Never Again is Again: Stand Up Against Genocide in Africa

The short answer is probably no. The Sudanese government has expressed that any UN troops in Darfur will be treated as “foreign invaders”. There are already 7,000 African Union troops in the region, but this works out to only 3 soldiers for every 100km of Darfur. Additionally, the AU troops have a weak mandate that must be renewed every six months. The government knows that the West is preoccupied. Truly, there don’t appear to be enough resources to satisfy peacekeeping in Southern Sudan, let alone peaceMAKING in Darfur.

Some argue that Khartoum will say no to any force that would succeed in restoring peace in Darfur, namely because they are at least in part responsible for the ethnic cleansing. All of this means that any (effective) military action would have to be without Khartoum’s permission.

Thanks to Dr. Stephen Brown for his talk on Darfur at The Failing, Failed and Fragile States conference, held at The University of British Columbia March 8 – 10, 2007, during which much of this information was obtained.

- sara