What Can Be Done?

unt question:

“The mayhem in Darfur, in western Sudan, where some 400,000 people may have been killed and 2 million-plus displaced, is worsening. The misery is spreading west into neighbouring Chad, unhinging that country and threatening a proxy war with Sudan. What can be done?” (“Chaos in western Sudan is threatening to engulf neighboring Chad” [dateline: N’Djamena, Chad], The Economist, March 2, 2006).

Obscenely, the question posed (“what can be done?”) has only answers increasingly attenuated by circumstances on the ground. “What can be done” to halt ongoing genocide by attrition—given the widespread and conspicuous failure of international will to date—is increasingly little. Darfur is poised to see a season of death like no other in this three-year catastrophe. Having dithered, delayed, postured, and obfuscated for so long, the international community has now simply run out of time. The most urgent of currently contemplated responses simply cannot halt the cascade of deadly effects rippling across the brutalized terrain of Darfur. Huge numbers will die in the coming rainy season, especially children under five (the rainy season runs from June to September, with July, August, and September typically the months of heaviest rains). Indeed, there are already signs of increased mortality, as well as morbidity and malnutrition that are harbingers of accelerating mortality rates.

A recent overview from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs offers an unsparing assessment of curent trends. The prosaically entitled “Preliminary analysis of the impact of reduced access and funding shortages on humanitarian activities” (February 2006) forces upon us a terrifying vision of the likely consequences—near- to medium-term—of the ongoing contraction of humanitarian delivery, access, and resources.

Meanwhile demonstrators in Khartoum protest against UN plans to take over peacekeeping operations in Darfur:

The marchers, including militias backed by the government, chanted slogans and held banners saying such things as “UN Troops bring your coffins with you”. […]

Stirred up by violent rhetoric in Islamic newspapers, several thousands of people marched on the UN headquarters.

Our correspondent says many believe their country’s sovereignty is at stake, with the West eager to turn Sudan into another Iraq.

Death threats against Western diplomats have been published and militia groups have warned of a holy war.

And how’s this for chutzpah?

A Sudanese envoy has stressed his government’s opposition to the United Nations taking over peacekeeping duties from the African Union in Darfur.

The envoy, Mohamed Elsamani, said Western troops in any prospective UN force were particularly unacceptable to Sudan referring to the behaviour of US soldiers in Iraq.

“Regarding the bad conduct or treatment of some, whatever linked with the UN or individual countries like America, how it is treating people in Guantanamo, how the allies are treating people in Iraq, in Abu Ghraib prison, or killing civilians – it is not a process which will be accepted in Sudan,” he said.