A deadline for Darfur
DARFUR IS IN a free fall. By Sept. 30, Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, is threatening to evict a heroic but overstretched force of peacekeepers from the African Union. He has also rejected United Nations peacekeepers and launched a military offensive aimed at destroying Darfur rebels once and for all. Without protection, humanitarian agencies will be forced to suspend operations and, the UN estimates, 100,000 people will die each month.
During a presentation last week to the UN Security Council, Elie Wiesel said that Bashir must cooperate with the international community, or pay a personal price.
To this end, targeted sanctions would be most effective. These include a travel ban on Bashir, his cronies, and their relatives, as well as freezing their overseas assets.
The Security Council can also show that it is serious about accountability by asking the International Criminal Court to indict Bashir. To accelerate the prosecution, the council should issue a public appeal to UN member states asking them to provide information relevant to the indictment.
Pressure can also be intensified by imposing an arms embargo on Sudan and enforcing a no-fly zone to prevent the aerial bombardment of civilians. The Security Council could also limit Sudan's war chest by implementing an embargo on the country's oil exports.
If Bashir refuses to accept the UN peacekeeping force recently authorized by Security Council Resolution 1706, Wiesel urged the council to invoke Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which allows the imposition of troops against the will of the host country.
UN peacekeepers would be used not to ``recolonize" Sudan -- as Bashir asserts -- but to create safe havens separating victims from the killers and allowing the delivery of emergency food supplies.
Bashir is cleverly trying to undermine international efforts by manipulating anti-American sentiments among the UN's members and drawing parallels with the US occupation of Iraq. He maintains that the United States has a hidden agenda to occupy Sudan and seize its oil.
The international community must not be fooled. The criminal nature of Bashir's regime and his history of collaboration with terrorist groups and rogue regimes speaks for itself.
Bashir harbored Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in the 1990s. He is exploring the acquisition of nuclear technology with Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Bashir has also waged war on his neighbors and committed atrocities against his citizens. Bashir also allows Chadian rebels to launch attacks from Sudanese territory. During the North-South civil war, Bashir's scorched - earth policy in south Sudan and the Nuba Mountains killed 2 million people. Since 2003, about 400,000 people in Darfur have been killed and several million rendered homeless.
In his UN address this week, President Bush warned that a disaster is looming. The time has passed for hand wringing and exhortations that ``something must be done." Before the Sept. 30 deadline, great powers should exert maximum pressure on Bashir.
The United States should engage recalcitrant members of the Security Council. The Bush administration should point out to China, a major customer of Sudanese oil , and Russia, the primary supplier of arms to Sudan, that they can show their commitment to human life above economic interests by pressuring Sudan to accept UN peacekeepers. Quiet diplomacy would be most effective.
The United States says all the right things when it comes to Sudan. However, the Bush administration's involvement has been largely rhetoric. It still hides behind the threat of a veto by Russia or China in demurring from more robust diplomacy aimed at getting Sudan to accept UN peacekeepers.
What if Bashir continues to defy the will of the international community? The Darfur crisis dramatizes two opposing principles central to the UN's identity. One is the principle of ``sovereignty" and the rights of member states to manage their affairs absent outside interference. The other, which emerged after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, is the UN's ``responsibility to protect."
The 20th century was the bloodiest in human history. If there is a lesson to be learned from the 1930s and '90s, the world can not sit idly by while ruthless regimes hide behind claims of sovereignty to commit genocide. International conferences are meaningless if they don't affect conditions on the ground.
For Darfur, which faces an imminent catastrophe if the African Union leaves and Sudan prevents the deployment of a UN peacekeeping operation, the choice is clear: many will die if the world does not act in unison to defend defenseless victims.
David L. Phillips is executive director of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. 
