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Comment by banach | Hacker News Reader

Ah yes, blame the lack of rulers and not colonialism or war.

They have been independent since 1956. Other (majority non-European) British colonies/protectorates as diverse as Singapore (ind. 1965), Belize (ind. 1981), India (ind. 1947) and UAE (ind. 1971) managed to build peaceful societies.

We need to recognize that the people of countries like Sudan are not children who don't know any better, contrary to European leftists' views. They are fully functioning adults who made a series of choices that led to the present situation.

> We need to recognize that the people of countries like Sudan are not children

Nitpicking here, but Sudan specifically only passed the median population age of 18 in the 2020s.

On gaining independence in 1956 Sudan endured two civil wars with up to a million deaths in the first civil war and between one and two million deaths in the second civil war.

Colonial governments like the British often (almost always) left a mess behind them.

Comparing Sudan to Singapore, India and the UAE is comical. This level of analysis on HackerNews, that ignores the realities of how different countries evolve / are influenced is why we cannot have an honest conversation.

Please enlighten us why it's comical. Economically, Sudan was richer per capita than India in 1960 and even as recently as 2017 [1][2]. It had, and still has, a more homogeneous population ethnically and linguistically. Yet India manages to keep things mostly calm while Sudan can't.

[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=sudan+nominal+gdp+per+c... [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=india+nominal+gdp+per+c...

I don't think India is a great example here. The Partition of India in 1947 resulted in over 1 million deaths.

That was before the country got its own constitution and had formed its national identity.

Not relevant as the partition was outlined in the Indian Independence Act 1947 which created the constitutions. The Act was agreed upon by the legislature representatives of the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League, and the Sikh community with Lord Mountbatten.

The point stands that decolonisation was a mess and the colonisers played a large part in it.

I think the point is in spite of decolonization being orders of magnitude more messy countries like India have established fully functioning peaceful societies.

On that note, reading about Bangladesh's split from Pakistan was gut wrenching.

So much senseless violence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_genocide

Every single piece of land on Earth has been attacked and colonized at least once. Why have some peoples managed to do well and others so bad? I think there's something more to learn.

Sudan has been a sovereign nation for 70 years. How many years must pass before you can no longer blame colonialism for their choices?

It's a bit like asking why we still blame lead for lead poisoning 70 years after it was painted on the wall...

Why not all of the above?

I lived in Nigeria, when they had the Biafra War[0]. That also killed a heck of a lot of folks. The problem, there, was sort of too many rulers.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Civil_War

If anything I’d blame the lack of colonialism as being the root cause of their problems.

Are you perhaps assuming they have no chance of learning to govern themselves peacefully?

I don't subscribe to this fixed mindset. I believe all peoples can learn to do well. It's hard, but possible. So the lack of conolialism isn't the answer, but lack of learning.

Perhaps they can, but there’s 0 evidence for it. Regardless my point was that they have had tremendous suffering since being decolonized. Endless conflict with external meddling from all over. I suspect that had they been under colonial rule since then they’d have significantly less suffering and stable. But what can you do because that ship sailed.

> Perhaps they can, but there’s 0 evidence for it.

Wouldn't this way of thinking prevent any improvement at all?

If I must have accomplished something before believing I may be able to accomplish, how am I even going to try?

They’ve had endless civil war essentially for 70 years. Maybe “Sudan” isn’t a real place and the people inhabiting those lands need to sort it out and figure out who rules what. The UN should stop recognizing Sudan as a state as it’s obviously failed. Remove itself from the region and let the people there figure out borders. Rip the Bandai’s off instead of prolonging this idea of Sudan that obviously isn’t real.

That's way different from something like 'what's missing in Sudan is a colonial power to rule them'.

People need to be ruled to maintain order. The alternative is chaos which leads to suffering until order is restored. The colonists ruled competently and maintained order even if your social justice reflex doesn’t feel good about it. What they left, decolonization, is a soft colonization from afar, managed by entities with no skin in it. This is why it’s disorderly and chaos reigns and suffering is a way of life for the people of those lands.

Colonization is preferable to that. However, because that’s not a palatable form of social order today the next best thing is complete abandonment and true self determination to discover where the borders are and who rules them. This will be bloody, yes, but have an outcome that leads to order if not tampered with. That’s preferable to the last 70 years.

Have you read the article ? Where does it mention lack of rulers ?

Seeing as the link is to a single paragraph and the actual article appears not to exist, has anyone read it?

"This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline “An intensifying calamity”"

You have to use the 'archive.ph' link in the HN commens to find it.

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