[icarus]

First of all, the spread of the conflict to Chad is nothing new; it has been that way for almost a year. The spread of Khartoum-sponsored violence to the Central African Republic is more recent, but not noted in this article.

As for not blaming the UN, why on earth not? What is this whole confederation of African countries who are opposed to UN intervention? I can't imagine that African nations would be tacit in the face of regional destabilisation and genocide against black Africans by Arab militias. Octothorp is right, the AU is pretty eager for the UN to step in because at the moment the AU force is so piddly and without mandate to intervene that it just gets mocked by the janjaweed militias.

The parties who most strongly support Khartoum's refusal of UN intervention are the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Conference, but most importantly Russia and China (who has vast oil concessions in Sudan). Couple that with a general reluctance for the international community to enter into another forcible conflict against an Islamic force and you have a huge hill to climb to convince the UN to save a region with no strategic value. Clearly human rights and the Responsibility to Protect alone are not sufficient reasons for the UN to intervene.

The UN won't intervene in Darfur (neither will NATO, which could potentially deflect attention from the UN's inadequacy) and it will be the organisation's undoing, in my opinion.

It really is a ****ing joke.