Darfur

After years of worldwide outrage over suffering in Darfur, the Obama administration will soon launch a new policy that could soften some longtime U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese government implicated in the large-scale killings and displacement of African tribespeople. White House officials say that specific conditions would have to be met before sanctions would be lifted, and that Sudan could face even tougher sanctions if its leaders act in bad faith.

Memo to the new leaders of Libya: If you're trying to establish a democratic, internationally recognized state founded on the rule of law, it's a very bad idea to seek governance advice from the modern successor to Idi Amin. In one of the more incongruous diplomatic visits in recent memory, Libyan officials over the weekend rolled out the red carpet for none other than Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir — the dictator next door wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for slaughtering his own people, very like the military dictator just overthrown in Libya who was also wanted by the ICC on similar charges.

According to the United Nations' military commander in Darfur, the war in Sudan's genocide-ravaged province is over. It would be nice if that meant the humanitarian crisis were finished, the U.N. peacekeepers could go home and President Obama could cross one big foreign policy headache off his list. But it really just means that an already complex problem has become even tougher to solve. Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, ending his tour of duty as head of the joint U.N./African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur last week, said that instead of open war between rebels and government troops, there is now mostly low-level banditry by assorted armed groups.

Sudan's armed forces said Sunday that they had killed the leader of Darfur's main rebel group, inflicting what could prove a severe blow to rebels who have waged a nearly decade-long war against  the Arab-led government in Khartoum. In a statement carried on the official Sudan News Agency, the army said Khalil Ibrahim, leader of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement, was killed in fighting in Wad Banda in the North Kordofan region, which borders Darfur. A spokesman for JEM confirmed the death to the French news agency Agence France-Presse, but said Ibrahim was killed in an air strike rather than during clashes.

Re "War and peacekeepers," editorial, July 10 Kudos to The Times for exposing the many enablers to the ongoing genocide in Darfur. While the United Nations condemned the recent brutal attack -- in which 200 bandits opened fire on an ill-equipped U.N. peacekeeping force -- its cries of outrage ring hollow. China and Russia continue to violate U.N. Resolution 1556, which prohibits weapons transfers to Darfur. No one should be surprised that the crisis in Darfur continues. Almost one year after the U.N. authorized a peacekeeping force, the mission is woefully understaffed and lacks crucial equipment.

Your call for measures aimed at stopping the unabated acts of genocide and racial insanity, restoring normalcy for thousands of displaced Muslims, and for the United Nations to make an overdue commitment to securing relief for 2 million Darfur refugees (editorial, Nov. 21) is highly desirable and very timely. Haven't we pledged that never again should another Holocaust happen? The victims are not only tormented and slaughtered by militias but also by the world's indefensible indifference.

Lawmakers, actors and writers marked the fifth anniversary of the conflict in Darfur with an impassioned plea for support for Sudanese children displaced by the crisis there. Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling and fellow authors of children's books have signed an open letter calling for more support for children affected by the bloodshed. More than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur and more than 2 million displaced from their homes. Protests will take place in about 30 countries today, the charity Crisis Action said, calling for an immediate deployment of more peacekeeping troops.

A Sudanese court convicted and sentenced to death two senior members of a Darfur rebel group and six others for their role in an attack near the capital in May, officials said. Defense lawyer Kamal Jazouli said the eight convicted include Abdel Aziz Ushar, of the Justice and Equality movement. Ushar was held days after the May 10 attack outside Khartoum, in which more than 200 people were killed.

Max Boot ("What Do We Do About Darfur?," Commentary, April 14) chides the antiwar masses for being "silent" on Darfur and says "they don't object to war crimes as long as they're not committed by Americans." Most of the antiwar folks I know are concerned about Darfur, and the congressional investigation of it was bipartisan enough. Why does Boot think it's incumbent on the anti-Iraq war masses to organize a rally about every single atrocity going on in the world? While we're protesting Darfur, why not protest the heinous crimes of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, the continuing carnage in Congo, the never-ending war in Colombia, and other human rights violations that Boot doesn't mention?

Re "Thousands Rally to Stop the Violence in Darfur," May 1 The number of deaths in the Darfur genocide cited in the article is inaccurate and discounts the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. The Times refers to the figure of "more than 180,000" deaths having occurred since the beginning of this genocide. That number is based on outdated U.N. figures released in March 2005. Even at that time, that figure represented only the number of people who had died from disease and malnutrition; it failed to include people who had suffered violent deaths or those killed across the border in Chad, even though those deaths were also caused by the Sudanese government and the janjaweed militia it supports.

How do you deal with a genocidal dictator who says he wants to reform? For more than a decade, Sudan has been the quintessential pariah state. Its armed forces carried out a campaign of genocide in Darfur, killing more than 300,000; its president, Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, has been indicted for crimes against humanity. The Khartoum regime waged a long and unsuccessful war to prevent its non-Arab south from seceding; now that the new nation of South Sudan is independent, the regime is still attacking suspected separatists in areas under its control.

The United States will recognize southern Sudan as a new, independent country in July, President Obama announced Monday. The announcement, which had been expected, came on the day that officials formally announced that 98% of the votes cast in the Jan. 9 referendum supported splitting Sudan into separate countries. More than 2 million people died during the civil war, which officially ended in a 2005 peace agreement. “On behalf of the people of the United States, I congratulate the people of southern Sudan for a successful and inspiring referendum in which an overwhelmingly majority of voters chose independence,” Obama said in a prepared statement.

Anyone who has traveled to both the desert-like north of Sudan ? where the capital city of Khartoum is located ? and the flood-prone south cannot help but notice the extraordinary differences between them. The people of the north are mostly lighter-skinned, Muslim Arabs. Those in the south tend to be darker-skinned, Christian and animist rather than Muslim, more recognizably African. The north borders the Arab nations of Egypt and Libya; the south leads to Kenya, Uganda and Congo. These disparate regions were melded into one country as part of the same blunt imperial exercise that deformed so much of the world: The British, that is, decided it should be so, creating a nearly 1-million-square-mile nation whose linguistic, cultural, racial and historical contradictions were readily apparent long before the country became independent in 1956.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday pressed Rwanda to keep its forces serving on peacekeeping missions despite its anger over a draft report accusing the African nation's troops of atrocities and possible genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The government of Rwandan President Paul Kagame has threatened to pull 3,500 troops from U.N. operations in the Darfur region of Sudan because of its outrage over the world body's draft report, which was leaked recently to the French newspaper Le Monde.

Imagine a movie about genocide that's, well, sort of uplifting. That was the goal of two former University of Pennsylvania classmates who set out to make a documentary marrying their Jewish heritage with their modern-day social activism. The result is "The Last Survivor," a film that chronicles how four people — survivors of the Holocaust, Rwanda, Darfur or Congo — rebound from atrocities and find new meaning in their lives. After debuting in the U.S. this year, the film had its international premiere at the Jerusalem Film Festival this month.

His image shining on billboards promising highways, schools and wealth, President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir takes credit for all that glitters, turning oil money into skyscrapers that rise above his palace in this sweltering capital. Khartoum reflects his aspirations to add a splash of Dubai-inspired architectural panache to an African nation long troubled by famine and war. But the skyline here glimmers only so far; beyond it looms widespread poverty, bloodshed in Darfur and the prospect that in January the mainly Christian south will secede, robbing Bashir of the oil reserves the Islamic north craves.

Turkey's president said Tuesday that he had urged Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir to act responsibly and end the suffering in the devastated Darfur region. Bashir is visiting Turkey for a summit of African leaders, his first trip abroad since the International Criminal Court indicted him in July on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court accuse Bashir of unleashing militias on groups in Darfur that rebelled against his Sudanese Arab-led government.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir offered a cease-fire in Darfur and promised to disarm militias, a top rebel demand, in a new push by his government to show it is serious about ending the nearly 6-year-old conflict in the western region. Darfur rebels dismissed the moves, saying they don't trust Bashir and want to see disarmament of the feared militias known as janjaweed before agreeing to a cease-fire. Bashir's announcement came as he is trying to fend off possible genocide charges by the International Criminal Court over atrocities in Darfur.

What is an Islamist foreign policy, exactly? Is it identifying with Muslims and their suffering, or is it identifying with anti-Western regimes even at the cost of Muslims' best interests? Turkey's foreign policy under the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government demonstrates that far from protecting Muslims and their interests, it is the promotion of a la carte morals -- bashing the West and supporting anti-Western regimes, even when the latter hurts Muslims. AKP leader and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to meet today with President Obama in Washington.

President Obama's Sudan strategy, announced this week, is consistent with his approach to foreign policy elsewhere: Engage, don't isolate. Hold out carrots, but hang on to the sticks. And, quite often, seek the middle ground. Obama offered direct talks on nuclear weapons to the notorious leaders of North Korea and Iran, and he made it clear he wanted to meet with the Communist bosses in Beijing before receiving their Tibetan human rights nemesis, the Dalai Lama, in the White House.