Jan Egeland, head of United Nations humanitarian operations, describes the region as “going from real bad to catastrophic” and “headed toward total chaos.”

The top U.N. aid official says the level of violence faced by humanitarian workers is “unprecedented.”

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan refers to the situation as “one of the worst nightmares in recent history,” “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” and “little short of hell on earth.”

No, they’re not talking about the crisis in the Middle East, where the United Nations has just announced plans to dispatch a 15,000-strong international force to enforce a cease-fire in southern Lebanon. These are the latest reactions of U. N. officials to the unfolding genocide in Darfur.

Sadly, the alacrity with which the U.N. has taken action in the Middle East stands in stark contrast to its dithering in Darfur, where for three years the world body has used strong language to talk about a solution but done very little of substance to quell the violence.

In May, the U.N. did help broker the Darfur Peace Treaty, requiring the Sudanese government to disarm its genocidal militias and allow U.N. troops in to restore peace. Unfortunately, not only has the Darfur treaty deal failed to bring peace, it has actually triggered an increase in violence against civilians.

Only days after the agreement was signed, Sudanese Dictator Omar al-Bashir reversed course, declaring that the installation of U.N. peacekeepers, “shall never take place.” He also promised to make Darfur “a graveyard” for any outside force, further emboldening the government militias that roam the countryside, seizing every opportunity to rape, pillage and kill, their attacks becoming more frequent and more deadly each day. After a July exploratory mission to Darfur, U.N. Head of Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Gueheno warned that the risk of “major violence…after the rainy season is quite real, very real.” The violence over the last 100 days has displaced more than 50,000 Dafuris, forcing many to seek refuge in Chad, Sudan’s western neighbor, where hundreds of thousands are already seeking refuge.

What’s more, the Sudan Liberation Movement, the only rebel faction to sign the peace agreement, now stands accused of carrying out bloody raids in northern Darfur in an attempt to punish those rebel groups that did not sign on. These attacks include rape and murder of innocent civilians, the familiar weapons of Bashir’s militias.

Adding to the misery, international aid agencies report a marked increase in the number and severity of attacks on international aid workers providing water, food and medical care to the 3.5 million refugees who depend on them to survive. A new U.N. report states that more aid workers in Darfur have been killed in the past month than in the previous three years combined. Citing security concerns, aid workers have effectively ended relief efforts in many areas. Oxfam recently announced closure of two of its six offices in the north of Darfur because of the abduction of a Sudanese staff member. Meanwhile, insufficient funding has forced the World Food Program to cut food rations in half for the six million it feeds.

Spiraling violence, fewer aid workers, and the onset of the raining season have also caused a rise in malnutrition and the spread of water-borne disease, and there is an outbreak of cholera on the verge of exploding in a number of refugee camps.

While the situation on the ground deteriorates, the United Nations is sending mixed signals. On the one hand, the U.N. continues to reiterate its plan to install a large and highly mobile peacekeeping force in Darfur “as soon as possible.” On the other hand, it recently pushed back until January 2007 its estimated time of arrival in Darfur.

The U.N. justifies its inaction by periodically calling for increases in funding for the African Union force already on the ground in Darfur. But the African Union cannot bring peace. Seven thousand troops currently patrol Darfur, a sprawling piece of desert the size of Texas. This means each soldier patrols an area roughly the size of Manhattan. Worse, when A.U. soldiers witness an attack, they do not have a mandate to intervene, just to observe and report. Not surprisingly Mr. Bashir has welcomed extending the A.U.’s presence in Darfur, even offering to pay for it. Meanwhile, the A.U. itself realizes how outmatched it is and, facing bankruptcy, has appealed to the U.N. to deploy its troops “as soon as possible.”

Despite its lack of success, the May peace agreement is the last, best hope for peace in Darfur. Too much time and too many resources were expended (including considerable efforts by the United States) to see it come to nothing. But, as Kofi Annan and much of the international community readily admit, the window of opportunity provided by the agreement is quickly closing. A minimum of 20,000 troops is needed in Darfur, and these troops need robust rules of engagement and authorization to use force against the government’s marauding militias and restore peace.

At a time when much of the world’s diplomatic efforts are focused on the crisis in the Middle East, there is a real danger of forgetting that genocide persists in Darfur. Nicholas Kristof recently reported that the war in Lebanon has received more airtime in the media each week than the Darfur crisis has gotten in total since it commenced in 2003. There are also fewer calls for U.N. intervention in Darfur. According to LexisNexis, the media have mentioned “U.N. peacekeepers” and “Lebanon” in the same news article over one thousand times in the last month, while “Darfur” and “U.N. peacekeepers” have been mentioned together just 144 times.

It took the U.N. just four weeks to negotiate a “cessation of hostilities” in Lebanon. As the genocide in Darfur enters its fourth year, it’s past time the world body enforced the peace agreement that would end the bloodshed in the most hostile place on earth.

The Bush Administration’s recent willingness to address ethnic cleansing in Sudan more actively suggests that, in the face of genocide, strategic and humanitarian interests never clash.

It was only a few weeks ago that those of us who have been closely following the genocide in Darfur were lamenting the tense and evasive nature of the Bush Administration’s policy there. Despite having done more than any other government to respond to this human rights disaster — including providing the bulk of humanitarian aid, continuously pressing for tough UN action against the government and unabashedly using the word “genocide” to describe conditions there — the administration’s reaction had at times been fragmented and equivocal.

Since Sudan is considered a key ally in the war on terror (Khartoum’s agents have reportedly penetrated terrorist networks not otherwise accessible to the U.S.), the administration often handled the Sudanese government with kid gloves. Last April the White House worked behind the scenes to ensure the demise of the Darfur Accountability Act in Congress, which would have stepped up pressure on the regime to cease the killing. The administration even allowed the CIA to fly Sudan’s intelligence chief, Salah Abdallah Gosh, an architect of the Darfur atrocity, to Washington for consultation.

The mixed signals sent by the United States — sometimes condemning and at others times seemingly commending the regime — gave the impression that the Bush Administration was not serious about securing peace in a region suffering the effects of the government-sponsored slaughter of 400,000 people, in addition to the rape, disfigurement and dislocation of another 2.5 million people.

Recent weeks, however, have brought a remarkable shift in America’s course of action toward the place United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan recently labeled “little short of hell on earth.” First came the president’s nod to Darfur in his State of the Union address, when he said, “We show compassion abroad because Americans believe in the God-given dignity and worth of…a refugee fleeing genocide…” Next came Bush’s pledge that the United States would play a pivotal role in helping swap an under-manned, under-funded, and out-gunned African Union force of 7,000 for up to 20,000 well-trained and properly mandated United Nations soldiers. (A move the UN Security Council approved at the prodding of U.S. Ambassador John Bolton.)

Most recently, Bush sent an emergency supplemental funding proposal to Congress, including a request for $514 million for peacekeeping and humanitarian programs in Darfur.

SO, TO WHAT CAN WE ATTRIBUTE the Bush Administration’s newfound commitment to Darfur? Here are two possible explanations.

First, by all accounts the situation in Darfur is spiraling out of control. After over a year of savagery, conditions seemed to improve last summer when Khartoum promised to rein in its death squads. But the promises proved hollow and the onset of the dry season last fall revived the government militia’s thirst for spreading terror throughout the region. Jan Pronk, the UN representative in Sudan, recently reported, “At least once a month groups of 500 to 1000 militia on camel and horseback attack villages, killing dozens of people.”

In addition, more than one million Darfurians continue to languish in internally displaced persons camps, while several hundred thousand have sought safety across the border in Chad, where the militias have started launching cross-border raids on villages on an almost daily basis.

International aid agencies have reported that entire sections of the population are cut-off from relief, and aid workers have faced increased threats, harassment and beatings. Last month, twenty-one World Food Program convoys were attacked, four times as many as last summer. The increased violence has caused many humanitarian organizations to scale back operations due to security concerns. The UN predicts that if the situation continues to deteriorate at its current rate, the death toll could rise to 100,000 a month. What has become clear is that far from improving, the conditions in Darfur are actually deteriorating.

A second and more compelling explanation for the administration’s interest in Darfur has less to do with what’s changing on the ground and more to do with what hasn’t changed about the philosophical groundwork of Mr. Bush’s foreign policy.

Foundational to this administration’s foreign policy vision is the protection and promotion of the dignity and natural rights of all men. Indeed, Bush identified human rights violations as a chief reason for intervention in Iraq, and he regularly refers to “ending tyranny in our world” as his ultimate foreign policy objective.

Accordingly, failure to act in Darfur manifestly undermines the moral credibility of every foreign mission the United States undertakes. Conversely, intervention in Darfur, certainly the most egregious humanitarian crisis in the world today, becomes proof positive that Mr. Bush is sincere when he talks about his dedication to the cause of human dignity and compassionate conduct abroad.

SO, WHILE SOME SUGGEST AMERICAN engagement in Iraq precludes intervention in Darfur, more astute observers recognize Iraq as reinforcing the imperative for U.S. involvement there.

Of course, America’s work is just starting, and there is much more that can be done.

A welcome start would be for the administration to insist that the UN enforce an arms embargo against Sudan and punish scofflaws (such as China and Russia) that continue to supply Khartoum with the money and weapons that fuel terror. The U.S. should demand the release of an unpublished UN study listing those countries that ship weapons to the Sudanese government. Mr. Bush should publicly denounce the Arab League’s decision to hold its annual summit in Khartoum, scheduled for the end of March. To allow the summit to take place would not only encourage the Sudanese government to continue the genocide against its people but would be an economic reward for a country guilty of the worst human rights abuses.

Most important, President Bush should continue to call on NATO members to provide equipment, training, transport and soldiers to the peacekeeping in Darfur until enough UN troops are available for deployment, which will take at least six months and as long as a year.

The conventional wisdom used to be that the White House’s reluctance to engage Darfur more actively derived from a foreign policy calculus that placed strategic military interests over humanitarian ones. But, Mr. Bush’s quiet metamorphosis on Sudan demonstrates that in the face of genocide the best strategy is also the most compassionate.

WASHINGTON - “Genocide can never be the exclusive internal concern of a country … whenever it occurs, it must concern the entire civilized world.” – From the Darfur exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Two years ago last month, United States Secretary of State Colin Powell declared for the first time that killings taking place in Sudan’s Darfur region constituted genocide. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience undertook to erect an exhibit it hopes helps visitors understand what that genocide looks like and what they can do to help end it.

Today, the Genocide Emergency: Darfur, Sudan exhibit — tucked inside the museum’s Wexner Learning Center — offers visitors a glimpse of the devastation and desolation of Darfur. The room’s grainy beige-hued walls, which replicate the flat, featureless desert plains that dominate Darfur’s geography, show close ups of the anguished faces of Darfuris who fill the refugee camps.

Videos describe the region’s complex political history and the heart-wrenching plight of its refugees. The display also includes interactive learning centers, which further educate visitors about the crisis that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has referred to as “one of the worse nightmares in recent history” and “little short of hell on earth.”

On a recent visit, I spoke with John Heffernan, director of the museum’s Genocide Prevention Initiative, who told me that the display’s purpose is “to move people from memory to action.”

He explained that amidst three floors of exhibits that recount mass murder during the Nazi Holocaust, the Darfur exhibit is a stark reminder to visitors that genocide is not just a thing of the past — an evil confined to black and white photographs of a bygone era — but also a tragic reality of today.

After three years of murder and mayhem, the government of Sudan stands accused of presiding over the systematic slaughter of at least 300,000 civilians, as well as the rape, disfigurement and dislocation of another three million people.

And conditions continue to deteriorate. Now that the rainy season has ended, government-backed militias have launched a new wave of attacks in Darfur and eastern Chad, where hundreds of thousands of Darfuris are seeking refuge. In a recent attack, 27 children were killed by militiamen, many of whom were wearing Sudanese military officers garb.

Due to the spike in violence, aid groups say they cannot access hundreds of thousands of refugees who rely on them for food, water and medical care.

For its part, the U.N. has been reluctant to act and recently pushed back until 2007 its estimated time of arrival in Darfur. In September, the U.N. Security Council finally passed a resolution authorizing the deployment of 20,000 peacekeepers.

But, the deployment of those troops is still dependent on approval from the Sudanese government, whose “president,” Omar al-Bashir has promised to make Darfur “a graveyard” for any entering force. Last week, Bashir refused to meet with newly-appointed U.S. envoy Andrew Natsios, citing fresh sanctions imposed against his regime by the United States.

In the midst of these disappointments, the Holocaust Museum’s message remains hopeful: “Your voice can make a difference. Do not be silent.” The Museum estimates that over 260,000 visitors have viewed the Darfur Exhibition since its opening. It has also distributed some 10,000 copies of the DVD “Witnessing Darfur: Genocide Emergency” to teachers and to student and community groups across the country, reaching an estimated 500,000 people.

Clearly, the Holocaust Museum is making a difference. Museum directors plan to turn the temporary Darfur display into a permanent exhibit — to open next year — that includes information about other recent genocides, such as Rwanda. As Heffernan explained: “It honors the memory of the Holocaust to stop genocidal situations today.”

As one exits the Darfur exhibit, lettering on the wall asks, “Who will survive today?” It’s a question millions of Darfuris must ask themselves each morning. The Holocaust Museum is doing its part to see that more Americans ask themselves that same question — and then act.

To learn more on what you can do to help end genocide in Darfur, go to www.committeeonconscience.org.