Tough Week for the Special Envoy to Sudan

Tougher weeks are yet to come.

I wonder what did Major General Scott Gration expect from women of Darfur in the camps in reacting to his description of the situation in Darfur as "remnants of genocide?"

Magbula may be to the Special Envoy a "remnants of genocide." There are hundreds of thousands women like Magbola in the IDP camps of Kassab, Hasahisa, KarYari, Habila, and in similar camps across Darfur and in Eastern Chad. They want justice before peace.

I believe that, with all the nice words and the good intentions expressed, General Gration is not ready to handle the Darfur problem. It is either you have it or you don't. Al Bashir has underestimated the Darfuri people in this conflict. Today he is a fugitive. In a different take, the Special Envoy might have underestimated the resolve and resilience of the Darfuri people who are confined to crowded camps.

To the Darfuris in the camps, Gration failed from the start when he couldn't return the 13 expelled NGO's. Then came the phrase of "remnants of Genocide," and I was shocked to hear Gration asking Congress to lift the sanctions from Khartoum's government and remove the regime's name from the list of the states sponsoring terrorism.

U.S. Department of State's investigation teams had interviewed many of these Darfuris in the camps in 2004 to determine whether what was going on in Darfur was genocide or not. Many of the Darfuri remember very well how those Americans were visibly shaken by the atrocities they saw and heard.

To resolve the problem of Darfur, the U.S. or international community officials have to sit down for long periods of time with those leaders in the camps. The irony is that we see, every now and then, a new U.S. envoy or U.N. official rushes to Khartoum, meets with the regime's officials, asking them about how to resolve the Darfur problem. The last people these officials care to hear from are those who are cramped in those miserable camps. The regime's officials, who everybody is catering to hear from, are themselves the perpetrators of the crimes in Darfur. They are the ones who have caused the "Darfur Problem" in the first place. We keep watching this bad movie so frequently now, but insanely hope every time that the end would be different.

Gration has pushed the envelope this time. He has crowded his table with so many contradicting devices and plans that, through the week he found himself explaining the obvious, blaming the others of misunderstanding the clear. He ended up angering so many, the Darfuris in the camps and in Diaspora, the activists, and some high-ranking officials in Obama's Administration. Even Khartoum responded angrily to what it called" reversal."

The key factor in resolving a complex problem like the Darfur conflict is trust. The mediator or whoever goes in between must have that minimum level of trust from all parties involved.

The longer this saga drags on, the more suffering the Darfuri people will reap.

[Photo of Darfuri refugees from the BBC.]