A small African Union peacekeeping force of 7,000 is woefully inadequate and too incompetent -- or worse -- to stop the slaughter. Last week in Ethiopia, African, Arab, European and U.N. leaders agreed to send a force of 20,000 more men to try again, but there is no timetable, and the Sudanese government has "questions" and "reservations," buying more time for the slaughter.
The rebels targeted for extinction by the Sudanese are fighting both the armed forces of the Sudanese government and Janjaweed ("devil on horseback") militias allied with the government. The rebels sometimes defend themselves with bows, arrows, swords and spears against the modern technology of war. Occasionally the rebels steal heavy weapons from the enemy, but they're radically outnumbered and torn by tribal conflicts within their own ranks. Sudanese air attacks annihilate whole villages. Estimates of the dead run between 200,000 and 400,000, innocents caught in a crossfire. Disease and hunger raise the daily death toll. More than 2 million civilians have been displaced to live in the desert with no protection from devils on horseback.
Earlier this year, Americans from all over the United States marched on Washington to plead for an end to the killing. Eli Wiesel, who knows the reality of genocide, spoke movingly of the need to act at once, with more than sterile debate and meaningless resolutions adopted by well-fed bureaucrats. Polls show that large majorities of Americans know something must be done. President Bush signed the Darfur Peace Accountability Act last month. The bill freezes the foreign financial assets of anyone found to be complicit in the genocide and denies them the right to travel here.
"The tools available within this bill, several of which were immediately enacted by the president, will bring us closer to the only true measure of success in responding to this genocide: protecting the people of Darfur from further attack," says David Rubenstein, coordinator of the Save Darfur Coalition. "Achieving that goal will take a sustained effort by the president, and by heads of state around the world."
The rest of us can start by talking about Darfur loud enough to make the politicians listen, beginning today at the dining room table. Happy Thanksgiving.