LONDON, 22 June 2004 — The cry of “something must be done” is becoming louder. Each new report on the plight of the Sudanese refugees evokes fresh sympathy.
More than one million have been forced out of their villages in Darfur. Thousands are dying and thousands more are set to die over the next three months as the rainy season begins, reducing their camps to squalor and cutting many of them off from aid.
The Sudanese government has been complicit in this, arming the Arab militia, the Janjaweed, which is responsible for terrorizing the villagers and driving them out.
At the UN, at the EU and various national parliaments, voices are demanding action. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who is to visit Sudan in the next few weeks, made a speech in May saying he did not want a repeat of the Rwanda genocide and hinted at a series of steps for Sudan, including military action.
An argument among those favoring intervention is that if it was right for the US and Britain to intervene in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, the case for Sudan is more clear-cut, both morally and in terms of numbers at risk.
In the London Times last Friday, James Smith, director of the Aegis Trust, an organization aimed at prevention of genocide, called for a UN resolution to impose a no-fly zone to stop the Sudanese government bombing its own citizens; introduce economic and political sanctions; and reserve the right to send in a peacekeeping force.
British government policy is to resist such calls and instead concentrate on diplomacy, maintaining dialogue with the Sudanese government and trying to win concessions through persuasion or pressure. On this issue, the British government may well be right. As Iraq demonstrated, diplomacy — however flawed — is preferable to the uncertainty of military intervention. Smith calls for a no-fly zone in Darfur, but it is too late for that. The Janjaweed, supported by Sudanese bombing raids, have completed their work over the last year. The villages are empty. Nor does military action appear necessary to ensure the supply of humanitarian aid. The Sudanese government had been blocking access by humanitarian agencies to Darfur and delaying the distribution of food and medical supplies. But diplomacy has succeeded in persuading the Sudanese government to ease these restrictions.
The other cry of those who feel something must be done is that international sanctions should be imposed against Sudan, another strategy largely discredited by the Iraq experience. The US, mindful that Sudan harbored Osama Bin Laden in the 1990s, still maintains trade sanctions against it. Blanket sanctions by the international community would add to the suffering of an already impoverished population, as happened in Iraq after the first Gulf War.
The final logic of intervention is the overthrow of the government. That would provide the UN with a problem comparable to Iraq. Separate from Darfur, the Sudanese government has been engaged for over 20 years in a civil war with the south of the country. An agreement to end that war is close to completion, but remove the government and that would be in jeopardy.
The better approach is to try to work with the Sudanese government, no matter how cynical it is. Diplomatic pressure has to be increased on the Sudanese government to begin policing Darfur, in the first case by protecting the camps. On the face of it, that seems like asking a cat to protect the mice. But the Sudanese government is showing signs of embarrassment over what is happening in Darfur and could yet be forced to rein in the Janjaweed.
