Like many people fortunate enough to live in our advanced democracy, I feel I haven’t been adequately educated as to what precisely is going on in Darfur, the western region of Africa’s largest country, the Sudan. I further confess that “On Our Watch,” a new documentary about Darfur showing tonight on PBS’s “Frontline,” failed to entirely dispel my confusion.

For example, “Janjaweed”: What exactly is it? Vague news reports notwithstanding, so far as I can tell it is a group of armed Muslim African militias of mostly Arab origin that is killing large numbers of darker-skinned Muslim Africans of mostly non-Arabic origin. According to PBS’s documentary, the Janjaweed is primarily responsible “for what has been called the first genocide of the 21st century.” At least 200,000 people have been murdered, 2.5 million have been displaced, countless women have been raped, and who knows how many of the luckless have been maimed. “On Our Watch” lays the blame for this state of affairs at the door of the United Nations. “If the United Nations could die of shame it would have been dead years ago,” the narrator, Will Lyman, states, quoting an unnamed writer. A two-second Google search of the quote reveals that it belongs to Tom Stoppard, one of the most famous authors in the world.

Why not say so? Arguably, it’s symptomatic of the fog that so often descends on discussions of Darfur, and Africa in general, just as it does on this episode of “Frontline.” If you’re not going to lay out for the viewer a detailed account of who exactly the Janjaweed are (I fleshed out the inadequate description given above by poking around the Web) or, more important, what worldview their backers in the Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, espouse (Osama bin Laden had his headquarters there from 1992–96, which should be a bit of a tip-off), or offer any explanation for why Sudan’s neighboring African countries are apparently indifferent to the killing of their fellow Africans, or why Christian and Jewish bodies seem much more upset about the slaughter of Muslims than their Muslim equivalents, then perhaps you’re better off referring to Mr. Stoppard as “one writer,” as if he might be anybody from Pat Buchanan to a penniless blogger.

The U.N. aside, “On Our Watch” also directs blame for the Darfur genocide toward that vaguest of entities, the “international community,” which largely boils down to the West. Russia, for instance, is essentially excused. The logic goes like this: Vladimir Putin doesn’t pretend to be nice, therefore we don’t expect him to be nice, therefore we shrug our collective shoulders when he isn’t nice. It’s a good gig, if you can get it.

Not that Western leaders produced anything more in the way of sympathy or aid. Four years ago, according to the film, Mukesh Kapila, Sudan’s former humanitarian coordinator to the U.N. (he was subsequently ostracized by his own government), informed foreign ministers in global capitals such as London, Brussels, and Washington of the carnage taking place. According to the eloquent Mr. Kapila, the information was greeted with the diplomatic equivalent of a yawn. The basic reaction was: “Forget it. It’s Africa.”

So what’s good about “On Our Watch”? First, the fact that it exists, even if the number of documentaries on the subject, such as the recent “Darfur Now,” is proliferating, and Darfur itself has become a political cause célèbre. The U.N., due to its inaction in Rwanda and Srebrenica and now Darfur, is hit hard, deservedly and repeatedly, and Bill Clinton gets a bloody nose over the genocide in Rwanda. We receive a strong visual impression of Darfur, particularly when it’s shown from the air. It is the size of France — a desiccated France nearly devoid of vegetation, agriculture, streets, roads, houses, cities, and almost any form of infrastructure. There is also brief footage of Janjaweed raids and their gruesome aftermath of mass graves and hacked bodies left in piles.

A number of commentators provide their views of what has taken place. Samantha Power, author of an acclaimed book on genocide, points out that saying, “Never again would we like genocide to happen,” is very different from saying, “Never again will we stand idly by and let genocide happen.” Sir Kieran Prendergast, Kofi Annan’s former second-in-command at the U.N., goes further. A lot further, in fact: “We don’t mean it when we say we’re not going to accept other Rwandas. But I never thought we did mean it.”

Funny, I never thought they meant it, either.

It’s just possible the Bush administration did mean it, however. “More than any other power, the United States pushed for meaningful action against Sudan, but its standing had been weakened in the eyes of many members by its show of force in Iraq,” argues the narrator, neatly letting the international community off the hook. I believe this is laughingly referred to in Brussels as the Iraq War Ate My Homework excuse: “The United States no longer has a moral right to interfere in other countries, even on the most strict humanitarian terms. And we … don’t have an army.”

Ultimately, PBS’s documentary puts its faith in people power, the damaging political heat generated either by little-known individuals, such as the indefatigable Darfur activist Eric Reeves, a semi-retired American professor suffering from leukemia; an Argentinian war crimes prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, or Mia Farrow, George Clooney, and other celebrities.

China, which has blocked sanctions against Sudan on the U.N. Security Council in order to protect its investments in the country’s oil production, emerges as the chief villain, albeit one with an Achilles’ heel it took a while to spot: the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Ms. Farrow, whom we witness visiting refugee camps in Darfur, started referring to them as the “Genocide Olympics.” Mr. Reeves threatened to make the 2008 games go down in infamy alongside those of 1936. If all this is a bit over-the-top, it nonetheless seems to be working. The Chinese are very eager to see the games go off without a hitch, and this summer the country’s U.N. delegation finally agreed to allow 26,000 U.N. troops into the country, albeit with the proviso that they be African and have no right to disarm the Janjaweed.

Progress? Maybe. But is China really the problem in the Sudan? Even the narrator seems doubtful. Whatever happened to “root causes”?

bbernhard@nysun.com