Peace in Sudan? (Not Off the Hook Yet Edition)

After a week in which negotiations in Sudan appeared futile, including reports as recently as this morning that the sides were too far apart to reach an agreement, it appears that the leading rebel group in Darfur, the Sudan Liberation Movement and Army, has agreed to a peace agreement with Khartoum. While this is good news, it hardly means that the Sudan is on the road to peace. Expecting peace to last in the Sudan is about as wise as looking to Italy for stable governments, and two other main, but smaller, rebel groups have refused to sign on to the accord. Furthermore, this peace agreement should not allow the rest of the world to pat itself on the back in self-congratulations. This morning president Bush seemed to hint proudly of America's central involvement in the accords which is, to be kind, hogwash. We had representatives there, but to claim even a sliver of credit would be a cynical gesture aimed at covering up our feckless inaction in the Sudan.

The latest issue of The New Republic is devoted what they are calling "the century's first genocide," a title fraught with the tragic recognition that where there is a first there is bound to be a second. The editors sum up what many of us have been saying in "Never Again? What Nonsense." Andrew Loewenstein, in "Words Fail" shows the almost inevitable failings of the United Nations, including the organization's unwillingness to utter the word "genocide" in relation to the Sudan. Even Colin Powell acknowledged genocide in Sudan, even if the government he represented has proven about as worthless as tits on a bull when it came to actually addressing the issue in the nearly two years that have followed Powell's utterance. Eric Reeves, the Smith College professor who has been perhaps the best voice on Sudan in the United States for the past few years, weighs in with "Next Casualty," a pessimistic but to my mind reasonable reading of the tea leaves of what the future offers in Darfur. Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, chairman of the Sudan Social Development Organization, writes from his own experiences "Inside a Sudanese Prison."

Let us not be fooled that we can now move on, that there is nothing to see in Sudan and Darfur. Now more than ever is a time for vigilance. We cannot undo the past. But perhaps we can do better in the future. I am not all that hopeful, at least when it comes to United States involvement, but I do try to maintain hope for the people of Darfur, of southern Sudan, of Chad and beyond where inaction has made nearly untenable situations worse. "Never again." We said it after World war II. We repeated it after Rwanda. Have emptier words ever been spoken?