President’s Corner: Bush’s Africa Trip Calls for Action on Darfur

Last week Refugees International sent a letter to President Bush suggesting actions he could take in Liberia and Rwanda, two of the five countries he is visiting in Africa, to promote regional stability. But the biggest security challenges in Africa today are occurring in a country that Mr. Bush is not visiting—Sudan.

The news from Sudan is unremittingly bad. In Darfur, where President Bush has accused the Sudanese government of committing genocide, the killing and displacement continue. In a report this week, the Darfur Relief and Documentation Centre in Geneva said: “In a new wave of violence and destruction in Darfur, the government of Sudan and its allied Janjaweed militia, supported by heavy military equipment including Antonov bombers and helicopter gunships, attacked and destroyed a vast area in West Dafur State.”

A new joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force, called UNAMID, is deploying to Darfur, but Sudan’s government in Khartoum has repeatedly slowed and obstructed the new force. Worse, government forces attacked a UNAMID convoy last month.

In a briefing to the White House press corps on the President’s trip yesterday (Feb. 13), National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said that “this force is deploying but very slowly. And we think the sooner the force is deployed, the sooner we can create better security, a better environment for humanitarian assistance and a better context for people … politically.”

The U.S. has provided large and generous amounts of humanitarian aid to help support the more than two million people displaced during five years of fighting in Darfur. Sadly, however, despite President Bush’s concern about genocide in Darfur, the U.S. has done too little to support peacekeeping in Darfur.

Consider these facts:

• The U.S., which owns the world’s largest fleet of military helicopters, has turned a deaf ear to the UN’s calls for helicopters to support UNAMID.
• The current fiscal year 2008 budget falls $334 million short of meeting the U.S. share for funding the expanded peacekeeping force in Darfur.
• The fiscal 2009 budget that President Bush sent to Congress earlier this month asks for only $414 million of the projected U.S. commitment of $550 million for UNAMID, a shortfall of $136 million.
• The U.S. and its allies remain passive while the government of Sudan interferes with the deployment of UNAMID and continues its genocidal attacks against civilians. The U.S. and European powers, for example, have refused to enact rigid travel and financial sanctions against top Sudanese officials. As a result, Sudan’s President al Bashir, continues to travel to international meetings in Europe.

When it comes to Darfur, U.S. actions don’t match its rhetoric. The U.S. needs to take a tougher stance against genocide, and President Bush should announce his intentions while in Africa. It would be fitting for him to outline a tougher policy when he visits the memorial to the victims of the Rwanda’s 1994 genocide in Kigali on Feb. 19.

--Ken Bacon