WORLDVIEW/ Eoin McVey: The black American writer, Keith Richburg, in his book Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa gave thanks that he was not born in Africa and that his predecessors were captured and sent across the Atlantic in slavery. He came in for some stinging criticism, but the tales of horror from Africa never let up, and one can appreciate the point he was making.
Two years ago, in a rugby stadium in Durban, South Africa, the leaders of Africa's 53 nations launched the African Union. The aims of the organisation are not dissimilar from those of the EU: a pan-African parliament, a court of justice, an African central bank and even perhaps, in time, a single currency. The union replaced the idealist but ineffectual 39-year-old Organisation for African Unity (OAU).
Lalla Ben Barka of the United Nations Commission for Africa said what was needed was an African Union responsible to the people of Africa, and not just to its states, and "a forceful union". So, the African Union set up a Peace and Security Council "to intervene in cases of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity".
Two years on and the AU's presence in Darfur is almost non-existent. The OAU ended its days discredited. Its inaction in the face of enormous suffering, such as in Rwanda and Congo, was attributed to its lack of powers to intervene. And yet the African Union has been vested with those.
The situation in Darfur is, of course, so grave that the entire international community should have been galvanised into action. Eighteen months ago the government in Sudan recruited and armed an irregular army of Arab nomads in Darfur, since named the Janjaweed, to put down a rebellion by some of the region's leaders who were demanding more autonomy. The region's fertile lands and especially its water are in short supply, so the Janjaweed took to the task with relish.
The scale of killings, mutilation and rape which ensued moved the US Congress to declare the Janjaweed are engaged in genocide. While the EU maintains it is not genocide, but that there is "widespread killing and village burning on a fairly large scale", the UN Genocide Convention defines genocide as: "deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part." It seems the EU is playing with words.
Whatever it is called, some 30,000 people have been killed and close to 1.2 million forcibly moved from their homes and villages. They exist in camps that are not secure, while some have moved across the border to Chad. Away from their fields they are prevented from planting next year's crop in time for the rains. If all goes according to plan for Khartoum, these Darfurians will have no homes and no crops to return to.
The atrocity is of such a scale that it was presumed that the United Nations would act. Kofi Annan visited Sudan and insisted that the international community "cannot sit idle and complain that yet again we have had mass killings". The UN, however, is only as strong as the collective resolve of its members, particularly the 15 members of the Security Council, where there is no desire to commit troops. And yet the council was expected to pass a strong resolution condemning Sudan and forcing it to pull back the Janjaweed.
The US and the UK have also declined to send in peacekeepers, although Tony Blair says that 5,000 troops are ready to travel if absolutely necessary. It is strange indeed that a dodgy intelligence dossier can result in the full-blooded invasion of Iraq while indisputable atrocities against more than a million defenceless farmers cannot even rustle up a modest peacekeeping force.
The US and the UK, in fairness, have led the diplomatic assault. They originally proposed the threat of an arms embargo and sanctions, but some Security Council members, notably China and Pakistan, wouldn't have it. Instead, the resolution finally passed by the council merely warns Sudan that the council will consider unspecified "measures" (which may include sanctions) if the Janjaweed are not brought to heel.
The Sudanese government has time on its side. Support is mobilised to fight the possibility of sanctions, and a picture is painted of western nations looking for an excuse to invade. Meanwhile the killings continue.
Khartoum does not have a difficult task in portraying the motives of the US and the UK as suspect. It is only six years since President Clinton sent cruise missiles raining down on the country, and the post-Iraq climate has made US and UK intervention in a Muslim-governed country virtually impossible.
The Pakistan Tribune has argued that Sudanese oil and gas are "at the centre of all this attention" while Egypt's Al-Ahram al-Arabi commented: "What has happened to the Iraqis has not satisfied the greed of the war machine".
Despite the climate, however, the US and the UK should contemplate intervention. The logistics of a peacekeeping force would be formidably difficult, but the US has incomparable resources, and the UK proved in Sierra Leone that when it sets its mind to it, its peacekeeping works.
And so it falls to the African Union. To date it has 60 monitors and two helicopters in Darfur, an area somewhat larger than France. Protection in the form of 270 troops does not seem to have arrived yet, despite a promise to increase numbers to 2,000.
Nonetheless, the AU is making an effort, and persuading the Sudanese government to allow any presence is no small achievement. But if it is to succeed, and it is vital that it does in this its first real test, it will need funding.
If the UN cannot bring itself to intervene in a meaningful way, then it should make available to the AU such equipment and money as it needs to do the job. And the AU should not be slow to turn to the Arab League in looking for funding. In Darfur Muslims are being killed by Muslims.
Africa is racked by a never-ending cycle of chaos, carnage and civil war. The AU and the development organisation, Nepad, might just be the catalysts that will finally bring about the African Renaissance that Nelson Mandela spoke so eloquently about. It will have arrived, the South African Jacob Zuma said, "when war and destruction are a mere chapter of Africa's history rather than a daily reality". But the AU, with the best of intentions, cannot deliver without the support of the international community.