The United States and Darfur - Very Briefly

According to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, "The Sudanese need to be convinced that if they are not willing to accept [] help from the international system, then they're going to be held accountable for anything that happens" (Reuters, 15 December). There is no 'if' about it: the Sudanese government has made it quite clear that it will not accept any legitimate help from the international community in terms of saving lives in Darfur, mainly because it is the body supporting and carrying out the massacres. Rice said they "will be held accountable": certainly, there are many who cannot wait for the International Criminal Court to issue its case evidence and suspect names against (presumably) members of the Sudanese government, Janjaweed, and even some rebel leaders for war crimes in February. The United States is not among those many, however, because this country is so staunchly opposed to the International Criminal Court. Therefore, we have absolutely no means with which to hold anyone accountable for anything, genocide or war crimes or ethnic cleansing. She also said that they will be responsible for anything "that happens": this future tense is completely denying the realities on the ground right now, as this genocide has exploded into an international genocide and war, leaving tens of thousands displaced, starving, and burnt to death in its wake.

Rice also stated that sanctions are being looked in to by the Security Council: there are already sanctions in place on Sudan, yet Khartoum is prospering as never before, and has perhaps the fastest growing economy in Africa. None of this is reaching Darfur unless it is in the form of rocket-propelled grenades and land cruisers, but regardless, the economy is soaring in Khartoum. Sanctions obviously have not played their part to curb violence in the past, particularly in this region: there is no evidence to suggest that sanctions will do anything more now.

No-fly zones would also be grossly ineffectual. The Sudanese government has even begun to paint their Antonov helicopters white, which is the color of medical vehicles. The paint job makes it difficult to distinguish military from aid planes, which renders a split-second decision no-fly zone enforcement nearly impossible.

"But the thing right now is to try and get the Sudanese to agree", Rice says. Agree to what? The government has categorically refused, countless times, to allow the Resolution 1706 mandated UN force into Sudan. In fact, it has been said multiple times that Darfur will become a "graveyard" for any UN peacekeepers that try to enter the region. The Sudanese government is responsible for carrying out a brutal genocide against its own people: there is absolutely no reason for it to open its arms to international troops. Bashir will never agree to that, and as long as Secretary Rice knows that, she will continue to passively claim that this genocide will be halted with utterly unsupported words spoken from the comfort of a briefing room thousands of miles away from the screams of the children of Darfur, Chad, and the Central African Republic.