10 Years Ago In Time

So far, the world has done little to stop the ethnic cleansing of black Africans in western Sudan by Arab militias, a pogrom that allegedly has the support of the Sudanese government. An estimated 10,000 villagers have already been murdered. In May 1994, as genocide swept across RWANDA, TIME explored the inadequacy of the global response to a crisis that would ultimately claim 800,000 lives.

No one is calling for direct intervention ... However troubled they might be by the scale and ferocity of the slaughter, Western nations have offered little more than emotional expressions of sympathy for the victims. The American appetite for such missions, even in cases of dire human need, has been dulled by experiences like Somalia. "Lesson No. 1," President Clinton said last week, "is, Don't go into one of these things and say, maybe we'll be done in a month because it's a humanitarian crisis." His reluctance mirrors the public's: a TIME/CNN poll last week showed that only 34% of respondents favored doing something to quell the violence, while 51% opposed any action.

--TIME, May 16, 1994