Winking at genocide

GLOBE EDITORIAL
November 8, 2005

A RECENT letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed by 109 members of Congress from both parties castigated the Bush administration for ''engaging in a policy of appeasement" toward the government of Sudan, which both Congress and former secretary of state Colin Powell have denounced as a perpetrator of genocide in the nation's Darfur region. The policy being carried out by Rice and her deputies may be more accurately described as indulgence of the Khartoum regime rather than appeasement, but, whatever the label, the failure to stop the suffering in Darfur is indefensible.

Reports from humanitarian organizations, the United Nations, and the African Union ambassador speaking for the 7,000 AU peacekeepers now in Darfur all indicate a resurgence of violence there this fall. The National Islamic Front regime of Sudan has renewed its practice of using military aircraft in support of Arab Janjaweed militias conducting murderous raids on African villages. Humanitarian workers providing food and other relief supplies to the more than 2 million displaced villagers languishing in makeshift camps inside Darfur are being attacked. The UN commissioner for refugees, Antonio Guterres, warned last month of ''a very serious degradation" in Darfur, saying, ''People are dying, and dying in large numbers."

Some assaults on humanitarian convoys have been conducted by Darfurian rebel groups fighting the government, but guilt for the Darfur genocide falls almost entirely on that regime and its Janjaweed proxies. Unlike the 1994 Rwanda slaughter, this is a slow-motion genocide. So there is no excuse for the world's failure to intervene and save lives.

The congressional letter signers are right to worry that the State Department has waived sanction rules so the Sudanese government could hire a Washington lobbyist, at a cost of $530,000. And then there is the dubious matter of the State Department softening the definition of Sudan from a Tier 3 to a Tier 2 violator of prohibitions against human trafficking. This change was justified on the basis of a plan for ending sexual violence against women that Sudan's rulers presented to Rice when she visited in July. However, that plan originated with her deputy, Robert Zoellick, who preceded her in Khartoum by two weeks. Such coaching of Khartoum suggests a policy rooted in the obtuse assumption that dialogue is the way to end a genocide.

Zoellick, who left for Sudan again Sunday, should instead be warning Sudan's rulers that if they do not disarm the Janajaweed and halt the genocide, the United States and its NATO allies will provide funds and logistical support for a greatly enlarged African Union force with a UN mandate not merely to observe events but to use force to stop the slaughter and save lives.

source: boston.com