[Marxism] Behind the call for humanitarian intervention in Darfur

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.monthlyreview.org/0606jbf.htm
The U.S. military buildup in Africa is frequently justified as necessary 
both to fight terrorism and to counter growing instability in the oil 
region of Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2003 Sudan has been torn by civil war 
and ethnic conflict focused on its southwestern Darfur region (where much 
of the country?s oil is located), resulting in innumerable human rights 
violations and mass killings by government-linked militia forces against 
the population of the region. Attempted coups recently occurred in the new 
petrostates of São Tomé and Principe (2003) and Equatorial Guinea (2004). 
Chad, which is run by a brutally oppressive regime shielded by a security 
and intelligence apparatus backed by the United States, also experienced an 
attempted coup in 2004. A successful coup took place in Mauritania in 2005 
against U.S.-supported strongman Ely Ould Mohamed Taya. Angola?s 
three-decade-long civil war­instigated and fueled by the United States, 
which together with South Africa organized the terrorist army under Jonas 
Savimbi?s UNITA­lasted until the ceasefire following Savimbi?s death in 
2002. Nigeria, the regional hegemon, is rife with corruption, revolts, and 
organized oil theft, with considerable portions of oil production in the 
Niger Delta region being siphoned off­up to 300,000 barrels a day in early 
2004. The rise of armed insurgency in the Niger Delta and the potential of 
conflict between the Islamic north and non-Islamic south of the country are 
major U.S. concerns.

Hence there are incessant calls and no lack of seeming justifications for 
U.S. ?humanitarian interventions? in Africa. The Council on Foreign 
Relations report More than Humanitarianism insists that ?the United States 
and its allies must be ready to take appropriate action? in Darfur in Sudan 
?including sanctions and, if necessary, military intervention, if the 
Security Council is blocked from doing so.? Meanwhile the notion that the 
U.S. military might before long need to intervene in Nigeria is being 
widely floated among pundits and in policy circles. Atlantic Monthly 
correspondent Jeffrey Taylor wrote in April 2006 that Nigeria has become 
?the largest failed state on earth,? and that a further destabilization of 
that state, or its takeover by radical Islamic forces, would endanger ?the 
abundant oil reserves that America has vowed to protect. Should that day 
come, it would herald a military intervention far more massive than the 
Iraqi campaign.?

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