In 1994, the international community failed to stop Rwanda's mass
murder of Tutsis even though the UN's commander in Rwanda, Canadian
General Romeo Dallaire, learned of the planned massacres, warned the
United Nations, and sought authority to disarm the attackers in advance
by raiding their arms supplies.
Today, a decade later, another
African variation of ethnic cleansing is taking place in Sudan's Darfur
region. Sudan's Islamist government in Khartoum, having waged a war
against Christians and others in southern Sudan, negotiated a peace
agreement with the Sudan People's Liberation Army, which represents the
southern Sudanese. But when Muslims in the western Darfur region
demanded a power sharing arrangement of their own with the central
government, Khartoum responded with a military campaign that is
estimated to have killed 50,000 and displaced one million.
The campaign is brutal, featuring destruction of villages and the use of rape as an instrument of war.
As
in Rwanda, the massacres and their perpetrators are known to the world,
and there is time to act. The test is clear: Either the international
community will act through the UN or some other mechanism to stop the
attacks, or as in Rwanda, it will fail to cut them off.
UN and
private relief agencies are monitoring the situation and providing
food, shelter, and medical care to refugees who have fled Sudan, and to
and displaced Sudanese in the Darfur region itself.
But
humanitarian relief is not the key to resolving the crisis. The key is
to persuade Khartoum to stop its organized murder - a feat that may
require the use of force. For now, the international community is
trying diplomacy. A UN Security Council resolution gives Khartoum 30
days, expiring August 30, to cease its actions or face "punitive
action" that could range from diplomatic and economic sanctions, to
military force.
The Khartoum government may heed the UN
warning. But it is not difficult to imagine that it will deliver only a
cosmetic response - and that the United States, Europe, and African
nations will lack the political will to take military action to protect
Darfur's people. An effective military action could require
peacekeeping, peace enforcement, and punitive strikes to convince
Khartoum that its actions must end. If August 30 passes without an
effective international response, then the world will have learned from
the history of Rwanda, and repeated it anyway a decade later in Darfur.
