Further words on Darfur

Several posts back, I suggested that the situation in Darfur could be somewhat ameliorated by using French and American air assets over Darfur as a way to deprive the janjaweed and other miliatary forces of freedom of movement and air support for attacks on civilians. In the past week Kurt Bassuener, from the Democratization Policy Institute in Sarajevo, made a similar suggestion in the press. The intransigent position of the Sudanese government in Khartoum has checkmated most attempts to apply some constraining force on the situation. A no-fly-zone has the potential to change the power relaationships enough that the massive humanitarian crisis can begin to be addressed. I had not realized this, but apparently Prime Minister Blair of Britain is also advocating such a move. We can urge our government to be more aggressive in exploring such a solution.