Splits over Sudan
Editorial, The Financial Times
For the second time in two months, the UN Security Council has voted for a watered-down resolution on Sudan in its efforts to resolve the crisis in Darfur. The advances it makes are in calling for an international commission to investigate war crimes charges, backing a bigger African Union monitoring mission and, for the first time, specifically raising the possibility of sanctions against Sudan’s oil industry.
However, UN action has so far failed to resolve the fundamental issue of security for communities in the region, where the World Health Organisation says 10,000 are dying each month in camps. As the UN prepares for the start of its annual General Assembly debate tomorrow, Darfur shows up the organisation’s chronic difficulty in summoning an adequate and timely response. It has been a frustrating saga of delay and compromise, and prevarication by the Sudanese government.
The search for maximum consensus has clashed with the need to send a sufficiently robust message to Khartoum to make it crack down on government-linked militias. In the end, the Council is threatening only to “consider” sanctions, in consultation with the AU. Even then, Algeria, which supported the last resolution with the Council’s two other African members, abstained, alongside Pakistan, Russia and Sudan’s chief oil partner China.
The US this month stepped up the pressure by labelling the Darfur atrocities as genocide, under the terms of the UN’s 1948 genocide convention to which Sudan acceded less than a year ago. Other countries, however, are less sure that genocidal intent by Sudan’s Arab leaders is demonstrable. Anyway, as Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, made clear, no action would necessarily ensue unless the Security Council itself invoked the g-word. It hardly seems about to do so.
The thrust of efforts to date has been to get Khartoum to co-operate more in containing a crisis that has got out of control. In some ways this has worked. The government has removed barriers to aid and human rights organisations and has shown willingness to negotiate with rebels. But it has done little to tackle the impunity of Arab marauders, and failed on its promise to provide lists of the militias under its control and copies of the orders issued to them to stop their raids. There have also been renewed reports of government helicopters taking part in attacks.
If the UN wants to stop Khartoum giving it the runaround, it must make the threat of sanctions credible. The trouble is that actually imposing sanctions could block the path of co-operation, taking the crisis into a different dynamic. In any case, China has indicated it would veto such a move.
What is crucial now is to increase not just the strength but also the mandate and authority of the African Union’s monitoring force in Darfur, and for the UN to co-ordinate more effectively with it. The importance of this mission succeeding goes well beyond the confines of Sudan.