An American reacts to Darfur

WE inhabit a brave new world indeed, when a pair of Hollywood personalities can apparently achieve within weeks a goal that years of international diplomacy and pressure could not. Hats off to Ms. Farrow and Mr. Spielberg, for their apparently effective insistence that Beijing trade warmongering for peace-brokering in Northern Africa. The case at hand, of course, involves the apocalyptic scandal of Darfur, a vast region peopled mostly by black Africans that was allocated, by opaque post-colonial reasoning, to the mostly Arab-ruled country of Sudan.

Four years ago, in this near-desert territory shared since biblical times by nomads, herders and farmers, the Arab-led (Muslim) government of Sudan launched a policy aimed at the eventual extermination or ejection of the (Muslim) black African population. Since then, a centrally planned genocide, spearheaded by paid \o7janjaweed \f7(loosely translated as "devil on a horse") militia, has ramped up to full terror mode with impunity and increasing audacity. The People's Republic of China, practicing ruthless realpolitik, showered the necessary modern weaponry on the Sudanese government in exchange for present and future oil favors.

Despite the best efforts of outraged humanitarians, outside intervention in Darfur currently consists of the deployment by the African Union of about 7,000 underfunded peacekeeping troops and a few hundred hamstrung "observers." Meanwhile, the rest of the world pulls a pillow over its head, exhausted by the noise of distant misery. As a chance drinking pal put it to Brian Steidle, the former Marine whose experiences as an AU observer in Darfur are chronicled in "The Devil Came on Horseback": "So, like, isn't everyone in Africa killing each other, if they're not starving already?"

Capt. Steidle was initially hired into the Sudan to join an internationally contracted cease-fire-monitoring team stationed in the northern plateau, where for roughly 20 years the government had been waging a separate campaign against a black -- in this case, mostly Christian and animist -- population. Fresh from a peacekeeping stint in Kosovo, where he had completed his Marine Corps service, Steidle remained "eager to be involved somewhere in the field, using my military background." Packing a camera instead of an M-16, anticipating exotic African adventure, he arrived largely uninstructed on the local situation, "with the enthusiasm of a boy invited to Disney World for the first time."