A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

A little less that three months ago I posted in this space some thoughts about the immediate past and likely future of Darfur's nightmare.  I'd review developments since that time in more detail, but couldn't possibly do better than Eric Reeves has done recently in The New Republic and on his own blog.  Both pieces deserve to be read in full.

The two key elements in any alleviation of Darfur's agony are security and adequate humanitarian aid.  Reeves notes how both are failing now in his TNR article:

First, the African Union decided not to turn over the task of securing the region to the United Nations for at least another six months. The African Union, out of its depth in Darfur, has proven unable to stop the genocide; and there is little reason to believe it can do any better in the months to come. Second, Jan Egeland, head of U.N. humanitarian operations, explained to his colleagues that humanitarian efforts in Darfur are facing a major shortfall in funding. In an internal e-mail sent Friday to U.N. personnel, Egeland worried that "the massive gains we made on the humanitarian front over the past year will be lost, and that the tide is starting to turn against us." If the African Union's decision and Egeland's warning are any indication, the twenty-first century's first genocide will not slacken any time soon. On the contrary, it will grow worse.

At one point last January it appeared as if the African Union, faced with a security task far beyond its resources, would turn over the job of restoring order and protecting refugees in Darfur to the UN, inevitably involving NATO troops.  Reeves describes what happened next:

February....passed without any meaningful action from the Council. The nominal reason for the delay was that the African Union had not formally agreed to hand over the mission to the United Nations, under whose auspices NATO personnel might have deployed a short-term bridging force to protect civilians and humanitarians--until the notoriously slow-moving U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations was ready to send a mission of its own.

The African Union had committed "in principle" to a handover to the United Nations in January. But the genocidaires in Khartoum used the intervening weeks to remarkable diplomatic effect, pledging to withdraw from the African Union if there were a handover to the United Nations, implicitly threatening to unleash Al Qaeda on Western forces, and lobbying A.U. nations. Egypt weighed in on Khartoum's behalf, creating the prospect that the African Union might split along "Arab" and "African" lines.

Last Friday's decision by the African Union to keep the Darfur mission for another six months revealed just how effective these threats and lobbying efforts had been. Because the African Union reaffirmed its support in principle for an eventual U.N. mission, some at the United Nations sought to put a positive spin on the outcome. But the approving noises from Khartoum suggest how disastrous the decision is.

In fact, Khartoum's triumph is as great as it could reasonably have hoped for. Continuing A.U. control of the mission ensures that there will be no change of mandate: The troops will continue to be officially tasked only with monitoring a non-existent ceasefire. In addition, there will be no international force to staunch the flow of genocidal destruction into Chad, conducted by both Khartoum and its murderous Arab militia allies. West Darfur will remain largely beyond humanitarian reach. Camps for displaced persons and refugees will continue to be vulnerable to the Janjaweed: Men will be killed because of their ethnicity; women and girls will be raped; and crops and croplands will be destroyed. No wonder Khartoum's foreign minister called the A.U. decision a "success."

With the honorable exception of The Washington Post's editorial page, American media and government officials have been silent about the central reason action to stop genocide in Darfur has been so difficult to arrange.  This is that the organizers of genocide in Khartoum have the unqualified support of Sudan's fellow Arab governments.  Unable to stage relief efforts from Egyptian territory, humanitarian organiazations and Western governments must extend these across the width of the Sahara Desert, like a dumbbell held at arm's length.  A no-fly zone, to suppress the air support Khartoum provides for its murderous janjaweed proxies, is a vastly more daunting logistical task for the same reason.  For good measure, $60-a-barrel oil has not induced Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and all the the other Arab oil states put together to provide funds for humanitarian relief equal to what Canada has by itself.

With American forces heavily committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, European governments as always helpless to do anything without American leadership, and Khartoum assured of support from its Arab neighbors no matter how many Negroes it kills, recent Western efforts to expand the size and scope of peacekeeping efforts in Darfur have been, essentially, a transparent bluff.  A halt to genocide there could happen only if the perpetrators of genocide saw fit to allow it.  

Well, the bluff has been called.  No one should be surprised by what happens next.  Twelve years ago in Rwanda the governments of the civilized countries could say more or less plausibly that the explosion of genocidal violence in that country was well beyond anything they had expected.  That can't possibly be the case where Darfur is concerned; Sudan's war against civilians has been going on since 2003, and Khartoum has now made it clear that it will continue.  How will the United States and other Western nations respond?