Editorial: The Donors and Darfur
Unfortunately, the United Nations can't count on collecting the money that it's about to ask for. At the start of this year it appealed for $693 million, nearly all of which it said it needed by June because of the time it takes to turn dollars into help on the ground. But as of June 1, only $358 million had come in from donors -- just over half what was hoped for. The United States has been by far the most generous donor, giving $252 million for Darfur plus another $100 million or so for relief efforts elsewhere in Sudan, according to figures compiled by the United Nations; Britain comes in second with $36 million, plus slightly more than $50 million for the rest of Sudan.Mallaby: Pills for the Poor
...Humanitarian relief is not going to solve Darfur's crisis; it's a way of keeping people alive until the genocidal policies of the Sudanese government are changed... The key to reversing this displacement is to have foreign troops provide security, so that it's safe to go back to the villages, and at the same time to pressure Sudan's government into reining in its local militia allies. The United States is doing some of this, but it hasn't yet mounted the sort of all-out effort that could really solve the crisis. And so the dying carries on.
The idea would cost nothing: It merely involves drug companies giving up patent protection for heart pills and similar medicines in the poor world. Since poor countries buy almost none of these medicines anyway, giving up patent rights in those markets doesn't hurt the drug firms. But it would mean that cheap generic versions of these medicines could be distributed to poor consumers.
...Who could possibly object to this? The drug companies apparently fear that, if Indians are allowed to get cheap heart pills, these would find their way back onto the U.S. market. But the drug companies already accept the principle that AIDS drugs should cost less in Botswana than in Boston -- and there aren't too many reports of contraband African AIDS medicines flooding the U.S. market. Indeed, for all the fuss about seniors getting cheap drugs from Canada, these purchases represent a fraction of the U.S. drug market. Does anyone really think that Americans are going to buy masses of medicine from distant and possibly unsafe suppliers based in Mombassa or Mumbai?
All of which raises the question: Why should the Bush administration not begin to focus on Kyrgyzstan as a military and political partner, while conspicuously leaving Uzbekistan, and Karimov, in the cold? It's possible logistically: In fact, some Air Force operations have already been shifted from Uzbekistan to Kyrgyzstan at the impetus of Karimov, who has curtailed flights from Kashi Khanabad out of pique over the State Department's demands for an investigation of the Andijan massacre. It would give a large boost to Kyrgyzstan's democrats, who could argue to their countrymen that democracy brings vital rewards, in the form of a privileged partnership with the world's superpower. And it would send a clear message to the Muslim nations of Central Asia: The United States will not support dictatorship, even in exchange for a landing strip.
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