Word: darfur
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With foreign-policy questions stacking like planes over a busy airport, Miliband will need a sense of clarity. The British government plans to focus on Darfur as well as Afghanistan, while continuing to reduce its participation in Iraq, and also contending with such headaches as a deteriorating relationship with Russia. Miliband won't have an easy ride. "Another couple of weeks and I'll probably be very white," he says, pointing to a gray streak in his black locks. If so, that'll be one less problem for him to deal with...
...dragon's wing has twitched. A tiny shift in China's Africa policy might just lead to peace in Darfur. China is Sudan's largest trading partner, buying 65% of its oil. Until now Beijing has protected Khartoum from the Western world, which was crying genocide and demanding intervention and sanctions. Now China has helped persuade Sudan to accept a new United Nations-led peacekeeping force of 26,000 military personnel and police, subsuming the 7,000 African Union peacekeepers who have failed to have any significant impact on the conflict...
...Critics will decry the fact that the U.N. has taken so long (four years and counting) to consider meaningful action, and even then to not do enough, but the British assessment reflects reality. The fighting in Darfur, which pitches Arab supremacist militias backed by the Sudanese army against Darfur rebels, has killed an estimated 200,000 people and left 2 million homeless. Against that, the U.N. has authorized a force of 26,000 peacekeepers whose mandate is limited to monitoring - but never seizing - arms, and which can only act defensively to protect civilians and the free movement of humanitarian workers...
...British and other Western powers are hanging their main hopes for ending the conflict on talks with Darfur's various rebel groups in Arusha, Tanzania, due to begin in the next few days. That appears a slim hope. For one thing, the rebels are a fractious bunch. On Monday, a new split was reported in the ranks of the hardline Islamic Justice and Equality Movement (J.E.M.) over who would represent them in Arusha. And even if they can agree a common platform, the Sudanese government still has to agree to meet them. Khartoum's preferred method of dealing with Darfuris...
...That's not to say there's an easy fix in Darfur. Resolving the conflict would require ridding the Sudanese government of its xenophobia in the short term, and, in the longer term, reversing climate change. (The Darfur conflict has its roots in the expansion south of the Sahara desert, which has pitched Arab nomads in competition with African-Arab pastoralists for ever decreasing fertile land.) Until it is fixed, however, Darfur will haunt the international community. Sometimes the U.N. isn't enough, as Rwanda demonstrated 13 years ago. The question is: What...