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Action on Darfur? Not likely.

President Bush recently called for a "doubling" of peacekeeping forces in Darfur, as well as NATO intervention, to stop the ongoing genocide there. But it's not at all clear where the troops are going to come from—Bush administration officials have ruled out sending U.S. troops, and Europe has certainly shown no real interest in sending its people to fight in Africa. (Darfur isn't really an issue among civil society groups in most European countries, apart from Britain, sort of, and there's no real pressure to act.)

The guess is that nothing will come of Bush's proposal. When pressed for specifics, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack recently said: "It's really premature to speculate about what the needs would be in terms of logistics, in terms of airlift, in terms of actual troops. And certainly in that regard, premature to speculate on what the US contribution might be." Oh? Pray tell, when won't it be premature to speculate? A year from now? Two years? When everybody's dead?

It's also not clear how serious the United States is about pushing the UN on Darfur. In February, when the U.S. took over the rotating presidency of the Security Council, Robert Zoellick promised that U.S. would press for the Security Council to take over the peacekeeping force in Darfur. But at the UN, Ambassador John Bolton has done little constructive this month besides berating Kofi Annan, rather than actually working to convince China and Russia—who both have oil interests in Sudan and are reluctant to act against Khartoum—to agree to a strong resolution along the lines recommended by the International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch, namely:

The Security Council authorize, on an urgent basis, a transition of the African Union force in Darfur to a UN mission under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Such a mission should have a strong and clear mandate that will allow it to protect itself and civilians by force if necessary, and to disarm and disband the government-sponsored Janjaweed forces that have confiscated land or pose a threat to the civilian population.

The mission should also be specifically empowered to provide appropriate assistance to the International Criminal Court's investigations in Darfur including the arrest of individuals indicted for crimes against humanity and war crimes. [I]t should be a force large enough to provide security throughout Darfur---some 20,000 strong---with capabilities that, realistically, only countries with significant military assets and mobility will be able to provide.

That's what's needed. (And yes, as I've written before, there would be plenty of problems and risks involved in a more robust intervention; but stopping genocide, and preventing the Sudan conflict from spilling into Chad and beyond, is worth those risks.) But both the United States and Europe have dug in their heels, and haven't come around to supporting anything of the sort.

Under the circumstances, it's hard to see that Bush's proposal for a NATO role in Darfur will amount to anything significant. On the bright side, a Security Council list of names of those in the Khartoum government responsible for genocide was recently obtained and leaked by Mark Goldberg of the American Prospect, and there's some sign that now Sudan's leaders are getting nervous about targeted sanctions. That would be a decent, low-cost, first step. It's shocking that the Security Council can't even get around to imposing targeted sanctions, but it's not as if African genocide has ever received a quick response from the West.

Posted by Bradford Plumer on 02/23/06 at 11:22 AM | E-mail | Print | Digg this | de.licio.us

Comments

Perhaps the real issue here isn't that Pres. Bush loves to talk up a storm whilst actually planning on sitting on his corpulent bum, but rather the real issue is that the government has a real interest in seeing to it that the general public's attention is occupied--that the common people are constantly stewing over apparent rampant barbism...
What about the Vietnam War? Shoot, if the US spent as much money on peacekeeping forces as it did on composing the White Paper on Vietnam... And if that actually is an exaggeration, still, how implausible is it that, while that study was so very, very wrong regarding the existence of Victor Charlie, we "allowed" major atrocities to go unchecked next door in Cambodia...

Posted by: Michael L. Wagner on 02/23/06 at 1:19 PM

This country was built on genocide and slavery. Despite the rhetoric, the power structure has not changed much in the last 200 years. Why should the white, land-owning males who created it, and are still in power, care about any people of color being killed on the other side of the world? Hey, it's just a question?

Posted by: Eileen Davis on 02/25/06 at 7:52 AM

This critical key resource message is not meant to dismiss nor ignore past and current efforts of international humanitarian aid and justice-seeking efforts toward the Sudan, in particular, the Nuba people. With the best of intentions, it is never enough nor addressing the 'heart and soul of the matter.' Rather, I found that I knew so very little about this on-going escalating genocide until I read the 2005 Independent Jounalist book account: "War and Faith in Sudan," by Gabriel Meyer, (based in LA), with heart-stopping photographs by James Nicolls. (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) No one can credibly and spiritually deal with this un-speakable horror" until this book is read. Macram Max Gassis, Roman Catholic Bishop of the El Obeid Diocese, Sudan (from a well-educated Arabic family) SEES, HEARS AND LIVES THE SUDAN AND ITS PLIGHT AND PEOPLE with no falsities, prejudices nor compromises. This book will invite you to: stop, look, listen, then act accordingly-in prayer, faith and hope-against-hope.

Posted by: MMCarey on 02/25/06 at 9:25 AM

Bush has always been good at double speak. Maybe first by accident. Puppets are, easy to manipulate with practice so this administration is still at the point of practicing on us. are we puppets ? No. G.W.Bush is the puppet. The puppet with way to many strings will bumble. Do not wait for another bumble as the next might be to costly for this (USA) to survive. True, Kevin David Di Rito

Posted by: Kevin Di Rito on 02/27/06 at 1:53 AM

Our diplomatic response to genocide has been the same in every administration-- polite hand-wringing followed by inaction. That was Roosevelt's approach to the Holocaust, Gerald Ford's approach to Pol Pot's Cambodia and Clinton's approach to Bosnia and Rwanda. To this day our State Dept. is too timid to even refer to Turkey's murder of the Armenians-- a deed almost a century old. We should rather be surprised that Clinton did briefly play Galahad in the far less egregious Kosovo and Somalia affairs.

And it was the same when Condi visited Sudan's Omar Bashir to have a little talk with him. Her condemnations were so mild and indirectly stated the man was actually beaming with joy for the photo-op. She had told him in so many words that he was going to get a free ride on this one.

How nice it would be to live in a world where there actually was a global cop on the beat. Not this time.

Posted by: Michael Elvin on 02/27/06 at 5:47 AM

its no surprise that no help is on the way. Remember 1994 in Rwanda?

Posted by: Adrian on 03/02/06 at 8:29 AM