Posted on: Wednesday, July 28, 2004

EDITORIAL
Catastrophe in Sudan calls for intervention

Genocide is a word being used with the utmost care these days because of the daunting obligations it incurs under modern international law.

Official declaration that what has been occurring in the Darfur region of the Sudan amounts to genocide will activate some specific responsibilities for the United States, other governments and the United Nations that no one should undertake lightly.

But the conditions on the ground in Darfur have long since outgrown, in terms of sheer horror, the measured response coming from the outside world so far.

Ethnic tensions between nomadic Arabs and black farmers and herdsmen in the region, the size of France, have led the former to form mounted militias, called Janjaweed, against the latter. Villages and crops have been burned, men slaughtered, women raped, wells poisoned in a systematic effort at ethnic cleansing. One million of these farmers have been displaced, and up to 50,000 of them killed.

The U.S. Congress has declared, in a nonbinding resolution, that this does indeed amount to genocide. Meanwhile, thousands are nearing starvation in refugee camps under appalling conditions.

So far the Bush administration's solution has been to demand that the Sudan government disarm the Janjaweed and provide security for international relief efforts. To this, Sudan has agreed in word but not in deed.

To mounting calls for international intervention in this catastrophe, serious impediments abound:

• The Khartoum government has warned sharply that it will fight back if foreign troops are sent to end the conflict.

• The Janjaweed are partly the creation of and instruments of the government.

• The U.S. military, enmeshed in two wars, is badly overextended, and the logistical demands of operating in northeast Africa are severe.

• The rest of the world shows few signs of backing its verbal eagerness to intervene with money or troops — or even a U.S. call for U.N. sanctions against the government.

The civilized world cannot stand back and allow another Rwanda, and that's what is quickly developing in the Sudan. This clearly is a job for the United Nations, with the understanding that sanctions, if they fail, must be backed up. This will require limited but decisive American help — air transport and helicopter gunships come to mind — plus broad international support.

Philosophically, the Bush administration has been more than skeptical of this kind of effort. But now it's the world's only choice.