Failed States As Safe Harbors for Terrorists

This has been one of my recurring comments whenever discussing human rights catastrophes in places like Darfur, Sudan, most of the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. Failed states make perfect breeding grounds for terrorist groups, and the most dangerous one out there right now is al Qaeda.

They want to set up shop in a big way in Sudan. Actually, they want to restore Sudan as a major base of operations. That's where the terrorist group found a safe haven for a long time. There's a genocide in Sudan that the UN has refused to act upon, despite the fact that there's international law that requires such action. And now al Qaeda is threatening the UN should it send peacekeepers to Darfur to replace the beleaguered African Union.

The Boston Globe comments on why we need to intervene in Sudan to stop the bloodletting. The fact that the violence is spreading to neighboring Chad is only one aspect. This is no longer a contained situation (not that it ever was, but that's besides the point). It's the spread of the violence that has finally brought Darfur's genocide to the forefront of significant news stories, despite the fact that most of the media outlets failed to cover this story over the course of the past year.

UPDATE:
Jihad Watch also noted the UN report on al Qaeda's threats of acting in Darfur.

Connecticut has introduced a bill that would divest all public investments from companies that do business in Sudan. Juliana at Mother Jones notes that we're at a stalemate on Sudan. Can't argue with that. Juliana notes:

When we wrote last week about Darfur, the UN was talking about taking over peacekeeping duties from the African Union there. Now top UN officials are claiming that the African Union is backing away from the plan. The Sudanese government has opposed UN involvement, and has helped fuel anti-UN sentiment around the continent, with other African leaders expressing concern that outside involvement will only cause more violence in the region.

Considering how awful the UN has been on defending human rights over the past decade, from failing to act on genocide in Rwanda, Congo, the former Yugoslavia, and now Sudan, there's good reason to be wary of UN action. UN peacekeepers have repeatedly shown themselves unwilling to stop violence against refugees in their care. However, Sudan's intention in stirring up anti-UN sentiment is to give the regime in Khartoum more time to complete its ethnic cleansing of Darfur.

Tom Barnett puts the Darfur/Chad crisis into a economic and geopolitical context relating to China, the need for oil, and how the overlapping interests are coming to a head in the region.

So who's going to stop the violence? Daimnation wants to know, given the general lack of interest in stopping this kind of slaughter.

Tapped notes that one of the 17 people named in news reports as being singled out for targeted sanctions, the Sudanese minister of the interior Zubair Bashir Taha, quickly placed the blame of the genocide in Darfur on the Bush administration. Maybe he's hoping that the Left will try and bail out the Sudanese regime much as they tried doing for Iraq?

Technorati: dafur, darfur, genocide, african union, annan, janjaweed.