Alright we really ought to focus and talk more about North Sudan. This is really happening down there, even if it may just be starting.
vomits shit to read and look at
http://transitions.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/06/27/sandstorm_friday
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/06/27/rumblings_in_sudan
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/06/27/the_sudanese_stand_up_by_christian_caryl
My personal take on it? We're dealing with, for lack of a better word, the evilist regime so far.
Gaddafi and Assad are angels next to Omar al-Bashir. What he's done to his people (and those formerly his people) is pretty much without equivalent in the post-Cold War world. The only other men and women whove been on tilts like his are either hiding in the jungles of the Congo or are already in the Hague.
This guy is president of a UN member country. He is indicted on war crimes, the reeeeallly bad ones.
So in other words his likely ability to gun down his people is far higher than Assad or Gaddafi, not the least of which is also the geographic and mental isolation North Sudan has to the rest of the world. People are simply less likely to pay attention than when something goes down in the Maghreb and Mid-East.
And let's not be coy, probably a degree of racism is here as well. Though most North Sudanese people are Arab, they're also black, and while more properly "Trans-Saharan" people will think of them as Sub-Saharan. And people just write that whole region off as a basket case of misery that can never be fixed. Even if there are more progressive governments with better living standards, more peace, and more open politics, than some of the corners of Eastern Europe (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kosovo, and Moldova I'm looking at you).
Don't be that guy or gal.
There are advantages Sudan may have as well. While Bashir may be the worst dude there is right now, he also not nearly as secure in his position as the likes of the Kim dynasty or even just Assad. I trickle of articles have been suggesting that since he let South Sudan leave that he's been seen as weak and gained a degree of unpopularity in elite and military circles in Sudan, precisely the people needed to weather protests. When the military decides you're no good anymore they can have you gone and even dead within days. Bashir should know, it's how he came to power in 89'.
Plus Sudan is a messed up pile of debris as it were, there are not one, not two but at least three different fronts of rebels. The South Sudanese are their own country now maybe, but there are insurgents in Darfur and even on the Red Sea coast. Bashir has made a career of staying in power by causing trouble with everyone but maybe it's about to snap back and squash him in the middle. There's lots of reason this could be chaos, but that's the risk every revolution takes. And pretty much none of our precious countries would be where they were without those risks.
Plus Sudan does not have the main problem Syria does, ethnic loyalty. These protesters are the Arabs, not the border peoples, the people to whom Bashir belongs. In Syria we're seeing the minorities (who rule) being played off against the majority (who don't). The protesting Syrians are almost all Sunni (or Kurdish). Here this is already bypassed.