Darfur’s misery continues

Diplomatic pressure, moral leadership desperately needed to counteract Sudan

SAVE EMAIL PRINT POPULAR It has been nearly five years since the humanitarian crisis in Sudan began, since attempts at diplomacy were made with the Sudanese government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Yet 400,000 people are dead, 2.5 million are displaced and nothing has changed on the ground.

Sadly, gunmen killed two African Union peacekeepers and critically wounded a third the other day, punctuating the violence and instilling concerns that the gunmen belonged to the Sudan Liberation Army — the rebel faction that signed the Darfur Peace Agreement in May 2006. If so, international efforts at peace have been severely damaged. The incident begs the question as to what significant action world leaders plan.

Diplomacy, by itself, isn’t going to work. If al-Bashir wanted to do the right thing, he would have done so a long time ago. Instead, he is putting off deployment of a U.N. multilateral peacekeeping force with the authority and ability to protect the civilian population, calling it a Western attempt to colonize Africa’s largest country. Read more >>>