Darfur_orphans_1
Darfur is a killing field, and it is likely to remain a killing field for a long time to come. But Americans receive few reminders that anything unusual is going on there. The bloody story of this destitute region in faraway Sudan is crowded off the front page—and off television altogether—by the disaster in Iraq and the corruption in Washington, if not by Arnold’s fat lip or Pat Robertson’s conversations with God. But the United Nations calls Darfur the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with two million people living in camps and more than 180,000 dead so far.

Eric Reeves, in an impassioned article in the New Republic, says that the situation is getting worse. Between rich nations’ indifference and African nations’ acceptance of the status quo, no one with sufficient authority or military power is doing anything to stop the killing. He writes:

Why does genocide in Darfur
continue? One reason is that there is no real international pressure on
the architects of the genocide–the National Islamic Front security
cabal in Khartoum–to bring the killing to a halt. On the contrary, as
the genocide enters its fourth year, the international community
continues to defer to Khartoum, or even to suggest disingenuously that
the regime has somehow reformed itself. Either way, the clear
implication is that the lives of Darfur’s civilians are not worth the
diplomatic price of confronting Sudan’s brutal leaders.

There is no more appalling illustration of this phenomenon than
recent announcements by the African Union and the Arab League that both
groups will hold their upcoming summits in Khartoum. These summits will
represent symbolic triumphs for Sudan’s genocidaires. And they will
reinforce in very public fashion what Khartoum already knows: that none
of its neighbors really cares what it does in Darfur.

Of the two, the African Union summit is certainly the more disturbing,
if only because it is the organization’s own troops that are, in
theory, supposed to be establishing security in Darfur. To be sure,
this mission has been woefully ineffective from the start. The A.U.
force has been deliberately undercut by Khartoum since it was first
deployed in summer 2004, with Sudan denying fuel to the African Union
for its essential helicopters, blocking A.U. deployments within Darfur,
and refusing to allow critical equipment and personnel into the region.
For its part, the African Union hasn’t committed enough resources or
manpower; and key African countries have either reneged on military
commitments (South Africa) or deliberately obscured Darfur’s terrible
realities and Khartoum’s responsibility (Nigeria).

But the African Union’s decision to hold its January 2006 summit in
Sudan provides the strongest evidence yet that the organization has no
intention of actually standing up to Khartoum and halting the genocide.

Not
everyone in the rich countries is oblivious. Senators Barack Obama and
Sam Brownback, a Democrat and a Republican reaching across the
ideological divide, have repeatedly called for the United States to
act. Two weeks ago, they wrote:

It is essential that the Bush administration shift its approach to
confront the new and mounting challenges. Only the United States,
working in concert with key nations, has the leverage and resources to
persuade Khartoum to change its ways:

First, the administration must help transform the African Union protection force into a sizable, effective multinational force.…

Second, the administration must keep up the pressure on the rebels
to unite their negotiating positions, and it must enlist Sudan’s allies
to increase the pressure on Khartoum to share power and resources.

Third, the United States and other nations must place additional
pressure on key nations — Chad, Eritrea and Libya — to stop playing a
destructive role in the conflict.

Fourth, the administration needs to place its weight behind the
Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, which would impose targeted
sanctions on the leading perpetrators of the genocide.

And today Physicians for Human Rights released a shocking report
that details the death and destruction in three villages. If mainstream
media in the US provided more coverage of the ongoing  genocide,
Americans would be likely to respond; but the catastrophe continues,
month after month, below the radar.

Here are a few sites with additional information on Darfur:

Read more, and write your legislator. The small force of 6,000
African Union peacekeepers is insufficient to stem the tide of
violence, and even they may be withdrawn this month, along with most of
the UN staff, according to Sarai at treehugger.

Darfur should be back on the front page—and on the front burner at UN headquarters./Rubicon

Photo of orphans from Human Rights Watch,
©2004 EPA PHOTO.