Consequence of Inaction
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
A humanitarian tragedy is mounting in Chad, where the Associated Press quotes Red Cross officials as saying hundreds of civilians were killed in a coup attempt over the weekend, and, the wire says, 20,000 residents of the capital, N’Djamena, have fled to neighboring Cameroon. Other accounts put the refugee flows in the hundreds of thousands.
The crisis illuminates the consequences of American inaction. Not that it is America’s fault every time one African kills another African; that would be the worst kind of blame-America-first mentality. The fact, however, is that Americans — from college campuses to Congress to the White House, in churches and synagogues — have been horrified about the Sudan-backed genocide in Darfur for years. These horrified Americans have marched on Washington, they have passed resolutions, given speeches, backed divestment of pension funds, advocated Olympic boycotts. They have done everything except what many of those so agitated about the situation in Darfur oppose when it comes to the Battle of Iraq — commit the American military to intervene.
Instead, they have relied on the African Union and the United Nations “peacekeepers,” which, predictably, have failed to prevent the violence of Darfur from spreading to neighboring Sudan. The latest stroke of genius to come out of the United Nations Security Council, our Benny Avni reports, is a plan to handle the Chad crisis with 1,800 French troops — not enough to secure a McDonald’s in Paris, let alone an African capital — in conjunction with Chad’s Northern neighbor, Colonel Gadhafi of Pam Am 103 fame.
The Chadian foreign minister claimed that rebel forces were backed by Sudanese Antonov bombers and helicopter gunships. Sudan is a center of Islamist extremism and a base for Chinese Communist influence in Africa, and it was the site of the recent murder of an American diplomat from New York state, John Granville. We hold no brief for the government of President Deby. But the war-wracked capital of Chad is what the world looks like when America relies on multilateral diplomacy and the United Nations instead of taking the lead.
