So when President Bush again stepped to the fore calling for a tightening of economic sanctions on Sudan for its actions in Darfur not all of the “international community” including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was on the same script. Despite the outrage for the past four years and an impressive international effort to keep up the flow of humanitarian aid, sadly little has changed on the arid killing ground.

Ban Ki-Moon has made solving the Darfur crisis a priority, but has allowed Omar al-Bashir’s Sudanese regime to entwine him in a series of desultory discussions as to the step-by-step timeline for additional relief and peacekeeping plans. Indeed the UN’s often breathless pronouncements concerning the latest twists and diplomatic turns in the ongoing ethnic hell of the Darfur region continue but with an extra push from the Bush Administration who announced new American economic sanctions on oil rich Sudan.

“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,” Bush implored, “the world has a responsibility to help put an end to it.” Secretary General Ban meantime was still calling for “more time” and political space for consultations with Khartoum.

For the last four years the “international community” has been focused on “doing something” to stop the ongoing ethnic genocide taking place in that troubled African land. But how do you stop the bloodshed, especially when Sudan’s main political protector remains the People’s Republic of China and some Arab states?

Beyond stronger sanctions on the Sudan regime, short of using military force to kick down the door to Darfur and get the aid flowing and the killing stopped how do you accomplish it? Short of truly meaningful action coming from the UN Security Council (not likely given China’s cozy commercial ties lubricated by oil to Sudan), the conflict will continue until the players themselves wish to quit.

At its heart, the Darfur crisis rests in the classic ethno-genocide between Sudan’s Islamic/Arab rulers and the Islamic black farmer inhabitants of that benighted region. Though its causes are essentially local, its effect has become regional, and its larger implications are global. The Arab-Janjaweed militias have cleared Darfur the old-fashioned way, slash, burn and pillage. The immediate regional effect has been 200,000 killed and a further 2 million refugees, many spilling over into neighboring Chad. While there’s global outrage against Sudan’s regime, little practical changes have resulted.

Though the United Nations and the humanitarian community remain aghast, they still have to gain permission from the Sudanese sovereign authorities to enter Darfur and dispense their food and medical aid. What understaffed peacekeeping units of the African Union are allowed to operate in region (a place geographically bigger than France!), are confined to an arid and nearly trackless chunk of land.

Darfur has emerged as one of those “causes” which rightfully rally support but which confront the grim realpolitik of Sudanese national sovereignty and geographical isolation. Still there’s the undeniable “feel good factor” over trying to help change the world in spite of reality.

Interestingly, some human rights activists have demanded holding China accountable for what transpires in Darfur. In other words linking Beijing’s cozy commercial relations and political ties to Sudan, to boycotts of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Next year’s Summer Games are near sacrosanct for the Marxist mandarins ruling the PRC and thus tying Chinese support of Sudan with a political propaganda knock-on effect to the Olympics seems to hold some short term gain but promises longer term opprobrium from an embittered China.

While the United Nations will continue to send humanitarian aid to Darfur’s beleaguered civilians, don’t expect the Security Council to get much tougher beyond some updated rhetoric. Still the political landscape has changed in Europe favoring a new approach. France’s new President Nicolas Sarkozy has appointed Bernard Kouchner (an unapologetic humanitarian) as Foreign Minister. Kouchner, a passionate and articulate defender of human rights issues can make an extraordinary impact here given France’s role on the Security Council and its standing in Africa at large. We may see the opportunity to set a more pro-active position facing the regime in Khartoum.

In September 2004, former Secretary of State Colin Powell called the killing in Darfur “genocide.” Nearly three years later, Khartoum’s Islamic regime is still getting away with murder.