Here is the latest from the UN website:
The Sudanese Government has not disarmed the notorious Janjaweed militias nor stopped their brutal attacks against civilians in the war-torn Darfur region, the senior UN envoy to Sudan told the Security Council today in a meeting assessing what steps Khartoum has taken to restore security to Darfur.
...On 30 July, in Resolution 1556, the Council stated it may take action under Article 41 of the UN Charter if Sudan has not taken steps to meet those promises. Article 41 measures include unspecified economic penalties and the severing of diplomatic relations.
On CBC Radio this morning the reporter mentioned that the UN is considering putting together a group of international peacekeepers. My question is what peace are they supposed to be keeping? On June 10, 2004 in the National Post, in an article entitled "Projecting force abroad", Retired Major-General Lewis MacKenzie put it like this:
...we should dispense with the all-too Canadian conceit that what the world needs is "peacekeepers." Peacekeeping in the classic, Pearsonian sense - whereby our troops occupy a piece of territory at the request of local belligerents - is no longer in much demand. What is needed now are peacemakers with the weapons and mandate necessary to kill belligerents who don't want us there.
It is my opinion that President, or is that Prime Minister (both actually, hmmm) Omer Hassan Ahmed Albashir is stringing the UN along, just as Saddam Hussein would have continued to do if the "Coalition of the Willing" had not stepped in. In the meantime, it appears that the UN may put pressure through economic penalties (sanctions) and severing diplomatic relations. Iraq proved how futile and costly (in human lives) such sanctions are. In this case, who will suffer? The displaced of course. And cutting of diplomatic relations? Will the Sudanese Government really care?
I do not see this ending until all the displaced die, flee to another country or the Sudanese Government is, through force, made to make it end.
