Darfur Update

This past week, the UN finally agreed to sanctions in Sudan. Except, the sanctions weren't against any of the combatant groups. Four individuals are subject to sanctions, and the four aren't really at the very center of the conflict. In addition, two are on the side of the Sudanese government, and two are among the rebel groups fighting the Sudanese government.

Is the UN trying to see all parties are equally at fault? President Bush and the US Congress have used the word "genocide". Can that be so if the UN thinks there is plenty of blame to go around? This weak response from the UN is going to do little to stop the suffering in Darfur.

Worse, the UN is cutting food aid in the Darfur region because, it says, it is running short of funds.

The United Nations agency responsible for feeding three million people affected by the conflict in Darfur announced Friday that it would reduce by half the amount of food it distributes because it is short of money.

The World Food Program said it had received just one-third of the $746 million it asked for from donors for its operations in Sudan. As a result, rations of grain, beans, oil, sugar and salt for people in Darfur, where a brutal ethnic conflict has raged since 2003, will be halved, from 2,100 calories a day to 1,050.

A NYTimes article correctly points out that US options are running short.

As the violence in the Darfur region of Sudan grows ever more deadly, Bush administration officials now acknowledge that they have few if any promising policy options for containing the carnage.

If there is no agreement by Sunday on a way to resolve the crisis, the long-running peace talks are to be disbanded. But hopes for an agreement are low.

One proposal, to send 20,000 United Nations peacekeepers to Sudan, has been stymied by Khartoum's adamant opposition. Without the government's agreement, the Bush administration acknowledges, dispatching troops to Darfur would rightly be viewed as an invasion.

"Sudan policy has run off the road into a ditch," said John Prendergast, a former senior Africa specialist for the government.

And as is so often the case in Africa, conflict rarely stays completely within borders. Here, Chad is being pulled into the chaos.

Chadian government troops are posted at key points along the border to halt what they say is a revolt by rebels based in Sudan. The soldiers wear red armbands to set them apart from the rebels, who wear similar uniforms and have an equally aggressive driving style, roaring through villages in pickup trucks, leaving behind clouds of billowing dust.

The insurgents, who are fighting to topple Chadian President Idriss Deby, represent at least 12 groups united under several coalitions. To make matters even more dizzying, some of them are Deby's estranged relatives, including a set of twin nephews.

Chad blames the Sudanese, saying they back the insurrection, an allegation that Sudan denies. An African Union investigation found this week that many of the captured attackers who invaded the capital April 13 had Sudanese and Central African Republic identification and said they were conscripted to fight by Sudan, which Sudan denies.

Sudan blames the Chadians, saying they support a different group of rebels in the Darfur region of western Sudan, some of whom have offices and villas in Chad's capital, N'Djamena.

And Chadians tend to blame France, Chad's former colonial power, which they accuse of being involved in the violence by backing the president.

Here in the inhospitable, rugged and lunar-like terrain of eastern Chad, where refugees huddle under thorn trees, two things are certain: The chaos in Darfur has extended deep into Chad, and a rapidly increasing number of civilians continue to suffer in one of Africa's most complex crises.

Across Africa, conflicts tend to spill across national borders and destabilize entire regions. Fighting in the central African country of Congo, for example, has flared off and on for about a decade, at times drawing in more than a dozen rebel groups backed by several neighboring countries.

The world community is not acting as if time is short. Because, for diplomats in tony salons, it isn't short for them. They'll still have their gourmet dinners and fine wines and operas.

But for the refugees in Darfur, it is going to be a long, terrible summer.