The uncomfortable realities of Darfur have become a staple in the news media: as we continually scan the headlines, things over there seem to go from bad to worse. We cannot avoid being observers of a great tragedy when we see images of the ongoing massacre of women and children and hear about unthinkable atrocities in a genocide that will wipe out a generation. The strong language but lack of action by the United Nations as a whole, and Western countries individually, is all the more jarring to our sensibilities. Last year, we students of Dartmouth scored a victory by persuading the trustees to divest from Dartmouth, but now, nearly 6 months later, we may be wondering what the Darfur situation has come to and whether anything is still being done to end this mass-murder. Indeed, a near-constant exposure to the plight of those suffering has jaded many Americans, who do not see the need for intervention in that conflict. But we must face our inaction and ask difficult questions: what does the future for Darfur look like? What is the future of the nearly two-million refugees, chased from their towns by Arab militias?

To understand where Darfur is headed, we have to look at where the conflict that has destroyed it came from. Historically, Darfur has been the home to both Arabic nomads from the Middle-East and African tribal groups from farther south in the continent. The nomads were favored by the Arab-supremacist Sudanese regime, called the National Islamic Front, and though the African tribes were also comprised of devout Muslims, they abided more by the rules of family and tribe than by the strict version of Sharia Islam sponsored by the Sudanese government. Things between the nomads and the tribes had never been particularly good, but in 2003 the Sudanese government greatly exacerbated the situation by devising a way to combat the insurgent groups created by the marginalized populations of the African tribes: destroying the villages to which these insurgents belonged.

These attacks were systematic and intelligent: irrigation systems were ruined, wells were poisoned, pottery was broken to prevent the transportation of water, food and cattle were destroyed, fruit trees were burned, and people were displaced, raped, and killed. The remaining refugees of this survive in camps – having arrived with nothing and with nowhere to return – and are wholly dependent on a food supply and the protection of humanitarian organizations. The future for these displaced persons appears rather bleak. The arriving rainy season – from June to September – could be the greatest period of death to date because of its falling between the spring planting and the fall harvest. The lack of planted crops is expected to lead to a widespread gap in harvest, killing people by starvation, while water-borne diseases will decimate the crowded camps of sick people.

In the long term, it is the janjaweed – the Khartoum-sponsored perpetrators of the genocide – who will triumph, for by killing men and boys they have destroyed the traditionally male-led farming communities. Children who are growing up now have not been learning the agricultural skills necessary to reestablish themselves, and so a future generation of farmers and providers has been lost to war. Furthermore, boys who have survived the killings are seething with anger over the humiliation and murder of their families. They are easy recruitment targets for the growing Darfur insurgency movements, or even more Middle Eastern-centered terrorist organizations. We can’t forget that Osama Bin Laden was initially recruiting the same types of disaffected boys in Sudan after then-President Clinton’s cruise-missile bombing of a pharmaceutical plant called El Shifa, suspected of producing chemical weapons. The migration of children towards urban areas has already begun in Sudan, where, with few useful skills, they join the large unemployed population and participate in everything from crime to joining warlords to prostitution.

Then there are the masses in the refugee camps. History has taught us that the longer people remain refugees in camps, the less likely it is that they will ever leave. Money for their upkeep is already being cut short. The United Nations cut refugees’ food supplies by half last week, and donor fatigue has set in – individuals and groups are tired of throwing money at a problem that is not going away soon. As seen in the other examples of ethnic conflict in our time – Serbia, Rwanda, Saddam against the Kurds – these camps are likely to exist in some form even a decade from now. These hundreds of thousands of displaced Sudanese will have given up their chances of returning to their homes, and Darfur will most likely never return to its previous notion of normality.

Despite this bleak outlook, Western nations are not excused from trying to seek better outcomes, however belatedly. The damage can still be mitigated. Western nations must try to establish control of the region by disarming the janjaweed and open up political space to negotiate for peace by keeping the Sudanese central government’s troops and influence distant. Sudan will certainly not become an independent nation overnight – but peacekeeping troops would create enough security to allow for Darfuris to begin returning to their villages and for humanitarian groups to operate without fear, as well as stemming the growing influence of the National Islamic Front.

The Western mediators would have to resolve a few other things as well. Firstly, the funds for the rebuilding of Sudan would have to come from somewhere, and while Khartoum should provide most of the money, the rest would have to be put forward locally, or come from First-World taxpayers and goodwill. Also, those responsible for the genocide must be tried in the international courts. As in Rwanda, the real masterminds will have to be held accountable for their crimes to a global populace, while some of the lesser culprits could be tried locally, to allow for a sense of pride amongst the locals in dispensing justice to those who have terrorized them for so long. Finally, the possession of land, historically a source of ethnic tension, should be negotiated locally in a way that addresses the grievances of African tribal groups.

Security provided by Western nations is essential for this plan to be carried out, however. None of this can happen without that. The future of Darfur already looks grim, but more months of inaction will only result in more death and make the situation intractable. The damage can only be effectively limited by intervention today.