A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

In 2005 there was, briefly, some hope for the people of Sudan's Darfur region.  A small African Union peacekeeping force was deployed.  A reduction in the level of violence directed at Darfuri civilians by Arab janjaweed tribesmen backed by the Sudanese government allowed mostly Western humanitarian groups to bring aid to thousands of civilians who had been driven from their homes.  Most promising of all, diplomacy led by the United States had made progress, following a strategy that assumed settlement of Sudan's long civil war between the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum and the mostly Christian and animist African population in the south of the country would make it easier to reach a settlement between the government and rebel groups in Darfur.

This strategy was borne of Western weakness.  America was too heavily committed in Iraq and Afghanistan to spare armed forces for the crisis in Darfur, a region in which American interests have traditionally been close to nonexistent.  Other Western countries -- as so often before when facing humanitarian disasters with political complications -- would take no action without American leadership.  But with that said, the strategy had some logic to it, and with luck it might even have worked.

Luck is the one thing its American sponsors did not have last year.  For the prospect that a settlement of the north-south civil war could be the first step in cooling down Sudan's other conflicts depended heavily on the influence of the southern leader, a charismatic, American-educated guerilla named John Garang.  Garang's death in a helicopter accident last summer forced the tribes of Sudan's south to look to their own political cohesion, while Khartoum, faced with continuing rebellion not only in Darfur but also in its eastern regions near the Eritrean border, returned to dealing with regions in which rebels lived as it so often had in the past, by striking at the civilian population of those regions.

It is now actually going beyond that, apparently sponsoring forces seeking to overthrow the government of neighboring Chad, into which many refugees from Darfur have fled over the last couple of years.  Fears have arisen that Sudan's attacks on rebels in eastern Sudan may escalate into a full-blown war.  And, not content with the tacit support Sudan has always enjoyed from its fellow Arab countries for its murderous conduct in Darfur, Sudan will later this year host both African Union and Arab League summits in Khartoum , a macabre reminder that the nations with which President Bush is so eager to share the glories of democracy have not even advanced to the point where they object to genocide.  Meanwhile, peace talks in Nigeria between the government and rebel factions are going nowhere.

I've written here and elsewhere about Darfur, focusing on one aspect of the situation that no one else seemed to notice, the indifference of Arab governments and media to the prolonged campaign against mostly Muslim civilians by an Arab government.  Obviously there is more to it than that; the complexities of Sudan's many conflicts could take many pages to examine fully (Eric Reeves' blog is a case in point.  If you have time, his exposition of the situation in Sudan is worth reading in full).

Complexity cannot be used as an excuse for inaction in a crisis of this magnitude, though.  The American government was not inactive with respect to Darfur in 2005; it followed a strategy to improve the situation with skill and determination, one that might have worked -- but didn't.  With one or two others, I made the point that genocide in Darfur would be a lot easier to stop if Sudan's fellow Arab governments were determined to stop it.  But they weren't, and aren't now -- and what is one to expect from these people, anyway?  

The question still remains:  what ought to be done now?  A resumption of wholesale war against civilians in Darfur, let alone the spread of the conflict to neighboring countries, may not make Ian Bremmer's list of 2006's Greatest Hits , but the West really can't stand aside and let this happen, even if its earlier efforts to solve the crisis came to nothing and even if it gets no help from Sudan's Arab allies.  It would be worth it to the United States to pay a high price to let someone else take the lead to stop genocide in Darfur, but it looks very much as if no one else will.