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Imagine Adolf Hitler arresting a handful of concentration camp guards on the eve of D-day. Or Slobodan Milosevic offering a dozen Serbian soldiers for prosecution just before facing charges of genocide in Bosnia.
A similar scene has emerged following news that the Sudanese government has arrested 15 police, military and security officials in western Sudan's Darfur region - detentions announced days before an expected United Nations Security Council vote on whether to refer those accused of war crimes in that African nation to the International Criminal Court at the Hague.
The decision by U.S. officials to end their long-standing opposition over prosecutions of the killers in Darfur at the Hague court changes little. Political wrangling among the U.N. Security Council members continues to paralyze the international body, keeping it from fulfilling one of its key mandates: mobilizing global support against genocide.
According to the United Nations, about 180,000 people, mostly black African villagers, have been slaughtered in the Sudan over the past two years, largely by government-supported Arab militias (other experts say the total who have died, including deaths by famine, illness and violence, could top 300,000). About 2-million non-Arab people have been displaced by the the killings, often initiated by roving bands of progovernment Arabs known as the Janjaweed. There have been mass killings, rapes, attacks on ethnic groups and widespread destruction of villages.
In the face of such atrocities, actions by the Sudanese government to finally crack down on a small number of suspects - to be prosecuted by the same government which allowed the killing in the first place - seems little more than a thumbing of the nose at an international community that refuses to stop the violence.
Already, the Sudanese government has ignored Security Council commands to disarm the Janjaweed. The United Nations responded by voting to send 10,000 peacekeeping troops somewhere else - into southern Sudan to monitor a 2-month-old peace agreement between rebels and the government.
Distracted by a punishing report on corruption in its oil-for-food program in Iraq - along with tsunami relief efforts near the Indian Ocean, peace efforts in the Middle East and the ongoing Iraq war - the United Nations has dithered at every opportunity to make a difference in the Sudan.
Ending the slaughter is only part of the problem. Aid workers attempting to curb deaths from famine and illness have also fallen victim to attacks from government troops and militias; extra security is needed to protect those who have come to help.
Ten years ago, the world's nations promised never to repeat the inattention that allowed the murder of 800,000 people in Rwanda. Now the crisis in Darfur may be the United Nations' last chance to prove it has the will to address genocide. And every day of political paralysis piles more bodies at the doorsteps of nations that should have stopped the killing long ago.