Send helicopters to Darfur

Conor Foley


December 17, 2007 4:30 PM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2007/12...pters_to_darfur.html

This will be the shortest piece that I have ever written for Comment is free and it is really only to give a link to this site where you can sign an e-petition calling on the British government to pledge to send five helicopters to Darfur

Since the start of this year more than 100 aid workers have been kidnapped and 66 assaulted or raped, while over 60 aid convoys were ambushed and 100 vehicles hijacked. These attacks are coming from all sides, and it is wrong to portray the conflict in over-simplistic terms, but the international community cannot allow this appalling humanitarian catastrophe to continue

The UN security council unanimously decided to send a joint UN/African Union force to Darfur in July. The Sudanese authorities have, in principle, agreed to accept this force, but it remains dramatically under-resourced. In particular, without adequate air cover, it cannot do its job of protecting civilian lives. At the start of October an AU base was overrun by a Darfur rebel group who massacred the peacekeeping soldiers and stole their equipment

This petition is asking Gordon Brown to set an example to the international community by immediately providing five of the helicopters required. An alternative would be to pay for the deployment of helicopters by a non-Nato country such as India. Western leaders have made many verbal commitments to "do something" about Darfur. Now they need to match their words with deeds

The Guardian

Some of the comments from the Guardian's website



(1)



"This petition is asking Gordon Brown to set an example to the international community by immediately providing five of the helicopters required"

I don't think that there are 5 spare UK helicopters - they seem to be very short in Afghanistan, and there must have been extreme wear and tear over the past year or so

(2)


The problem you highlight is very like the other Aid Promises . Natural catastrophes invite huge promises of AID from governments, a total of billions promised and a few score or hudreds of millions actually arrive.

The British Army is dramatically short of choppers, spare parts, already, in Afghanistan. Also short of MONEY

(3)


the UK is so short of helicopters it's been privately hiring them for the Afghan theatre since at least October 2006

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/20...0/11/uhelicopter.xml

(4)


Great idea but let's face it, where do you stop. As the comments above make clear, Darfur is not the only humanitarian horror in the world at the moment and as soon as the West goes blundering in trying to help it gets pilloried both at home and abroad. Given that this conflict involves muslims killing muslims should it not be down to the Islamic world to act? It's not as if the Saudis and the other gulf states are short of money or off hardware - hell we've sold them enough down the years

(5)


This looks suspiciously like an armed intervention. How long before we are embroiled in another armed conflict? How long before we are accused of "imperialism" and "colonialism" by the know- nothing left? How long before the islamists are proclaiming that we are yet again on a "crusade" against their muslim brothers

I also agree with the above commenters- we simply haven't got the equipment to do it

(6)



FYI: The US has already offered to provide the helicopters for this mission


http://www.defencetalk.com/news/publish/wars/US_reports...loyment130014570.php

(7)



I think there has to be an African solution to this. Western countries cannot police the world and, with a very few notable exceptions, are unwelcome when they try

And, as has already been pointed out, the British military is pretty much stretched to breaking point intervening elsewhere so I don't really see where the required extra helicopters would come from anyway

(8)



http://rebelresource.wordpress.com


Ten Reasons Why "Save Darfur" is a PR Scam to Justify the Next U.S. Oil War in Africa


http://rebelresource.wordpress.com/2007/12/13/46/

(9)


China is by far the largest sponsor of the Sudanese government and takes 70% of their oil exports. I'd worry more about Chinese 'imperialism' than US


It seems however that our armed forces lack the helicopters needed for their existing theatres and also that our tired and demoralised armed forces have very little enthusiasm for this mission. I will therefore be moving the campaign on to petitioning Gordon Brown to 'finish what he started' by applying pressure on our allies to help out here. You idea of financing the deployment of Indian and other helicopters is a good one. Certainly we can do more


Goodness knows the UN is ineffectual enough but they're all we've got. UN members voted unanimously to pass Resolution 1769 on the joint deployment of the UN-African Union peacekeeping force for Darfur. If these same members now stand around twiddling their thumbs instead of supporting that mission, they will destroy the last vestiges of credibility that the UN has

(10)



"Save Darfur" and "stop the genocide" has gained enormous traction in U.S. media along with bipartisan support in Congress and the White House. But the Congo, with ten to twenty times as many African dead over the same period is not called a "genocide" and passes almost unnoticed. Sudan sits atop lakes of oil. It has large supplies of uranium, and other minerals, significant water resources, and a strategic location near still more African oil and resources. The unasked question is whether the nation's Republican and Democratic foreign policy elite are using claims of genocide, and appeals for "humanitarian intervention" to grease the way for the next oil and resource wars on the African continent


http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_c...view&id=453&Itemid=1

(11)




Darfur is a pretxt to colonial invasion of the Sudan. Western liberal invenionists are not driven by similar urgency when it comes to the crisis in Somalia and the Congo and in Ogaden. Sudan will defend itself and the conflict there can only be solved locally. Let us speak about the real economic and political imperatives behind the darfur discourse

(12)


Any country could send helicopters to Darfur but the pilots and the support crews would have to be, according to the Government of Sudan, from Africa, they will not accept European, American or Asian pilots and support crews