Comments on: A new approach to Darfur: Shake hands with the devil http://chrisblattman.com/2008/04/24/a-new-approach-to-darfur-shake-hands-with-the-devil/ International development, politics, economics, and policy Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:41:11 +0000 hourly 1 By: Anonymoushttp://chrisblattman.com/2008/04/24/a-new-approach-to-darfur-shake-hands-with-the-devil/comment-page-1/#comment-3021 Anonymous Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:47:00 +0000 http://dev.chrisblattman.com/2008/04/24/a-new-approach-to-darfur-shake-hands-with-the-devil/#comment-3021 More on Natsios... how much credibility to give to his opinion? <br/>How about the following quote from 2003 when he was administrator of USAID planning reconstruction of Iraq, interviewed on Nightline:<br/><br/>http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/iraq/koppel.htm<br/>ANDREW NATSIOS<br/>Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada, and Iraqi oil revenues, eventually in several years, when it's up and running and there's a new government that's been democratically elected, will finish the job with their own revenues. They're going to get in $20 billion a year in oil revenues. But the American part of this will be 1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.<br/><br/>Eustil Elive More on Natsios… how much credibility to give to his opinion?
How about the following quote from 2003 when he was administrator of USAID planning reconstruction of Iraq, interviewed on Nightline:

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/iraq/koppel.htm
ANDREW NATSIOS
Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada, and Iraqi oil revenues, eventually in several years, when it’s up and running and there’s a new government that’s been democratically elected, will finish the job with their own revenues. They’re going to get in $20 billion a year in oil revenues. But the American part of this will be 1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.

Eustil Elive

]]> By: Anonymoushttp://chrisblattman.com/2008/04/24/a-new-approach-to-darfur-shake-hands-with-the-devil/comment-page-1/#comment-3007 Anonymous Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:07:00 +0000 http://dev.chrisblattman.com/2008/04/24/a-new-approach-to-darfur-shake-hands-with-the-devil/#comment-3007 Commentary on Natsios<br/>Paragraph 1:<br/>“the Janjaweed militias, an Arab supremacist movement,” is probably not the right way to label the very irregular militias. There is very little evidence to suggest they are a “movement” in the way readers of Foreign Affairs would understand the word.<br/><br/>Right in the very first paragraph Natsios reverts to very problematic language of Arab versus African, and even worse, goes right back to using “tribe” with no sociological nuance.<br/><br/>In the next line, the 250,000 dead are “Sudanese”… what happened to the “African tribes”?<br/><br/>The same line elides the distinction between “internally displaced persons” and refugees. Of all people, Natsios knows the distinction- but hey, the insurgents in Iraq are all al-Qaeda backed by Iran, right?<br/><br/>“Both the Democratic and the Republican candidates for president have put Darfur on their foreign policy agendas.” Pretty laughable, that.<br/><br/>Paragraph 2:<br/>Simplification started in previous paragraph carries over and will be developed throughout: the problem in Sudan is of various tribes (the Arabs here, the Africans there, the animist and Christians down below) who do not get along. Natsios writes, “new strains in these groups' relations nearly broke out into a full-scale war”… here we all thought the strains were between named and organized political groupings that represent or claim to represent certain segments of the varied population- the National Congress Party and the SPLM…. <br/><br/>Natsios starts wearing the reader down: only two possibilities are allowed: “either the country holds free and fair multiparty elections and ends two decades of autocratic rule or it disintegrates, plunging this volatile region into its most severe crisis yet.” Only the Darfur advocates want the plunging disintegration, everyone else wants elections and peace.<br/>You can almost hear the police horn, “Good people of the United States, go back inside, nothing to see here, go back inside please.”<br/><br/>Paragraph 3<br/>“The Bush administration can still help avert such a disaster.” Surely unwitting, but the implication lingers- nobody else really can help avert this disaster. Certainly not the Darfur activists.<br/><br/>“Washington spends a disproportionate amount of its staffing and budgetary resources on resolving the crisis in Darfur rather than on supporting the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.” Meaning, all the Darfur activists take up a lot of our valuable time. It is a strange implication too: the two parties signed a peace agreement, and peace returned. Meanwhile there is an active war zone, with 2 million displaced. But this war zone and those displaced, and the threat continued war poses to the peace, should not receive “disproportionate” attention. <br/><br/>“...peace cannot be achieved in Darfur if it is not secured between the north and the south. “ One could just as easily have written, “...peace cannot be achieved between the north and the south if it is not secured in Darfur.” Natsios frames again as an absolute, a fact, when of course this is an opinion. “In my opinion, peace, etc.” <br/><br/>“The best way for Washington to proceed, moreover, is not by confronting Khartoum but by engaging it, even in the face of likely objections from the Darfur advocacy community.”<br/>Again, the basic gist of the article is to frame the problem in Darfur as a problem exacerbated by the Darfur activists… if they would just go away, the “practical policies” could take care of the situation, just as they did (you surely recall) during the period 2003-2005 leading up the the CPA. Oh, right, but nevermind, the "practical policies" didn't actually do much in the previous 20 years of civil war 1983-2003(sparked you recall by the U.S. ally Jaafar Nimeiri’s government in a power play to secure oil revenues for the north… Chevron, Bechtel, conspiracy theories, all you crazies out there… get to work!)<br/><br/>More later.<br/><br/>Eustil Elive Commentary on Natsios
Paragraph 1:
“the Janjaweed militias, an Arab supremacist movement,” is probably not the right way to label the very irregular militias. There is very little evidence to suggest they are a “movement” in the way readers of Foreign Affairs would understand the word.

Right in the very first paragraph Natsios reverts to very problematic language of Arab versus African, and even worse, goes right back to using “tribe” with no sociological nuance.

In the next line, the 250,000 dead are “Sudanese”… what happened to the “African tribes”?

The same line elides the distinction between “internally displaced persons” and refugees. Of all people, Natsios knows the distinction- but hey, the insurgents in Iraq are all al-Qaeda backed by Iran, right?

“Both the Democratic and the Republican candidates for president have put Darfur on their foreign policy agendas.” Pretty laughable, that.

Paragraph 2:
Simplification started in previous paragraph carries over and will be developed throughout: the problem in Sudan is of various tribes (the Arabs here, the Africans there, the animist and Christians down below) who do not get along. Natsios writes, “new strains in these groups’ relations nearly broke out into a full-scale war”… here we all thought the strains were between named and organized political groupings that represent or claim to represent certain segments of the varied population- the National Congress Party and the SPLM….

Natsios starts wearing the reader down: only two possibilities are allowed: “either the country holds free and fair multiparty elections and ends two decades of autocratic rule or it disintegrates, plunging this volatile region into its most severe crisis yet.” Only the Darfur advocates want the plunging disintegration, everyone else wants elections and peace.
You can almost hear the police horn, “Good people of the United States, go back inside, nothing to see here, go back inside please.”

Paragraph 3
“The Bush administration can still help avert such a disaster.” Surely unwitting, but the implication lingers- nobody else really can help avert this disaster. Certainly not the Darfur activists.

“Washington spends a disproportionate amount of its staffing and budgetary resources on resolving the crisis in Darfur rather than on supporting the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.” Meaning, all the Darfur activists take up a lot of our valuable time. It is a strange implication too: the two parties signed a peace agreement, and peace returned. Meanwhile there is an active war zone, with 2 million displaced. But this war zone and those displaced, and the threat continued war poses to the peace, should not receive “disproportionate” attention.

“…peace cannot be achieved in Darfur if it is not secured between the north and the south. “ One could just as easily have written, “…peace cannot be achieved between the north and the south if it is not secured in Darfur.” Natsios frames again as an absolute, a fact, when of course this is an opinion. “In my opinion, peace, etc.”

“The best way for Washington to proceed, moreover, is not by confronting Khartoum but by engaging it, even in the face of likely objections from the Darfur advocacy community.”
Again, the basic gist of the article is to frame the problem in Darfur as a problem exacerbated by the Darfur activists… if they would just go away, the “practical policies” could take care of the situation, just as they did (you surely recall) during the period 2003-2005 leading up the the CPA. Oh, right, but nevermind, the “practical policies” didn’t actually do much in the previous 20 years of civil war 1983-2003(sparked you recall by the U.S. ally Jaafar Nimeiri’s government in a power play to secure oil revenues for the north… Chevron, Bechtel, conspiracy theories, all you crazies out there… get to work!)

More later.

Eustil Elive

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