The global indifference toward the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan is a moral outrage.
In 18 months, the violence sweeping a region the size of France has killed some 50,000 people and driven more than 1.2 million into the squalid misery of refugee camps where they face death by starvation or disease. Uncounted numbers have been raped or incinerated, and their communities destroyed.
By any definition, this is genocide. A Muslim- and Arab-dominated Sudanese government is allowing its surrogate Janjaweed barbarians to wipe out black Africans who are Muslim as an excuse for quelling an insurgency (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). But in essence, this effort to scrub a nation clean of a race of people is what Nazi Germany attempted. And the world stands by. Again.
Where is the alliance of caring nations that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry keeps talking about? The nations that he can persuade, by the power of his personality I suppose, to do right. Nowhere. The responsibility for cleaning up this mess falls again to the United States.
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As well it should, because America is the most powerful force for freedom, democracy and justice in history. Just as humanitarian reasons (in addition to ones of pressing national interest) compelled us to take on Iraq, President Bush now carries a similar burden of leadership on another continent. Because who else will?
Meanwhile, Kerry offers some vague ideas along with his usual hollow call for the U.S. to exert international leadership, implying that the Bush administration has been sitting on its hands. In fact, the United States is providing 80 percent–80 percent–of the humanitarian aid to the refugees. And the Bush administration, defining the carnage as genocide, is trying to prod, cajole, pressure or embarrass the United Nations Security Council into meaningful action.
Specifically, we’re calling for UN sanctions on the Sudanese government, while raising the troubling question of why a nation that engages in genocide is not bounced off the UN Commission on Human Rights.
Naturally, our call for sanctions against Sudan has been opposed. China doesn’t like it because its growing thirst for oil allows for no offense of any Arab nation. Without irony, China’s UN ambassador amazingly calls the U.S. sanctions resolution “destructive of the atmosphere.” Muslim Pakistan also objects. That figures; no Arab nation is raising any alarms or providing aid. The greatest humanitarian catastrophe in the world today is rending an Arab nation, and neighboring Arab nations do little or nothing.
So, as part of the U.S. struggle to lead a recalcitrant world into action, the Bush administration softened its call for sanctions. Instead of saying that if the Sudanese government fails to respond, the UN Security Council will impose sanctions, it was revised to say the council would consider sanctions. Instead of asking Sudan to “cease” all military flights over Darfur, it was changed to urge Sudan to “refrain” from the flights. Big deal, huh?
At least the European Union says it deplores what’s happening in Darfur, although its concern is mostly expressed in dithering. “… [S]ome of the Europeans, including, I regret to say the French, have gone small on this,” said Richard Holbrooke, the Clinton administration’s UN ambassador.
The fact is that for all the huffing and puffing about the war in Iraq, the world is strangely stuck in the mud about the Darfur genocide, where more people are being killed than in Iraq. Mind you, we’re not discussing sending American or European peacekeepers there. We’re talking essentially about wholeheartedly backing the request of the African Union to send in at least 3,000 troops from its own 53 member states to protect the refugees from the ravages of the Janjaweed.
Whether the Sudanese government will respond to any kind of pressure, especially diplomatic–from the U.S., African Union, NATO, European Union, UN or others–is debatable. Certainly, it won’t respond to no pressure.
Does America have any vital interest in trying to lead the world in stopping the genocide? Probably not in a direct sense, although you can argue that allowing another fanatical Arab nation to get away with mass murder only will invite it to become a haven for anti-American terrorists.
More powerful, though, is the pure morality of the matter. Will America have to virtually go it alone? Or will the international community step up when the cause is just? Will the rest of the world be willing to be led by us to do what is right? Or will the “community of nations” take on the leadership role itself and do what is right–without American badgering? Surprise us. Please.
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