So What To Do In Darfur?

The United States, two years late I might add, is finally responding to public pressure and intervening more directly in Darfur.

The United States' No. 2 diplomat joined Darfur peace talks Tuesday and President Bush called Sudan's leader as mediators tried to get rebels and the government to strike a deal before a midnight deadline.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick headed into a conference room with African Union mediators and delegates from the warring parties.

Rebels stuck to their demands for concessions on security and power-sharing. The Sudanese government said it approved a draft of the peace deal first circulated last week at the AU-hosted talks.

"We asked him (Zoellick) to put pressure on the government side so that we can have a balanced paper - and then we can sign it," said Ahmed Hussein, a spokesman for the Justice and Equality Movement, one of the Darfur rebel factions.

"We told him that our demands are very limited. We are asking for the rights of the people of Darfur within a united Sudan," he told reporters after meeting Zoellick.

In addition, Bush called the President of Sudan to push for peace, as Presidents of the world's only remaining superpower need to do. Meanwhile the janjaweed have stepped up attacks, much like the Nazis started engaging in wholesale killing right before the end of WWII. Both want to bury the evidence.

This is why it is so crucial to have the international community united on this issue. The Sudanese government has apparently agreed to disarm the militia in a draft agreement, but given that they use air power to support the militia, I don't think we are in a position to trust them. Sudan is clearly a case of ethnic cleansing, and it's appalling that we've sat idly by for this long. A meager African Union presence in an area this large (7,000 troops in a space the size of Texas) does not work, and I know that's the preferred course of action, but it doesn't reflect reality unless it's backed by NATO in the air. Sanctions are nice. American interests divesting themselves of financial ties to Khartoum is nice. An African Union force that isn't mandated to even shoot is nice. None of it will stop the killing. They haven't worked to date.

So if we're serious about stopping the first genocide of the 21st century, which should be front-page news every day until it's stopped, my initial thoughts are that we must at least consider a full intervention. Mark Leon Goldberg doesn't quite think so, and offers a range of policy options. First he puts things into perspective:

With no expectation that the 130,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq will be rotated out anytime soon, the requisite number of troops that would be required to pacify Darfur are simply unavailable. But even if it were feasible, it would be neither wise nor prudent to do so. Given the experience in Iraq, there is reason to believe that the U.S. military simply cannot undertake such a task, no matter how noble our intentions. American boots on the ground will bolster popular support for the ruling National Islamic Front. They will also inspire jihadis who have rotated out of the Iraqi theatre to respond to Osama bin Laden’s recent call to arms and mount an insurgency against America in Darfur.

Osama's already called for this in a recent tape. We can't hope to control his message. I understand the lack of troops argument (which is why NATO must do its part). But as for bolstering popular support, what choice do we have? This is Goldberg's answer:

I. Diplomatic Pressure

The United States has engaged with Darfur more than any other country in the Security Council, but that is not saying much. The Bush administration has not yet made punishing the men responsible for this genocide a priority. According to an April 5 Reuters report, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton sought to keep top Sudanese commanders off a Security Council list of individuals to be sanctioned for perpetrating the violence in Darfur. To be sure, China and Russia will likely block efforts to criminalize the Sudanese political and military leadership, but this should not deter the United States from trying. Doing so would send the clear message to Khartoum that the counter-terrorist intelligence we have received from them does not give them a carte blanche for genocide.

Further, the United States has not sought to use the International Criminal Court’s investigation in Darfur as leverage against the Sudanese regime. Perhaps because the U.S. delegation to the United Nations is lead by the Bush administration’s most ardent critic of the ICC, the political advantage of this criminal investigation has not been exploited by the United States. This is not to say that paper indictments will stop the genocide, but it should put the regime on the defensive. Men fearing a U.S.-supported articles of indictment are wont to go into hiding, not orchestrate more crimes against humanity.

Finally, the African Union (AU) forces in Sudan have conducted themselves admirably. But at 7,000, their size is paltry and their mandate does not allow for traditional peace-keeping operations... the United States should make a properly mandated AU force a top priority of American-South African relations, and the United States should offer to help underwrite the costs of such a force.

One thing we do have is money, so bankrolling a properly mandated AU force could work. And certainly we need to stop pretending that Sudan is such a wonderful partner in the war on terror when they are terrorizing their own civilians. I'm all for making the perpetrators responsible. But even Goldberg doesn't believe that all of this will possibly work. He has no trust in the current negotiator, Robert Zoellick, and calls on the President to appoint a special envoy. But failing all this, even Goldberg is forced to consider other options:

It is conceivable that should the United States pursue these policies in tandem, the regime in Khartoum will quickly find itself under a strain of international pressure that it has not experienced since it was sanctioned for orchestrating a plot to assassinate Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in 1995. But should Khartoum continue to support the their proxy janjaweed militia, disrupt humanitarian access to Darfur, or launch aggressive military campaigns in Darfur, the United States should reserve the right to launch cruise missile or airstrikes against Sudanese military instillations. The regime in Khartoum values its fleet of converted Antonov transport jets above human lives. So why not threaten the government where it will hurt? The leaders in Khartoum are not bloodthirsty thugs for the hell of it. Rather, they devised a counterinsurgency strategy of genocide precisely because it was the most practical way to suppress a rebellion. It would not take much to make that strategy prohibitively expense for Khartoum by taking out a few dozen aircraft.

These aren't easy choices, and Goldberg comes to them in a reasoned way. He lays out the challenges of air strikes and how to manage the situation in the UN. Anyone who thinks that there's no such thing as a realist, progressive, muscular foreign policy should read the Goldberg story.

Of course, the elephant in the room is that we're talking about an Administration that's shown a stunning inability to make foreign policy decisions that are (a) separate from politics and (b) good for the world. I'm not exactly optimistic that these guys will do the right thing. But I feel there must be a continued push to stop what is a clear case of genocide. In this day and age, genocide affects American interests no matter where it occurs. With inaction, Darfur will become as much a part of Bush's legacy as Iraq. To quote Barack Obama, "Paralysis in the face of genocide is wrong. . . . If we care, the world will care."

We can offer these solutions, prove that liberals can be trusted on foreign affairs, and hope that the Administration will heed the advice. We must empower this government to take meaningful action. This weekend I was at a gathering for two of the Lost Boys of the Sudan. They were refugees from the South, fleeing from a different part of the conflict, but the misery they described can only be the same in Darfur, if not worse. We have to do more.