Horror in Darfur

[gottaB]

N THE Darfur province of western Sudan, a slow-motion genocide has been taking place while the rest of the world either pretends not to notice or finds excuses for refusing to intervene. The uprooting and expunging of the Fur, Massaleit, and Zaghawa peoples is the deliberate, systematic doing of the National Islamic Front that rules Sudan. Government planes bomb the non-Arab villages of Darfur, and then the regime's collaborators, Arab militias known as the Janjaweed, ride in to murder men and boys and rape women and girls.

The Darfur atrocities have been going on for 16 months. If they are not stopped immediately, the world will witness a human calamity on the scale of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions told the UN News Center recently that the number of black Africans killed by Arab militias in the Darfur region is "bound to be staggering."' There are more than a million displaced people within Darfur. At least 200,000 more have fled across the border to Chad.

Human rights groups and others gripped by the horror of Darfur know what needs to be done to save these refugees from death by starvation or from the cholera and malaria that will inevitably rage through their crowded camps. The Khartoum regime, however, has been denying access for humanitarian relief efforts. Recently, as the National Islamic Front has come under pressure generated by visits to the region by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Secretary of State Colin Powell, it has made promises to allow 60 African Union monitors into Darfur and to permit the delivery of relief supplies.

Horror in Darfur....

[El Supremo]

1. Our military could be used so much more humanely here...

than in Iraq. But last time I checked Sudan and Chad have little oil and we have no troops to spare.

[gottaB]

2. Not much is needed

1. In clashes with Chad's forces, the Janjaweed have already shown that they are no match for real soldiers.

2. Other nations have shown willingness to contribute. The AU has already pledged some 300 peacekeepers in a deal agreed to by Bashir. A big problem is funding. The EU has sent mixed signals, but I suspect that Germany might be willing to step up.

3. The relief effort is already international in scope, and includes Arab nations like Libya, Kuwait and Egypt, as well as transnational ngos. There is thus a shared interest in protecting aid workers and ensuring the success of the humanitarian mission.

4. When Powell was in Khartoum, one thing that was talked about was redeploying police to Darfur from other regions. I'm not sure, but it seems like there's a possibility some of the armed forces in Darfur are not directly under Bashir's control. If that's true, such a redeployment could assist in truly disarming the Janjaweed and bringing security to Darfur.

Thus not much would be needed militarily to secure the delivery of relief supplies. A few thousand troops, a UN mandate, and some deft negotiating could make a huge difference.

As for liberating the concentration camps, that would require a larger force. How do you feel about concentration camps?

[gottaB]

3. Germany is clearly willing to send peacekeepers

a recent report:

http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1432_A_1071864,00.html