Peace for Sudanese

Peace treaties in Sudan are as unreliable as the Khartoum government’s insistence that it has not — and never would — engage in genocide. But, as the murders and rapes of black Africans in Darfur go on, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is steadfast in refusing to allow entry to U.N. peacekeepers, even though the inadequate African Union on the ground wants them.

Declaring that these would be “colonial forces,” the ruthless Mr. al-Bashir accuses Jewish groups of organizing for U.N. intervention. “If we return to the last demonstrations in the United States, and the groups that organized the demonstrations,” said Mr. al-Bashir on June 21, “we find they are all Jewish organizations.” (Actually, a rainbow of many religious groups organized the demonstration.) This updating of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” — the perpetual myth of a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world — follows a report in the June 9 New York Sun that the “government of Sudan does not permit Jewish relief organizations to operate in the country.”

The major motivation of this insertion of anti-Semitism into Sudan’s crimes against black Africans in Darfur is, as the Sudan Tribune reported on June 16, that “Khartoum fears U.N. troops in Darfur may arrest [government] officials likely to be indicted by the International Criminal Court investigating alleged war crimes there.” Six days later, U.N. Head of Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno warned after a two-week exploratory mission in Darfur that a risk of more “major violence… after the rainy season, is quite real, very real.”

And Eric Reeves, the long-term premier expert historian of Sudan’s extermination of so many of its people, advises: “A cholera outbreak in Sudan has spread to the war-torn western Darfur region, posing a serious threat to the 2.5 million living in squalid camps in cramped conditions, a U.N. statement said… on June 11.” This epidemic “at the outset of the rainy season, has the potential to claim many tens of thousands of lives, particularly among populations cut off from adequate medical resources, including intravenous fluids.” The fatal sham of the May 5 peace agreement was its requirement that Sudan’s Khartoum government disband its hired killers and rapists, the Janjaweed, a lethal cause of the proliferation of these refugee camps endangered by disease and diminishing food aid.

As Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times reported on June 12, after a visit to the Northern Sudan headquarters of the thriving Janjaweed, Khartoum “pledged during seven separate rounds of peace talks over the past three years to neutralize them but has failed to do so.” Even more criminal than Khartoum’s refusal to admit responsibility for these Janjaweed murderers and rapists is this further revelation of Mr. al-Bashir’s fear of appearing before the International Criminal Court: “For some time, the government has been simply integrating the Janjaweed militias into its official paramilitary Popular Defense Forces and the regular army.” At Mr. al-Bashir’s trial for crimes against humanity, this would be a damaging fact.

The source of this information was the authoritative investigator of the genocide and other crimes of Khartoum, John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group. He added that the integration of these murderers into Sudan’s regular army will likely increase as Mr. al-Bashir insists that he will personally lead the resistance to any of these U.N. “colonizers” spurred on by the “Jewish conspiracy.” And what does U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan say as the corpses of the black African victims of Khartoum keep mounting? On June 22, a Sudan Tribune dispatch quoted Mr. Guehenno: “As long as the government of Sudan does not accept a [U.N.] mission, there will not be one. It’s as simple as that.” His boss, Kofi Annan, did not disagree. Mr. Annan only added, said the report, “that he hoped al-Bashir would change his mind.” (Mr. Annan was silent during the Rwandan genocide.)

So this is what the United Nations has become. The ever-expanding charnel house of Darfur and now Chad will exceed even the rivers of blood in Rwanda as the signature of Mr. Annan’s U.N. reign, as well as the shame of all the countries, including the United States, that piously deplored this genocide known to all, and let it go on and on and on so that the precious sovereignty of the monstrous government of Khartoum would not be disrespected.

Will any world leaders dare to say once more, “Never again”? Of course, they will.