The Specter of a Moslem/Christian Rwanda
The mysterious death of John Guarang is unleashing an eerily familiar scenario, threatening to cut short yet another Islamo-Christian rapprochement.
A poor African country is bitterly divided into two warring parties. Fortunately, a historical peace treaty to bring the two together has been recently signed. Just a bit later, the leader of one of the groups and signatory of that treaty has died (killed?) in an air accident. Loud riots are beginning to be heard in the capital.
If the African country in question was Rwanda, then the rest of the story would be known: 500,000 men, women and children were cruelly massacred for their sheer ethnic affiliation.
But it’s not: The country in question is Sudan, where the leader of the (Christian/pagan) south, who was recently declared Vice-president of a united country after a long and bitter fight with the (Moslem) north ended, died in a helicopter crash. Violent riots are beginning to be heard in Khartoum.
The international community has to move fast to avoid another embarrassing repeat of Rwanda. What adds more to the urgency is the symbolic nature of the Sudan conflict: a fight between Moslems and Christians. This should end very quickly. God knows how little we need other Jihadists and Crusaders.
P.S: the movie Hotel Rwanda should be playing in Lebanon anytime soon. I strongly recommend it.
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Hello, my name is Mustapha and I blog in The Beirut Spring about Lebanese society and politics. I started in February 2005 after the killing of P.M. Rafik Hariri.
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Scary.
This time the international community will have no excuse.
Africa has had enough!
I pray for restraint and peace in this poor African continent…
Yes Kamal,
But first the international community is still discussing Darfur.
However, on the more positive side, I am certain the (demented and useless) Arab League will come up with a very strong communique, any time now.
of course there were clashes in khartoum… b.f.d.
the 1st question is - was the copter crash an accident or an assassination? if it was an accident, then it will all depend on whether the southerners will believe it, on who will replace garang as southern v.p., and wether or not the khartoum guys will keep following the peace deal or not. if it was an assassination, then it would be nice to have an “independent investigation” (i’m sure the germans have some more legal experts they can spare…) and whether or not the parties & people involved will be able to overcome the “moment of crisis”.
i personally would not compare sudan with rwanda. for a host of reasons - distribution of population, (relatively low) level of racial/ethnic/religious enmity between the groups, just to name the first two that come to mind - a “repeat of Rwanda” (as M phrased it) is highly improbable.
BTW - in rwanda, a sizable segment of the slaughtered included hutus - some were killed ’cause they just happened to have been tall & “looking like a tutsi”, others ’cause their greedy neigbors wanted their car & thought “hey - here’s a chance”, still others happened to be on the interahamwe (hutu militia) shitlist for having been proponents of a peaceful cohabitation with the tutsis…
funny how life just ain’t ever being so neat & black/white like we’d love to have it.
oh, & before i forget - damn zionists!
–raf*
we need not explain events always with a “clash of civilization”-esque perspective. clashes in sudan are more like economical and class struggle related and the conflict in the south has nothing to do with islam/christianity/animisn but rather the destribution of wealth and power between central government and provinces (oil in the south, anyone). IMHO the turmoil is bound to die away in the upcoming hours.
Nobody will allow a new Rwanda in Sudan. The country is just too big.
Rather bad analogy mate, worse case scenario is ethnic cleansing in the capital area - 50 years of civil war has made this nothing new for Sudan and frankly there is not the same dynamic as in Rwanda.