has become increasingly politicised. But over Sudan, in particular, two of its most senior officials have long held strong personal views. Both Natsios, a former vice-president of the Christian charity World Vision, and Winter have long been hostile to the Sudanese government.
Hostile to the Sudanese government? How could anyone be hostile to the Sudanese government, after all they’ve done for the southern Sudanese Christians, and now the black Muslims of Darfur?
If aid workers are to be apolitical at all times, even when the government itself is the prime instigator of the problem, then aid agencies in Nazi Germany would have been negotiating with the concentration camp commanders to allow food parcels in (“and we understand that there have been a number of deaths from poisonous gas, so we’ve included some gas masks”), and excoriating the Allies for dragging politics into it (see also here for a discussion of the ethics of aid to North Korea). An apolitical approach may be justified in the case of natural disasters, but not when you have politically inspired massacres and starvation. But really this is just good old anti-Americanism. If the US government is calling it genocide, then suddenly it’s become a cause that’s being over-hyped.
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