THE DARFUR TEST Print Page 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. Copyright 2004 The Lexington Institute Copyright © Lexington Institute. All rights reserved. |