Deaf to Darfur
Editorial, The Boston Globe
March 18, 2005 — Tribal peoples in the Darfur region of Sudan are dying at a rate of at least 10,000 a month, victims of the genocidal policies of the government in Khartoum run by the National Islamic Front. They face famine, disease, and unceasing attacks from the regime’s proxy Arab militias known as Janjaweed. Confronted with these crimes against humanity, the United Nations, members of the Security Council, and the African Union, which has taken responsibility for monitoring conditions in Darfur, have failed — or refused — to take actions that could stop the slaughter. On Wednesday the UN actually withdrew all of its staff to the regional capital.
Shameful as that failure has been, the world’s indifference to the dead and dying in Darfur reached a new low point recently when European governments and the Bush administration allowed their dispute about the International Criminal Court to block any effective intervention to save lives in Darfur.
The Europeans are refusing to consider a Security Council resolution authorizing an enlarged peacekeeping force for Darfur unless that resolution also refers suspects accused of crimes against humanity to the International Criminal Court. The Europeans do this knowing that the Bush administration, foolishly but adamantly, opposes the court and its jurisdiction in such matters.
President Bush and opponents in Congress who fear that Americans may be subjected to politically motivated prosecutions at the ICC are doing more harm than good to US interests by combatting the court. They ought to drop their efforts to punish countries that do not sign waivers promising not to charge Americans at the ICC. The United States participated in the creation of the court and should now be part of it.
But the argument between Washington and the Europeans about the ICC is irrelevant to ending the horrors in Darfur. The genocidal regime in Khartoum has made it plain that it will not send any citizens of Sudan to a foreign court to be tried. And since Janjaweed militia figures arraigned abroad might incriminate complicit Sudanese Army and government authorities, Janjaweed killers are no more likely to be extradited to the ICC than the Sudanese president and his ministers.
Instead of playing puerile political games while human beings are perishing by the thousands in Darfur, Security Council members should be creating a NATO-style peacekeeping force of 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers to stop the killing and make certain that humanitarian aid is delivered to more than 2 million displaced people.
History will not forgive the powerful people who could have ended yet another genocide but preferred to play their pitiless games