Darfur is getting worse
Wed Aug 23, 2006 at 09:41:38 AM PDT
Hard as it may be to believe, the genocide in Darfur is getting worse. When a UN-backed peace agreement was signed in May, it was estimated that 500 people were being raped and slaughtered every day--400,000 total had perished. Today, as the International Herald Tribune
reports, the death rate is growing and the peace agreement is near collapse. We must all soon decide whether we intend to sit back and allow another Rwanda to unfold without meaningful intervention. Over 800,000 were murdered in Rwanda, and in Darfur we're halfway towards meeting that heinous number. Over 2.5 million people have lost their homes. Those in refugee camps are facing food shortages and continued attacks. We can't raise the dead; we can keep people from dying.
Many diarists and I have written on the roots of the genocide. In fact, it was the topic of my first
diary back in June. While there has been much sympathy for the people in western Sudan, only a few have stood up and accepted the fact that diplomacy has failed, and intervention is the only real solution.
The Herald Tribune article does not call for an intervention. Instead, it calls for tougher sanctions. I do not think this is the preferred option, but it is the most available option given the lack of political will in the West for intervention:
Hard though it is to believe, the horrific humanitarian situation in Darfur is getting worse. There are more clashes now than a year ago, the number of rapes has steadily climbed and humanitarian workers are being attacked. The Darfur Peace Agreement, signed in May, is on the verge of collapse, and more than two million people continue to languish in refugee camps.
Meanwhile the United Nations and its member states fiddle, gently trying to persuade the government of Sudan to accept a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur, but getting nowhere. That's not surprising, as, over the last 15 years, constructive engagement with Khartoum has rarely produced results.
Sudan is run by a calculating and pragmatic Islamist party that will do whatever it must to survive. Only when it has been subject to real pressure has the regime changed its behavior.
There you go. Sudan is not a country that can be changed through negotiation. Stopping the genocide will require us (whether 'us' is the U.S., NATO, or the U.N.) to compel change by Sudan. The Bush Administration, despite its earlier cowboy rhetoric, is either ignorant of this or unwilling to expend their political capital (what little they have of it) to help end the genocide in Darfur. Their solutions so far have consisted of diplomacy alone. Isn't ironic that they're finally willing to be diplomatic when that won't work?
Until significant costs are imposed on it, Khartoum has no incentive to stop its current campaign of atrocities - let alone agree to the deployment of a UN force, disarm the janjaweed militias, and implement its other obligations under the Darfur Peace Agreement. Achieving these outcomes will require significant international political will and tough, targeted sanctions. What the international community needs to do is follow the money.
Targeting the ruling party's assets and those of its security agencies and fraudulent charities could inflict real damage on the regime's ability to sustain its ethnic cleansing campaign. But much more investigative work has to be done to clearly identify these commercial interests and the nature of their activities.
Appeals to Khartoum's conscience, and requests for its assistance in winding back its ethnic cleansing campaign, are destined to fail. The regime will only change its behavior in response to realistic threats of punishment. Until it changes Khartoum's calculus of self-interest, the international community will continue to flail around helplessly while the conflict and suffering in Darfur get worse.
Here is probably the greaest example of the necessity for soft power. Protecting human rights, even forcing other nations to recognize human rights, requires some diplomatic skill. If genocide was funny, the Bush Administration's incompetence would be laughable.
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