Sudan's Bloody Peace

SUDAN
Bloody peace ignores tragedy in Darfur
Miami Herald
Posted on Fri, Jan. 14, 2005
BY FRIDA GHITIS

The streets of Juba, in southern Sudan, filled with joyous celebrations last Sunday. The thousands who came out to march and chant their happiness could hardly believe that the moment had finally arrived.
After decades of fighting, one of Africa's longest running and bloodiest conflicts had officially come to an end. Across the border in Kenya, officials from around the world had gathered to witness the signing of a peace deal ending a war that killed at least two million people and left millions more homeless. The president of Kenya called it, ``the beginning of a new, brighter future for the people of Sudan.''
Really? We may want to set aside that Nobel peace prize just for now.
In fact, rather than praise and commendation, the names of government leaders in Khartoum belong on indictments in war-crimes tribunals. Instead of shaking hands and back slaps with the world's politicians, these leaders' limbs belong in shackles. If ever there was a country deserving of regime change, Sudan is the one. And, as is often the case, powerful people around the globe have shielded and protected these leaders, allowing their track record of serial genocide to continue to this day.
The war that we can only hope just ended in the country's south pitted the Muslim central government against the Christian and animist south. Because most of the victims were Christians and the territories are rich in oil, the world eventually took the conflict seriously and exerted the necessary pressure to bring a resolution.
While the celebrations over the peace deal in southern Sudan unfolded, however, the systematic slaughter in Darfur, in western Sudan, continued. There, the war sets Muslim against Muslim. But the government and its supporters are Arab Muslims, and their victims are ethnic Africans, not Arabs. Despite many lofty-sounding speeches, threats and ultimatums, the world appears unwilling -- definitely not unable -- to do anything meaningful to stop the killing.
Let's be clear about this: Responsibility for the outrages in Darfur, where at least 70,000 have died and some two million have been forced from their homes, lies squarely with the Sudanese government and the nomadic Arab militias that it supports, the Janjaweed. But the international community, from the speechifying society of the United Nations Security Council to that exclusive dictators' club known as the Arab League, has shown little interest in stopping the slaughter. By their inaction -- our inaction -- we have become accomplices.
The peace treaty in the south provides for a sharing of the land's riches between the dictatorship and the people. The excruciatingly poor people of the region now have a chance at a measure of prosperity. The government no longer will enforce Muslim law there, and in a few years, the area will presumably be allowed to vote on full independence, rather than mere autonomy. But the strongmen in Khartoum are cleverly distracting the international community. They have learned their lesson, working to tighten their control and ''Arabize'' Darfur more than they did in the south.
Practically all the grievances against the government that created the conflict in the south are still the order of the day in Darfur, where the killings started after rebels said that their region, too, is marginalized, does not receive enough resources from the central government and should have a say in its own affairs.
The peace treaty just signed shows that this regime, which once harbored none other than Osama bin Laden, does respond to international pressure. Sadly, the international community has been unwilling to impose even an arms embargo on Khartoum, when much-stronger sanctions are fully justified.
Life for the people of Darfur has become a slow-motion nightmare of death and devastation. The only way to stop that is to impose strict sanctions on the regime and to push forth with a much-stronger presence of armed peace keepers than the minimal force now in place from the African Union. Without it, we are not only complicit in the horrors, but we risk a full unraveling of this weekend's peace treaty. After all, as a former Soviet refusenik once said, we should never trust a government that doesn't trust its own people.
If the killing in Darfur does not end, the joy in Juba could be short lived. We'll have ourselves, in addition to the perpetrators, to blame.

Frida Ghitis writes about world affairs.

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