It did nothing to improve security outside the camps for the displaced, but in a single camp in a single day arrested, and then reportedly tortured, 50 men it accused of encouraging others to balk at returning to burned villages that are beyond the reach of relief.
To this day, Khartoum refuses to countenance a peacekeeping force to protect civilians in Darfur, insisting that this is the job of its own security forces – the very same forces supporting the janjaweed. […]
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, after a lightening visit to Darfur, said the Khartoum government had made progress. “The last thing we want is the international community to be in conflict with the government of Sudan,” he said.
Why on earth not? Could it be because Khartoum has warned, brazenly, of Iraq-style opposition to any foreign intervention to save lives in Darfur? But this is a government that seized power by force and wields it by force – one that hosted Osama bin Laden not that long ago and that spends its oil revenues on arming itself to murder its own citizens. It is also a government whose proxy militia in Darfur has “chained civilians together and set them on fire,” according to the AU.
The few expedient modifications Khartoum has made to its behavior in Darfur will doubtless provide the excuse most Security Council members want to temporize yet again next Monday. If they fail to endorse a new action plan that is backed by sanctions against government officials responsible for Sudan’s militia policy, they must be deemed to have failed in their “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.”
The present impasse not only guarantees tens of thousands more deaths in the short term, but wider instability in the longer term. After Monday, the Security Council, too, must be in the dock.
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