02/06/2006

Below is an editorial from Sacramento Bee:

Nearly two years after the Bush administration branded as genocide the murderous violence in Sudan's Darfur region, the world has done next to nothing to stop it. It may be impossible to end a tragic impasse, but the United States could try by using its presidency of the U.N. Security Council this month to demand that the world body act, starting with targeted sanctions against Sudan's top officials.

Another possible starting point, suggested by Kenneth Bacon, who heads Refugees International, would be for U.S. Ambassador John Bolton to call on U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to make public a U.N. report that lists countries that are shipping weapons to both sides in the conflict in violation of an arms embargo.

Whether that would help is questionable. But at least it would refocus the world's attention on a festering crisis, and would embarrass those governments whose actions are driven more by self-interest than by genuine concern for the victims in Darfur, where Sudanese government-backed Arab militias continue to terrorize, rape and kill black civilians while a 7,000-member monitoring force from the African Union looks on helplessly.

It may soon become worse. The AU force is running out of money and so far Congress has rebuffed the administration's request for more funds. Nor has Europe yet offered to pay more.

More than 200,000 people have died so far, and skirmishes between Sudanese troops and forces in neighboring Chad, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have taken refuge, raise the prospect of more casualties.

Negotiations between Sudan's government and rebel groups have made no progress. A proposal to send a large U.N. peacekeeping force to the region to replace the AU force has so far been rejected by Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. He has said that the militias he is accused of backing don't exist. And even if he agreed, Russia or China, which have economic interests in Sudan, might veto the plan in the Security Council.

Annan once said in a speech that some internal conflicts justify humanitarian intervention.

Again last week he said the "threat of complete lawlessness and anarchy draws near," and called on Western countries to do more. But so far world leaders just wring their hands, as in 1994, when genocidal attacks in Rwanda killed some 800,000 people. And after it's too late to act, no doubt some will mourn the dead and ask why no one did anything.