CARSE: Yes. They are doing the same thing that the United States is doing in Iraq. They want to install an alien system through the region … they want to control it.

INDC: Ok. Some would argue that, left to their own devices … and actually this has of course happened in Rwanda and looks to be happening in Sudan ... um, that there’s been be a lot of sectarian violence, mass starvation, genocide, civil war … a lot of violence that these countries haven’t been able to sort out on their own. What would you advocate as a solution to …

CARSE: First, first of all … the solution is not us. The solution is themselves. Secondly, who provides the money? Where the money flowing? Who provides the weapons? Who provides the ideology? And is more intervention the solutions for the past interventions which led to the situation we have now?

INDC: So you think that ethnic and religious rivalries are caused by the West?

CARSE: Absolutely! Like the state system in Africa is so arbitrarily set … and it’s arbitrarily … it’s actually set by the colonialists to create strife. To get people divided. To get people together that don’t even speak the same language, who have completely different histories, completely different everything.

INDC: So, at this point if … intervention was removed from certain countries, you think that these ethnic (divisions) would be worked out peacefully

CARSE: Not under the conditions of a continuous drain of resources, you know. This is why I say reparations. Isn’t it time to say, you know, here, we stop, we finally try to stop exploiting you? Trying to, uh, stop taking all your resources, using your land , using your, uh, water, using your fishes, eat whatever you have? And … uh, let them sort it out. It may take awhile, I mean if you think … I’m a European, if you think, I mean, how many wars did we need to get to the bad situation where we are now? And how many wars does America need to get somewhere else than what it is?

So why aren’t they allowed to have their wars?

INDC: Ok, thanks. What nationality are you?

CARSE: I’m German.

INDC: Ok, thanks.

To review Carse's foreign policy prescription for Africa - give the people (governments? tribes? factions?) large monetary reparations for past Western colonialism and rapacious business interests in Africa, step out of the way, and then just ... let them "have their wars."

After all, violence in Africa stems exclusively from the involvement of the west. Or does it?

In its vulgar form, nationalism claims a biological basis for its persecution, oppression, exploitation, and enslavement of others. This is the case with two African nations, Sudan and Mauretania. In those countries there is established a dichotomy between Arab and African, between Islam and African Religions. This division is sharpened by appeals to biology, to physical looks, though many times I have been unable to distinguish the so-called Arab from the African. It is a South African type problem where the so-called Colored, robbed of his or her African culture and unable to speak an African language, is called better than the person who has retained his or her language and culture, even though they may look exactly alike. This is a problem of racism. Sudanese and Mauretanian societies have made the enslavement of Africans a racial issue, complicated by the cultural question in its basest form, naive nationalism.

"Hands off Sudan." After all, Rwanda was left to its own devices, and we all know how well that turned out.

Although disease and more killings claim additional lives in the refugee camps, the genocide is over. An estimated 800,000 Rwandans have been killed in 100 days.

Right Carse?

Ja. "... why aren’t they allowed to have their wars?"

Today's lesson: Not all "peace" activists are anti-war.

UPDATE: Human Rights Watch disagrees with Carse.

(Via GR)

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