Sudan Hit With US Sanctions

President Bush ordered new U.S. economic sanctions Tuesday to pressure Sudan’s government to halt the bloodshed in Darfur that the administration has condemned as genocide.

“I promise this to the people of Darfur: the United States will not avert our eyes from a crisis that challenges the conscience of the world,” the president said.

The sanctions target government-run companies involved in Sudan’s oil industry, and three individuals, including a rebel leader suspected of being involved in the violence in Darfur.

“For too long the people of Darfur have suffered at the hands of a government that is complicit in the bombing, murder and rape of innocent civilians,” the president said. “My administration has called these actions by their rightful name: genocide.

“The world has a responsibility to put an end to it,” Bush said.

Unfortunately, most of the rest of the world is unwilling to do the same. The Sudanese government in Khartoum has been complicit in the Darfur genocide and there are foreign countries that are more than willing to look the other way in order to secure oil contracts, including Russia and China. The UN has been incapable of dealing with the situation because those countries do not want to risk their oil deals.

UPDATE:
The rest of the world refused to call the situation in Darfur a genocide. Kofi Annan refused to call it genocide, despite the ethnic cleansing and the bloody toll - hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced. The inaction at the UN only emboldened the Sudanese government to refuse peacekeepers access to the region and stymied humanitarian aid.