In Darfur, the suffering continues

Hotel Darfur?

THIRTEEN YEARS after the Rwandan massacre, what has the world learned about preventing genocide? Not enough, apparently, for those suffering in Darfur.

The two nations' stories are somewhat different; the results, sadly similar. The Rwandan massacre was a blitzkrieg of violence by government-supported Hutus against the Tutsis, an ethnic minority. In just three months, between 800,000 and 1.1 million people died. The Darfurian conflict has been longer, lasting four years now, but, again, the victims have been an ethnic group--the black Africans who populate Darfur. Driven from their homes, slaughtered and raped by government-supported janjaweed militia, 200,000 of them have been killed, and more than 2 million displaced. They sit in camps, waiting.

The Rwandan debacle forced the world's powers to do some soul-searching. Uniformly, they had refused to call what was going on in Rwanda "genocide." Rather than intervene to save the Tutsis, they withdrew peacekeepers, abandoned embassies and native workers, and thereby empowered the thugs running rampant through the land.

In the shadow of Rwanda, the U.N. Security Council in 2005 passed Resolution 1706, declaring that the international community has a "responsibility to protect" populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or ethnic cleansing--even if the national government resists.

Enter Darfur. When news of the janjaweed's attacks on Darfurians surfaced, the United States was among the first to describe the killing campaign as "genocide." Four years later, the wholesale slaughter has ended, says Andrew Natsios, special envoy to Sudan. Speaking recently to a group of editorial writers, Mr. Natsios explained that most Darfurians are now languishing in displacement camps or holed up in the mountains hiding from government troops. Their villages are gone. The United States and other nations are providing over $2.7 billion in humanitarian aid to support the victims.

Peace is a long way off. And, despite the U.N.'s own resolution affirming a "responsibility to protect," that body dawdles, awaiting approval from the Sudanese government to send in U.N. troops. Read more >>>