Demagogue

From the New York Times

A United Nations commission investigating violence in the Darfur region of Sudan reported Monday that it had found a pattern of mass killings and forced displacement of civilians that did not constitute genocide but that represented crimes of similar gravity that should be sent to the International Criminal Court for prosecution.

Human Rights Watch has written a letter to Condoleezza Rice accusing the Bush administration of "creating a deadly delay for the people of Darfur by attempting to block the U.N. Security Council from referring Darfur atrocities to the International Criminal Court."

Eric Reeves has a new analysis available

No political expediency or semantic disingenuousness by a UN Commission of Inquiry can change these fundamental realities. Nor can we hope for more from those who are actively cultivating a moral equivalence between Khartoum's genocidaires and the insurgency movements of Darfur, however culpable the latter are in their military behavior, especially toward humanitarian relief efforts.

In short, we will see no progress in halting genocide without the emergence of real international leadership, with a moral commitment to stopping genocide regardless of difficulties, political obstacles, or geopolitical and economic self-interest. Such leadership is nowhere in sight---at the UN, in Washington, within the European Union, or within the African Union.

Darfur has been abandoned.

I am trying to track down the UN's report so that I can read it for myself. I am guessing that the decision not to accuse Sudan of genocide has to do with an inability to establish some clear "intent" to destroy the African population. The irony is that many in the world, including the US, have been calling it genocide for months. Now that the UN has determined that the technical definition of the term has not been, you end up getting misleading headlines such as "UN Clears Sudan of Genocide in Darfur." Of course, the report itself accuses Sudan of widespread and systematic crimes against humanity, but that is getting somewhat overshadowed by the lack of a genocide finding.

Just because genocide is not technically taking place (and I'm not sure I even agree with that view, but I'll have to read the report first) does not mean that the situation is any less dire. 400,000 people have died, civilians are still unprotected and those responsible have not been prosecuted. But I fear that UN's decision to avoid the genocide designation will only make the situation seem less pressing and the international community less likely to act.