You can’t save Darfur

Two-hundred thousand residents of the Darfur region of Sudan are dead. Thousands more have been raped and tortured by the (probably government-endorsed) Janjaweed militias. Additionally, 2.5 million people have been displaced by the conflict. \nSo what can be done?\nAt this point, nothing good.\nSince 2004, student groups who that hope to save the people in Darfur have rallied for the UN to send a peacekeeping force to the region.\nBut with uncooperative government leadership in Sudan, the absence of anything that could be called an infrastructure in Darfur and the limited powers of UN troops and Ban Ki-Moon’s recent decision to send UN troops will do painfully little.\nRewind to Rwanda, circa 1994. The Hutus are murdering the Tutsis in the former Belgian colony in central Africa. The UN sends in a peacekeeping force led by Canada. However, international troop presence does not prevent 800,000 people from dying within a span of three months. The UN soldiers are crippled – under-manned, under-gunned and under orders not to shoot. \nThe UN has since conceded that their mission in Rwanda was a failure – so why should Darfur be any different?\nSo here’s what we should do instead. \nOption one: Forcibly remove Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, denounce him as an evil dictator and knock over that big statue of him in the capital. Then pretend the country’s minority has been saved from the indiscriminately murderous ways of the dictator, hang the dude messily, accidentally sever the heads of a few of his associates and call it a day. We already did it in one country; why not in the Sudan?\nOption two: More economic sanctions and humanitarian aid. The world is clamoring for China to cut off diplomatic and economic relations with the Sudanese government. Most other world powers have already done so. Send humanitarian aid via NGOs to Darfur to ensure sanctions hurt the government and not the people. \nOption three: Transform this peacekeeping force into a formidable threat to the Janjaweed. Allow the UN soldiers to use their guns and kill Janjaweed leaders. \nNo peacenik college student could endorse options one or three. No one wants Darfur to become Iraq the Second. Killing the Janjaweed leaders also poses many problems, namely that killing for the sake of peace is crooked logic. \nEconomic sanctions plus humanitarian aid will not work because Sudan’s civil war and damaged infrastructure prevent the easy dissemination of aid. Economic sanctions will only further hurt a damaged country.\nSo we fall back on option four: Rely on the UN to protect those in most immediate danger, even as we know there is only so much the soldiers can do.\nBut the only thing that can save Darfur now is to time travel into the past, when diplomacy and international intervention could have prevented the conflict.\nUnfortunately, the troubles of poor, resourceless countries like Sudan are ignored until they are shamefully obvious. Many disasters in the ’90s, like Kosovo and Rwanda, might have been thwarted had the international community cared earlier. Diplomacy works, but only if it happens early enough. \nNext time we have another situation like the one in Darfur, let’s try to salvage it sooner.