Diplomats and aid workers ponder years of work in Darfur

Now that the problems in Darfur are so great they cannot be fixed, the diplomacy and aid vultures are getting ready to swoop in earnest:

The Sudanese soldiers and allied militiamen who destroyed Darfur could empty out an entire village in something like 60 minutes flat.

They would swoop in fast in the early morning hours, their horses and camels sprinting, their trucks racing, their guns blazing. Within the space of that one calamitous hour they would obliterate the settlement, torching, raping and killing with ruthless efficiency.

But now, with some of the first tentative signs of peace settling over the area, the question is how, and even whether, their malign work can be undone.

It will be years before we know the answer. But it is already evident to diplomats and aid workers here that Darfur has been deeply changed by the war in ways that will be difficult to fix. They point to a litany of emerging problems: diminished water supplies; bitter land disputes; inflamed tribal animosities; the psychosocial traumas of rape and displacement; and a significant transfer of wealth in a place that has always been, and still is, desperately poor.

Imagine an oncologist with this sort of attitude: a tumour isn't allowed to keep growing to see if it sorts itself out, it's cut out, irradiated or killed with chemicals. Sorry doctor, your patient is dead.