Plan B; or, how to look like you're doing something about the genocide in Darfur without really doing anything at all

By Michael J.W. Stickings

On Darfur, there seems to be nothing but impotence and disinterest at the top. To wit:

President Bush has approved a plan for the Treasury Department to aggressively block U.S. commercial bank transactions connected to the government of Sudan, including those involving oil revenues, if Khartoum continues to balk at efforts to bring peace to Sudan's troubled Darfur region, government officials said yesterday.

The Treasury plan is part of a secret three-tiered package of coercive steps -- labeled "Plan B" -- that the administration has repeatedly threatened to unleash if Sudan continues to sponsor a campaign of terror that has left as many as 450,000 dead and 2.5 million homeless. But the administration has held back on any announcement of Plan B, even after setting a Jan. 1 deadline, in hopes of still winning Khartoum's cooperation.

Apparently, "[s]ome aspects of Plan B have already been stealthily launched, such as stationing four U.S. Army colonels last month as observers on the Sudan-Chad border in full view of Sudanese intelligence," but, given all the delays, not to mention the continuing procrastination in Khartoum, holding off international efforts and thereby enabling yet more genocide, there is justifiable skepticism that Plan B is anything more than hollow rhetoric supported by a few minor initiatives.

I suppose blocking these bank transactions is a positive step, but it will take far more to put an end to Sudan's genocidal ambitions in Darfur -- and this means not just international sanctions, since China likely wouldn't agree to such sanctions, and not just U.N.-led peacekeeping efforts, which as in Rwanda would not have the authority to engage the perpetrators with force, but a military intervention with teeth, one that could engage the Janjaweed, the Khartoum-backed militia operting in Darfur, and crush it.

Bush's Treasury-based effort goes back to Clinton, who initiated similar action in 1997, and this is one case where I do not necessarily question his sincerity -- his concern, such as he is concerned, may very well be sincere, and he may very well be frustrated that little has been accomplished thus far. But how to explain the delays? How to explain that Plan B -- a plan to "put pressure on Darfur rebel leaders -- isn't nearly enough, that such action as there has been thus far has been ineffectual? How to explain that Bush is still holding out hope, when there is no justification for it, that Khartoum will cooperate? In short, how to explain that the genocide continues even as Bush -- and everyone else in a position to do something about the genocide -- fiddles?

I can offer no explanations here other to conclude that Darfur just isn't that important to the U.S. And I can't just single out the U.S. It apparently isn't all that important to anyone else either. Even the U.N., which talks repeatedly about breakthroughs with Khartoum that never quite seem to materialize, as if talking is doing, falls far short of acknowledging what must be done to put an end to the genocide. Peacekeeping won't be enough -- has no one learned the lessons of Rwanda?

And so more time is wasted and more people die. And all we have is Plan B.

Which won't make a difference.