A
Anonymous
Guest
It seems that every year around X-Mas, we have a major disaster coming on. Two years ago it was the earthquake in Bam, last year it was the Tzunami in Southeast Asia. This year, it's something rather classic, old-fashioned. Something we haven't really had in quite a while: A declaration of war. Between two neighbouring countries.
Nobody, not even students of contemporary politics saw this coming. Sure, Chad and Sudan aren't the best friends, but then, which two African countries are?
This declaration of war is disastrous for two basic reasons. First, it is a classic declaration of war, something we haven't had in decades. Two countries going to war against each other is something that was virtually wiped out like the smallpox. In fact, I seem to remember that the last true war between two countries that was not an air-raid and subsequent invasion by one vastly superior side was in 1995 between Peru and Ecuador.
Second -and much worse-, if you look at the map (depending on the atlas you have or don't have), you might see that the Sudanese side of the border region is a country called Darfur. It seems like the people there will not get their much-needed break.
Here are some details one should know about this event.
Chad declared war on Sudan in response to Sudanese support of Chadese rebels.
If we wanted to speculate about international reaction, we should bear in mind that Chad is a traditional enemy of Libya; Libya has an interest in keeping its border regions calm, and Gadaffi is the driving force behind the African Union (AU). Moreover, Libya is one of the richest countries in Africa, and definitely has ressources it can spend on this conflict; considering historic wounds, we can speculate that it would favour Sudan (especially because it was Chad who declared war). It should then be kept in mind that Libya is not exactly friends to the US; the US, in turn, is not very favourable of the Sudanese, as they accuse them (and Libya) of harbouring terrorists (see [a href=\'http://news.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/08/21/wemb21.html\' target=\'_blank\']here[/a] and [a href=\'http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/khartoumbomb.html\' target=\'_blank\']here[/a]). Taking into consideration that Chad has recently begun exploiting oilfields and is in this undertaking supported by US companies (the [a href=\'http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/cd.html#Econ\' target=\'_blank\']CIA World Factbook[/a] is rather favourable of Chad), we all can guess whom the Pentagon will go to bed with.
I'm not going to exaggarate the geopolitical importance of this, but I just want to point out that this is/will be a major disaster to the concerning regions, and that we can't expect our nuclear care bears to do any good there.
Nobody, not even students of contemporary politics saw this coming. Sure, Chad and Sudan aren't the best friends, but then, which two African countries are?
This declaration of war is disastrous for two basic reasons. First, it is a classic declaration of war, something we haven't had in decades. Two countries going to war against each other is something that was virtually wiped out like the smallpox. In fact, I seem to remember that the last true war between two countries that was not an air-raid and subsequent invasion by one vastly superior side was in 1995 between Peru and Ecuador.
Second -and much worse-, if you look at the map (depending on the atlas you have or don't have), you might see that the Sudanese side of the border region is a country called Darfur. It seems like the people there will not get their much-needed break.
Here are some details one should know about this event.
Chad declared war on Sudan in response to Sudanese support of Chadese rebels.
If we wanted to speculate about international reaction, we should bear in mind that Chad is a traditional enemy of Libya; Libya has an interest in keeping its border regions calm, and Gadaffi is the driving force behind the African Union (AU). Moreover, Libya is one of the richest countries in Africa, and definitely has ressources it can spend on this conflict; considering historic wounds, we can speculate that it would favour Sudan (especially because it was Chad who declared war). It should then be kept in mind that Libya is not exactly friends to the US; the US, in turn, is not very favourable of the Sudanese, as they accuse them (and Libya) of harbouring terrorists (see [a href=\'http://news.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/08/21/wemb21.html\' target=\'_blank\']here[/a] and [a href=\'http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/khartoumbomb.html\' target=\'_blank\']here[/a]). Taking into consideration that Chad has recently begun exploiting oilfields and is in this undertaking supported by US companies (the [a href=\'http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/cd.html#Econ\' target=\'_blank\']CIA World Factbook[/a] is rather favourable of Chad), we all can guess whom the Pentagon will go to bed with.
I'm not going to exaggarate the geopolitical importance of this, but I just want to point out that this is/will be a major disaster to the concerning regions, and that we can't expect our nuclear care bears to do any good there.
