Opinion: How to solve a problem like Darfur

PALO ALTO — In Darfur, disease, rape, carnage and death have been regular features of life since February, 2003. Now President Obama says he wants to talk to the Sudanese government. All I can say is, that has been tried before.

In October 2004, Tony Blair, then British prime minster, came to Khartoum and climbed the steps of the presidential palace to see Omar Bashir, Sudan’s dictator. On those same steps, in 1885, an Islamic rebel leader beheaded Gen. Charles Gordon, the British administrator of Sudan. This time, Blair reached the second floor without incident, sat with Bashir in his lair and came away with a promise.

Sudan would withdraw its forces from Darfur and reach a peace agreement with the Darfur rebels by the end of that year. At that time, the United Nations estimated that 50,000 people had been killed and at least 1 million others driven from their homes.

After Blair’s visit, a succession of world leaders climbed those steps, sat with Bashir and came away to brag before the microphones about the concessions he had offered. All of it came to naught.

In 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid her own visit. Outside Bashir’s den, his private guards beat up members of Rice’s staff and the news media traveling with her as they tried to enter the room. (I was there.) Rice said she was “outraged.” Finally the guards let her entourage pass. Inside, when a reporter tried to ask Bashir a question, two of his guards grabbed her from behind and dragged her away. Bashir watched, silent and still, a slight smile on his face.

After that, most everyone realized that Bashir was a nothing more than a thug who offered glib promises while dispatching more killers to Darfur from his back door. At the very time Rice and her bruised staff left Sudan, western government officials said Bashir was still paying regular salaries to the militias responsible for the bulk of the slaughter. I can almost see Bashir and his hired killers laughing as they watched Rice’s plane take off.

Still the West tried to work with him. But more disappointment lay ahead. Rice gave Robert Zoellick, the deputy secretary of state, the Darfur account, and he made frequent trips there. On one visit, to Shearia, Darfur, villagers told him that government militiamen rode into the nearby refugee camp almost daily, killing, raping and pillaging. Then Sadek Abdel Nebi, the area commissioner, Bashir’s man, sidled up and blamed all of the violence on the rebels. “They are responsible for death ongoing,” he insisted.

A villager pointed to a scorched plot of ground where, he said, the mayor had lived until government troops had burned down his house and then shot him in the head.

Hearing this, Nebi erupted. “I am in charge here,” he shouted. “Talk to me, not him!” “I can’t get a straight story from your government!” Mr. Zoellick shouted back. ”But I will find out. I will find out!” Bellies touched as the two men shoved against each other, red faces barely an inch apart. Had not half-a-dozen American reporters been watching, rapt, the two might have come to blows.

Undeterred, the next year Zoellick arranged a peace conference. When it came time to sign the document, one rebel leader, Abdul Wahad al-Nur, stormed out of the room and denounced the whole exercise. Leaders of several smaller groups followed his example, and the agreement fell apart. Bashir, as always, had been saying all the while that if only the rebels could unify, Darfur would find peace. The outcome certainly pleased and amused him. The carnage continued. A few days later, in Menawashie village, government militiamen killed one woman, wounded six others and raped 15 women, witnesses and victims said.

The problem is Bashir. Remove him, and soon enough Darfur will find peace. The International Criminal Court charged him with genocide and issued an arrest warrant in March, to be executed by any country he visits that is a signatory to the court. Well, in April, Bashir took a grand tour of the Arab world. His hosts laid red carpets and greeted him with kisses on both cheeks. At an Arab summit in Doha, Amr Moussa, the Arab League’s secretary general, hugged the accused and said the league would “continue our efforts to halt the implementation of the warrant.” Just last week, on a visit to Mauritania, Bashir and his host “signed 15 cooperation agreements,” the two governments said.

This month, gunmen shot and killed five Rwandan peacekeepers while they were driving through a government-controlled area of Darfur. As always, everyone who follows events there deplored the latest deaths. As always, nothing more happened.

Want to solve this problem? Next time Bashir leaves Sudan, the International Criminal Court should arrange with one of its member states to snatch him and throw him in jail. Only then will Darfur find peace.