In the past week, the blood-stained regime ruling Sudan has once again engaged in "open and transparent effort to overthrow a neighboring government," Chad, where for the past week Sudanese-backed rebels have been attacking towns. The attacks put at risk half a million Sudanese and Chadian refugees in the region.

Khartoum seems determined to give new meaning to the phrase "repeat offender." The proxy militias it arms, in concert with the Sudanese military, continue to destroy villages and bomb schools in Darfur. Ahmad Harun--who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for recruiting and ordering Janjaweed to commit mass rape, murder, and looting, and who should be on trial in The Hague--instead continues to be the Sudanese government minister in charge of supervising (and impeding and expelling) humanitarian workers in Darfur.

Instead of enabling Khartoum's behavior by our inaction, the international community should be putting concerted economic and legal pressure on Khartoum, and on specific officials such as Harun, to get the promised U.N. humanitarian protection force on the ground in Darfur, and to get a real peace process started like the one that won an agreement stopping Sudan's previous civil war (which was north-south, rather than east-west). Instead of replicating that success, though, we've been letting Khartoum undermine it: Last month the Sudanese Armed Forces "burned the strategic town of Abyei to the ground, leaving the North-South Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) at extreme risk, " as John Prendergast of the Enough Project pointed out to the U.N. Security Council in a briefing on Tuesday.

Read Prendergast's Tuesday Security Council briefing and Enough's new report on how to get humanitarian protection and a long-term solution in Darfur. The world has stood idly by too long.

Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.

The genocidal situation in Darfur continues to worsen, with more killings and increased attacks on peacekeepers.  All the efforts to date by the U.N., the U.S., and other governments have failed to stop the atrocities. 

In this morning’s New York Times, the Save Darfur coalition ran an ad with the message: “We stand united and demand that the genocide and violence in Darfur be brought to an end.”  It was signed by the three remaining presidential candidates – Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama.   The statement, We Stand United On Sudan, concluded: 

Today, we wish to make clear to the Sudanese government that on this moral issue of tremendous importance, there is no divide between us. We stand united and demand that the genocide and violence in Darfur be brought to an end and that the CPA be fully implemented. Even as we campaign for the presidency, we will use our standing as Senators to press for the steps needed to ensure that the United States honors, in practice and in deed, its commitment to the cause of peace and protection of Darfur’s innocent citizenry. We will continue to keep a close watch on events in Sudan and speak out for its marginalized peoples. It would be a huge mistake for the Khartoum regime to think that it will benefit by running out the clock on the Bush Administration. If peace and security for the people of Sudan are not in place when one of us is inaugurated as President on January 20, 2009, we pledge that the next Administration will pursue these goals with unstinting resolve.

An Associated Press story called it a rare show of bipartisan unity.  It is that, and it is also a hopeful sign that on this moral issue, there are indeed no Democrats or Republicans, conservatives or liberals, only compassion and a commitment to do everything possible to bring an end to the horror in Darfur.

We know that the government of Sudan responds to civil war by targeting innocent civilians—a strategy based on its weakness as well as its evil. This is the strategy the Khartoum regime used in southern Sudan until the international community pressured it into a 2005 peace accord. It’s what the regime is doing now in Sudan’s western area, Darfur.

So it’s not surprising that, after one of Darfur’s rebel groups attacked targets on the outskirts of Khartoum two weeks ago, the regime has responded by rounding up civilians from Darfuri ethnic groups living in Khartoum, killing some, torturing others, and hiding many God knows where.

We shouldn’t be surprised, but we should be on the ball. This escalation of the civil war in Sudan—in which rebels from a rural province reached the fringes of the capital city, gaining a public relations coup—only emphasizes that we need a real, substantive peace process, involving civilians as well as the different Darfuri rebel groups. Rather than the drive-by diplomacy of the past few years, this process must follow in Darfur the successful model we used to get the peace agreement in south Sudan: a full-court press of economic and political pressure from a united international community. (For more on what it takes to bring Khartoum to heel, check out Sojourners’ interview with Enough Project co-founder Gayle Smith earlier this year).

Instead, we’re letting even the agreement in the South slip through our fingers: Khartoum has repeatedly and openly broken its 2005 commitments about the oil-rich region of Abyei, and has instead been arming ethnically targeted militias there. Recently, the situation has escalated into fighting between Sudan’s army and the SPLA in the oil-rich region of Abyei, fighting that has driven at least 30,000 people from their homes, according to a U.N. bulletin this Wednesday.

Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.

Running interference for genocide is not an Olympic sport. And now Nobel laureates such as Shirin Ebadi and Archbishop Desmond Tutu are joining with former Beijing 2008 Olympic Games artistic advisor Stephen Spielberg to say just that to China, which has repeatedly used its diplomatic and economic clout to shelter its oil supplier Sudan. China's support has emboldened the regime in Khartoum to keep up its policy of genocide in Darfur.

Pressure on China can work – last year it caused China to pressure their pals in Khartoum to agree to U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur. But then China backed off, and now Khartoum is doing all it can to undermine the U.N. mission – for example, by saying the peacekeepers can't work after dark. Also, by having the Sudanese military shoot at them.

Khartoum has been shamelessly trying to claim that Darfur is home only to a civil war, not a genocide – but that doesn't explain the government's arming proxy militias to kill, rape, or displace millions of civilians. It doesn't explain why Khartoum recently appointed the documented genocide leader Musa Hilal, whom Human Rights Watch calls "the poster child for Janjaweed atrocities in Darfur," to a high government position.

Khartoum's recent progress towards destabilizing its neighbor Chad is an aggravation of the problem, not an excuse (Chad's government is no beacon of democracy, but it's not responsible for mass murder).

I'm definitely not suggesting that spectators boycott the Olympics, which would be a disservice to hardworking athletes. I'm saying that the world must use the international spotlight of the games to shame China into helping solve, rather than enable, the crisis in Darfur. Spielberg's withdrawal from helping to plan the games' opening and closing ceremonies is a perfect example – it sends a message without harming the athletes' chance to compete. Many athletes are considering using victory speeches to send a similar message of solidarity with the victims in Darfur.

If you were planning to go to the Olympics this summer, by all means do – just wear a Save Darfur t-shirt. And anytime you can, be sure to tell anyone you can how much the Olympic athletes' spirit of international cooperation contrasts with China's shameful defense of Khartoum.

The rest of us shouldn't wait for this summer to keep building the pressure on the U.S. government to use real economic, political, and diplomatic force on Khartoum.

Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.

Yesterday I had the chance to attend a compelling panel hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Penn Press titled "Human Rights and the 2008 Presidential Campaign." The panel discussed a report released by CAPAF about the prominence (or lack thereof) of human rights issues in the 2008 presidential campaign.

The report's findings show that of the 2,253 questions that were asked in the Republican and Democratic debates through Dec. 27, only 5.1% of the questions posed to candidates dealt with human rights issues (CAPAF called their definition of what constituted a human rights issue "a generous interpretation" -- it included topics such as Darfur, torture, genocide in Iraq, and promoting democracy). This was in contrast to the 8.6% of questions about immigration, 10.7% on moral issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, and 18.1% about general personal politics and party values.

In the report, William F. Schulz, a CAPAF senior fellow and former executive director of Amnesty International, offers a possible explanation for this marginal attention:

Human rights issues have rarely, if ever, been a principal focus of political campaigns for President or even for Congress. This reflects the fact that human rights are often perceived to be matters involving people far away whose needs and interests have very little relevance to our own.

However, he argues that human rights issues, such as the genocide in Darfur and military torture, do in fact have an impact on us here in the U.S. and should be a more prominent focus in the current presidential campaign:

Many U.S. actions have colored the attitude of the international community toward America and thereby implicated U.S. national interests quite directly: the "unsigning" of the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court; the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; the denial of habeas corpus to certain prisoners; revelations regarding U.S. use of torture. Moreover, the continuing saga of unstaunched death and destruction in Darfur, Sudan, has cast a pall over the reputation of every country that has failed to stop it.

One might assume that human rights would have been more central to the 2008 presidential campaigns to this point than in years past given the relationship of human rights controversies to U.S. policy and interests—the fact, for example, that how the world regards this country can have a very direct impact on America's national security, and the need, in light of Iraq and Darfur, to clarify when in the future the U.S. should commit its blood and treasure to countering regimes that abuse human rights.

Here at Sojourners, human rights issues, such as the genocide in Darfur and human trafficking, are incredibly important. They are not issues that "have little relevance to our own;" instead, they are central to our mission as people of faith to follow Christ's example of fighting for and working with the poor, rejected, and forgotten.

Despite the disheartening findings of the CAPAF report, I think change IS happening. This shift in values, the desire to focus on ending and eradicating these huge moral issues of our time, is happening. As a member of the progressive faith community, I hear a lot of discourse about this movement that we see happening all across the country, this "great awakening," this spiritual revival that is sparking a social movement.

But you don't have to take our word for it. All of the panelists at the CAPAF event yesterday affirmed that change is happening, and that a lot of progress has been made just in recent months to make these human rights issues compelling national values. In fact, two of the panelists, Gary Haugen, president of the International Justice Mission, and Gayle Smith, co-founder of the ENOUGH! Project, specifically singled out people of faith as being leaders in bringing about this change.

"We're seeing some shift in terms of what values are all about, from values as a matter of personal choice to values as an expression of solidarity and global citizenship," Smith said. "There is the beginning in the faith community of a translation of values from, again, within the four walls of our homes to the far reaches of the globe." Smith cited the increase in attention to the genocide in Darfur as one tangible example.

Haugen agreed, saying that the religious community has contributed to "a broadening of issues to include human rights and international human rights" in the national conversation. He also talked directly about the impact faith had in the abolition and civil rights movements, and how the spiritual foundation of those movements provided a "very profound motivator for sustaining a prolonged, successful fight."

"Religion can be a conviction to force us to act on hard, painful issues. It is a very powerful, sustaining, motivating force," Haugen continued. A force that is having a clear effect again now, he said.

It's true that issues such as genocide and global poverty are big and seemingly insurmountable. But, as the event reaffirmed for me yesterday, ultimately we have the conviction and force to win this fight.

(You can watch the full panel discussion here).

Kaitlin Hasseler is the media assistant for Sojourners.

The newest issue of Sojourners, hitting mailboxes and newsstands soon, has a photo of Andrew Natsios, President Bush's special envoy for Sudan at press time. Natsios stepped down in late December (because, many allege, he was frustrated by the federal government's failure to unify behind a policy to stop the genocide in Darfur), and was replaced by former U.N. ambassador Rich Williamson, by all accounts a good choice.

What hasn't changed, and what boggles the mind, is that the job is still only part time.

Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.

As I do more reading about Darfur, I've had to re-examine some of my assumptions about genocide. I'd tended to think about genocides on the model of the Holocaust, which involved a massive logistical undertaking by a ruthlessly evil state whose armies were strong enough to conquer multiple other nations.

The genocide in Darfur is intentionally caused by a ruthlessly evil state, but that's where the similarities end. Khartoum's strategies in Darfur - as in southern Sudan before the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005 - are the methods of a government that is not only evil and selfish, but weak.

Faced with insurgencies in Darfur, Khartoum chose a strategy based on weakness - rather than go to the expense of fighting its own wars, the regime recruited ethnically based proxy militias. Rather than go after the actual rebels, those militias, egged on and given air support from Khartoum, have pursued a scorched-earth policy of murdering, raping, and displacing civilians who happen to be of the same ethnic groups as the rebels. (Those would be the ethnic groups which, in an earlier divide-and-conquer move, the government had been economically and politically marginalizing even more than it marginalized the other residents of the desperately poor region.)

For a regime willing to spend provincial citizens' blood like water, genocide simply seems like the cheapest way of holding onto power.

The bad news is that the victims of a genocide of convenience are just as dead or traumatized as they would have been if the crimes' instigators had some different motivation. And, given the upsurge in violence against humanitarian workers, and the government's efforts to drive people from the comparative safety of the camps, there's the potential for a lot more people to die.

The good news is that this will be much, much easier to stop than the Holocaust. Khartoum can be brought to heel by coordinated economic, political, and diplomatic pressure - as was demonstrated just three years ago, when a U.S.-led coalition of countries prodded Khartoum into signing a substantive peace deal with rebels in southern Sudan (and in Darfur, in contrast to southern Sudan, there aren't even any proven oil fields). The first priority should be pushing Khartoum to stop dragging its feet on its agreement to admit U.N./African Union peacekeepers who will defend civilians.

Recently, a committed pacifist I know startled me by grimly joking that we should nuke Khartoum. The gallows humor was understandable, given the horror of the situation. And transforming the international outrage over Darfur into effective international economic and political sanctions will not be easy or simple. But nothing remotely resembling World War II (or any war) is called for to stop this genocide-on-the-cheap.

Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.

Here's the good news about Darfur: we know it is doable to force the regime in Khartoum to back away from its genocidal divide-and-conquer strategies. We know this because the U.S. helped do it once already: it led international pressure that forced Khartoum to a peace accord and power-sharing agreement with southern Sudan in 2005. If we want to preserve the peace in the south, stop the genocide in Darfur, and prevent Genocide Round Three from happening in Sudan's eastern Beja region, we need to remember the lessons of the last seven years.

Here's the genocidal strategy Khartoum has repeatedly employed: when rebel groups form in Sudan's provincial areas – an understandable reaction to a government that takes callous disregard for its countrymen to new depths – it arms ethnically or regionally-based militias and turns them loose to rape and kill civilian populations, forcing millions to flee their homes. It aims to create as many splinter groups as it can, in order to keep its enemies weak.

Then, when it has managed to stir up widespread violence and human rights abuses, it cynically tries to bill the whole thing as an internal ethnic conflict, hoping to pass off genocide as anarchy. But to buy this line would be to blame the spark of pre-existing ethnic tension, rather than the truckload of gasoline which the Khartoum regime systematically poured on.

They did this in southern Sudan, against Christian and animist populations, for decades. The tide began to change just before the turn of the millennium, when the New Sudan Council of Churches initiated a people-to-people peace process (focusing on traditional leaders and civilians rather than rebel commanders) which did hard, painstaking work to heal ethnic and regional divisions within southern Sudan – divisions which had prevented the region from negotiating from a position of strength. At the same time, a wide outcry from diverse groups in the U.S., including conservative Christians and human rights advocates, motivated the Bush administration to initiate a full-court diplomatic and economic press. After a range of delaying tactics, Khartoum signed onto a peace agreement in 2005.

By that time, they were already into round two of the genocidal strategy, in Darfur: this time arming the Janjaweed militias, drawn largely from groups that consider themselves Arab, against populations that consider themselves ethnically African.

Khartoum didn't think we'd care if they slaughtered Muslims. It is a good and hopeful thing that they were wrong.

But we need not just to care, but also to remember the lessons of the last seven years. So far Darfur peace efforts have consisted of sporadic, drive-by diplomacy which has allowed Khartoum to continue fanning the violence in Darfur, while putting off the international community with false promises of reform, mixed with belligerent bluster. Exhibit A is the failed 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement, which got the buy-in of only one rebel group and gave no seat at the table to civil society.

Peace talks are re-convening in December – read this excellent, concise analysis and let your government know you want us to get our diplomatic act together, now.

Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.

One year ago, I worked with Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Commission and others to create Evangelicals for Darfur – an effort to bring evangelicals from across the spectrum together to urge President Bush to take strong action to stop the genocide in Darfur. We ran a national ad campaign and met on several occasions with high White House Africa staff. I wrote that they " assured us of the president's commitment on this issue, and readily agreed that much more needs to be done."

It's a year later, and not much has changed. Ceasefires are announced and then violated, peace talks between the Sudanese government and rebel groups begin and end, U.N. resolutions are passed – but the terror, rapes, and killing goon.

This week, Michael Abramowitz of The Washington Post wrote a long piece on how the U.S. Promises on Darfur Don't Match Actions. His conclusion?

Many of those who have tracked the conflict over the years, including some in his own administration, say Bush has not matched his words with action, allowing initiatives to drop because of inertia or failure to follow up, while proving unable to mobilize either his bureaucracy or the international community.

He documents that, despite the president's strong passion, internal problems of a turnover of top administration staff on Darfur, covert and overt opposition by officials throughout the bureaucracy, and a lack of follow-through on decisions made have prevented stronger action.

Three international factors have also played a role:

Bush has complained privately that his hands are tied on Darfur because, with the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, he cannot be seen as "invading another Muslim country."
…
Some U.S. officials saw another reason for the reluctance to get involved: preserving a burgeoning intelligence relationship with Khartoum, which had begun sharing critical information about al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists.
…
The Sudanese government has resisted cooperation at every step in the saga and has been shielded at the United Nations by China, its main international protector.

The biblical injunction we cited in our ad last year still calls us to "rescue those being led away to death." (Proverbs 24:11) The president should put his faith and commitment into action by demanding that the people who work for him stand up to China, press for strong and effective sanctions, and prioritize lives over intelligence information.

An interview with Brian Steidle, a former American military observer in Darfur and the subject of the documentary film and book The Devil Came on Horseback.

Briefly explain why you were in Darfur.

I had been in Sudan for seven months prior going to Darfur. Even though I was in Sudan, I had very little idea what was going on in Darfur. At the time, I was looking for adventure and a job that paid well.

How did your experience in the military inform your work in Darfur?

All my colleagues who served with me in the military did so because we wanted to protect people who couldn't protect themselves from an oppressor. As I was a military contractor observing the cease-fire, we were neutral military observers. We thought we were doing a good job monitoring the cease-fire but in reality that wasn't the case. It became very frustrating and I quit the job because you couldn't do anything but count dead bodies and watch people's lives being destroyed in front of us.

Why do you say your camera was not nearly enough to cover what you saw?

I took pictures but that was it. I didn't have the capability to stop the fact that 400,000 people - and counting - are dead as a result of a government killing them because of who they are.

What's happened in Iraq has caused the U.S. to lose a lot of moral ground. Apparently, the Sudanese government is cooperating with us regarding intelligence on al Qaeda. Our government continues to appease them. The only way to trump that is to have the American people stand up and say "Hey, we want this to stop."

What led you to create the documentary The Devil Came on Horseback and the book?

I always planned on writing a book that described my journey. Originally, I wanted to do a documentary about the women in the compound but it changed into telling the story of Darfur through my eyes.

When I saw The Devil Came on Horseback at the Tribeca Film Festival, the pictures were so gripping and surreal I thought I was watching a fictional movie.

I was there and I can't believe what I saw. When people see the over 2,000 images I've taken, I hope they're going to be motivated to get involved in this crisis.

What's your reaction to the faith community's response to this situation?

I've spoken at numerous churches and synagogues. In particular, the response I've gotten from the Jewish community has been tremendous. While Christian organizations are very supportive of our work in Darfur, many of them are not as supportive as they were with the campaign against genocide in the South. There the battle was between Christians and Muslims. Since the Darfur situation pits Muslims against each other, I don't see the urgency from some very powerful Christian groups. I'd like to see them step up to the plate this time.

How can religious organizations such as Evangelicals for Darfur have a positive impact on this situation?

Too much lecturing can drive people away. I run into people every day who don't know what Darfur is. We can reach them through events where there are tables and information available about the situation but where there are also activities going on. Everyone is enjoying themselves as they learn. I was involved with Young Life and we did a lot of really fun events along with our teaching.

What organizations are you currently involved with and why?

I work with Hope Artists: Helping Other People Everywhere (HOPE). This is an advocacy movement targeted to youth between 18 and 30. The money raised through cultural and arts events will go to Global Grassroots (www.globalgrassroots.org), which is working to rebuild the lives of the genocide survivors. We want people to have hope that Darfur can be a hopeful situation. Hollywood movies portray Africa at its lowest point in history, but there's another side of the story. For example, Rwanda is now the Silicon Valley of Africa. Liberia just elected the first women president in the continent. Even the diamond trade in Sierra Leone is starting to get regulated. We need to inform and educate people but also give them a sense of hope that change is indeed possible.

Becky Garrison's publications include the forthcoming Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church (Seabury Books, October 2007). She will be speaking at Greenbelt Festival 2007 and Soularize.