Hand-wringing over Darfur

JOHANNESBURG — Another bloody African crisis, another round of hand-wringing in the capitals of the world’s most powerful nations.

As the 30-day deadline nears for Sudan to disarm the mostly Arab pro-government militias in Darfur, the United Nations and the leading Western powers are in a dilemma over how far to go to stop the killing in an African country.

Still haunted by the fiasco in Somalia a decade ago, the United States and its European allies are reluctant to intervene militarily in Africa — afraid of being dragged into a quagmire far from home while troops are still tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Western nations want Africa to lead — to find African solutions for African problems. But analysts say the governments of the continent lack the cohesion, resources and political will.

“It is terrible. The West finds a need to follow an African lead, and Africa is not ready to lead,” said Greg Mills, director of the South African Institute of International Affairs.

In Sudan’s Darfur region, at least 1.2 million black Africans have fled the militias, known as the Janjaweed, that have killed thousands of civilians in response to a rebellion.

The African Union is taking various approaches to dealing with the Darfur conflict, offering to host peace talks in Nigeria between African rebels and the Sudanese government starting Monday and providing forces to protect monitors of an April 8 cease-fire agreement.

But Africa’s capacity to supply troops is limited, analysts say.

“What is needed now is for someone to go in — not with a peacekeeping force, but with an enforcement force,” said Chris Landsberg, co-director of the South African Center for International Relations. “The African Union is not ready for that. They are already overstretched in Burundi and Congo.”

While Africans die, Western capitals debate whether to classify the deaths officially as genocide, as Congress and some humanitarian groups have declared, or as a less serious episode of ethnic cleansing.

Mr. Landsberg accused the United States and its allies of seeking ways to avoid calling the Janjaweed attacks a genocide — a definition that some argue would require action under the 1948 Geneva Convention.

However, in the case of Darfur, he said, “I think we are heading for genocide unless decisive action is taken.”

A decade ago, Hutu extremists in Rwanda slaughtered more than 500,000 people, mostly Tutsis, while the U.N. Security Council, paralyzed by events in Somalia to the north, watched from afar. Instead of beefing up its peacekeepers in the country, the world body pulled them out.

Today, all agree more should have been done.

Now, faced with another killing field in Africa, there still is no clear idea how to proceed.

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