'Job from hell' and a problem to match
BAN KI-MOON has assumed the impossible job of secretary-general of the United Nations with a "problem from hell" at the top of his agenda. In office just since Jan. 1, Ban is already being tested by how to respond to the slow-motion ethnic cleansing in Darfur, the 3-year-old conflict that has landed squarely in his lap.
The reputation of a secretary-general rises and falls on his response to mass atrocities. That's unfair, but it is an understandable expectation for an institution created out of the ashes of the Holocaust. Just ask Kofi Annan. His term was a 10-year effort to exorcise the ghosts of the Rwandan genocide, which unfolded while he headed the United Nation's peacekeeping office. As secretary-general, Annan eloquently asserted the international responsibility to stop genocide, and he pushed the General Assembly to endorse a "responsibility to protect" that removes respect for national sovereignty as an excuse to look the other way when populations are being wiped out. But Annan was unable to convert these lofty phrases into a plan of action in Darfur, and the U.N. still lacks the capacity to mobilize peacekeepers when it counts.
Pinning responsibility on the United Nations for the failure of its members is a time-honored tactic of presidents and prime ministers. In Darfur, Ban confronts the conundrum that bedeviled his predecessor in Rwanda and Kosovo: how to be effective when your bosses who sit on the Security Council are disinclined to act or are divided. It is, as Annan said, a "job from hell."
For Ban, the test is two-fold. First is his immediate response to the conflict he has inherited in Darfur, which has now claimed more than 200,000 lives. Equally important will be the steps he takes over the long run to give the U.N. the wherewithal to prevent future Darfurs. Ban seems to recognize the stakes. His first official phone call was to his special envoy on Darfur, and he announced plans to travel to Africa this month for a one-on-one with Sudan's defiant leader, Omar Hassan Bashir.
But the long-running international failure to call Khartoum's bluff has narrowed Ban's options. Perhaps to make himself a viable negotiating partner with Bashir, Ban said last month that "there is no military solution to this crisis." But that's risky. After three years of failed diplomacy, seeming to rule out military strikes while atrocities continue will be read by Khartoum as permission to do as it pleases. The only way to get Sudan to relent may be the credible threat of military action, specifically a ban on offensive military flights, which the U.N. agreed to two years ago but never enforced. Ruling military options in or out is a decision that will be up to others. The step Ban should take now is to put troops in place for an international force should one be called into action.
