He told of two and a half million persons driven from their homes and living in refugee camps throughout Darfur (an area roughly the size of Texas) and of 200,000 more Darfurians living as refugees in neighboring Chad. Action by the United States involved, first, calling on the African Union to deploy security forces there. Seven thousand troops were sent and for nearly three years have provided the scant security the people of Darfur have had.

    The United States also launched a massive humanitarian relief campaign, feeding two and a half million refugees during that same time period and helped lead the effort to achieve the first cease fire there and begin peace talks, culminating in the Darfur Peace Agreement in 2006.

    Our country also brought the claim of genocide before the United Nation’s International Criminal Court, he related, with a mandate to bring justice and peace to Darfur. This past summer the U.N. Security Council was finally able to pass a resolution authorizing 26,000 peacekeeping troops to Darfur.

    “But all this is very difficult to do in the context of a place like Sudan,” said Small, noting it is controlled by an authoritarian government in Khartoum that has strongly resisted any efforts by the international community to bring an end to the crisis. “Our goal in Sudan,” he said, “is to try to transform it peacefully. We’d like to see democracy come to Sudan.” A start had been made down that path when the crisis in Darfur erupted.

    As background, Small noted that another area of Sudan, Southern Sudan, had been fighting their own civil war for more than 22 years — the longest running war in South Africa — in which close to 4 million citizens became refugees and 2 million died. The conflict there could be somewhat simplified as being along religious lines, with Northern Sudan being predominantly Arab Muslims and Southern Sudan consisting chiefly of Christians and animists of African descent who were being forced to live under Muslim sharia law.
    Peace was finally achieved in that region with an agreement in 2005, however, and while there is a long way to go, Small noted that progress had been made in starting to create an environment where all could live together in peace.

    In Darfur, however, the conflict has been driven by what has basically been at the root of violence throughout Sudan — the concentration of power and wealth in the country’s capital of Khartoum, with the remainder of the country remaining marginalized.

    “As we look at what we’re trying to achieve in Darfur,” said Small, “we have to remember that we’re also trying to achieve transformation throughout Sudan, so that we don’t have another conflict of this nature, another genocide, another violent outbreak of violence somewhere else in Sudan or in the region.”

    Sudan is a highly sensitive area, he noted, with conflicts there affecting the entire East Africa region as refugees flee across borders. It also is very close to the Middle East, with Osama Bin Laden once living there.
    “So we need to make sure that the solutions that we work towards are solutions that are for the long term,” he said, “not just for the short term. We don’t want to put a Band-Aid on Darfur and just stop the violence when the seeds of the conflict are still there.”

    Until things are resolved, massive humanitarian aide continues to the refugee camps. “It’s very heart-wrenching,” said Small, who has visited these camps, “to see these people who have been driven from their homes, their farms have been burned.”
    There are children who have grown up in the camps, never having known any other home. The people of Darfur, he said, want one thing — to be able to return to their homes and live in peace.

    What is needed, he told the students at St. Mary’s, is for people to continue to raise awareness of what is happening in Darfur, as that has been a tremendous help in the United States being able to do what it has so far in terms of aid and pressing for peace.
There is also a need for humanitarian workers, and he noted around 10,000 persons have assisted in this way in the past two and a half years in Darfur.

    Things have moved slowly, he said, in getting the important involvement of the United Nations in the Darfur issue, this being due to the natural challenge of its being an international body and the difficulty of achieving consensus among nations. Fortunately, China has begun working with us now in ways they previously had not, he noted, and it is hoped they will continue in this direction. China is the major importer of Sudanese oil, so able to exert pressure on Sudan in that regard.

    The United States has also continued to apply pressure in the form of economic sanctions against Sudanese owned or controlled companies and individuals doing business in the United States. It was shortly after we increased these sanctions, said Small, that Sudan agreed to accept the U.N. peace keepers.

    He was optimistic, on the eve of the peace talks in Libya, that with an excellent mediation team in place there and a wide representation of factions in Darfur being represented, steps could be taken to begin resolving key issues.

    Not only the government in Khartoum and the rebel forces were to be represented, but major tribal leaders, women’s groups, youth groups, other civil society organizations and the camp refugees.
    “I’m still very hopeful,” Small said, “that if we can resolve the situation in Darfur and that if we can sustain this peace agreement between the north and the south, which is ultimately directed at transforming them back into a country, that we will be able to send that message to other conflicts around the world.”

Editor’s note: By press time, a boycott of the Libyan peace talks by major rebel groups in Darfur had dashed hopes of success there, with further negotiations being postponed until December.