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Originally Posted by Livia

How do we do that? How do we intervene? More soldier's lives in an endless, unwinnable war? The Muslims in that country turning it in to an endless, unwinnable holy war?

In a perfect world the UN should be able to step in, get rid of whoever's in charge and keep the country ticking over till they can organise themselves, have a fair election and get themselves on their feet again. But the UN is a useless, expensive, toothless, ball-less waste of time.

The government there has no qualms about killing, starving and generally mistreating its people, and we reward that behaviour with more cash. I don't know what the answer is, but paying their government to continue this madness is in itself, madness.

Not military intervention, no. Some sanctions are in place atm and I guess that's something but trouble is they just have a habit of hitting the poorest the hardest without deterring the leaders enough. And if the sanctions haven't helped that much then I don't think withdrawing aid will either. It's hard because most of the men at the political centre there are all likely to be different sides of the same coin, and regime change could easily just open up a vacuum for another power struggle, or replace one despot with another. Though with the President there having been in power for 25 years maybe thing will never improve until he's gone. I can't say to be hugely clued up on Sudanese affairs but with the problems being so deep rooted I don't think that there'd be any quick fix and I don't think that they'd be able to fix their problems of their own accord even if they wanted to, it would need some sort of international assistance. I'm not really qualified enough to say what form that assistance should best take.