More Victims of Distraction

Following my previous post on the topic of important events being overshadowed by the crisis in Libya, Foreign Policy magazine has a good slideshow entitled "What Else happened This Week?"
It's definitely worth a read/view.

Distracted by the Arab Spring?

For the last couple of months the world has been paying close attention to the events in the Middle East and North Africa except maybe for the wedding of William and Kate. While the Arab Spring is admittedly a major step in the promotion of democracy, and extremely interesting to those of us interested in international relations, it is starting to appear that the protests (and their respective fallouts) are distracting the world from other major developments around the world (except for the death of Osama Bin Laden).

While this likely does not come as a surprise to some, the severity of this distraction is something I believe is worthwhile to look at. Today, the International Crisis Group sent out an alert that warned of serious trouble between Sudan and its newly separated southern region:

"North and South have deployed forces in and around Abyei in breach of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and subsequent security arrangements, as both seek to control the territory come Southern independence on 9 July. While previous clashes have involved civilians, informal militias, and/or police, last week's involved members of security forces on both sides. Further escalation and additional tit-for-tat deployments risk pushing Abyei beyond the tipping point, endangering lives and the fragile peace in Sudan.

Fighting broke out at a security checkpoint near Todach in the Abyei area on 1 May, after Sudan Armed Forces elements of the Joint Integrated Units (JIU, a largely failed CPA mechanism comprising troops drawn from the Northern and Southern armies) allegedly delivering an authorised weapons shipment were stopped by Southern police forces; fighting erupted leaving some 14 dead. In addition to the immediate threat posed to civilians in and around Abyei, at risk are recent gains of the CPA and the peaceful secession of the South."

The fact that the escalation towards conflict in Sudan has largely been ignored in favour of Libya et al. is interesting AND concerning. Achieving peace in Sudan has been a target of multiple actors in the international community. The Obama administration - including the president, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice - had identified achieving peace in Sudan as a prominent goal of American diplomacy in Africa. In addition, the United Nations and the African Union have sent numerous peacekeepers to the area and facilitated multiple attempts at creating, and sustaining, dialogue between the conflicting parties.

After all the investment that members of the international community have made into resolving Sudan's conflict with its southern region, the mostly peaceful referendum this past January was hailed as a positive sign that peace might be foreseeable in the near future. With this in mind, the fact that the world has largely forgotten/ignored the recent developments in the Abyei region is worrisome.

It is understandable that some may prioritize conflict (Libya) over potential conflict (Sudan), and while it would be completely unrealistic to demand that a western power (history's primary interveners) involve themselves in another conflict (this would be the 4th war "kinetic military action" for the United States), one would think that the various invested actors would try to exert greater diplomatic pressure on the governments in Khartoum and Juba. in the case of the intervention in Libya, the United States has had little investment in Libya, having only re-established diplomatic ties in the last few years. Meanwhile, the United States has been an active supporter of Southern Sudan's independence efforts and vocal about the situation in Sudan's western region of Darfur, or at least until it got distracted by the Arab Spring! Even the UN Security Council has remained, at least officially, silent about the growing likelihood of renewed conflict in Sudan!

It's probably too early to start prognosticating how renewed conflict in this region would unfold, but a number of questions come to mind when considering the lack of response to the increased likelihood of conflict between Sudan and Southern Sudan:

1) has peace in Southern Sudan fallen victim to the hope for democratic reform in the Middle East and North Africa?
2) do fast-moving developments trump long-standing diplomatic investments?
3) for some, is spreading democracy more important than the promotion of peace?
4) is this an example of the media being able to dictate what is important in international affairs?
5) has Sudan become a tired subject in international affairs?

I'll probably think of more questions as time goes on or events proceed, but these are just some of the questions that come to mind when taking a first look at what is happening.

Happy Mother's Day everyone

Back to Blogging/Response to "Xenophobia to the Rescue?"

Okay so I've been meaning to get back to blogging for a while now but I keep letting myself get distracted by other things (job/school work/travel), but I wanted to write up my two cents concerning a question posed by Steve Saideman concerning xenophobia and intervention and was looking for a way to avoid working on an assignment for my economics course.

So Prof. Saideman asks whether or not intervention motivated by xenophobia is a good thing. I guess the first thing is that it seems to me that it would be just as self-interested as any other reason for intervention. Just like an intervention for strategic interests (US in Iraq for oil) or under the umbrella of the R2P doctrine (guilt from inaction during Rwanda), xenophobic intervention has the intervening states' interests at heart and not those of the victims on the ground. I do, however, see a difference in that a state intervening out of fear of an influx of refugees benefits from a sustainable peace being achieved. This would mean remaining involved afterwards to ensure that the country does not fall back into conflict. For example, France and Italy cannot afford to continually hold back the wave of refugees that would accompany sustained conflict in North Africa. A relatively quick end to the fighting and then some amount of peacebuilding assistance would be in their best interests so that a sustainable peace could be achieved and the flow of refugees could be reversed.

The danger, though, is that xenophobic intervention could lead to a focus on the refugees and directing one's efforts to turning away refugees and subjecting them to dangerous conditions. The 1951 Refugees Convention requires states to allow people to apply for asylum once they set foot on their land. By preventing refugees from landing, countries can avoid having to provide shelter to these people (until their status is determined). Such has already been the case as a boat of Tunisian refugees sunk off of the coast of Italy, killing 35, and another boat, carrying 1800 refugees from Libya was turned away and escorted into international waters. There have been other cases, especially in southeast Asia, where boats of asylum seekers have been forced to turn around and brave international waters in vessels (and conditions) that are unsafe and unsanitary.

So to bring it back to the original question, I would suggest that xenophobic intervention directed at tackling the problem(s) at the source of the refugees (conflicts) is "okay" whereas those acts of intervention aimed at preventing refugees from reaching their shores are bad forms of xenophobic intervention. (I do, however, find it distasteful to label some xenophobic actions as "good". I would say that a better term is needed).

... I guess I have to get back to my econ assignment now that I've thrown my two cents in (sigh)...