Sudan’s Darfur, Inaction’s Consequence

Editorial, The Washington Post

Dece 9, 2004 — Last month the United States and its allies signaled a change in Sudan policy. Rather than pressuring Sudan’s government to halt its genocidal attacks against civilians in the western province of Darfur, they switched to pushing for a peace deal between the government and southern rebels. This change in priorities was a mistake. Although the north-south war has killed an estimated 2 million people over the past two decades, it is now in abeyance; by contrast, Darfur’s conflict, pitting the government against three semi-organized rebel factions, is fueling malnutrition, disease and violence that are claiming thousands of lives each month. By emphasizing north-south talks, the United States risked sending a signal that the genocide in Darfur might be tolerated.

Sure enough, the violence in Darfur has worsened. According to the latest U.N. assessment, government attacks on civilians continue; the number of people affected by the conflict has risen to about 2.3 million; Western aid workers are being blocked from helping civilians, and the head of Oxfam International’s Sudan operations was recently kicked out of the country. On Sunday Sudan’s foreign minister brazenly declared that his government was not conducting aerial attacks on civilians, despite evidence to the contrary collected by African Union monitors. The foreign minister also told The Post’s Emily Wax that he looked forward to U.S. sanctions being lifted once the north-south deal was completed, as though the atrocities in Darfur would pose no obstacle.

The State Department hastened to respond that Darfur’s crisis must be “addressed” before relations can be normalized. But it’s not clear what this means, if anything, since the international community’s pronouncements on Darfur are increasingly prone to criticizing rebel violence as well as official aggression. Darfur’s rebels have indeed carried out attacks, perhaps in the hope of provoking government retaliation and, hence, outside intervention. But however bad the rebel violence, it pales next to the government’s policy of systematically destroying ethnic African villages, then impeding humanitarian access to displaced civilians so that they die by the thousands. The moral equivalence of some official statements is counterproductive. By blurring the question of responsibility, it encourages the government in its calculation that genocide will go unpunished.

If the Bush administration really does want Darfur’s crisis to be “addressed,” it needs to upset that calculation. It could revert to its earlier strategy of pressing for U.N. sanctions on Darfur, which would require a willingness that’s so far been lacking to go to the mat with opponents such as China. Or it could push for a much-expanded foreign troop presence, building on the African Union force of some 3,000 that is being deployed. Neither course would be easy. But the alternative to difficult action is to live with the consequences of inaction. On the best estimates available, about a third of a million people have died so far in Darfur, and unless the violence can be brought under control soon, there will be no spring planting next year and no fall harvest. More than 2 million people will continue to depend on Western food aid, and the lands of the displaced people may be taken by the perpetrators of the genocide. Thousands of dispossessed and desperate victims will sign up to join the rebels, perpetuating the cycle of violence and starvation.