Darfur is becoming a byword for impotence in the face of real tragedy and genuine anger in the face of bewildering inaction. In the last two years as many as 300,000 people have died, the majority of them murdered by militias. In addition, two million refugees have fled to camps inside Sudan or in neighboring Chad, where the international community has been struggling to feed, house, care and protect them. For all the words that have been churned out by the world’s politicians and journalists and the promises made by the Sudanese government, nothing much appears to have changed.
If anything, matters have gotten worse. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was clearly moved by what he saw and heard when he visited one of the refugee camps yesterday. The personal tales of rape and murder, even in locations nominally protected by the 2,300 members of the African Union force probably reinforced determination that the UN try again to take an aggressive lead in this humanitarian disaster area.
Unfortunately for the Khartoum government which facilitated Annan’s visit, there was no praise and much embarrassment as refugees first begged the secretary-general to obtain assurances from nearby Sudanese officials that they would not suffer retribution if they laid out their evidence before him. Whatever explanations the authorities tried to give Annan when he first held talks with them in Khartoum almost certainly proved unreal when the UN leader saw for himself the disastrous situation in Kalma camp — built for 5,000 refugees and now home to more than 100,000.
Today Annan moves on to southern Sudan where President Omar Bashir’s government has successfully ended 21 years of civil war by accepting limited autonomy for the largely black inhabitants of the region. No doubt he will appreciate how the limited victory of the secessionists there has encouraged the breakaway movement in Darfur. He will also know how the long war in the south brought in its train widespread starvation and also created millions of refugees. Yet the very enormity of the tragedy that struck the divided communities in the south of the country has caused the outside world to set its face against a repeat performance in Darfur. Because Khartoum has failed to tackle the Janjaweed militias, the area has become ungovernable. It is prey to gangs of bandits who murder and pillage.
The initiative is steadily slipping away from Khartoum. Nongovernmental aid organizations, for so long frustrated in even getting permission to bring food and medicines into Sudan, long ago lost sympathy with the authorities. The international community now appears prepared to believe NGOs without question and discount any opposing explanation from Khartoum.
The dangerous case for more decisive intervention in the affairs of Sudan under the UN Charter becomes disturbingly stronger almost by the day. Yet the risks range from humiliating failure for the international community to the destabilization of Sudan itself and the possible unraveling of the hard-won peace in the South.
