Darfur.

What I take from Romeo Dallaire's harrowing memoir of the 1993-94 Rwanda UN mission Shake Hands with the Devil is that the real tragedy of the Rwandan genocide was how easily it could have been prevented. The geographical distances that needed external policing were small; the population was desperate for peace and an end to the civil war (people cheering in the streets as the first phase of Arusha was implemented in the capital); the genocidaires were generally deferential to the UN's initial attempts to intervene and were broadly responsive to the presence of foreign (particularly non-Belgian) troops; the moderate Hutu parties, many members of the Habyarimana regime itself, even elements of the radical Hutu groups who were training to carry out the genocide didn't really, or didn't fully, want it to happen; were, at least, tentative. It was almost as if enough of those gravitating toward genocide wanted to be forced instead toward a peace settlement, wanted to be stopped. But they weren't stopped. And eventually they couldn't be stopped. The West just didn't care enough to overcome bureaucratic niceties, the post-Somalia humanitarian aid overkill and a general apathy about sub-saharan Africa to put up the relatively small force and exert the relatively small amount of dipolmatic pressure, backed up by force (what Dallaire calls "Chapter Six and a Half" intervention) it would have taken to subdue Kigali and stop the massacre before it started. The tragedy of Rwanda was a result of the combined anti-forces of bureaucracy, timidity and apathy.

None of that's true in Darfur. The distances that need patrolling are much bigger. the vulnerable spots are dispersed rural refugee camps, not concentrated, crowded urban enclaves. The Sudanese government is relatively stable, completely vile and more interested in real politik than historical score-settling. The genocide is one of attrition and low-level, winked-at vigilante-style violence, not of wild-eyed, organized, politically-motivated massacre. The African Union is involved on the ground. The Western superpowers care, and in a relatively nonpartisan way -- the Democrats' and the Republicans' favourite potential future presidential candidates have just penned a joint op-ed in the WaPo on the matter, the latest of many such outbursts. The US Congress declared a genocide six months ago, though the Depute Sec State Zoellick went on to basically take it back soon after. The UN cares; here's their latest handwringing press release, the fourth this week. But the killing can't be stopped. I can't find a mortality estimate since September (370,000 over three years then, via Eric Reeves.) The outrage continues apace; it just gets less and less specific.

Blame the Bushies of course -- but we always knew this is what we'd get from them: de facto apathy, a Cold War mentality: intelligence against the current Big Red Scare matters most. Bush said so himself during his first campaign. But there's more to it than that. What of Paul Martin and Tony Blair and the EU? The New Republic is ranting and raving again at ineffectual senators, at the corrupt AU. The question they don't answer, that I haven't seen answered, is why. Why, if everyone cares so much this time, if we're willing to call it genocide, if the international community is expected to act, if the UN has been such a positive global influence over the past ten years, if so much of the West cares loudly and in unity: why can't the ethnic cleansing be stopped? Is it the specific nature of the conflict? Or is it the location of the conflict? Is this ineffectuality general, the nature of the international community beast, or is it specific to Darfur?