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Conflict in Darfur, Sudan - The Mega Thread

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Posted IAW the fair dealings provisions of the Copyright Act

Sudan: U.N. forces not needed in Darfur (http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2007/01/10/3277406-ap.html)

By NEDRA PICKLER

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said Wednesday that African Union forces can maintain order in Darfur and United Nations forces are not needed.

“Our experience with U.N. operations in the world is not encouraging,” al-Bashir told an Associated Press reporter Wednesday at his residence.

“There are sufficient forces in the Sudan from African countries to maintain order and they can provide order. All we need is funding for the African troops.”


 
Haggis said:
“Our experience with U.N. operations in the world is not encouraging,” al-Bashir told an Associated Press reporter Wednesday at his residence.

He got that right!

“There are sufficient forces in the Sudan from African countries to maintain order and they can provide order. All we need is funding for the African troops.”

And someone like himself to administer the funds, no doubt.



 
China set to step into Darfur crisis
12-day African tour: Hu to meet with Sudan's President 'to promote peace'
Peter Goodspeed, National Post Published: Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Article Link

China's President Hu Jintao launched a 12-day, eight-country tour of Africa yesterday that could hold out hope of finally resolving the conflict in Darfur.

During his third trip to Africa in as many years, Mr. Hu is expected to spend two days meeting General Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese President, in Khartoum. Chinese officials have pointedly noted the two leaders will discuss ways "to promote peace and stability in Darfur."

The simple fact China is ready to discuss what it has long regarded as a Sudanese internal affair may serve as a warning to Gen. Bashir that he can no longer stall on implementing a UN Security Council resolution calling for the introduction of UN peacekeepers in Darfur.
More on link
 
I see this as strategic bad news.

China and India both need resources.

Africa is a resource rich continent.

China also has an enormous pool of resources on its border – in the Stans of central Asia and in Central and Eastern Siberia.

While I sympathize with the Darfur dilemma, especially with the West’s fervent desire to avoid that particular tar baby lest it get stuck and dragged deeper and deeper into Africa’s apparently intractable problems, I cannot believe that we should give China carte blanche in the region.

We should promote India as Africa’s saviour.

India is too poor to advance its own case in Africa but Indian diplomatic, administrative and military skills coupled with Western money could turn the trick.  Strengthening India (especially at the expense of China) while, simultaneously offering Africa a prospect of decent administration is in our common, Western best interest.  On that basis I doubt George W. Bush will act.
 
I fear you are correct. There is such a fear of becoming embroiled in another conflict, the west (read US) just wants somebody else to deal with it, especially with the Democrates coming into power. Right now it's easier to look the other way, and hope the sh*t happens under the Democrat's umbrella. Let them deal with it.

And deal with it they will have to. This is the cold war revisited, except with China as the adversary. Global politics is alive and well.
 
I don't disagree with the sentiment regarding China's influence in Afghanistan.  Nor do disagree with the notion that action needs to be taken and that that action can include India.

I am starting to get a bit concerned though that there seems to be an increasing tendency to view India as Mikey.

For those that may have forgotten or not seen it Mikey was the kid brother in a TV ad for cereal.  Two older brothers were fighting over who should be the first to try this new cereal that Mum had just bought.  "I don't wanna. You try it." "I don't wanna. You try it." "Hey.  I know. Let Mikey try it."

There is a tendency to think that if only we had enough young bodies then we could solve the world's ills and build Jerusalem on Darfur's burnt and sandy hills, and elsewhere.  India appears to have a suitable supply of the necessary ingredient therefore we should welcome them into the fold and immediately send them off to save Black Muslim Africans from Arab Muslim Africans.

Both Jack Layton and George Bush are alike in this worldview.  One that springs from the same source.  Manchester.  Where the newly enriched middle class met the New Light preachers and decided they didn't have to wait for the next world and God's judgement to make things better in this world.

This thinking led British reformers to promote the dispatching of missionaries and settlers to improve the rest of the world and required the governments of the day in Britain to create a central government in India where there had been none.  It also promoted the notion of intervention and settlement in the Dark Continent.

This converted what had been a nicely functioning and profitable trade enterprise of trading posts into financially draining and politically taxing empire.

During the successful commercial phase, when influence was expanding, Indians were recruited by their own leaders as well as the East India Company to maintain Domestic security.  Up until the late Victorian and possibly even until World War I - many Indians would not cross "Black Water" - ocean water.

Relatively few Indians ever left India to take up service in other areas of the Empire although even a few could have a major demographic impact on a small island.

India contributed forces to Mesopotamia in 1915, as well as the rest of the Middle East and some went on to the Western Front.  But, again, that was a small portion of the Indian population. It was drawn from a small segment of Indian society,  a segment that had be largely anglicized in its views and aspirations.  Also the India of that time included Baluchistan that was part of the Sultan of Oman's traditional sphere of influence and that were soldiers, seamen and considered Mesopotamia "local".

You want a cure for Darfur? Build a railroad.  Complete the Cairo to Capetown rail link and have the railway company supply its own PSC for security.  Then you can service the oil lines, get to the oilfields and mines, and people.  And more importantly, people can get away from their misery.

We talk about refugees as if they were a bad idea.  Historically that is the most common adaptive mechanism we have.  Our feet let us move from threats.

Once we have moved from the threat then our brain lets us adapt to a more secure but different environment.

 
This, reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act, is an opinion piece from a recent (30 Jan 07) edition of the Globe and Mail by former Justice Minister and well known human rights advocate Irwin Cotler:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070130.wxcodarfur30/BNStory/specialComment/ 
Darfur's pain is the West's shame
The international community must stop this 'go slow' genocide, says MP and human-rights activist IRWIN COTLER

IRWIN COTLER
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

Tragically, incrementally, the genocide in Darfur has moved into high gear, mocking the lessons of history while betraying the people of Darfur.

For history's enduring lesson is that the genocide of European Jewry occurred not only because of the ideology of hatred, but also because of crimes of indifference and inaction. Indeed, we have witnessed in our own days appalling indifference and inaction that took us down the road to the unspeakable -- the genocide in Rwanda.

Darfur is in "freefall" or "meltdown," as chief UN aid co-ordinator Jan Egeland recently put it. We know that:

More than 450,000 Darfurians have died in this genocide by attrition. The media have been repeating for 20 months now that 200,000 have died, but recent evidence of 450,000 is compelling;

There are four million people, as Mr. Egeland put it, now on a desperate life-support system. Again, the media mantra for those 20 months has been that two million people have been displaced, ignoring the additional numbers of both displaced persons and those in desperate need of assistance;

These four million Darfurians are now being joined by one million in Chad, and another one million in the Central African Republic. The humanitarian life support system is itself on life support;

Mass atrocity has increased dramatically, including systematic rape, indiscriminate bombardment and burning of villages, forced expulsions, and more assaults and killings of aid workers;

The Darfur Peace Agreement of May, 2006, between Sudan and the main Sudan rebel group, is being violated daily and is itself in a "coma," as attested by Jan Pronk, the UN representative in Sudan, while the just-brokered Darfur ceasefire has already been violated.

In a word, we know that the genocide by attrition, or "go slow" genocide as it has sometimes been called -- a description that itself reflects the banality of this radical evil -- has moved into high gear.

It is our responsibility to shatter the silence, to break down the walls of indifference, to stand with the people of Darfur. But while words are important, while UN Security Council resolutions are necessary, while the normative adoption by the UN of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine is crucial, words, resolutions and doctrines are not enough. What is of the utmost urgency is immediate international action to stop the genocide.

What is desperately needed is a "Darfur Summit" involving leaders of the African Union, the European Union, the UN and NATO, convened for the express purpose of putting a "Save Darfur" action plan into effect and not adjourned until that plan is adopted.

Meanwhile, Canada, in concert with the international community, can exercise the moral, political and diplomatic leadership to save Darfur. Here's how:

1) The robust UN peacekeeping force authorized by the UN Security Council must be deployed quickly to take over from the underfunded, undermanned African Union mission in Sudan (AMIS);

2) Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir has called the UN peacekeeping force a "colonialist" initiative and "Zionist plot," denies atrocities are occurring and threatens to withhold consent for the force's deployment. The resolve of the international community must be clear: to put the UN force on the ground with the consent of the Sudanese government if possible, but without it if necessary. Stopping genocide cannot be held hostage to the perpetrators of genocide;

3) The mandate of the AU mission has been extended to March. But plans, announced four months ago, for sending 1,200 more troops to join the 7,200-member force and broadening the mandate, have yet to be realized. This mission has courageously stood as the only line of defence for millions of Darfurians. But it has neither the numbers nor the mandate to stop the killing, and is itself increasingly under attack. Until such time as the UN peacekeeping force is deployed and operational, the international community must immediately reinforce -- and fund -- an expanded AU mission;

4) The demand by the UN Security Council in 2005 that the Sudanese government cease offensive military flights must be enforced by the immediate establishment of a "no-fly" zone, supported in particular by France and Germany;

5) The Security Council, the EU, and their individual members must also enforce and enhance the sanctions adopted by the UN Sanctions Committee against the named Sudanese violators;

6) Sudanese officials responsible for the perpetration of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide must be brought before the International Criminal Court;

7) The Darfur Peace Agreement, which only a robust UN force can enforce, must not be allowed to unravel;

8) Human security is more desperate, and humanitarian assistance more urgent, than ever. Attacks on NGOs doubled in 2006 from 2005; attacks against members of the AU peacekeeping force are up by 1,000 per cent. There is no humanitarian access for the more than 60 per cent of people who desperately need it, with the deadly threat of starvation and disease;

9. Individual Security Council members must pressure Sudan directly to accept the UN peacekeeping force and end its military offensive. China has particular leverage as Sudan's paymaster and largest trading partner;

10. As the International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch recently recommended, the Security Council, with European support, must move quickly to establish a new UN peacekeeping mission with a strong civilian-protection mandate in Chad and the Central African Republic, aimed at deterring the movement of insurgent armed groups across the borders. The NATO-ready rapid deployment force of some 30,000 might be an expeditious way of both augmenting the African mission and underpinning the UN peacekeeping force.

As the student posters cry out at the "Save Darfur" rallies: "If not us who, if not now, when?"

Irwin Cotler, a former justice minister of Canada, is the founder of the Save Darfur Parliamentary Coalition.

I have a few comments and questions:

First: These are ringing words; a veritable call to arms” It is our responsibility to shatter the silence, to break down the walls of indifference, to stand with the people of Darfur. But while words are important, while UN Security Council resolutions are necessary, while the normative adoption by the UN of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine is crucial, words, resolutions and doctrines are not enough. What is of the utmost urgency is immediate international action to stop the genocide.”

And what is the action, what is of the utmost urgency?  A conference!  But not just any conference, Mr. Cotler says: ” What is desperately needed is a "Darfur Summit" involving leaders of the African Union, the European Union, the UN and NATO, convened for the express purpose of putting a "Save Darfur" action plan into effect and not adjourned until that plan is adopted.” Oh, good!  That's real action!  A conference: for shame Mr. Cotler!  Is that best you can do?

Second: Mr. Cotler advocates that: ”… Canada, in concert with the international community, can exercise the moral, political and diplomatic leadership to save Darfur.”

We are to display moral leadership; that’s par for the course for the Pink Lloyd Axworthy wing of the Liberal Party of Canada which raised Canada to the status of moral superpower - even as it emasculated our diplomatic and military services.

We are to display political leadership – shades of Stephen Harper!  This would involve undoing all that Saint Pierre Trudeau did; he stated, explicitly, in the 1970 White Paper ‘Foreign Policy for Canadians,’ that Canada was a poor little country which could not afford the responsibilities of being a ‘leading middle power.’  Canadians would rather, Trudeau suggested, live off the fat of their own land and let others do the heavy lifting.*

We are to display diplomatic leadership, too – anything and everything, it seems, except military leadership.

Third:  Cotler says: ” The robust UN peacekeeping force authorized by the UN Security Council must be deployed quickly to take over from the underfunded, undermanned African Union mission in Sudan (AMIS) … The resolve of the international community must be clear: to put the UN force on the ground with the consent of the Sudanese government if possible, but without it if necessary. Stopping genocide cannot be held hostage to the perpetrators of genocide …”

What role, if any, is Canada to play in this; will we promise much, again, and, again, deliver all possible aid short of real help?

"If not us who, if not now, when?"  Indeed, Mr. Cotler; and thank you and your colleagues in the last two Liberal governments for depriving Canadians and Canadian governments of the tools needed to do the job.


----------
* The 1970 White paper was a resounding failure for two primary reasons:

1. It was an ill considered, amateurish, indeed sophomoric exercise – reflecting far too much of Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s second rate ‘intellect’ and far to little of External Affairs Minister Mitchell Sharp’s department’s knowledge; and

2. Nixon’s 1971 shift in US policy – which was, almost certainly in my opinion, provoked by Trudeau’s uncoordinated, unwelcome and unwise about turns – knocked the underpinning’s of Trudeaus’ so called policy out from under.

Pierre Elliot Trudeau was a fool, as well as being a petty, pompous, provincial poltroon.


 
So Mr Cotler wants a UN invasion (though he does not call it that) if necessary. Somehow I don't see too many countries volunteering.  Or China and Russia allowing the Security Council to authorize such action in any event.

What dream world does he live in?

Mark
Ottawa
 
Kirkhill said:
I don't disagree with the sentiment regarding China's influence in Africa Afghanistan.  Nor do disagree with the notion that action needs to be taken and that that action can include India.
...

Is that what you meant to say, Kirkhill?

Kirkhill said:
...
I am starting to get a bit concerned though that there seems to be an increasing tendency to view India as Mikey.

For those that may have forgotten or not seen it Mikey was the kid brother in a TV ad for cereal.  Two older brothers were fighting over who should be the first to try this new cereal that Mum had just bought.  "I don't wanna. You try it." "I don't wanna. You try it." "Hey.  I know. Let Mikey try it."

There is a tendency to think that if only we had enough young bodies then we could solve the world's ills and build Jerusalem on Darfur's burnt and sandy hills, and elsewhere.  India appears to have a suitable supply of the necessary ingredient therefore we should welcome them into the fold and immediately send them off to save Black Muslim Africans from Arab Muslim Africans.
...

I don't disagree with this.  No matter from whence the idea springs (and I do not agree with the Bush/Layton alliance POV) the idea of India as our new secret weapon must be tempered with reality re: India's capabilities.

My, personal assessment is that we ought to do what we can, short of explicit unfriendly acts, to discomfit and contain China.  Given the geopolitical and demographic realities, the only country in the whole world which can act as a counterbalance to China is India but India is weak - in part because it lacks Mackinder's hinterland with all that implies, including resources and even lebensraum.

I propose to 'give' Africa to India.

Africa needs and desperately craves good government, well better government and, I am told by colleagues who ought to know that anything is better than the status quo.  India can provide better, maybe even good government.  (As a parenthetical aside: the impetus for the African 'independence' movements in the '50s was, largely, the result of Africans being exposed to India in WWII.  Educated Africans were amazed and inspired by the accomplishments and politics of the Indians.)

India needs resources.  An African empire can provide them.

Kirkhill said:
You want a cure for Darfur? Build a railroad.  Complete the Cairo to Capetown rail link and have the railway company supply its own PSC for security.  Then you can service the oil lines, get to the oilfields and mines, and people.  And more importantly, people can get away from their misery.
...

Agreed!  Much better than Mr. Cotler's conference - see above.

Kirkhill said:
...
We talk about refugees as if they were a bad idea.  Historically that is the most common adaptive mechanism we have.  Our feet let us move from threats.

Once we have moved from the threat then our brain lets us adapt to a more secure but different environment.

A whole new topic but, again, I agree.
 
Edward Campbell said:
Is that what you meant to say, Kirkhill?

It was indeed mate.  Freudian slip

My, personal assessment is that we ought to do what we can, short of explicit unfriendly acts, to discomfit and contain China.  Given the geopolitical and demographic realities, the only country in the whole world which can act as a counterbalance to China is India but India is weak - in part because it lacks Mackinder's hinterland with all that implies, including resources and even lebensraum.

I propose to 'give' Africa to India.

Africa needs and desperately craves good government, well better government and, I am told by colleagues who ought to know that anything is better than the status quo.  India can provide better, maybe even good government.  (As a parenthetical aside: the impetus for the African 'independence' movements in the '50s was, largely, the result of Africans being exposed to India in WWII.  Educated Africans were amazed and inspired by the accomplishments and politics of the Indians.)

India needs resources.  An African empire can provide them.
 

Now there's a good idea.  Western backing for Indian companies to set up operations in Africa.  I note that a privatized Indian steel manufacturer has just bought British Steel with all its international operations.  Indians into Africa via Kenya and Tanzania, as well as South Africa, all (I believe) with sizeable communities of Indian expats.  Uganda used to have one.  Link via Oman, Aden, Socotra, Ethiopia, possibly Madagascar and various offshore islands, as well as the Indian Navy buttressed by the USN and the USMC....

India's hinterland.  China gets western investment dollars to spend in Africa if it plays by the same rules. (Or should we encourage them to focus on working Co-operatively with BOTH Russia AND The West.)



 
And Edward, it seldom warrants responding to your posts because I agree with so many of them.

” The robust UN peacekeeping force authorized by the UN Security Council must be deployed quickly to take over from the underfunded, undermanned African Union mission in Sudan (AMIS) … The resolve of the international community must be clear: to put the UN force on the ground with the consent of the Sudanese government if possible, but without it if necessary. Stopping genocide cannot be held hostage to the perpetrators of genocide …”

Somebody really SHOULD do something - but pleased be advised if anybody is going to die it won't be Canadian soldiers - the rest of you will have to make the necessary sacrifices.

Idioten.  The hale gang o' them.
 
This is an Associated Press article from today’s (3 Feb 07) Business Week.com; it is reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act:

Chinese leader tours copper-rich Zambia

By JOSEPH J. SCHATZ

LUSAKA, Zambia

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Saturday was bringing his eight-nation African tour to Zambia, a copper-rich country where China's growing clout has prompted charges of exploitation and emerged as a volatile political issue.

Huge photos of Hu and Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa greeted motorists on Lusaka's main roads in preparation for the tightly orchestrated three-day visit, which follows stops earlier this week in Cameroon, Liberia and Sudan.

Hu has used the tour to cement China's increasing economic and political ties and its fast-growing role as a foreign donor throughout the continent.

Hu was expected to attend talks with the recently re-elected Mwanawasa and a state banquet. The Chinese delegation asked for strict security measures and said Hu would not take questions from the media.

Mwanawasa has cultivated close ties with China, which has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Zambia's copper sector, an industry that accounts for 60 percent of the impoverished nation's exports.

China also has become a major foreign aid donor to Mwanawasa's cash-strapped government. Chinese investment in Zambia now totals more than $500 million, according to China's state-run news agency, Xinhua.

Hu's visit to Lusaka is expected to focus on new Chinese aid initiatives for Zambia and the inauguration Sunday of a new economic partnership zone in Zambia's Copperbelt province, which has become a key source of copper for China's growing economy.

But the Chinese delegation canceled plans to visit the Copperbelt province, where 51 Zambian workers died in a 2005 explosion at a Chinese-run mine.

Accidents and concerns over poor working conditions at Chinese-run copper mines -- plus resentment over an influx of Chinese traders into the local apparel industry -- fueled political backlash over the Chinese presence in last September's presidential elections.

Opposition challenger Michael Sata won support in urban areas after lashing out at what he called "exploiter" Chinese investors and threatening to recognize Taiwan, which China regards as a rebel province. This sparked an unusually public verbal dispute with the Chinese ambassador to Zambia.

"They're not here to develop Zambia, they're here to develop China," said Guy Scott, a Sata ally who represents Lusaka's central district in parliament.

The government has not invited Sata's party to public events during Jintao's visit due to its anti-China sentiments, according to the state-owned Daily Mail newspaper.

China's involvement in Zambia dates back to the early 1970s, when the Chinese government built a railway linking central Zambia to the nearest port city of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Since the late 1990s, trade has soared.

At last year's conference between the Chinese government and African heads of state in Beijing, Zambia and China forged an agreement on a new $200 million copper smelter, to be built by China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group.

The Beijing government has conducted road-building and water supply projects, and also sent Chinese physicians to practice in Zambia -- important projects in a country where more than 70 percent of the population lives in poverty and the health care system faces serious shortages of doctors and nurses.

Hu's visit was preceded by a raft of new Chinese commitments, including the release of more than $6 million for the construction of a new soccer stadium in the mining town of Ndola and a $39 million grant for road building.

While many Zambians welcome the Chinese presence, many take a more wary view.

Joan van Otterdijk, a Zambian textile and clothing shop owner in Lusaka said cheap, low-quality Chinese-made textiles being sold by Chinese traders in Lusaka are "destroying our business."

He said China should concentrate on the mining sector "rather than putting themselves into these local businesses."

The key bit is this:

"They're not here to develop Zambia, they're here to develop China."

The Chinese are willing, indeed eager to offer the Africans the one prize we, in the West, have denied them: a secure, stable market for their resources.  There are strings.  Free trade must, after all, work both ways or it’s neither free nor even trade.  If the Africans want/need to exploit their resources now they have to accept that the Chinese will do real, long term damage to Africa’s cotton/textile industries.

India needs those resources, too – perhaps even more than China.

Sorry, Mods: we're drifting off track but Zambia isn't that far from Sudan and Africa's problems are not confined to Sudan, either.
 
Cameroon and Zambia are both Commonwealth countries.  (So is Tanzania for that matter).  The best strategy would be to re-engage them with Commonwealth investment offered under Commonwealth values, now that they have had a chance to see what Chinese values look like. 

But it needs to be done quickly while the situation is still fluid.

(Perhaps Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand - and some of those incredibly wealthy island tax havens scattered around the globe - could pony up an investment fund or two, backed by Commonwealth laws and Commonwealth enforcement.  Canadian company acts beyond the pale then the local workers can sue them in a Canadian court.  Where would they prefer their case to be heard: Ottawa or Beijing? )
 
Kirkhill said:
Cameroon and Zambia are both Commonwealth countries.  (So is Tanzania for that matter).  The best strategy would be to re-engage them with Commonwealth investment offered under Commonwealth values, now that they have had a chance to see what Chinese values look like. 

But it needs to be done quickly while the situation is still fluid.

(Perhaps Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand - and some of those incredibly wealthy island tax havens scattered around the globe - could pony up an investment fund or two, backed by Commonwealth laws and Commonwealth enforcement.  Canadian company acts beyond the pale then the local workers can sue them in a Canadian court.  Where would they prefer their case to be heard: Ottawa or Beijing? )

India is a member of the Commonwealth, too.  Perhaps ABCNZ + Singaporean money and Indian ABC (administrative, bureaucratic and commercial) knowhow could combine for Africa's benefit and 'our' security.
 
Edward Campbell said:
India is a member of the Commonwealth, too.  Perhaps ABCNZ + Singaporean money and Indian ABC (administrative, bureaucratic and commercial) knowhow could combine for Africa's benefit and 'our' security.

Roger that, absolutely.

Bermuda, Turks and Caicos and some of the others aren't hurting for investors money either.
 
As a leading member of the "Mikey" group, I agree with much of what is being said about India here. We might not need to do more than supply "seed money" for India, their culture is more open and flexible than China's (that British influence?), and they do not have the weight of the state hanging over their economy to anywhere the same extent that the Chinese do. (The thread on the growth of the
PLAN in International Situation and World News http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/55433.0.html points out some of the long term difficulties China is going to face).

I would also venture to say that inviting India to hook up with us (either Canada alone, or better yet, the rest of the Anglosphere) in a free trade agreement would also provide a huge boost to India without requiring them to get deeply involved in Africa. The reasoning is similar to what happened in Japan during the late 1920's and early 1930's. The Imperial Japanese Army considered the best course for the Empire was to reach into China and Russia for land, resources and markets, while the Imperial Navy favored taking territory, resources and markets from the more established European Empires.

The factors which tipped things to the Imperial Navy included the time and effort required to extract resources from Siberia (which was mostly undeveloped) compared to taking already developed resources from the European Empires, and the rather negative results of military encounters with the Soviets. India would probably rather deal with modern nations with developed resource industries and markets like Canada and Australia rather than watch their time, energy and resources disappear into the African sinkhole.

In the longer term, India will have to deal with Africa, since India will need both more markets and resources than we can provide, as well as to ensure freedom of the seas when accessing markets in the Atlantic Ocean basin. We just need to get them ready.
 
Canada commits $48M to help keep peace in Darfur
Updated Thu. Mar. 1 2007 7:57 PM ET Canadian Press
Article Link

OTTAWA -- Canada has committed $48 million to support African Union peacekeeping efforts in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan.

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay announced the funding late Thursday amid continued civil strife in Darfur.

"Canada is gravely concerned about the ongoing international humanitarian law and human rights violations and abuses in Darfur, and condemns continued ceasefire violations by all parties," MacKay said during question period.

He said the new funding is aimed at helping the African Union mission in Sudan to "enhance the protection of civilians and to facilitate safe, unhindered humanitarian access to affected populations in urgent need."

Since 2004, Canada has pledged more than $190 million to the African Union mission in Sudan, and has provided military equipment, helped train African peacekeepers, and provided food, water, sanitation, and basic health care.

Canada has also sent several dozen military observers to Sudan
 
Note this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/02/AR2007030201089.html

...the EU has provided most of the financing for the AU force now in Darfur - some [US] $530 million since 2004 - and the bloc's special peace support fund for Africa has run dry.

EU foreign ministers are expected to seek extra funding Monday from the EU aid budget and from the coffers of its 27 member governments...

So on a per capita basis Canada--$190 million--is providing a huge deal more that the EU. No notice of that in our media.

Meanwhile, Sudan's president is continuing his dance of the seven veils with the UN:

Sudan's president is sending a letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressing his commitment to the deployment of several thousand U.N. peacekeepers to help end the violence in Darfur, Sudan's U.N. envoy said Friday.

The deployment would be the second step of a three-stage U.N. plan that would culminate in a 22,000-strong joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission...

Al-Bashir's letter expresses his commitment but also raises "issues of operational, technical and legal aspects" of the proposal, Sudanese Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem told The Associated Press. He declined to elaborate...

The first phase _ a "light support" package adding some equipment, military officers and U.N. police to the AU operation _ is nearly almost complete. The second phase is a "heavy support" package that includes the deployment of more than 3,000 U.N. military, police and civilian personnel...

Mark
Ottawa
 
Canada gave more than a 1.2 million per Canadian in this one gift, how does that compare to the EU's contribution of 530 million in terms of population?
 
Colin P said:
Canada gave more than a 1.2 million per Canadian in this one gift, how does that compare to the EU's contribution of 530 million in terms of population?

We gave $36+ Trillion!?! ($1.2 Million each from 30+ Million Canadians)
 
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