Darfur cries for justice.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court had no choice but to request an arrest warrant for Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir. To do otherwise would have made a mockery of the court and its pursuit of justice for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Yet some human rights activists fear that the court's efforts to bring Bashir to justice will have little chance of success and will push the Sudanese government to retaliate with even more violence.

The court has dismayingly little ability to arrest and prosecute Bashir. The 106 nations that created the international tribunal made no provision for enforcement other than to require member nations to turn over indicted suspects. Unless Bashir leaves Sudan, he could remain safely out of the court's reach. There will be no middle-of-the-night commando raid to grab Bashir and spirit him to a jail cell at the Hague.

But the ICC's indictment of Bashir is a moral imperative. Even if the court cannot bring him to justice in the short term, an indictment sends a message to future murderous tyrants that their atrocities will not go unnoticed. It also prods other African and Arab nations - as well China, which buys huge quantities of Sudanese oil and is Bashir's shameless defender on the U.N. Security Council - to finally demand that Sudan stop the killing in Darfur.

An indictment also should galvanize the U.N. Security Council to pressure Bashir directly to make the concessions necessary to bring peace to Darfur.

Earlier this month, 200 bandits on horseback and in sport utility vehicles mounted with anti-tank weapons opened fire on a U.N. peacekeeping force that was investigating the slaughter of civilians in north Darfur. Seven peacekeepers were killed; at least 22 were wounded.

The peacekeepers were vulnerable to attack because Bashir has blocked the arrival of equipment and deployment of non-African troops. Meanwhile, Western countries have refused to provide peacekeepers with the helicopters and other equipment they need to effectively patrol a Darfur region that is more than twice the size of Oregon.

A year has passed since the United Nations approved a powerful force of 26,000 troops and police for Darfur. Yet there are barely more than 9,000 peacekeepers in the country now, and most of those are members of the weak and underequipped African Union force that the new U.N. force was supposed to absorb and largely replace.

More than 2 million refugees live in sprawling camps that are vulnerable to attacks by Sudanese troops and their militia surrogates, known as janjaweed. With or without Bashir's permission, the Security Council swiftly must deploy a fully equipped peacekeeping force needed to protect these refugees and the aid workers who are risking their lives to help them.

The responsibility for the massive crimes in Darfur lies squarely with the government of Sudan and its leader. The world must act now to stop the genocide and, as soon as possible, bring Bashir to the justice he so thoroughly deserves.