01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, May 6, 2004

WASHINGTON

IN A PART of the world little known to most Americans, a tragedy is unfolding. In December a top United Nations official called the situation in western Sudan's Darfur region "the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe."

Ten years after the genocide in Rwanda, another scenario of extermination -- thousands of civilians killed and more than a million people forcibly displaced -- is playing out, while the world pays slight attention.

Diplomats and relief agencies are now stepping up their response. But even these efforts are half-hearted. Diplomatic reluctance to challenge the Sudanese government is part of the problem: There has been no clear international message demanding a stop to the campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Whether or not the killings in Darfur meet the formal definition of genocide, it's clear that a business-as-usual response can result only in tens of thousands more deaths.

Researchers from Human Rights Watch spoke in March to some of the 100,000 refugees who had fled across Sudan's western border to Chad. They document a clear pattern: Government troops have joined with government-supported militia in razing villages and killing their inhabitants, or forcing them to flee. The rights organization confirmed two massacres in early March, in which more than 200 men were executed after their villages were destroyed. Other reports estimate that thousands of villages in Darfur had been similarly destroyed.

The Darfur region is an area the size of France, with a population of some 7 million. It is both ethnically diverse and marginalized by the central government, based in Khartoum. All groups in the region are dark-skinned and Muslim, but some identify culturally as Arabs, while others do not.

The government has created, armed, and directed militias among the Arab-identified groups, while rebel movements opposing the government have gained support among the non-Arab-identified groups. The Sudanese military government has long practiced this strategy of divide and rule. It has also promoted ethnic militias and instigated atrocities against civilians elsewhere in the country, particularly in southern Sudan, which has been at war for decades.

The conflict in the south has different ethnic outlines from the fighting in Darfur. For one thing, much of the southern population is Christian, or else follows traditional non-Muslim practices. But the patterns of violence are similar.

In all cases, the Sudanese government attempts to evade responsibility by claiming that it has no control over its surrogates. Yet Sudanese church sources report that in the last few weeks, several hundred villagers have been killed, and as many as 120,000 people displaced near the southern town of Malakal. According to Bishop Kevin Dowling, of the Sudan Ecumenical Forum, those responsible were militias under government control, supported by regular Sudanese troops.

In recent years, East African countries, led by Kenya -- and supported by Britain, Norway and the United States -- have pressed negotiations on southern Sudan. By late last year the peace talks had nearly reached an agreement between Khartoum and the main rebel group in the south, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army.

But failure to deal with fundamental issues of democracy and power sharing among all the groups in the country could cause that agreement to unravel and fuel conflict in other regions.

Rhode Island College Prof. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, a leading scholar on Sudan, says that any comprehensive peace settlement must cover the crisis in Darfur. "A separate peace with the south alone," she says, "would work against the goal of national unity to which virtually all parties to the decades-long peace process have agreed."

The Bush administration has energetically backed the negotiations between Khartoum and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army. An agreement including shared oil revenues from that area could simultaneously please U.S. Christian groups and allow closer U.S. cooperation with Khartoum against global terrorists. But the peace process in western Sudan has suffered from U.S. and international neglect.

Neighboring Chad, acting as mediator between the Sudanese government and the rebel groups in Darfur, brokered a cease-fire agreement last month. Chadians are sharing their limited resources with the refugees pouring over the border. But the Chadian government has neither the influence nor the independence to monitor the cease-fire or compel the Sudanese government to negotiate seriously.

Late last month, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell demanded that the Sudanese government allow relief workers into Darfur immediately -- before the mid-May rainy season blocks overland convoys. A U.N.-aid assessment team also visited the region. The African Union is planning a peacekeeping observer mission.

But even delivering relief supplies will require more money, high-level attention, and pressure, to overcome stalling in Khartoum. Deterring further ethnic "cleansing" and fostering genuine negotiations will require determination and sustained engagement from Washington and other world capitals.

The U.N. Human Rights Commission, which last month passed a watered-down resolution on Darfur, must insist on follow-up after a more comprehensive fact-finding report. President Bush -- who has deferred sanctions against Sudan, saying that Khartoum and the southern rebels are negotiating "in good faith" -- must be willing to threaten sanctions to protect the Sudanese in Darfur from further violence.

William Minter, an occasional contributor, is editor of the Washington-based AfricaFocus Bulletin, an online publication on African issues.