Tsunami Wipes Darfur Off Priority List

The South Asia tsunami not only wiped out more than 150,000 lives but also overwhelmed international media coverage of genocidal conflict in Sudan.

"Before the tsunami struck, the U.N. described the conflict in the western Darfur region as the world's greatest humanitarian crisis," noted The Age in Australia yesterday.

"Darfur has almost slipped off the world's radar," the Sydney-based daily reported.

As the world's generosity turns to victims of a natural cataclysm, the equally innocent victims of equally vicious man-made disaster are at risk of being forgotten yet again. Tens of thousands of people in Darfur have been killed and at least 1.85 million people forced from their homes since early 2003 when rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum. The government has backed Arab militiamen, known as Janjaweed, who have been massacring and raping the black African residents of the region.

Patrick Webb, chief of nutrition at the United Nations' World Food Program (WFP) told Reuters that the "massive response" in south Asia "will make recovering a lot faster than . . . Darfur, for example," he said. Aljazeera.net, the Web site of the Arab news channel, ran the story, as did many other international news sites.

Darfur has occasionally captured the world's brief attention. A belated visit by Secretary of State Colin Powell last June did not prevent online commentators from waxing caustic about the slow response of the international community. But there was faint hope that international action might save lives.

Since then, geopolitics intertwined with economic interests have confounded optimism. In September, the U.N. Security Council finally considered a resolution to impose sanctions on Sudan for failing to prevent the atrocities. But China threatened to veto the measure and it was watered down.

It is no secret that China has a mutually beneficial oil exploration partnership with Sudan, notes journalist Paul Mooney, writing in Monday's International Herald Tribune .

"China National Petroleum Corporation won an oil exploitation bid there in 1995, and when Washington cut ties two years later, the Chinese were ready to fill the void left by retreating Western oil companies," he reports. "Sudan, which was an oil importer before the Chinese arrived, now earns $2 billion in oil exports each year, half of which goes to China."

The only progress in Sudan has come on another front. Earlier this month, Powell and other diplomats did succeed in pressuring the Sudanese government into signing a peace agreement with the Sudan People's Liberation Army, (SPLA) a black African insurgent group in the south. The Jan. 11 agreement, signed in Nairobi, Kenya, guarantees the SPLA a role in the national government. The pact, designed to bring an end to a 21 year long civil war in Sudan's southern provinces does nothing to address the crisis in Darfur.

In West Africa, Le Patriote (in French), credited Powell with imposing the settlement on the two parties. The editors of the Ivory Coast daily praised the "Anglo-Saxon pragmatism" of U.S. policy which they compared favorably with more high-handed French diplomacy during the recent unrest in Ivory Coast. Powell, with "stick in one hand and money in the other, made Khartoum understand that the time had come to make peace," the editors said.

In the Arab word, the Sudan peace agreement was hailed as a hopeful sign of Arab unity. In Syria, the state-owned newspaper al-Thawra (in Arabic) said the Sudan peace pact was "extremely important." The agreement "came at a time when some international forces coveting Sudan's resources are trying to take advantage of the Darfur crisis," the paper editorialized.

All the while, the plight of the people of Darfur continues to deteriorate. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anna told the BBC earlier this month that both the government and the insurgents had violated a ceasefire agreement.

Last week, gunmen attacked two international aid convoys in Darfur, according to a United Nations news service story carried by Allafrica.com.

Eric Reeves, a U.S. academic writing for the Sudan Tribune fears the Sudanese government now believes that "it is free to continue its genocide in Darfur. The failure of the international community to disabuse the regime of this conviction threatens additional hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths," he said.

But the embattled Sudanese government can take comfort in the indisputable fact that many international forces do covet its natural resources.

"The scramble for Sudan" is on, writes Kibisu-Kabatesi in The Standard, a leading daily in Kenya.

"Sudan has massive economic potential in minerals, agriculture and service provision. . . . Already, South African companies have clinched exclusive deals in oil exploration on the heels of Malaysian, American, French and Russian firms," he said.

The International Herald Tribune reported that the French oil giant Total announced in late December the company had renewed oil agreements with Sudan that were abandoned in 1985 because of the civil war. Marathon Oil, a Houston-based company is also said to be interested in Sudan, according to the IHT.

So after two years of suffering, millions of people in Darfur have been left stranded by a perfect storm of civil war, tsunami, money and geopolitics. They remain what they have always been to the governments of the world: a lesser priority.