Com­pared to how today’s equiv­a­lents of emper­ors are deal­ing with  crises and cat­a­stro­phes, Nero being syn­ony­mous with “fid­dling while Rome burns” is a bum wrap.

Sudan is front, cen­ter and in human­i­tar­i­an terms the fore­most example.
To mark the sec­ond anniver­sary of the civ­il war that has offi­cial­ly become the world’s worst  human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis — more than 12.7 mil­lion peo­ple, near­ly one third of the pop­u­la­tion  forced to flee their homes, 3.7 mil­lion of them to neigh­bour­ing coun­tries — a con­fer­ence was held in London.
Why does it always seem nec­es­sary to wait for an anniver­sary before pay­ing prop­er atten­tion to mas­sive human suf­fer­ing that did not hap­pen overnight?
What’s the log­ic of in effect say­ing “sor­ry inno­cent vic­tims, you’ll just have to do your best not to die vio­lent­ly or starve to death until  it’s time for your cri­sis to have a birthday?”
But to be fair, the con­fer­ence did take place.
As for real action however…break out the fiddles.
The con­flict is a pow­er strug­gle between the Sudanese army, which seized pow­er in a coup and its erst­while ally, the para­mil­i­tary (read armed thugs) Rapid Sup­port Force (RSF).
The would-be peace­mak­ers man­aged to agree that first and fore­most, there’s an urgent need for Sudan to “tran­si­tion to an inde­pen­dent civil­ian-led government,”
A fine ide­al, except the con­fer­ence atten­dees couldn’t agree on that most basic out­come of such grand gath­er­ings, a “joint com­mu­nique”. The stum­bling block, accord­ing to one diplo­mat, was a dis­agree­ment  over “lan­guage on state institutions”.
That such things even exist will come as a sur­prise to Sudanese civil­ians. Accord­ing to Oxfam, “five areas in the coun­try are expe­ri­enc­ing famine, and near­ly eight mil­lion more peo­ple are at risk of starvation.”
I’ve yet to hear or see a news sto­ry focused on the sit­u­a­tion on the ground in Sudan that wasn’t intro­duced with a ver­sion of the cop-out of respon­si­bil­i­ty phrase “some may find parts of this report distressing”.
Per­ish the thought that the squea­mish might acci­den­tal­ly hear voic­es of women like Jamil­la Abdul­lah, who was in the Zamzam  camp with her six chil­dren when the RSF attacked it a week ago and told the BBC: “We had to dig holes behind our house to hide from artillery and drone strikes.”
Artillery and drone strikes.
To destroy a sprawl­ing, famine-strick­en camp with almost no facilities.
To force as many as 400,000 of its half a mil­lion res­i­dents to flee, with nowhere safe to go.
That’s not a war, it’s a war crime.

                       ARMS AND AMORALITY

Since Sudan has no domes­tic arms pro­duc­tion, sure­ly the obvi­ous first step towards end­ing the con­flict would be cut­ting off the sup­ply of weapons, not argu­ing over language.
Except the main play­ers in the talks are Sau­di Ara­bia and Egypt, who favour and back the Sudanese mil­i­tary, and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, who accord­ing to Amer­i­can and UN offi­cials, are the RSF’s main arms suppliers.
The UAE denies the alle­ga­tions, but the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice is delib­er­at­ing whether the UAE can plau­si­bly be found  “com­plic­it in the com­mis­sion of geno­cide” by arm­ing the RSF.
The Catch-22 is that the UAE, along with the Unit­ed States, is among 26 sig­na­to­ry nations that have not yet accept­ed, rat­i­fied or approved the Arms Trade Treaty  (ATT), which pro­hibits “…autho­riz­ing the export, import, tran­sit, trans-ship­ment and bro­ker­ing of arms, ammu­ni­tion and parts and com­po­nents if they know that these arms or items would be used to com­mit war crimes or oth­er inter­na­tion­al crimes.”
For nations and gov­ern­ments with agen­das that might not stand the scruti­ny of moral­i­ty, the ratio­nale when it comes to treaties seems to be “if you’re not in it, you win it.”
 Gaza makes their case.
Hamas’ stat­ed aim of elim­i­nat­ing Israel ought to be suf­fi­cient grounds to mer­it an arms cut-off. But its arse­nal is a mix of weapon­ry from Iran, Chi­na, North Korea and Rus­sia, none of whom are like­ly to admit to, nev­er mind care that they’re emu­lat­ing Nero.
Wash­ing­ton has ample grounds to cut off spe­cif­ic types of bombs and oth­er shells to Israel.
Last Novem­ber, a UN Spe­cial Com­mit­tee con­clud­ed Israel’s war­fare in Gaza “ is con­sis­tent with the char­ac­ter­is­tics of geno­cide, with mass civil­ian casu­al­ties and life-threat­en­ing con­di­tions inten­tion­al­ly imposed on Pales­tini­ans there”
That would go some way to pres­sure Israel to cur­tail attacks on hos­pi­tals, tent­ed refugee camps, aid work­ers and ambu­lance crews at the very least.
Instead, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is tar­get­ing uni­ver­si­ties for allow­ing stu­dents to protest on behalf of Pales­tini­ans in Gaza.
The fid­dle hadn’t been invent­ed in 64 AD, so at worst, Nero may have plucked a lute.
Ancient tra­di­tion has it that he wept copi­ous­ly as he did so, however.
So far, there’s no evi­dence Sudan and Gaza pro­vok­ing any­thing sim­i­lar in today’s Nero equivalents.

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