It’s hard to fathom that one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises is unfolding so close to Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan, where luxury hotels are going up and wealthy residents sport the latest fashions, going about their lives in high style.
In the Darfur region about 600 miles away, millions live in extreme fear and poverty – driven into refugee camps by government-backed militias, which have burned villages and killed more than 200,000 civilians while fighting rebel forces.
Such atrocities take place with the international community sitting helplessly on its hands, while the government ejects relief workers and the violence spills deeper into neighboring Chad.
President Bush announced a review of U.S. policy on Darfur last month as the Sudanese government continued to resist deployment of U.N. peacekeepers. He said “the United States is going to work with the international community to come up with a single plan on how to address this issue.” That will require an effort to strengthen African Union forces that have been poorly equipped and relatively ineffective.
The U.N. Security Council took a step in the right direction Monday when it sent a delegation to meet with the African Union and Sudan with plans to give $77 million to the AU to fund more troops and equipment. As recently as August, the U.S. was a principal backer of a U.N. resolution demanding the deployment of 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur, where some 2.5 million have been left homeless during three years of civil war.
Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade says that Sudan is now willing to accept limited U.N. intervention, which would be a step in the right direction.
President Bush has renewed economic sanctions against Sudan, including a ban on trade and defense materials. Even so, given its oil wealth, Sudan seems to be doing fine. It may be time for Americans to ramp up the pressure and force U.S. institutions to divest themselves of investments in companies that do business with Sudan.
State House Speaker Andrew Romanoff is crafting a bill that would direct the Public Employees Retirement Association and other Colorado government investment managers to drop investments in foreign companies that do business with the Sudanese government. “At some point this is no longer a political or financial question. It is a moral question,” Romanoff said.
Similar efforts in the 1980s and 1990s had an impact on South Africa’s apartheid government. Once the Sudanese feel the financial pain and the ostracism, perhaps it will be willing to change course.
