ABSTRACT
Despite countless opportunities to halt genocide in Darfur, ongoing since 2003, the international community has accommodated the wide-ranging atrocities of the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime. With varying motives, the UN, the African Union, the European Union and the United States have all acquiesced in the face of the regime’s canny obduracy. Europe, which never considered imposing the severe economic sanctions of the sort imposed by the U.S., has commercial and economic interests in the country, and increasingly wants Khartoum as a partner in stanching the flow of African migrants to Europe. The U.S. since 9/11 has been obsessed with obtaining from Khartoum counter-terrorism intelligence. UN leadership, particularly under Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, has been feckless and misguided. For reasons of narrow self-interest, the African Union leadership has been content to praise the collapsing UN/African Union (“Hybrid”) Mission in Darfur, a Mission that has failed catastrophically in its primary mission of civilian protection. All this occurs against a backdrop of rapidly increasing repression in Sudan, the implosion of a badly managed economy, and the outbreak of new genocidal counter-insurgencies in South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Darfur is the scene of vast militia violence, disintegrating international humanitarian operations, and the continuing displacement of some 3 million non-Arab Darfuris. Their future is grim beyond description.
