From Good to Ugly: US Foreign Policy on South Sudan Deteriorates with Time (2-2)
By Simon Yel Yel, Juba, South Sudan
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April 26, 2015 (SSB) —- The third one was the most extortionate and dark one and definitely it is the “beginning of an end” of the US neo-imperial foreign policy on south Sudan because no fly zone and full bombardment on south Sudan will be the next executive order of Mr Obama.
It was on Date: 31.3.2015, when the self-claimed leader of the free world Mr Barrack Hussein Obama issued an executive order 13664” I declared a national emergency to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States constituted by the situation in and in relation to South Sudan, which has been marked by activities that threaten the peace, security, or stability of South Sudan and the surrounding region, including widespread violence and atrocities, human rights abuses, recruitment and use of child soldiers, attacks on peacekeepers, and obstruction of humanitarian operations” and went further again saying “The situation in and in relation to South Sudan continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”.
I wondered whether really south Sudan is posing an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. I can’t what Obama wants really to tell the world. Many people will question the logic’s of Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry’s reasoning. This executive order is a pure political hypochondria on south Sudan, no main nitty-gritty to issue such order. The United States is pitting its wits against the whole world that its national security and foreign policy is under threat by south Sudan, why our neighbours like Kenya, Uganda, CAR and others didn’t issue such order that south Sudan is threat to their national securities and foreign policies ?
It is totally buncombe and a pure neo-imperialism in making. Well, economically or militarily it is grossly preposterous to imagine south Sudan could be a threat to the United States, let alone “an extraordinary” one. But the US is not scared of south Sudan. The only threat south Sudan poses to the United States is being a good example of how an independent country can be master of its own house, confident in leading its people, determine its own fate and knee or bow not to any country or leaders who claims to be the masters of the world and all-knowing. That is the only extraordinary threat that Barrack Obama is talking about.
Our government have demonstrated to the whole world that, no independent country be under servitude or thraldom of any other country in this world. We are not a young nation in mind, we know what is good for us and we can’t and shall allow any country to decide our destiny.
It is about month now since the US and its allies adopted the sanction regime on south Sudan. It is very important to look back and remember when the UN lost it impartiality and started to be driven by the US and decide countries to be sanctioned. In 1945 up to 1990, the UN Security Council only imposed mandatory sanctions twice, first on Rhodesia from 1966 to 1979, and then on South Africa from 1977 to 1994, these two sanctions were generally economic embargo, and the later largely an arms embargo. That was time of apartheid gov’t in South Africa and the UN was right to impose sanction though UK opposed it.
Following the collapse of USSR in 1989, it was the time when the United States sanction and humanitarian–military intervention imperialism started to emerge tempestuously and what George A. Lopez described as the “Sanctions Decade.” The United States presided over the sanction on Sudan, Angola, Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti, Eritrea, Sierra Leona, Ethiopia, Yugoslavia by UN Security Council within about five years. The failure of sanctions as leverage tool in Iraq, Haiti, Libya and Yugoslavia was accompanied by full military interventions which destroyed millions of lives but install the United States’ GOOD BOYS.
The same sanction decades mixed with supporting the rebels to oust democratically elected gov’t or what the US termed to be “pro-democracy fighters”, coups and military interventions destroying people and nations started again in Libya in 2011 and continues in different shapes and forms; we have seen the United States’ sanctions on Syria, Russia, Venezuela and what the US called renewed sanctioned on Zimbabwe and now south Sudan’s sanction is due to be implemented in few days.
It is a laughable and asinine to say that the due sanction on south Sudan is a targeted sanctions that would bludgeon the government officials to sign peace. The language of smart or targeted sanctions does not meaningfully change the context and nature of sanctions. Rather the language sanitises the message around these sanctions, much as it is meant to help mobilise public opinion in support of the sanctions themselves.
According to the definition of sanction by the US and its Western allies, the sanctions are adopted to oblige compliance and to push for a particular world order. They are implemented to achieve political goals and, most of the time, they are always covered in the velvety magnanimousness of bringing warring parties to sign peace, like the telling palaver that says “the sanction on south Sudan will let the two warring parties sign peace”.
This is totally a big joke. Why the UN didn’t sanction SPLA and Khartoum during the negotiations of the CPA which nearly took 5 years? Why the US didn’t sanction the Libya rebels when they rejected the peace brokered by the AU and say “The African Union initiative does not include the departure of Gaddafi and his sons from the Libyan political scene, therefore it is outdated.” says rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil.
The US has never given and shall never any satisfactory explanation on sanction that it always force the UNSC to adopt. Will the US sanction the rebels if they reject the propose mondus vivendi by the IGAD? The answer is definitely NO. The US is after something, not bring the warring parties to sign peace.
In conclusion, it is next to impossible to convince anyone with a sane mind that the so-called targeted sanction will bring peace to south Sudan. If really sanction can bring peace, why south Sudan gov’t didn’t think of freezing assets of the rebels and G10 members? All the businesses of the rebels and G10 are still operating now and money goes to them like Beer Company of Rebeca Nyandeng, hotels, and banks of the rebels and G10. The gov’t believes that the peace in south Sudan can and will be brought only by negotiations not sanctions.
I will conclude by saying “Let every nation know, we are independent nation, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any enemy to assure the survival of south Sudan as a nation and prosper as a people”.
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The writer is a concerned citizen and be reached at simonyel55@yahoo.com or 0955246235
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