Time Running Out in Sudan

Sudan has edged away from being the playground for terrorists it was in the 1990s, when Carlos the Jackal, Abu Nidal and Osama bin Laden called the African country home. In recent years it has tried to improve relations with the United States, but the Sudanese government’s lies about the ethnic cleansing it is sponsoring in the country’s Darfur region threaten to again make it a pariah.

A conservative estimate of the death toll in Darfur is 10,000. The respected International Crisis Group puts it at 30,000. Aid workers warn that hundreds of thousands more could die if the Khartoum government keeps blocking supplies to refugees.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell toured the Abu Shouk refugee camp in Darfur on Wednesday as part of his application of needed pressure on the government to halt the killings by Arab Muslim militias and to let foreign aid agencies operate. The militias have razed villages, murdered inhabitants, burned crops and poisoned water. The terror campaign against black African tribes has caused more than 1 million Sudanese to flee their homes. The military dictatorship denies that the militias operate with its blessing, but without its approval the thugs could not continue their campaign of murder, rape and pillage.

Between denials of the gravity of the crisis, Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail said this week that the government would cooperate with relief efforts, protect civilians and disarm militias. The United Nations, which is considering an arms embargo and travel ban on the militias, should hold Ismail to his word. Speed is important; once the heavy rains start, it will become more difficult to cross rivers to supply the camps.

Powell said before his Abu Shouk visit that lawyers were studying whether to describe the Darfur campaign as genocide, which a U.N. convention defines as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” If the U.N. did apply the label, the convention would compel the U.S. and other countries to intervene. U.S. troops are tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq, and NATO is dragging its feet on adding soldiers in Afghanistan. But African nations could supply armed forces, especially under authorization from the U.N. Security Council. A debate over semantics should not stand in the way of getting relief quickly to Darfur.

The U.S.-Sudanese relationship has not yet improved enough to get Khartoum removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and the country still hosts offices of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. It can demonstrate that it has reversed course from its support of Al Qaeda and similar groups by ending the terror it is waging against its own citizens and helping food, water and clothing get to the refugees of Darfur.