US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that the world has failed Darfur. It has. Who can disagree when faced with the UN figure of 200,000 civilians killed in the four-year conflict and 2.4 million displaced? Despite all the “breakthroughs,” the peace agreements, not to mention the presence of African Union peacekeepers, the misery is unabated — and seems set to continue despite Sudan’s latest concession. It has accepted a hybrid force of UN and African Union troops for Darfur. The signals from Khartoum suggest that the new force is not going to be allowed to happen. The Darfuris could be about to wake up to another false dawn.
But it is not all despair. Hope comes from an altogether unexpected quarter: France. Rice’s comments came on the eve of Monday’s conference on Darfur hastily organized by the new French government of President Sarkozy. The push says a great deal about its desire to make an impact in Darfur and make it fast. What has driven this remarkable change from the former French foreign policy of putting national interest first is the appointment as foreign minister of Bernard Kouchner, founder of Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and also officially a socialist. He is passionate about putting an end to the killing — and he is a breath of fresh air. Few, however, can have realized that his appointment would have an effect so soon. Cynics may claim that with the conflict spilling over into Chad and the Central African Republic, both of which fall within France’s sphere of interests, the new French government is not acting from a totally dispassionate position in making Darfur its first foreign policy venture outside Europe.
The cynics may also be right that the ambitious Sarkozy is looking for an early foreign policy triumph and also for world applause. Nonetheless, Kouchner’s passion for peace cannot be disputed nor is there any reason to doubt Sarkozy’s commitment to ending the Darfur tragedy as soon as possible. With Darfur, France has signaled that it wants to pursue a morally-driven foreign policy. That is inspiring — and for that Sarkozy deserves all the applause and support the world can muster. Whether it lasts is another matter; across the Channel Britons still remember Robin Cook, Tony Blair’s first foreign secretary, promising an ethical foreign policy when Labour came to power ten years ago. It has all been sadly different. France must do better. For that, the commitment to Darfur has to remain total.
But French efforts will have to be focused on far more than bringing Khartoum’s main ally, China, round to their way of thinking or doing deals to solve the political divide in the war-torn region. People forget that the Darfur conflict began not as a political dispute between the center and a resentful region. It was caused by scarce water resources that pitted nomadic Arab tribesmen against settled African farmers. Until that issue and Darfur’s grinding poverty are addressed, no amount of politicking and diplomacy will end the conflict. There is also a lesson for us here. Many find ridiculous the warnings that water, or the lack of it, will be the cause of the next big war. Darfur proves the underlying truth of that fear. We all need to pay far greater attention to the potentially dangerous politics of water.
