Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep 8 2005 (IPS) — Exactly one year after the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush declared the ongoing violence in Darfur, Sudan to be “genocide”, activists here declared that the president had failed to follow through with a sustained effort to provide help to the victims.

Rallying in Lafayette Park across from the White House Thursday, more than 100 activists noted the anniversary and called for the international community to urgently provide protection for the estimated 2.5 million people who have been displaced and left homeless by the continuing attacks on the African population by government-backed Arab militias in Sudan’s western-most province.

“As Americans struggle to cope with the president’s failure of leadership on the domestic front in the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” declared Salih Booker, the director of Africa Action, “we must also condemn the president’s failure of political leadership on the international front, where he has failed to act to stop the ongoing genocide in Darfur, and the death toll continues to mount.”

Africa Action, which Thursday released a petition signed by nearly 100,000 people calling on Bush to “take every step necessary” through the United Nations to immediately dispatch a multinational intervention force with a mandate to protect civilians in Darfur, was joined by the leaders of several religious denominations, including the American Jewish World Service, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and the National Council of Churches, as well as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP, among others.

While some observers have claimed that the violence has abated somewhat in recent months, the death toll in Darfur since the conflict began two and a half years ago has continued to climb and is now estimated at between 300,000 and more than 400,000. Recent reports have also indicated an increase in sexual assaults on women and girls in many of the camps where most of the African population in Darfur have been displaced.

The African Union (AU) has now deployed – with the logistical and transport assistance of members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), including the U.S. – nearly 5,500 troops to Darfur to monitor the situation there, and they still lack a U.N. mandate to protect civilians.

Moreover, the AU announced this week that it was suspending additional deployments for at least three weeks due to the lack of jet fuel, thus putting its goal of having 7,500 troops on the ground by the end of this month out of reach. Activists have argued that a considerably larger force is needed to cover an area roughly equivalent to France or Iraq.

The activists are also concerned that the media attention being given to Hurricane Katrina, as well as the ongoing conflict in Iraq, will make it much more difficult to publicise the situation in Darfur.

A study released in July by the Genocide Intervention Fund (GIF) found that U.S. network and cable-news television stations had devoted more than 50 times more coverage to Michael Jackson’s child molestation trial than they had to Darfur violence. Moreover, when GIF subsequently prepared an ad announcing those findings, the networks refused to broadcast them.

“We face a new challenge, particularly with Katrina’s shocking aftermath, of getting media attention focused on Darfur,” said Ann-Louise Colgan, Africa Action’s assistant director. “But Katrina highlights the common vulnerability of people in this country and around the world. For that reason alone, we need to refocus on Darfur, where the ultimate crime against humanity is still taking place with impunity.”

“It is unacceptable for us to sit idly by as people die,” said Robert Edgar, NCC general secretary. “This is true whether it is in the Deep South or Darfur, Sudan. This gnocide is one of the great horrors of our day, and we urge people of conscience everywhere to take action now before events force us to one day have to confess our sin of negligence and complicity.”

It was one year ago that Bush issued a press statement acknowledging that genocide was taking place in Darfur and that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell testified that the Sudanese government and its proxy militia bore responsibility.

Nine days later, the U.N. Security Council passed a weak, U.S.-sponsored resolution that pressed Khartoum to end the violence but failed to impose strong measures in the event that the regime did not comply.

In November, the Security Council, at Washington’s urging, passed another resolution authorising the AU mission but once again failing to threaten or impose sanctions for non-compliance.

Since then, Washington has stepped up its support for the AU operation but has declined to take stronger action, privately citing its concerns that a more-aggressive approach would be vetoed by China, which has substantial investments in Sudan’s oil industry, and could derail a peace agreement between Khartoum and a long-standing rebel movement in the southern part of the country.

But some critics have charged that other motives may also be at work. The secret visit here in April of the head of Sudan’s intelligence agency, Maj. Gen. Salah Abdallah Gosh, who reportedly has been named in a U.N. report as one of the chief perpetrators of the government’s Darfur campaign, suggested that Khartoum’s cooperation in Washington’s anti-terror struggle had bolstered its position in Washington. This assessment was bolstered by subsequent White House pressure on Congress to sideline legislation designed to add pressure on Sudan to end the violence in Darfur.

Despite several trips to Darfur over the summer, including one in July by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and the appointment of Roger Winter, a senior USAID official known for his sceptical views of Khartoum good faith, as a special envoy to Sudan, the administration has done little or nothing to reduce suspicions by Darfur activists that it is willing to pay additional political and diplomatic capital to ensure Sudan’s full compliance with Security Council demands or its own promises to rein in the Janjaweed and provide sufficient security to the displaced to enable them to reclaim their homes and villages.

“We call on Pres. Bush, one year after he recognised the genocide in Darfur,” declared David Rubenstein, coordinator of the Save Darfur Coalition, which includes 134 member organisations to which 130 million U.S. citizens belong,” “to take decisive and effective action to end the violence that is brutalising innocent civilians in Darfur.”