Diplomacy has had its chance and failed in Sudan

Peter Brooks:

DESPITE endless rounds of shadowboxing with the dodgy Sudanese government over the ongoing nightmare in Darfur, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is asking us to give appeasement, er, diplomacy, one more chance.

That's not going to help: It's going to take some highly credible threats to get Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir to end what many call the 21st century's first genocide.

What kind of threats? Before I detail that, let's review why diplomacy alone is a guaranteed bust.

The U.N. attempts to stop Khartoum's ethnic cleansing have been feckless. At last count, the campaign by Sudanese government forces and their Arab-Muslim "Janjaweed" henchmen against Muslim Africans in Darfur has left 200,000 dead, 2 million refugees and 4 million needing assistance.

Bashir has made a mockery of U.N. efforts to stem the violence since the Security Council passed its first resolution on Darfur in 2005.

He's made promise after promise to stop the chaos and carnage, yet it continues unabated.Now the ever-worsening humanitarian disaster is spilling over Sudan's borders into neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic.

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Political reconciliation between Khartoum and the Darfuri rebels - who demand more representation in the central government and wealth-sharing and less discrimination - is fundamental to ending the violence. But that now looks more distant than ever.

Only one of three major rebel groups signed the 2006 peace agreement reached at U.S. urging. Now there are as many as 15 rebel groups - making an inclusive peace agreement a Herculean task.

Can the slaughter be stopped in the meantime? Not with the small U.N. and A.U. forces now proposed - not even if they have a robust mandate (meaning authorization to take offensive action if necessary) under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter.

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The government of Sudan plays the international community jaw-jaw game well. When it gives a little it takes it back pretty quickly and will give a little again as pressure mounts. In some ways is it like dealing with the Palestinians in Israel. They really have nothing of value to offer Israel but everyone keeps insisting that the two parties keep talking. For the most part it si Muslim leaders of bad faith talking out of one side of their mouth while allowing the people they really support to continue their destructive ways. We play into this game by treating them as legitimate partners for peace when they have no such intentions and even if they did they could not deliver.