seem to be sticking by the embattled Sudanese president. Recent Qatar, the only Arab state currently on the UN Security Council, voted against sanctions for Sudan (Russia—which would stand to lose a lot of money if sanctions were imposed, and China—which generally blanches at anything related to human rights—also, despicably, voted against sanctions as well). Also, two of the African Union’s Arab nations, Libya and Egypt, have recently rejected the move to replace the under-funded and ill-equipped African Union force currently in place in Darfur with a more robust United Nations deployment. The AU Peace and Security Council will official vote on replacing the AU force on March 10th and with Egypt and Libya on record against replacement the AU may actually vote to keep its troops in place.

It’s alarming to see the situation in Darfur become part of the global struggle between the Arab and non-Arab world. While this sort of struggle has long been a part of Sudanese politics—the decades-old conflict between the Arab Muslim government and the non-Arab Christian south, and now the conflict between the Arab Muslim government and the non-Arab Muslim region of Darfur are examples—it is very disheartening to see the Arab world rally around a government that has clearly allowed, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of its own citizens to be killed and millions more terrorized, raped, beaten, and displaced from their homes. And don’t forget, the people of Darfur are Muslim too.

What is even more troubling, however, is that Arab nations like Egypt and Qatar—allies in the global fight against extremist Islam—are among those standing in the way of real progress being made in Darfur.

So if the UN (or NATO) can get past these hurdles and deploy troops in Darfur with a mandate to stop the violence what will happen? Will it truly become a “graveyard” as President Bashir says? Will Jihad be unleashed on the troops there and on the countries that sent those troops? Will Sudan become embroiled in the larger Middle Eastern conflict? Will President Bashir make a call to his old friend Osama bin Laden and open up Darfur to foreign “freedom fighters” looking to make the region another example in the struggle between the Arab and non-Arab world?

Let’s hope not. Let’s hope that rationality and a general worldwide distaste for genocide rule the day. Let’s hope that all of the world’s leaders will recognize, after more than three years of killing and suffering in Darfur, that something must be done now. And let’s hope that President Bashir’s fear mongering about a ‘conspiracy against the Arab-Islamic world’ eventually gets brushed aside for what it is: a desperate attempt by Sudan’s government to ‘play the Arab card’ in the hope that it prevents the world from finally taking effective action in Darfur.