For most of us, Darfur is only the name of a distant, unknown region. In those remote longitudes, however, nothing less than an outright genocide goes umpunished. The United States and its allies around the world can no longer refrain from an armed response. Military intervention is the only path, and it is our moral duty.

The two groups involved in this age-old conflict are both predominantly Muslim—one is collectively known as Baggara, and the other includes different African tribes such as the Zaghawa, Masalit, and Fur—although the former is Arab and the latter is not. In recent years, the Sudanese government has been predominantly Arab.

In the western region of Sudan known as Darfur, the genocide is carried out by Arab militia groups known as Janjaweed and not Sudan’s central government. Despite the government’s official stance against attacks by the Janjaweed militia, the central Khartoum administration actively aids the militias by funding them and giving them weapons and supplies. Various intelligence agencies and international organizations have been able to trace the subtle but undeniable links between the government and the murderers.

As in many genocides, it is difficult to determine how many people have died. While the World Health Organization estimated in October 2004 that 70,000 had died since March 2004, other estimates put the death toll three to four times higher. But exact number of deaths is irrelevant. The Janjaweed militias continue to use such tactics as filling wells with sand and raping non-Arab women in order to breed “Arab” offspring. And our concern for the region only grew this week when Osama bin Laden called for a jihad in Sudan against any peacekeeping force.Also recently, rebels funded by the Sudanese government stormed N’Djamena, the capital of Chad.To call Darfur dangerous and unstable is an understatement, and there is reasonable concern that continued insecurity in the region could breed more global insecurity—on top of the immediate concern of continued genocide there.

Economic divestment from Sudan is a moral imperative, but it has failed to eliminate the genocide. As long as Chinese investment in Sudan continues, Western economic divestment will not incapacitate the Sudanese government and will not affect its funding of the Janjaweed. And the current peacekeeping force is insufficient. As it stands, the African Union (AU) force cannot intervene or raid Janjaweed camps, as rules of engagement forbid any offensive action.

Something more must be done.

The U.S.’s first step should be to push for a Security Council resolution that enables UN peacekeepers to directly intervene in Sudan. Due to economic interests, however, China and Russia are unlikely to join in such a resolution and could veto any resolution of which Khartoum might disapprove. We are not hopeful that discussions with China and Russia will lead to UN-led action in Sudan, although the U.S. should still encourage such discussions and should push for the inclusion of the issue on the agenda of the G8 meetings this July. (We are, however, heartened by yesterday’s Security Council resolution, which condemned four Sudanese nationals accused of committing war crimes in Sudan, and passed because China and Russia abstained from the vote.)

More realistically, Europe and the U.S. should step in with direct military force in Darfur. (This is permissible under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: because genocide is occurring in Sudan, military forces are allowed to enter a foreign nation to stop the killing.) Nor should the force be merely reactive: it should take proactive steps in Darfur to seek out and neutralize the offending Janjaweed militia. But the effort must be led by European nations. Because of the ongoing campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military is too stretched to spearhead the effort. But the U.S. should still provide funding, intelligence, logistics, and even troops when possible.

The U.S. and its European allies cannot wait any longer. The dark shadow of our failure to act on the eve of the Rwandan genocide, and the relative success of former President Bill Clinton’s Serbian campaign, lend further support to an interventionist agenda.

Because of the ongoing genocide, Darfur must become a new theater of operations for our allies and ourselves. It is nothing short of a moral imperative for the U.S. to do what it can—and convince its allies to do so as well—to curtail the genocide in Sudan.