By Robert Asketill
George Clooney: “I talk in Congress about Sudan. I have rebel Sudan leaders on my cell phone. I can go to the United Nations and not worry about who I am pissing off.”
George Clooney was certainly well off the mark in his targeting and knowledge of what is really going on in the Sudan region of today. Now for the truth.
George Clooney, the Hollywood actor, described a humanitarian crisis in Sudan to the U.S. Senate recently saying he witnessed death, destruction and even came under rocket attack when he secretly travelled to a volatile area of the country, namely the Nuba Mountains, where he also saw the dropping of 15 bombs by the air force of the Khartoum government. As he saw it and wanted the citizens of the USA to know, he was secretly watching a campaign of murder, fear, displacement and starvation. He not only asked senate leaders to take action but also explained how gas prices are being affected by the violence.
Whilst showing the senators a video he shot while on his trip, Clooney spoke about the repeated bombings of residents in the Nuba Mountains, describing it as an area between Sudan and the recently formed South Sudan. We are told the video showed Clooney standing over dead bodies and even discovering old bombs. He said the same government that committed the atrocities in Darfur is trying to ethnically cleanse the region. Seemingly the senators were not aware of the Nuba region of the Sudan or what was causing the violence and as Clooney has said: “I talk in Congress about Sudan. I have rebel Sudan leaders on my cell phone. I can go to the United Nations and not worry about who I am pissing off.”
Seemingly, a celebrity with the use of such rhetoric must be taken seriously, even to the extent of thinking that U.S. power should back Clooney’s frequent exhortation: “We must take action now!” We note he has failed to mention the conflict rooted in a dispute over land between farmers of the pro-South Sudan Dinka Ngok people and cattle-herding Misseriya Arab tribesmen where the UN, themselves unorganised in the Sudan, have appealed for help to provide the food, water and shelter needed by as many as 50,000 people displaced by marauding tribesmen of the mini nations who had razed villages and as the UN confirms today that there is ethnic cleansing and genocide.
It describes a massacre, one of the most horrific ever seen in the east of the country, when thousands of men of the Lou-Nuer tribe swept through territory of the Murle tribe, killing all the humans or animals they encountered. Every man of the Lou-Nuer was armed with an automatic weapon, many of which are coming in from the looted armouries of Libya. This massive inflow of guns, where a rifle can be exchanged for a chicken, should alone have President Obama re-consider ending the US arms embargo but this may be whistling into the wind. The former interpretation of events in Southern Sudan as one between Arabs and the rest of the population can no longer be supported; the victims of the massacres throughout the newly independent region are all Christian groups. George Clooney was certainly well off the mark in his targeting and knowledge of what is really going on in the Sudan region of today.