Printed in both The Washington Times and Hoover Digest
Based on accounts from the scene, things have clearly taken a turn for the worse in a hurry in
Darfur. At the U.N. summit in September 2005, countries included an affirmation of their “responsibility to protect” their populations and the necessity for collective action to protect people when a government fails in this basic responsibility—or worse, as in the case of the Sudan government, is actively complicit in war crimes against civilians. It would be tragic if, having declared this bold new principle, governments couldn’t bring themselves to act on it effectively in Darfur.
The problem is as it was: The Janjaweed militias—armed bands of killers, marauders, and rapists of Arab origin set up to fight a burgeoning armed resistance movement—have acted in conjunction with forces of the Khartoum government or at its behest to terrorize the black African population of Darfur, the Texas-sized western region of Sudan. The militias, often operating with assistance from helicopter gunships flown by the Sudanese military, have destroyed whole villages, driving millions of Darfuris into internally displaced persons (IDP) camps or across the border into refugee camps in Chad.
Tod Lindberg 