The UN deadline requiring the Sudanese government to stop its campaign of mass rape, mass murder, forced relocations, and forced starvation against Black Africans in Darfur has come and gone. Once again, the UN has shown itself to be completely impotent. At the same time the UN talks tough about Sudan, it has by default extended its so-called “deadline.”

The U.S. is pushing for sanctions to be levied against Sudan, but other UN Security Council members are ringing their hands, worrying that “they risk losing the Sudanese government as a negotiating partner.” Never mind that “Sudan's government ‘rarely ever’ honoured its promises.” One would think that the UN’s own post-deadline report would spur it to action. Just days after the deadline expired, the UN stated that

Attacks on villages south of Zam Zam have resulted in a population movement of around 3,000 to 4,000 persons…

There has been a sharp upturn in the number of attacks throughout the southern part of North Darfur.

For the Sudanese government, it has been business as usual. According to Amnesty International,

The reality in Darfur is that war crimes and crimes against humanity are committed with impunity and attacks by government-supported militias and government troops have led to the displacement of at least 1.2 million civilians within Darfur and an additional 200,000 refugees in Chad. …

After more than a year of conflict, world attention is now being given to the appeals for international assistance from the people of Darfur. However, as demonstrated in Amnesty International’s latest report on Sudan, Intimidation and Denial: attacks on freedom of expression in Darfur, the government of Sudan appears more concerned with managing recent international criticism than with meaningfully solving the crisis.

The right to freedom of expression in Darfur is being stifled by the Sudanese government’s unlawful and unnecessary restrictions, including detentions of its citizens for merely speaking to foreigners or for calling for peace.

Of course, Sudan’s government denies supporting the rampaging Arab militias (“Janjaweed”), but Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the U.S. claim otherwise. 50,000 people have been killed by the UN’s count. Amnesty states,

The testimony of the Sudanese woman … echoes hundreds of others, collected by Amnesty International, other human rights organisations, UN fact-finding missions and independent journalists. They all describe a pattern of systematic and unlawful attacks on civilians in North, West and South Darfur states, by a government-sponsored militia mostly referred to as "Janjawid"(armed men on horses) or "Arab militia" and by the government army, including through bombardments of civilian villages by the Sudanese Air Force. In these attacks, men are killed, women are raped and villagers are forcibly displaced from their homes which are burnt; their crops and cattle, their main means of subsistence, are burnt or looted. These massive attacks are the response of the Sudanese government to the insurgency of two armed political groups. These armed groups, mainly of Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnicity were founded in 2003.

The post-deadline UN report found that Sudan had only taken cosmetic steps to address the Darfur holocaust. It has deployed additional police in some regions of Darfur, but as the BBC pointed out,

this is not really making a difference to the daily lives and feeling of security for the refugees themselves.

They have absolutely no faith in anybody from any security structure in the Sudanese government. They say they fled their villages because of attacks by Janjaweed militias working together with government forces.

The thousands of displaced people now living in camps are unhappy that they are now supposedly being protected by the people they originally fled.

Sudan has ruled out a peacekeeping force for Darfur. All talk and no action. Isn’t it obvious what Sudan’s intentions are?