Stop the killing in Dafur

Editorial by the Miami Herald

Nov 30, 2004 — How long will the world community watch with hands folded as the ethnic cleansing in Darfur continues unabated? Global leaders, including at the United Nations, apparently are willing to wait a very long time — too long. Yet there is no excuse for the international community’s hands-off attitude. The slaughter of more than 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda 10 years ago is a graphic example of what can happen when world leaders fail to stop the systematic slaughter of people.

In Sudan, more than 70,000 ethnic Africans have been killed and more than 1.4 million displaced in 20 months of fighting with Arab Muslims, who are being assisted by the Sudanese government itself.

A visit to western Sudan last week by two U.S. news organizations, including Knight Ridder reporter Sudarsan Raghavan, confirmed suspicions that the Sudanese government is involved in killings. Mr. Raghavan and the other reporters found evidence that bombs had been dropped from government planes on hapless villagers.

Meanwhile, the U.N. General Assembly last week, in a cowardly capitulation, avoided taking a vote on a resolution that would have condemned the violence as a violation of human rights. And although Secretary of State Colin Powell in September called the killings genocide, the United States hasn’t been aggressive enough or involved enough to force a different outcome. The African Union has put together a meager force of 700 troops, but this isn’t nearly enough manpower or firepower to be effective.

The United States should proceed along two paths. First, we should increase pressure on the U.N. Security Council to intervene with force. The United States must also significantly increase humanitarian aid and assistance to relief agencies, as well as provide U.N. and African Union forces with the supplies and resources that they need. Now is the time to act.