E, Clinton's (maybe) first international intervention was in that region, the ill fated Somilia effort that foundered after the "Blackhawk Down" incident. That pretty much killed the idea of intervention in Africa for a while. Very sad, because there are so many African situation that cry out for intervention, and it probably wouldn't take that much if somebody knew what they were doing. Rwanda is the primary example there.
There was a big, heartbreaking article on one small part of the Sudan situation in the NYT magazine last week
The Long Road From Sudan to America siliconinvestor.com
A bit:
As government troops cut a swath through southern Sudan, reportedly killing the adults
and taking girls as slaves, scattered groups of surviving boys, suddenly orphaned, were
discovered by the rebel army and pointed toward Ethiopia. Almost impossibly, their
numbers swelled into the thousands, as more and more boys made their way toward safety
in a kind of surreal diaspora, often following in the footsteps of their elders, who were now
not much older than 12. Some intact families joined the march (Peter, Maduk and Riak
made the trek with their parents and three of their sisters, all of whom were shot by
government soldiers three years later), but unaccompanied boys still composed the majority.
By most accounts, the journey to Ethiopia took between 6 and 10 weeks. The boys
foraged for what food they could find, surviving on leaves and berries and the
occasional boon of a wart hog carcass. Some boys staved off dehydration by
drinking their own urine. All the while, they tried to avoid other humans, since nearly
anyone they encountered -- government troops, rebel recruitment squads, slave
traders and rival tribes -- would very likely be hostile. The itinerant children traveled
mostly under cover of darkness, hiding by day in forests and swamps.
Over time, many grew weak from hunger and exhaustion and fell behind, becoming
easy prey for lions. Some of the boys were reportedly trampled by buffalo. When
the marshlands of the west gave way to desertlike terrain, they found themselves
with neither food nor water, and thousands, it has been estimated, died as a result.
"How did I keep walking?" said one boy, describing the desert crossing to a writer
visiting Kakuma. "When I saw a small boy walking, I would say: 'See this small
boy? He is walking.' And I would carry on."
Near the Ethiopian border is a quick-flowing river called the Gilo, and many more of
the Lost Boys died while attempting to cross it. Phillip, one of the boys in Grand
Rapids, said that he had had good luck at the Gilo: he and seven friends were able
to climb into two boats. Midway across the river, however, the second boat flipped.
"Three drowned and one was eaten by a crocodile," he said. Then he gestured
toward James, a quick-to-smile, gap-toothed boy sitting across the room. "He was
with me then," Phillip said. "He is like my brother now."
In Ethiopia, the Lost Boys passed three years living in several U.N.-supported
camps, watched over by armed soldiers from the Sudan People's Liberation Army,
some no older than the boys themselves. There has been speculation that the army
conducted military training inside these camps; at the very least, the rebel army had a
stake in keeping the Lost Boys alive. "Those boys were their recruitment pool," says
one journalist who visited the Ethiopian camps in 1990 and observed the army's
strict control over them. "Those were their future soldiers. They didn't want the
manhood of the nation, so to speak, to be wiped out."
Yet in the constantly shifting mosaic of African geopolitics, whatever stability they
had was relatively short lived. In 1991, when the Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile
Mariam was overthrown and replaced by a leader no longer sympathetic to the
liberation army, the boys were forced back into Sudan. With Ethiopian and
Sudanese militias at their heels, they again tried to cross the Gilo River and again,
they say, huge numbers of them perished. Over the next 14 months, the boys made
their way back through Sudan as a group, living for a time in a place called Pochala,
where it has been reported that every boy, fearing attack, dug a foxhole outside his
door.
Somehow, more than 10,000 of the boys miraculously trailed into Kenya and into
the arms of the United Nations during the summer of 1992 -- even as Khartoum
government forces bombed the rear of their procession as a final farewell. "Some
are still dying, even in the refugee camp," William Deng said that day in Grand
Rapids. Then he put the cap back on his head and stood up. They were leaving
soon for a weekend bus trip to northern Michigan with a local youth group, and it
was time to pack. Within minutes, the five boys had bounded upstairs, where to the
beat of Michael Jackson's "Bad" they filled their backpacks with sweaters, snow
boots, a biography of Michael Jordan, a stick of Old Spice -- all the curious riches
of their new life.
One of those stories that makes you realize how lucky we all are to be living in the first world. Truly sad to think that the boys described in that article, after years of wandering through deserts and subsistence living in refugee camps, are the lucky ones; most of their families probably died brutal and pointless deaths, or worse. Ending up in Fargo is an odd coda, but culture shock has to be better than what came before. I was particularly touched by this little bit.
In Fargo, I met a Nuer boy named Peter Riek, who was 17 when he arrived from
Kakuma in November and was placed, alone, in a foster home in a neatly
manicured subdivision on the north side of the city. After three months, he was still
grappling with the weather ("My skin is turning to ash and my brain to ice," he said),
his new school ("Everybody is white but for me") and the dynamics of living with an
American family. Upon arrival, he was startled to learn that he was to live without
his friends from Kakuma and even more horrified when his foster parents proudly
pushed open the door to his new room. "I do not want to sleep alone," Peter told
me one afternoon at the Center for New Americans in Fargo. "I lived almost 11
years in refugee camps, but I never lived alone."
Edit: After looking at the dates, I got to point out that the Sudan situation describe above actually predates Clinton , for the sake of the rightious right preachers around here. I don't recall W's father being too worried about it, but maybe he was too busy not doing anything in Bosnia at the time. |
