Darfur continues to be a horror story with more than two million people displaced from their homes and at least 200,000 dead. The figures cannot be exact but they have been gathered by the UN and by aid agencies from around the world, doing their best to succor ravaged and uprooted communities. The Sudanese government, having accepted the 7,000 African Union peace-keeping force which is grossly inadequate to patrol a region the size of France, has also agreed to 3,000 UN peacekeepers, largely to give logistical support to the AU force. However, Khartoum rejects plans for a larger mobile UN deployment of 20,000 troops to make up a hybrid peacekeeping mission along with the AU military.
Some Sudanese do ubtless fear the intervention is inspired by Washington and may suspect that the West fomented the original Darfur rebellion four years ago. They may even believe that they are the victims of a long political game designed to allow the Darfur region to break away. The resolution of the conflict is perhaps still in the hands of President Omar Bashir’s administration. It can assert its authority in the Western region of the country, rein in the Janjaweed militias that have been acting in its name and stop the situation from drifting ever further out of its control.
Sudan is far from being a failed state. It has a unity government which includes members from the former breakaway south with whom it ended a 21-year conflict in 2005. It has growing hydrocarbon revenues. An administration which had the statesmanship to end one apparently interminable conflict ought to have the political savvy to deal with Darfur. Yet Khartoum has a dangerous blind spot about this appalling tragedy. Sudanese officials have protested that the death toll, far from being 200,000, is nearer 9,000. Leaving aside the fact that even 9,000 deaths should be unacceptable to any government, the disparity in the numbers is striking. If the Sudanese authorities are well enough represented in the region that they can make such a contradictory claim, why have they not also been able to initiate effective measures to bring the bloodshed and violence to an end?
On Friday, the UN agreed on a report that proposed the “robust” mobile force of 20,000 blue berets to act in support of the AU contingent in Darfur. It also agreed that these peacekeepers would only be deployed with Khartoum’s agreement. The door is still therefore open for the Bashir administration to retain control of the exercise, by welcoming and working with the UN and AU to try and bring peace to this troubled region of Sudan. Unfortunately the signs are that Khartoum will reject the plan. But what then is the alternative? Are Sudanese citizens to be allowed to continue brutalizing each other as Darfur sinks further into anarchy and barbarism? And what of the reputation of Sudan as the world watches the horrific disaster growing worse and worse? From both the humanitarian and political angles, the UN plan seems the only answer.
