"This is no longer Rwanda in slow motion"

Professor Eric Reeves has posted a lengthy essay on the situation in Darfur.  His conclusion:

The violence in Darfur since the May 5, 2006 signing of the DPA [Darfur Peace Agreement--MP], which brought only the Minawi faction aboard, has been dramatically worse than the violence that preceded the signing of the agreement, although of course in the event the Abuja talks had collapsed, heightened violence would have been inevitable. But the DPA has not simply “heightened the conflict,” as Nathan [Mr Laurie Nathan was a member of the African Union mediation team during the negotiations of the DPA--MP] would have it: the agreement directly (if certainly not by design) contributed to the alliance of the brutal Minawi faction of the SLA and Khartoum’s regular forces, along with its Arab militia allies---and thus to the violence that has proceeded directly from this alliance.

 
But most significantly, the DPA allowed Khartoum to assume the posture of signatory to a peace agreement, even when that agreement had no meaningful international guarantors for the security arrangements that were essential to its success (the securing of precisely such international guarantors was perhaps the key feature of the north/south Comprehensive Peace Agreement [January 9, 2005]). This has made it impossible to secure subsequently from Khartoum any concession on a truly meaningful international presence, a presence that might actually oblige the regime to respect its commitments (preeminently to disarm the Janjaweed, but also to stop the flow of weapons and troops into Darfur, to create buffer zones around camps housing over 2 million displaced civilians, and to cease instigating cross-border violence between Darfur and Chad).

 
Absent such international presence, there is no hope for Darfur. Insecurity and violence will continue to escalate uncontrollably. The negotiations in Abuja should have been the occasion for the international community to demand of Khartoum that it accept the presence of a force, ideally a UN force, that could actually oversee and enforce implementation of the complex and highly challenging agreement that emerged. The failure of the Abuja process to provide such guarantors has left Khartoum feeling emboldened in its subsequent defiance of an international presence, even as it again accelerates its genocidal assault on the African tribal populations of Darfur. In this sense, it is all too true to say: “much of the violence [in Darfur] is a direct result of the shortcomings in the Abuja agreement, particularly the failure to provide meaningful international guarantees and guarantors.”

 
But it is not May 2006; it is November 2006. And there is no evidence that the international community is now any more willing to make serious demands of Khartoum’s genocidaires about security in Darfur than it was half a year ago---or more than two months after passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1706. The assaults on innocent civilians in displaced persons camps and rural areas will continue indefinitely, as will indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilian targets, the killing and brutalizing of aid workers, the attenuation of humanitarian relief efforts, the raping of girls and women, the mass executions of men and boys, the burning of children and the elderly in homes that have been turned into bonfires, the pillaging of food and resources. And the violence will continue to spill into both Chad and the Central African Republic, with increasingly destabilizing consequences.

 
The world looks on, having made its decision of acquiescence. This is no longer Rwanda in slow motion.

It is one of the most egregious signs of  the West's spiritual and social degradation that a second Rwanda is in sight, and we do nothing.