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| June 16, 2010 |
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF
Read the entire piece at http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/has-obama-forgotten-darfur/
Darfur seems to have been forgotten, but the killings continue. After a lull, the pace of killings has increased lately, with some 600 people killed violently last month alone. As Newsweek notes, that's more than in any month since U.N. peacekeepers arrived.
The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, addressed the Security Council today, giving a blunt report about Darfur:
But the Security Council seems mum, frozen, passive, paralyzed. Instead of insisting that Sudan take further action, it shrugs and looks the other way. It used to be that the problem countries on the U.N. Security Council, in terms of getting action on the slaughter in Darfur, were China and Russia. But now the U.S. and Britain seem equally complicit. President Obama, who was one of the leaders on the Darfur issue when he was in the Senate, seems to have forgotten about it as president.
The entire Darfur region is still a crime scene. The attacks against civilians not participating in the conflict continue.Thousands of civilians were attacked immediately after the signing of a peace agreement and public commitments to peace earlier this year. Rapes continue. The process of extermination against millions displaced in the camps continues. And why not, since the criminals enjoy impunity?
The Security Council on Monday will hear from a range of leaders about South Sudan. But I hope the Council remembers that while the focus must be on preventing war in the south, turning a blind eye to Darfur is not a way to achieve that. Let's hope I'm wrong, but I fear that myopic policies by the Obama administration and its allies may lay the groundwork for a catastrophe in Sudan