The UN Cavalry — Not

REVIEW & OUTLOOK, The Wall Street Journal

Sept 16, 2004 — Last week Secretary of State Colin Powell made headlines by declaring that events in the Darfur province of Sudan amount to “genocide,” but that doesn’t seem to have changed things much at the United Nations.

The Security Council that prominent politicians want to depend on for the legitimacy to use force against rogue regimes, such as the one in Khartoum, is still paralyzed by disagreement. China, which has oil interests in Sudan and veto power at the U.N., won’t allow a resolution merely threatening sanctions, much less imposing them. An African peace-keeping force could be assembled to enter the province, if only the U.N. would act.

Only yesterday the German daily, Die Welt, reported that Syria, in coordination with Khartoum, used chemical weapons against civilians in Darfur, where African Muslims are being attacked by Arab Muslims supported by the Sudanese government. The paper cites Western intelligence sources and documents, as well as eyewitness accounts published in Arab papers. At least five civilian Syrian aircraft were flown to Khartoum bringing specialists from the “Syrian Academy for Chemical Warfare,” the German paper reports.

This news follows an Aug. 17 dispatch in the Washington Times citing Sudanese villagers as claiming to have seen bombs dropped that produced poisonous smoke that sickened people and killed livestock. Keep in mind that some in the U.S. government suspect that Syria might have been the destination for some of Saddam Hussein’s missing WMD. Certainly these Sudanese reports deserve to be checked out.

In the wake of all this, perhaps the key to understanding the U.N.’s inertia can be found in the fact that the Khartoum government remains a member in good standing on the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Only last May, when the atrocities in Darfur were already well known, Sudan was reappointed to the Commission through 2007. The American envoy walked out in disgust at the time, but much of the rest of the world yawned. No wonder Sudan’s leaders don’t take the U.N. seriously.