Darfur Makes Sudan's Omar al-Bashir Barack Obama's Biggest African Foe

By William J. Dobson

Presidents don't get to choose their first foreign policy crisis. It usually chooses them. For President Clinton, it was the killing of 18 U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu. For President Bush, it came when a U.S. EP-3 military plane collided with a Chinese fighter pilot, forcing the American crew to land on the Chinese island of Hainan. Many think that President Obama's first crisis came last month in the unlikely form of Somali pirates. (Actually, pirates have been patrolling those waters longer than there have been American presidents and they will likely be there hundreds of years from now.)

While Obama may have handled the high seas showdown, his most dangerous foe in Africa isn't a rag-tag group of teenagers with AK-47s and speedboats. No, that adversary is Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, the world's first sitting president with a warrant for his arrest.

Darfur, the war-torn western region of Sudan, is being pushed perilously close to the edge by the Sudanese government. The biggest test for Obama's foreign policy in Africa will not be pirates; it will be Bashir.

The emerging crisis is of Khartoum's making. In March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bashir immediately lashed out, expelling 13 foreign aid groups—groups such as Oxfam, Save the Children, and Doctors without Borders—from the country. These relief organizations were providing clean water, food, and medical attention to roughly 1.5 million people. Now, two months since Bashir's cruel directive, Darfur is again near the brink: water reserves have been depleted, food is in short supply, and medical care is desperately needed. The United Nations has scrambled to make up the shortfall before the rainy season begins. The hardest hit are Darfur's women and children, who make up more than 60 percent of the 2.7 million people driven from their homes.

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