What to do about Darfur

THE UNITED STATES IS APPARENTLY serious about sending international troops into Darfur -- so much so that on Thursday, Congress approved $60 million to help pay for a United Nations peacekeeping mission there. Too bad the mission itself doesn’t exist and, without more top-level diplomatic involvement, may never materialize.

Last month’s peace agreement between the Sudanese government in Khartoum and one of the rebel factions in the Darfur region was hailed as a triumph of diplomacy. But it’s looking more and more like the latest in a series of empty gestures.

The cease-fire has been ignored by both sides, and the violence has actually increased. The only way to stop the ongoing rape, murder and dislocation of millions of innocent Darfurians by Sudanese soldiers and government-backed militias is to send in a strong U.N. peacekeeping force empowered to protect civilians.

The U.N. will be debating such a force in the coming weeks, but it faces a very tall hurdle: the Sudanese government. It’s theoretically possible to send peacekeepers into a country without the permission of that nation’s government, but it isn’t likely because that would constitute an invasion rather than a peacekeeping mission, and the U.N. isn’t big on invasions. So the U.N. is essentially waiting for an invitation to intervene by the world’s most murderous regime.

That invitation has not been forthcoming, especially because Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir and his associates have reason to worry that the arrival of international troops in Darfur would foreshadow their arrest on charges of crimes against humanity.

On Wednesday, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor unveiled documentation of thousands of civilian killings and hundreds of rapes; the U.N. Security Council has approved international prosecution of those responsible.

There still might be a way of resolving the mess. China and Russia have long stood in the way of strong Security Council sanctions against Sudan, but diplomatic pressure from the U.S., including personal attention from President Bush, could change that. With a threat of serious sanctions over its head, Khartoum might be persuaded to allow a peacekeeping mission.

The United States deserves credit for being more engaged with the Sudanese problem than the rest of the international community. But it remains far more focused on the Middle East than Africa.

The Darfur crisis should be considered among the nation’s, and the world’s, top diplomatic priorities.