After reading my previous post a Darfur advocate came back to me with a sound point that deserves incorporation. Namely that in addition to distorting the field in terms of U.S.-based advocacy asks, Abdalhaleem’s comments (and those of the same genre) serve another function – trial ballooning for, in particular, a regional audience. In other words, put an outrageous statement out there and see what comes back. If the African Union doesn’t object, there’s a useful piece of information about how far Khartoum can go and still maintain some allies.

You may say that such statements could serve the same purpose in reference to the U.S. (and that therefore contrary to my prior post we should all be jumping on them). The reason I would differentiate the audiences is that  I don’t think there’s a question for anyone in Khartoum that throwing out the peacekeepers would be objected to by the U.S. There’s no trial balloon function when you know the result.