When the U.S. declared the conflict in Darfur a genocide without the backing of the U.N., were we really committing ourselves to anything?

[Former Secretary of State] Colin Powell said no. He essentially said, "We find that it's genocide; we refer it to an obviously paralyzed U.N. Security Council. Genocide proceeds, but we've made our determination and our legal obligations end."

I would argue that there is ultimately a moral force that creates a legitimacy such that all actions that will stop the genocide are justified. That would include unilateral intervention. That's politically impossible, but the moral obligation is there, and it should take the form of working publicly to put pressure on the Europeans, NATO, the Arab League and Japan.

What are the short-term and long-term actions needed to resolve the crisis in Darfur?

We need immediate humanitarian intervention, with all the necessary military support, to protect civilians and aid operations that are increasingly at risk of being suspended. The only credible military assessments I've seen -- the ones that begin not with African Union capacity, or what's politically possible at the U.N. -- range from a low of 25,000 to a high of 60,000. The African Union has no mandate for civilian protection, and it has taken half a year to deploy 2,300 unequipped men. Any force must have an extremely robust mandate to protect civilians and humanitarian operations. It cannot be a monitoring mission, as the A.U. is.

You need to secure the perimeters of camps that have over 2 million people in them. You need to provide a way for people trapped in rural areas to try to get to camp areas. People are desperate to go back to their lands -- this is the planting season -- but they will not leave the camps unless they are provided security.

And the Janjaweed must be disarmed. If you look at those tasks, and you ask what is required to address them, you're talking about a force of six to seven brigades of NATO-quality troops, assuming a brigade of 6,000.

Finally, for the next year, as people move back to their homes, we are going to need to ramp up emergency transitional aid. If we don't, we risk this peace falling apart before it has a chance to take hold. And yet, the U.S. appropriation for emergency transitional aid has been negligible.

What other actions should the U.S. take at this point?

The United States has comprehensive economic and trade sanctions against Sudan. No American businesses are operational within Sudan, but many European and Asian companies that do business with the regime trade on the New York Stock Exchange. That fact has become much more salient in recent weeks, and there is a booming divestment campaign on campuses and among state legislatures directed at clearing investment portfolios of holdings in these companies. Only foreign investment makes it possible for this regime to survive and commit genocide. But there is no sign that the Bush administration is prepared to countenance capital-market sanctions.

Are there any reasons for optimism at this stage?

In Security Council Resolution 1590, passed in March, the U.N. committed to a peace support operation for southern Sudan of 10,700 personnel, including roughly 900 observers. But there is no civilian protection mandate and no mandate to stop the fighting initiated by the Khartoum-backed militias in southern Sudan. (The cease-fire agreement of 2002 has largely held, but there have been many violations, and many of these have targeted civilians.) Going forward, the greatest threat to the North-South peace agreement is the threat of military assault by these militias.

I am hopeful that the comprehensive peace agreement of Jan. 9 will hold -- not because I have any confidence in the Khartoum regime but because I think they miscalculated. I don't think they expected that the U.N. peace operation would have a chance to deploy.

If war resumes in southern Sudan, it will be because Khartoum concludes that too much has been given away in the peace agreement, calculating that it's better to resume the war before peace really has a chance to take hold. It's an all-or-nothing state of affairs right now. If [the war] resumes, it will be hell on earth.

Meanwhile, Darfur has captured the attention of a great many people. I don't know how it happened. I've been working on Sudan for six years now, and at the beginning my main frustration was not being able to interest college students in Sudan. Now, I lecture constantly on college campuses. Just look at the number of Darfur Web sites, the number of prominent pieces published on Darfur. I think Congress' determination that this was genocide was very significant.

But is it too little, too late?

Yes and no. If I'm right that 400,000 people have died, how can we not be too late? The question, though, is too late for what? Jan Egeland, the head of the U.N.'s humanitarian office, estimated in December 2004 that if humanitarian operations were forced to suspend their operations -- and some have -- monthly mortality could be as great as 100,000 civilians. If that occurs, we're going to surpass the Rwandan genocide total before the end of the year. That, it seems to me, would be an even greater failure.

I was lecturing at Bowdoin College the other night, and I told the students that I have this fantasy about going to Darfur: I look into the eyes of a little girl there, and I'm told by those who know that she is the last child who would have died a genocidal death but for the efforts that finally, finally stopped the genocide. We've already failed, but she is the measure of our success.

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