Perversely, the intense focus on genocide has allowed a U.N. report that documents widespread atrocities to serve as moral cover for continued official lethargy. The United States has been the leading player in diplomatic efforts in the Sudan, but has not pushed as aggressively as it could for sanctions. Europe -- and France, in particular -- has talked a good game but done little. Russia and China, both U.N. Security Council members, have made only the weakest gestures of concern. And so staunching the bloodshed in Darfur has been left to a small, ill-equipped force from the African Union (A.U.), a regional economic and security organization.
There is an alternative to this intense focus on genocide. The category of "crimes against humanity" -- first used to describe the massacres of Armenians after World War I and then codified at the Nuremberg trials -- is simpler and broader but still morally powerful. It encompasses large-scale efforts to kill, abuse or displace populations. It avoids messy determinations of whether the victims fit into the right legal box and whether the killers had a sufficiently evil mindset. Do we really care, after all, whether the victims of atrocities are members of a distinct tribe or simply political opponents of the regime?
Death in Darfur: What do we call a brutal campaign to kill civilians in western Sudan?
(Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post)
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Man's Inhumanity
The mass murder of civilians in acts of genocide and other crimes against humanity stand out amid a hundred years of bloody warfare. Here are estimates of death tolls from some of the many episodes. The exact numbers will never be known.
ARMENIANS IN TURKEY (1915-18)
1.5 million
STALIN'S FORCED FAMINE IN UKRAINE (1932-33)
7 million
JAPANESE MASSACRE OF CHINESE (The Rape of Nanjing, 1937)
300,000
NAZI GERMANY AND THE HOLOCAUST (1938-45)
6 million
POL POT IN CAMBODIA (1975-79)
2 million
BOSNIA (1992-95)
200,000
RWANDA (1994)
800,000
SOURCE: COMMITTEE ON CONSCIENCE AT THE U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM
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Moving beyond what has by now become a warped diplomatic parlor game (who will say the G-word first?) would have the added benefit of shifting the debate from the abstract to the practical. The word genocide may be too powerful for its own good. It conjures up images of a relentless and irrational evil that must be confronted massively. It is almost paralyzing. We are used to fighting crime; genocide seems to require a crusade.
There are small but concrete steps that the United States could take to fight the mass killings and crimes in Darfur, without sending a U.S. combat force. The most critical step would be to bolster the African Union force there now. For almost a decade, the United States has sought to strengthen Africa's ability to tend to its own crises. That effort -- and tens of thousands of lives -- are on the line in Sudan.
The A.U. has promised a force of almost 3,500 troops, but only about half of them have arrived. Getting those soldiers to Darfur fast may require airlift capacity that is a U.S. specialty. And the fragile A.U., which is struggling to bear the costs of the Sudan operation, needs immediate cash infusions. Both the United States and Europe have pledged funds, but they have been slow in coming.
The Darfur Accountability Act, introduced in the U.S. Senate last week, calls for increased aid to the A.U. force, as well as a military no-fly zone and a tight arms embargo. It's a start. If the government in Khartoum gets in the way, the Security Council should impose tough and targeted sanctions. And if China and Russia get in the way of the Council, the United States and Europe should act without it. The United States and Britain (which has gone furthest in discussing a deployment) should send their own small tripwire force to accompany the African monitors.
Some of these measures may require a U.S. policy that borders on unilateralism. But this administration has not shown undue patience with or deference to the often dysfunctional and amoral U.N. Security Council -- and there's no reason to start now. As Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld put it in another context, "the mission defines the coalition." And the mission of fighting crimes against humanity must be a central one, as it was in Bosnia and Kosovo and should have been in Rwanda and at an earlier stage in Sierra Leone.
Realities, not labels, should define our response. The word genocide, rightly, has a unique moral impact. But the concept -- and the interminable debate about its boundaries -- must not become the issue. When the world chooses to immerse itself in terminology rather than take action, it does today's very real victims no good at all.
Author's e-mail:
dbosco@carnegieendowment.org
David Bosco is a senior editor at Foreign Policy magazine.
