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Deja vu — Judith Apter Klinghoffer

Daniel Mandel

WORLD INDIFFERENCE ON SUDAN'S GENOCIDE

Genocide committed against black Muslims by Arab Muslims has proceeded unhindered in Sudan's Darfur region since 2003. In 2004, the Bush Administration determined that genocide was indeed occurring and said so, unlike almost anyone else, before implicitly retracting that designation in February 2006 and thus the apparent need for action.

Internationally, there has been talk of Sudanese solutions, African solutions, Arab solutions, NATO solutions,
Chinese solutions and UN solutions. None have materialized.

As Oscar Wilde might have said, to suggest an abortive solution might be viewed as a misfortune. To suggest several looks like carelessness. In fact, it is evidence of more than mere carelessness; something like basic indifference. Such was certainly on display in May last year when the European Commission Ambassador to Israel, Ramiro Cibrian-Uzal, made the revealing admission that neither genocide in Darfur nor ethnic cleansing in Tibet could jockey for priority with the Palestinian issue for European hearts and minds. Said plainly Cibrian-Uzal, Darfur "is not one of our strategic priorities."

400,000 people murdered in an ongoing genocide, yet Darfur is not a strategic priority for Mr Cibrian-Uzal.

What to do? Lawrence Kaplan and Marisa Katz
have both argued that international reluctance to see America involved ("American soldiers might arouse resentment in Sudan," says the New York Times) is resulting in depriving the future victims of Darfur of the only military force capable of saving them. The US needs also to summon the will but shows scant sign of doing so at the moment. In the meantime, do not expect any local panaceas. America's ally, Egypt, will be no help; to the contrary, it has been consistently thwarting international action. And an Arab League that held its annual summit in Khartoum last year cannot be the agency for anything other than acquiescence in chaos and bloodshed.