The West should not atagonise the Muslim world  Any intervention by the West in Sudan, following so closely on Iraq and Afghanistan would have been looked upon as a further attack on the Muslim world and therefore act as a recruiting tool for terrorism.  While it is true that the intervention would have been couched in terms of helping oppressed Muslims, so too were the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.  An attack, especially if it was air-only, and therefore left Bashir in power in Khartoum might also have strengthened the regime by providing it with religious legitimacy, and might well have as a result inspired volunteers to enlist in order to fight in a jihad to protect it.  The latter would be even more true in the event ground troops were used, in which case volunteers might flood in from around the world to fight the “Crusaders”.  Such an added dimension could not have helped but place the Christian Southern Sudanese in an awkward and very uncomfortable position.