WHATEVER the truth of the charges and countercharges about the role of Sudanese forces, foreign governments or international conspiracy in the trouble in Darfur, the fact is that atrocities continue to be committed in the region. The Sudanese government does not deny this.
Therefore, it made no sense for Khartoum to reject the UN Security Council resolution demanding that Sudan act decisively to stop the violence immediately after it was passed Friday saying that the facts on which it was based were incorrect. The problem is that the crisis in Darfur has moved beyond the stage where the outside world is prepared to listen to detailed refutations of the charges made against the Sudanese authorities. Had Sudan heeded the advice of friends and addressed rather than ignored the rising tide of disaster, it could have avoided this confrontation with the United Nations and the alarming possibility of outside military intervention in a month’s time.
The ugly facts of Darfur are clear enough to the international community. Some one million people have been driven from their homes into camps either in neighboring Chad or in Sudan itself. At least 10,000, and maybe as many as 50,000 people, have been murdered. There has been widespread rape and pillage. The people who committed these crimes of genocidal proportions are the militias of the Janjawid. They are even patrolling refugee camps in Sudan and have been seen by independent observers, still killing and raping helpless victims. The firm hand of the Sudanese authorities in this situation has hardly been apparent at all.
Khartoum has made matters worse by seeming to go out of its way to hinder the attempts of aid agencies to bring in personnel, equipment, food and tents. Once again the government has claimed it regrets the extraordinary delays that have been reported. However, if these are indeed simply the result of bureaucratic inefficiency, then senior ministers must shake up its civil servants and demand Darfur relief be given the highest priority.
At no point has Sudan been able to present a convincing explanation for its slow and feeble response to the catastrophe that is taking place among over a million of its own people.
Khartoum has been given 30 days to act decisively, crack down on the militia, substantially speed up the flow of outside aid and facilitate in any other way it can the international effort to stop the terrible sufferings of more than a million refugees. The time to debate what led to this calamity is not now. Rebels may well have started it and the Janjawid may have been, originally, reacting to attacks from them. The Darfur rebellion may indeed have been fostered by the Sudanese Liberation Army in the south as a lever to pressure the government during the settlement of the long-running conflict which has drained Sudan since 1956. However none of this is relevant at this precise moment.
Sudan must comply with Security Council demands, act against the Janjawid and speed aid. Anything less will precipitate a disaster of far greater proportions.
