Getting Tough Could Save Innocent Lives

Seeking an effective end to the murderous mayhem in Darfur is representative of the few truly moral foreign policy initiatives of the Bush administration. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick repeatedly has implored the military regime that runs the Sudan to cease and desist its violence in Darfur. The administration's message has been unambiguous.

Alas, good rhetoric has accomplished too little. It is time for Washington, in league with the European Union and the United Nations, to get tough. The war in Darfur between Muslim Arab camelback militias supported by the Sudanese government and Muslim African rebels goes on, with cascading casualties and continuous civilian collateral damage.

Rape and pillage are daily occurrences. At least 200,000 Darfurians have been killed since 2003; about 2 million to 3 million homeless locals are crowded into camps within Darfur and across the border in Chad. In recent weeks, the civil war has also spilled over into Chad and threatens to become an international as well as a civil battle.

Washington and the UN seek to strengthen the 7,000 African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, who lack equipment to patrol an area the size of Texas and have an insufficiently robust mandate to beat back the camelback militias or corral the rebels. Because of Sudanese government sensitivities and politicking, the AU this month refused to hand over control of peacekeeping in Darfur to the UN before September, if then, thus thwarting one useful, American-backed approach. The Arab League now promises in a compromising move to pay the costs of AU peacekeepers until September. Sudan is a member of the League.

Washington must either persuade or compel Sudan's rulers to permit a NATO force to replace or supplement the outgunned African Union contingent. NATO troops are also needed to prevent the Darfurian war from spilling over into eastern Chad. NATO contingents are available, well-disciplined, and not otherwise committed outside of Afghanistan and Kosovo. NATO troops could operate under UN auspices, but they must operate with guns drawn.

Washington will have to assist any new NATO operation by enforcing a no-fly zone over Darfur, as it did in Kurdistan in the late 1990s. Doing so would ground Sudan's 21 marauding helicopter gunships employed to strafe innocent camp dwellers. Washington could also insist that the Sudanese government stop using freshly painted white vehicles (a parody of the UN or the Red Cross) to move its militias into action against refugee camps.

Laborious peace negotiations between the Sudanese government and rebels have gone on and on in Abuja, Nigeria, for much of the last year. Washington has tried to demand effective, high level, bargaining for peace by the Sudanese government, but now needs to redouble those efforts. The threat of NATO intervention may help the military rulers of Sudan pay attention. Washington can also pressure Chad to lean on the rebels. A durable cease-fire needs to emerge from Abuja sooner rather than later.

Washington's leverage on the Sudanese government is hefty, if so far little used. First, Sudan is still on the official list of terrorist nation-states, and wants to be removed. Only if it cooperates with Washington over Darfur, can Sudan come in from the cold, and perhaps receive American financial assistance as well. Second, smart sanctions (travel bans and sequestering of bank accounts) would hinder the easy movement of Sudan's leaders, as new congressional legislation intends.

Third, Washington should give the Sudanese government a month to call off its militias and cease attacking civilians in camps and crossing the Chadian border. If it refuses, Washington must act decisively. The US Navy has the ability to make the export of petroleum, the country's only major earner of foreign exchange, more costly and logistically difficult. Sudan's petroleum flows out of a pipeline and is loaded onto tankers in the Red Sea at Port Sudan. The US Navy has ships in the area, patrolling for terrorists.

Preoccupied in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington has been loath to use its considerable muscle to end the genocide in Darfur. In cooperation with the UN and its European allies, however, Washington can ill afford to temporize any longer. Carefully calibrated multilateral actions would staunch Africa's running atrocity.