The Obama-Biden Plan for Darfur (and input from ENOUGH)

You've been campaigning for two years, first in an intense nomination battle and then in an even more intense general election, and you've emerged victorious in an moment sure to define a generation. What do you do? If you're Barack Obama, you give a great speech, and then get back to work. (I would've gone on vacation. Or at the very least, slept for a week straight.)

The Obama-Biden Administration launched their impressive Change.gov website, replete with information on the new agenda, including the Obama-Biden Plan for Renewing American Diplomacy. (Which, as I say here and here, should be a key priority of our new president.)

Ending the genocide in Darfur is a specific priority:

"As president, Obama will take immediate steps to end the genocide in Darfur by increasing pressure on the Sudanese and pressure the government to halt the killing and stop impeding the deployment of a robust international force. He and Joe Biden will hold the government in Khartoum accountable for abiding by its commitments under the Comprehensive Peace Accord that ended the 30 year conflict between the north and south. Obama worked with Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) to pass the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act in 2006."

More details on exactly how they plan to do this would be nice. Lucky for the transition team, the ENOUGH Project released a set of recommendations for a "Peace Surge" earlier today, which advises the new administration to:

1. Continue the ICC investigation of President al-Bashir and others;
2. Enhance multilateral, non-military coercion, such as UN-sanctioned targeted sanctions;
3. Expand the arms embargo, with a monitoring mechanism to guarantee enforcement;
4. Make UNAMID effective, by building capacity and removing the Sudanese government's "de-facto veto power" over the mission's deployment and mandate; and
5. Ban offensive military flights, by enforcing a no-fly zone to prevent the bombings of villages in Darfur.

The difficulty of dealing with China at the UN will pose a particular challenge--China has the ability to thwart or mitigate the effect of sanctions and arms embargos, as we've already seen, and thus Chinese cooperation is critical for ending the crisis in Darfur. (The ENOUGH paper is "the first in a series of letters...spelling out a practical roadmap to end the crisis in Sudan," so I hope they address the China issue in an upcoming addition.)

I'm generally not the most optimistic person in the world (goes with the territory), but I've never felt so hopeful about the prospects for substantial change--an end, even?--to the dynamics of the conflict in Darfur. It's high time, and I hope it remains an administration priority.