Hilarity alert: The Real World -- African Autocrats

A curious script for a reality TV show if I've ever seen one.

Hat tip: Scarlett Lion.

No apology necessary: An open letter to Norway

Dear Norway:

We haven't met, but I hear your country is both beautiful and obscenely expensive. The individual Norwegians I've met along the way have been impressive, so I'm gonna chalk that up to your overall character.

Now, down to business. Last week, one of your brilliant diplomats in New York wrote a brilliant confidential memo to the folks in Oslo about how UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is basically a waste of carbon-based molecules. That memo leaked, and of course was immediately posted to every corner of the internet. Now your foreign minister is apologizing for the whole deal.

Frankly, I think no apologies are necessary. Ambassador Mona Juul, the memo's author, was merely speaking the truth (and speaking it well, I might add). For that, she needs a promotion, and you don't need to apologize.

Remember, Norway, to always speak truth to power (remember your brilliant overthrow of the Swedes?), even if it's just puppet power.

Most respectfully,

Jason

Brilliant blogging by others causes writer's block

I came across this post this evening about the release of the Lockerbie bomber and the politics of the UN Security Council and how its evolution has helped alter the international legal environment.

I've sat here for a good little bit now, trying to think of something to add to this discussion. But mostly, I just think it thought provoking, so enjoy, and analyze for yourself.

It's not like anyone is paying me to do this. ;)

A discussion you should follow

FP's Passport and UN Dispatch (see sidebar) have teamed up to run a special blogging series, aka Peacekeeping Salon, featuring thoughts on the state of United Nations peacekeeping operations and imperatives for the next U.S. administration. The conversation is just starting, but it's worth a read. Click here to visit, and be sure to glance at the background paper here (pdf).

EDIT: If you need some convincing as to why the U.S. should be fully engaged in and supportive of UN peace operations, read this.

Attempting to make sense of U.S. policy on African peace and security

For the past week or so, I've been trying to wrap my brain around U.S. policy toward Africa, in light of a presidential visit, the FY09 budget request, and the development of events on the ground.

First, an incredibly brief synopsis of the current security situation in Africa. The Ethiopian/U.S. intervention in Somalia has basically failed to bring security to the country, and has possibly made it worse. The whole point of supporting intervention in the first place was to root out terrorist threats there, but that obviously can't be done in a context of more generalized fighting. Just up the road, Ethiopia and Eritrea are in a period of heightening tensions, with Eritrea basically thwarting the UN peacekeeping mission along the border. Looking a little further west, implementation of the CPA in Sudan is more precarious than ever, the Darfur peacekeeping operation is pretty much stalled, fighting continues in Chad and C.A.R., which has led to refugees now flowing into Cameroon, and the EU peacekeeping mission for Chad/C.A.R. is basically on hold. There's a bit of hope that we might soon see some positive progress in Northern Uganda, and if so, that process might require some greater international assistance. Things in the eastern Congo are still tenuous. Who knows what will happen in Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, the countries of the Mano River Basin in West Africa are on the long, slow road to recovery, and need support.

In this context (or, perhaps, in spite of it), the Bush Administration has proposed a dramatic cut to its financial support to UN peacekeeping, which of course is in addition to our existing arrears to the peacekeeping fund. Instead, they propose focusing more exclusively on various troop training/peacekeeping capacity building programs through bilateral agreements. These programs have existed for several years now, under a huge variety of names, but generally focus on generating more professional armed forces that are trained in the intricacies of peace and stability operations. Although some somewhat shady partners get help through these programs (like Ethiopia), in general I think they're a good thing.

So what's the problem then? It's pretty simple, actually. All the trained troops in the world won't make a peacekeeping operation effective. Those troops need equipment, transportation, weaponry of various types (beyond the assortment provided through the programs above), and most importantly, civilian leadership in each mission. What's the point of having a bunch of trained troops if there aren't any missions to send them to? A peace operation is usually a pretty complex undertaking, and well-trained, professional security forces are but one part of them. With the number of UN and African Union peace operations continuing to increase in Africa, it is essential that the Administration look at the whole picture when making policy and budgetary decisions of this sort.

If, then, the Bush Administration thinks they're somehow promoting peace and stability in Africa through their robbing Peter to pay Paul funding logic, they definitely have another thing coming. If their proposal makes it into the actual 2009 budget (and based on last year's stunning performance by Congressional Democrats, it likely will), this will become yet another foreign policy mess that the next administration will have to clean up.

Support UN peacekeeping

Excuse me for a moment while I blather on like an activist.

The time has come for Congress to debate the foreign affairs budget, which of course includes funding to the United Nations, including peace operations. The Better World Campaign and the United Nations Association of the United States of America have teamed up to create a website, the Price of Peace, where you can learn more about peacekeeping and sign a petition to your Congress member asking for continuing support of peace operations.

UN peacekeeping is vital in many countries emerging from conflict, as it provides security and stability and thus allows for the development of peaceful political discourse. Peacekeeping is not without its problems, though on the whole the operations have had significant successes. There are currently over 100,000 peacekeepers stationed worldwide, with many more coming if missions in Darfur and Lebanon reach their authorized strength, as well as talks now underway about a mission in Somalia. The United States doesn't have a particularly stellar record when it comes to meeting its obligation to the peacekeeping budget, even though such missions are vital to American interests abroad.

Take a minute to visit the website and sign the petition, which is now linked in the sidebar here. If you're skeptical or want to learn more about peace operations, I recommend reading an introductory article here, and visiting one of these sites:

Center on International Cooperation: Global Peace Operations
Henry L. Stimson Center: Future of Peace Operations Program
Challenges of Peace Operations Project
Partnership for Effective Peacekeeping

Refugees and repatriation

This week in my human rights & conflict class, we were discussing refugee issues. The conversation didn't quite go where I was hoping it would go, plus I was hopped up on cold pills and thus easily confused. Anyway, I thought I would say here what I had hoped to say there, as this is an issue that is increasingly important to me.

In their chapter in the book Problems of Protection, Erik Roxstrom and Mark Gibney discuss the circumstances surrounding UNHCR's involvement in handling individuals who fled the Bosnian war in the mid-90s. UNHCR encouraged very reluctant Western European states to accept Bosnian refugees on the grounds of so-called "temporary protection," which was a classification assigned en masse to all fleeing Bosnians. This was apparently to ease concerns the would-be host states had over taking in and then keeping a large refugee population indefinitely. Yet it led to a period wherein Bosnians found themselves unable to integrate into new societies and thus unable to do much to fend for themselves. It was obviously unsafe for them back home, what with ethnic cleansing going on and all, but these individuals were seen with contempt by the countries to which they fled. That, to me, is most distressing.

This summer while I was at the Liberian refugee camp in Ghana, I noticed huge UNHCR posters all over that proclaimed "Go home! Liberia is safe!" These struck me on a number of levels. For one, the pictures of children sitting in well-kept schools were obviously false. An accompanying DVD I later got to watch that had been developed particularly for inhabitants at this camp also showed several things that clearly were one-hit wonders, so to speak, including pictures of schools at that very camp which didn't actually exist. Many people at the camp were of the belief that if UNHCR was willing to lie to them about conditions right under their noses, they certainly couldn't be trusted to tell what was really going on back in Liberia. These refugees argued, quite effectively, that they had no business going home when every communication with family and friends revealed one of two things: 1) residual violence was still common, and thus repatriation was unsafe, or 2) the local economy in their home village was so destroyed that there was almost literally nothing to return to.

My problem, then, is with the repatriation issue is handled. Refugees should be able to enjoy the full protections offered under the Refugee Convention and other relevant international instruments. They should also be able to seek and receive permanent asylum if there is a genuine fear of persecution. Temporary protection then doesn't quite reach the same standard. It allows for host states to relegate refugees to poor conditions and second-class (or worse) status by refusing to let them work. I'm not saying that all refugees should be automatically integrated into the country to which they've fled, but that they should be protected under the law, and at least be allowed to find some means of subsistence, especially when international aid is not forthcoming. Indeed, most people who flee their homes as refugees don't want to be integrated into someplace new. They want to go home, but they want to go home when it safe to do so. In the meantime, they want to ensure that their children are fed and sheltered, which is often why they left in the first place.

Repatriation in most instances is still a voluntary choice. But with asylum regulations tightening around the globe, safety outside one's home country is becoming harder to find. Also, UNHCR has been instructed to do more to prevent refugee crises from beginning. This doesn't mean that people are no longer being displaced by conflict, just that they're now mostly staying within their own borders. These people, known as internally displaced persons (IDPs), are especially vulnerable, and there are virtually no international legal protections for them, and no institutionalized mechanisms to deal with them. Thus in pressing situations like Darfur, you find large camps of displaced people that are essentially sitting ducks, waiting to be targeted once again by the very people they fled.

I think the push for repatriation (especially when based on false information) is problematic mostly because it fails to take into account why people left in the first place. While it is obvious that refugees shouldn't have to face refoulement (return to place of origin where there is valid evidence that they will face persecution), not having to face persecution and enjoying security or economic viability are very different things. I think Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf put it well when she said that of course the Liberian government wants all its people to return home, but only when there is sufficient infrastructure to support a large group of people who will obviously need assistance in rebuilding their lives. Should they come home before this point, they just further drain already stretched networks of support.

Yet if we're only going to insist upon repatriation when it refugees can viably subsist at home, then many nations need to seriously reexamine their asylum and relevant immigration laws. Asylum is increasingly difficult to claim as Western nations clamp down on immigration as part of their anti-terror efforts. Fact is, if UNHCR has to beg a wealthy country like Germany to take in some refugees from nearby, then a dirt poor country like Chad has little incentive to take in refugees of its own free will. If people are are fleeing persecution, mass violence, or some other sort of disaster, the decent human being in all of us should kick in and we should protect these individuals and provide for their basic needs. Only after that is done should we even think to start asking about when they'll go home.

Help for the UN, version 1.0

It seems as though your world peace and security apparatus is dysfunctional.

What would you like to do?

1) Plead with the world's only remaining superpower to stop ignoring it whenever said superpower can't get its way.

2) Send yet another terse letter to that pesky African dictator who keeps thwarting its plans, reminding him that the decisions of the peace and security apparatus are legally binding.

3) Create another committee, to create subcommittees, to think about how one might make the peace and security apparatus less resemblant of the Stone Age.

4) Outsource to regional conglomerates, regardless of capabilities.

5) Have Lakhdar Brahimi make it work -- they don't call him Mr. Fix-it for nothing.

6) Replace all apparatus members with high school students and hope that they can do better.

Photo from here.

In which I'm mildly worried about humanity

It's becoming increasingly obvious to me that the world simply cannot handle any new humanitarian crises at the moment. We're stretched thin. Response capacity is just about all used up. There are some 18 UN peacekeeping missions at present, with more on the way. Trouble is, there aren't enough troops to staff them. One more disaster and we're stuck wringing our hands in grief.

In class the other day, we were discussing what could be done about Darfur. Obviously, the U.S. is "otherwise engaged" and so can't do much. Someone suggested sending in Europeans. They're skilled and have money and stuff, right? I pointed out that Europe has pretty small military resources compared to the United States, and those resources are basically already committed in Afghanistan and Lebanon. With East Timor getting shaky too, and who knows what might go down in other parts of Southeast Asia, Australia is pretty tied up. China and Russia have big militaries, but are so non-interventionist that they'll be incredibly unlikely to use them. As Victoria Holt points out, there is a serious need to sit down and figure out just how much response capacity the world currently has.

But it's not just military forces that are stretched. The high volume of ongoing crises/rebuilding from crises stretches civilian capacities within governments, international organizations, and NGOs as well. Do we even have the first idea of how these organizations are currently holding up under the strain?

This wouldn't be quite so scary if there weren't already big problems festering and receiving inadequate attention from the international community, even in some cases where there isn't a lack of will, per se (Darfur is probably a decent example here), but the funds and personnel just don't seem to be available to do what needs to be done. Admittedly, Western nations continue to be guilty of grossly underfunding their aid targets, but even if funds were forthcoming, would there be enough people to make use of them? Even if Ban Ki-moon restructures the UN Secretariat to make managing peace operations more efficient, will the organization even have the capacity to meet increasing demands?

All told, this seems like a bad time for human security. I hate to be so pessimistic, and I'm sure that present circumstances are temporary and likely to improve over the long term, but what do we do until then?

Briefly on Darfur

I'm concerned that things still appear to be getting worse in Darfur, and that the international community is still ham-strung over what to do. While New Mexico Governor (and now presidential candidate worth looking at) Bill Richardson managed to get the Khartoum government to accept a ceasefire (of uncertain date or timing) acting only as a representative of U.S. NGOs, official diplomacy seems to be going nowhere, while the military and humanitarian situation continues to decline, to put it mildly.

In his most recent post to his controversial blog, Jan Pronk, who served as UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sudan until the end of the year, provided rather disturbing information regarding the state of UN-Sudan relations, the recalcitrance of the UN Security Council and Secretariat, as well as an update on the lack of diplomatic initiatives by great power nations. It's worth a read, but it is far from uplifting.

It seems that now more than ever, there needs to be greater activism and advocacy for effective and determined engagement to end this now three year old crisis. Otherwise, the cries of "never again" that followed Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda are proving themselves to be hollow promises. For information on what you can do, I recommend visiting the Save Darfur Coalition.

Ban Ki-moon is gonna fire you

Newness abounds in the new year! New UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who totally lacks the warm charisma of his much fawned over by UN geeks predecessor, has asked some 30 senior officials for their resignations. Oh, the humanity of it all! But they have contracts!!! How dare an SG come in and attempt to manage the place. Maybe he's taking James Traub's advice to shake things up. Looks like even more new things in store.

Oops, looks like I stepped out

A number of different things have piqued my interest of late, but unfortunately I'm a grad student. This means that every so often I have to write lots and lots of things in bursts of productivity that I'd honestly rather avoid. Anywho, I have decided to provide a roundup of sorts for your viewing pleasure (all 1.5 of you).

Africa conflict news

• The Central African Republic is destabilizing due in part to the ongoing conflict in Darfur, which has already spilled into Chad. CAR provides a lovely stomping ground for Sudan and Chad to fight each other by proxy on somebody else's land.
• Speaking of proxy wars, Ethiopia is gearing up to support the transitional Somali government against the Eritrean backed Islamic Courts.
  
• DR Congo is alleged to be on the path to recovery now that elections went peacefully and no new fighting erupted. This is a good thing.
• Sierra Leone may be destabilizing just a touch ahead of 2007 elections, which many expect to be rigged.
  
• Let's not forget about the upcoming Nigerian elections, which might just be scary.
• Ethiopia's former dictator found guilty of genocide, even though he's being sheltered by Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

UN news

• Kofi Annan has made his final major speech, in which he politely bitch slapped the United States, in his very polite Kofi Annan way. One can also find a brief version of his lessons learned in office via WaPo.
• Ban Ki-Moon has been sworn in as the new SG. Let's hope he'll have some teeth. Apparently his rise to the top of the planet somehow includes being fired from a top-level post in Korea after a major typo.
  
• John Bolton is out, nations (literally) rejoice.

Homo news

• NYT does an article on gay evangelicals that is sensationalized and written for the lowest common denominator in a way that queer related NYT articles always are. Said article features (and mischaracterizes) a friend of mine from NC.
• Mitt Romney has filed suit in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to compel the legislature to put gay marriage up to a public referendum. Apparently likes to lose political battles in as many ways as possible.
• Middle East is still not a fun place to be gay, reminds some observers of small towns in Tennessee or Utah.

Weird science

• New study financed by abstinence crazed Bush administration finds male circumcision reduces HIV rates. Same study apparently fails to examine whether or not condoms are used, assuming that those silly Africans didn't pay attention in the sex ed that accompanied their operation, or lack there of. Way to spread cultural imperialism to peoples' genitals. Surely there's not some better way to curb the spread of HIV?
  
• Nobody really knows what to do if a Democratic senator gets incapacitated. Some sort of cloning or stubborn refusal to die and thus vacate seat may be under consideration.
  

To spare you the repetition, I'll spare any mention of Vietraq and all the DC dribble going on around that issue. Consider yourselves lucky.

As a final note, I've made a couple of layout changes, and added a neat feature from LibraryThing that lets you see random books from my shelf, as though you actually cared. Also, this blog may now actually be read by at least 2 people. And that, friends, is better than nothing.

Dear Shrub, Bolton = BAD

Unforunately for all of humanity, President Bush is insistent upon keeping John Bolton as ambassador to the UN. Even though the nominate seems dead under both the current Republican Senate and the forthcoming Democratic Senate, Bush just keeps pushing.

John Bolton was sent to the UN to do a full court press (look at me and my sports terms) for a big hairy overhaul of the UN system. Reform down to the last man, and what not.

The other "little" countries of the planet, probably scared out of their brains by the prospects for being bombed/invaded for Weapons of Mass Status Quo, actually went along with the game. Reform proposals were made. Panels were created. Reports were issued. Compromises were worked. People like Jan Eliasson went to bat. Kofi Annan went all out, doing things he probably wanted to do years ago.

If you stop the record there, it looks like Bolton was pretty damn successful.

However, with all these new proposals in front of him (and very few of his own, I might add), John Bolton squashed the substance out of each and every one. His efforts were so hostile, that the 2005 opening General Assembly summit almost didn't have a document to approve, because he was busy running his red pen of death through it. When it came time to review the UN's 12,000 mandated tasks, Bolton decided that everything but stuff dealing with Israel could be considered, and thus killed the whole process, as every other country (except Israel) insisted that the whole agenda be examined, streamlined, etc. Bolton even nearly killed the new Human Rights Council, which while not much better than its predecessor, could have been better had Bolton not been so obstinate.

So yeah, I hope the Senate drops his nomination right off the top of the Capitol and into the Potomac, where it belongs.

Breaking: U.S. suddenly gives a damn about UN Security Council

Following the current scuffle with North Korea (DPRK) has been, for me, an amusing exercise in watching the United States come grovelling to the UN because it now has virtually no leverage to act independently on anything but routine trading of back scratches.

After a week of wrangling, the U.S. yesterday finally pushed through a resolution sanctioning the DPRK. Then, immediately after the vote was cast, China stepped out and said something to the effect of, "by the way, we're not going to participate in the shipment inspections regime mandated in the resolution." Ambassador John Bolton's response was absolutely hilarious:

“I can’t believe that China won’t adhere to obligations that the Security Council has imposed.”

Seriously, reading that almost made me fall out of my chair. To think that any country, let alone one of the permanent five members of the SC, would have the audacity to ignore all or part of a resolution that is technically legally binding. Whatever is the world coming to?

UN Security Council and Western nations need a wake-up call

I meant to write this a week or so ago, but personal circumstances prevented me from getting it done. As you are all well aware, this has been a busy summer with regard to "the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression." Israel, the world leader in failing to grasp the concept of a proportional response, went and blew the hell out of Lebanon in a failed effort to rescue two of their captured soldiers. The peace agreement in Darfur has effectively collapsed and only succeeded in creating a shift of alliances on the ground. And yet at the same time, international responses to these and other crises have been half-hearted at best.

On the Lebanon front, the UN Security Council managed to approve a resolution that called for a cease-fire and a 15,000 strong peacekeeping force (sans Chapter VII mandate), but only after weeks of wrangling. Even then, the European countries that had been so adamant about the need for a strong peacekeeping force then initially refused to cough up any respectable number of troops for it. Indeed, getting troop committments from them required an extended period of "intense prodding and pleading" by the UN from Kofi Annan and others.

In Darfur, the situation on the ground continues to detiorate, in spite of the May peace agreement, and possibly because of it. Again, the UN Security Council has authorized a peacekeeping force, this time of 24,000 personnel, but on the contention that the Sudanese government must approve the mission's deployment. Sudan, of course, has said no. After all, they're pursuing a genocidal policy, so why should they agree to letting the world curtail such activities?

There are two main lessons here that the world, especially the wealthy and powerful nations, seem to be missing.

1) All peacekeeping missions have a certain element of risk. Contributing nations (usually developing nations with big militaries) should be aware that some of their soldiers and police may be injured or killed. These peacekeeping operations don't just go anywhere, they deploy in places where there is a genuine need to prevent further violence, and the role of such forces is to basically stand between combatants and then work to consolidate a more durable peace arrangement. For the French (or any) government to assert that the potential loss of even one of its troops is too high a cost for the protection of a substantial group of people is preposterous on any number of levels.

2) The UN General Assembly opening summit in 2005 agreed that all nations have a "responsibility to protect" (R2P) their own civilians from genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that the international community has an obligation to ensure that this responsibility is met both at home and abroad. Clearly, in Darfur, Lebanon and elsewhere, this principle has been violated. Honestly, R2P is a pretty basic concept that should have been adopted well before 2005, but that's beside the point. The fact remains that governments have agreed that this is a core concept of international relations, and thus it needs to be enforced.

To be perfectly honest, I'm tired of sitting around and waiting for the world to respond to the various crises that pop up each year. I'm tired of Nigeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh being the biggest peacekeeping troop contributing countries. If the Western world has all these wonderful values about protecting civilians and ensuring international peace -- the U.S., after all, essentially wrote the UN Charter -- then they should step up and do something about these conflicts. To fail to act smacks of everything from irresponsibility to racism. Yet to claim these lofty values from some higher level of morality while refusing to stand up for them simply reaks of the most arrogant hypocrisy. We need to not only reform the United Nations. We must also reform the way our leaders here in the West act and think.

Being jobless + summertime news slump = very little blogging

That's right folks. It's slow news season in DC.

On the Africa front, the only hugely noteworthy developments are that the Islamic Courts that took over Mogadishu want everyone to believe they're non-terrorist nice guys. Also, Nigeria and Cameroon have resolved their border dispute! That only took... well, it took more years than I have fingers. Finally, Darfur is still miserable, and Sudan still isn't keen on a UN peacekeeping mission there.

But hey, the UN is gonna shut down at the end of the month anyway. Even though people in both parties and a whole bunch of big NGOs think the U.S. position on UN reform is, well, pretty much a secret to everyone but John Bolton. Uncle Kofi is now begging for money... and, sanity.

On a lighter note, the Post's Reliable Source has reported on a three year old boy who had a Jim Lehrer themed birthday party. Should the parents ever decide they don't want this kid, I'll adopt.

Now, back to job hunting and preparing for Ghana.

That whole Darfur thing...

As someone who follows African conflicts basically all the damn time, I feel obliged to weigh in on the Darfur issue right off the bat.

The conflict is Darfur is absolutely miserable. There are multiple factions, multiple agendas, multiple interpretations of history and the present, and multiple attempts to either end or ignore the conflict itself. I'm one of those that believes that genocide is in fact taking place, and that this has been the case for at least two years now. Finally, a peace deal was signed late last week between the Khartoum government and the largest rebel faction, the SLM/A. Even though this has allegedly opened the door for UN peacekeepers, I'm still not terribly hopeful about the situation.

My primary concern is that the peace deal was signed by only one of three major factions. See, for things like ceasefires to work, you kinda have to get all sides to cease firing. Further, I have absolutely no confidence in the Khartoum government. Even though it has been relatively faithful to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that it signed with forces that had been fighting in Southern Sudan, there is still evidence that President Bashir and his cronies still try to sidestep the South, while taking in part of its oil money.

But part of my concern lies with the rest of the world too. Thanks for your protest last week. That was important. But it was a little late, no? Where were you two years ago? What kind of world is it that genocide takes two years to get a response?

Oh wait, we're talking about Africans being slaughtered. See the Rwanda example.

Why the Western interest now? We realized there might be oil in them there desert hills.

I'm not trying to be overly cynical. There are, in fact, boatloads of people who have expressed their concern over Darfur from the very beginning. I applaud those people, and I wish that I had been more vocal myself. But what we haven't seen in two years is real international action.

The African Union stepped up when nobody else did or would. They have fielded a peacekeeping operation in Darfur since 2004, although that mission is too small and lacks key equipment and essential funding. The mission should and now likely will be replaced by a UN operation. Yet this won't be any ordinary UN peacekeeping mission.

A peacekeeping operation in Darfur must be massive. After all, we're talking about a place the size of France. It took 21,000 peacekeepers in Sierra Leone to secure a peace that was more stable and in a country far smaller. It took 17,000 in Liberia. There are 17,000 more in Democratic Republic of Congo, and they can only cover about a third of that vast country. There are 10,000 coming to Southern Sudan, but again, that peace is more stable. In Southern Sudan, the war had raged for 20 years and it ended as much out of exhaustion as it did a real desire for some sort of peace.

So what should a UN mission in Darfur look like? Personally, I think you need at least 50,000 troops, complete with tanks and lots of helicopters. Those fighting in Darfur have not shown signs of exhaustion and don't seem terribly keen on this peace deal. This will be more peace enforcement than peacekeeping. It will be the biggest thing the UN has ever done. It will be ridiculously expensive. It will require huge logistical support. And it is entirely necessary. One of my former co-workers half-jokingly referred to this as "the invasion option." I don't think that's quite accurate. We don't need to conquer anything, we just have to stop the massive bloodshed. The whole original concept behind peacekeeping was to simply stand between two parties and refuse to let them kill each other.

A gentleman I met with tonight suggested that we first needed to buy off some of the parties in Darfur. However, with the discovery of oil wealth in the region, it will be impossible to buy off the spoilers unless they are promised a cut of the revenues. But wealth and power sharing can also be ensured by expanding the Government of National Unity to include Darfur representatives, and in short, some sort of political voice for the disenfranchised. It won't be perfect, but it's a start.

The fact of the matter is that Sudan is crumbling. In five years, the South will likely exercise its secession option. I think those in Darfur would like a similar option. There is also brewing conflict in Eastern Sudan that will likely lead to calls for independence, or at least autonomy. That leaves the Khartoum dominated center, which, by the way, has no resources at its disposal.
Thus the best we can do is make the disintegration a relatively calm one. Bashir and company are going to fight tooth and nail to stop it, and thus must be contained. The situation therefore requires a tremendous show of international resolve if we are to prevent further slaughter.