Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Deploy now in Darfur

Two months have passed since a peace agreement was signed by the Sudanese government and one of the three rebel groups it is fighting in Darfur. Yet the genocide grinds on, and there is no agreement on the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers needed to save Darfur's two million refugees from slaughter, starvation and disease.

On Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan met with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and unsuccessfully urged him to accept U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur. Al-Bashir categorically rejected Annan's plea, arguing that allowing U.N. forces into Sudan would be the same as allowing foreign forces to occupy his country.

Given Africa's troubled colonial history, Bashir's resistance might be understandable if he weren't the leader of a murderous regime responsible for the deaths of up to 300,000 non-Arab Darfuris since 2003. Another 2 million have been driven from their homes, tortured, harassed and raped by the government-supported Arab militias known as janjaweed. Read the entire editorial >>>

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