Don't let Sudan become another Rwanda

Don't let Sudan become another Rwanda
In Darfur, a region in western Sudan the size of Texas, civil strife has raged for the past two years, bringing with it a litany of pillaging, rape, arson and murder. More than 30,000 innocent civilians have died, and more than 1 million have been forced to flee their homes.
Jan Egeland, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, calls the conflict in northern Africa the "worst humanitarian crisis in the world today."
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is considering using the term genocide to describe what many call state-sanctioned killings there.
President Bush and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan have each condemned the atrocities and called for aid workers to be given immediate, unimpeded access.
Those stark images and calls to action are hauntingly familiar. So, too, has been the international community's long-standing indifference to Sudan.
It was 10 years ago this spring that the world finally began to take note of genocide on a massive scale in another African nation, Rwanda. It was there that more than 800,000 African tribesman were slaughtered by a rival tribe with tacit government complicity. Ultimately, international pressure, U.N. peacekeepers and relief arrived. But in general, those measures were too little and far too late.
The international community then pledged to work aggressively to never let the atrocities in Rwanda be repeated. Curiously, that lesson has not been heeded. Callous indifference reigns anew.
Background
Increasing evidence points to government complicity in the atrocities in Darfur. A U.N. report last month accused Sudan's leadership of supporting Arab militias carrying out what was described as a strategy of systematic and deliberate starvation against African tribes in Darfur. A Human Rights Watch report accused the government of overseeing or directly participating in "massacres, summary executions of civilians -- including women and children" as well as "burnings of towns and villages and the forcible depopulation of wide swaths of land" in Darfur.
Now that the bloodbath has intensified, there are a few optimistic signs that the international community may soon abandon apathy.
U At last week's G-8 summit of industrialized nations in Georgia, leaders called on Sudan's government to disarm Arab militias that they said were carrying out "gross human rights violations" against blacks in Darfur.
U The European Union has decided to give $14.5 million toward an observer mission led by the African Union.
UThe United Nations is beginning debate on how to respond to the carnage in Sudan.
Such signs are encouraging since the region has long been overlooked by the West. Indeed, in 1999, when the seeds of today's conflict were taking root, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is reported to have said that the Sudan strife simply is "not marketable to the American people."
Responding to the crisis in Sudan is not about marketability or popularity. Nor is it a mission that the United States should ever take on alone. It is, however, an operation that merits a firm international punch in the face of the most stark human-rights abuses on this planet.
As U.N. Commissioner Egeland also pointed out, the international community has been very late in responding. "Nowhere in the world are there so many lives at stake as in Darfur at the moment." Clearly, there is no time left for waiting.
"We cannot afford to wait until the worst has happened, or is already happening or end up with little more than futile hand wringing or callous indifference," Annan told the U.N. Human Rights Commission about Rwanda long after the worst of the atrocities there had ended.
That same forceful pledge -- backed up by international human rights monitors and U.N. peacekeepers -- must be applied to Sudan with all due speed.