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The United Nations High Commission for Refugees warned today that the violence in Chad threatens to escalate to the level of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Eastern Chad has been facing spillover effects from its neighbor, the Darfur region of Sudan, for years now. The two areas share a similar ethnic makeup as well as a scarcity of resources. To make matters worse, 200,000 refugees from Darfur have flooded eastern Chad. The Arab Janjaweed militia from Sudan was responsible for the initial violence and murder, but now Chadian locals have joined in, leaving hundreds dead and thousands homeless.

With Darfur still embroiled in violence and chaos, and the Sudanese government still refusing entry to U.N. peacekeepers, the outlook for Chad looks bleak. It's unlikely that the nonaggression pact between Chad, Sudan and the Central African Republic will do much good, since technically "government" forces are not engaged in the conflict. So once again we ask the question, will the "international community" step in to honor the commitment of "never again" this time?