The Latest Darfur Outrage

September 5, 2006
The Wall Street Journal
Original Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115742213914153463.html

Perhaps there were no conditions under which Sudan would have allowed United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur. Just in case, the conspicuous abstentions by China and Russia in Thursday's Security Council vote to send about 20,000 troops to the war-ravaged region were all the diplomatic cover Sudan's Arab rulers needed to continue their three-year-old genocide of black Darfuris. It's another example of why the international community is an unreliable problem solver.
The votes had scarcely been counted before Khartoum rejected out of hand the U.N. contingent, which was meant to bolster the African Union's 7,000 ineffectual troops in Darfur. For good measure, Sudan yesterday told the AU to accept Arab League funding for those troops or move them out within a week.
One might point out that either China or Russia could have vetoed the resolution and neither did. True, but they didn't have to veto it to accomplish their goals. The Security Council expressly said it wouldn't send the troops without Sudanese consent. By refusing to endorse even this timid action, Beijing and Moscow gave Khartoum every reason to believe that they wouldn't let the Council press the issue.
U.S. officials described the abstentions as inexplicable, but the Sino-Russian intransigence is all too easily explained. China's thirst for Sudanese oil has been well documented: Oil accounted for 90% of Sudan's $2.6 billion in exports to China last year. Russia, meanwhile, is less interested in Sudan's oil than in using the vote as another chance to thumb its nose at Western, and particularly American, power.
Chinese and Russian diplomats offered the excuse that the U.N. might trigger more violence by contemplating a peacekeeping force before Sudan said publicly that it would accept the troops. But that rationale is hard to support. Reports out of Darfur indicate that government-backed militias had already begun a new offensive against rebels before Thursday's vote.
Granted, U.N. peacekeepers have a poor track record when it comes to, well, keeping the peace. Their mandate would have to be unusually stout to make them much more effective than the AU troops. Alternatives, however, are in short supply. The least credible is Khartoum's offer to send 10,000 government soldiers to the region. For Darfuris, it would be like sending lions to guard the gazelles.
At the least, Chinese and Russian fecklessness on Sudan gives reason for even more pessimism about U.N. efforts to quell crises in Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere. At worst, it means that hundreds of thousands more Sudanese are in grave danger.