Word: bashir
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...Staff writer Asli A. Bashir can be reached at bashir@fas.harvard.edu...
...supremacist Janjaweed militia, with support from Sudanese troops, against the farmer population of Darfur, who are mostly black Africans. In four years of fighting in this eastern, semi-desert region of Sudan, 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced. Last November, Sudan's President Omar Al-Bashir finally agreed to a three-phase U.N. plan to strengthen the overstretched, 7,000-strong African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Darfur. Then, after five months of stalling, the Sudanese President gave the go-ahead in April for the second phase of the peace plan: a "heavy support package," with...
...Bush noted, international attempts to pressure the Sudanese government have long foundered on Bashir's intransigence. "President Bashir's actions over the past few weeks follow a long pattern of promising cooperation while finding new methods for obstruction," the President said. "The result is that the dire security situation on the ground in Darfur has not changed." The question is how sanctions by the U.S. government against a few Sudanese companies with whom America already does no business will persuade Bashir to relent...
...might work.") Meanwhile, Africa and the Arab world offer no way forward, while China - whose oil interests and other investments in Sudan give it substantially more leverage than the U.S. has over Khartoum - has used its veto power in the Security Council to block harsher U.N. actions against Bashir's regime...
...Precisely because the U.S. ability to directly pressure Sudan is so limited, the al-Bashir regime has been able to ignore criticism and all but laugh at measures taken against it so far. With most diplomatic avenues exhausted, the only type of action that might change minds in Khartoum would be the threat of direct military intervention, but in light of the Iraq debacle, that option is simply not on the table. Despite the sanctions announced Tuesday by President Bush, the coming months will see more horrifying news of massacres from Darfur, more wrenching refugee tales, more urgent calls...