In Lebanon, multinational troops and humanitarian-assistance staff have already poured in to enforce the cease-fire there and start rebuilding. Contrast this with Darfur, where a three-month-old cease-fire between Khartoum and rebel factions is on the verge of collapse, because the UN has failed thus far to deploy a robust international peacekeeping force to take over from the feeble African Union monitors in place there.

Obviously, there have been far fewer television cameras to record the atrocious crimes committed by Arab Janjaweed militias against civilians in the predominantly black region of Darfur. The Janjaweed militias storm into villages on horses and camels, killing and pillaging as they go. Entire villages have been razed, women raped and branded and crops systemically destroyed in a campaign that bears all the hallmarks of a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing.

This is not to say that war-ravaged Lebanon does not deserve the world's attention, but rather to point out how easily the international community can be distracted.

But the world cannot afford to be distracted for much longer.

As many as half of Darfur's 2 million civilians have long had no access to humanitarian assistance, because aid workers in the area are targeted. A humanitarian disaster of epic proportions could take place unless the international community puts the blue helmets on the ground to protect the refugees and ensure an uninterrupted flow of desperately needed supplies. Hundreds of thousands of defenceless civilians now face the grim prospect of mass starvation.

Over the past three months, the UN Security Council has tried to persuade Khartoum officials resisting UN involvement to allow it to take over the command of peacekeeping forces in Darfur from the underfunded and poorly armed African Union.

Right after the May cease-fire, the Sudanese government appeared ready to relent and consent to the deployment of a UN-mandated international peacekeeping force of more than 17,000 battle-ready soldiers. But dramatic turns of events elsewhere in the world, including Lebanon and stand-offs over nuclear arms with North Korea and Iran, appear to have emboldened Khartoum's obstinacy in resisting deployment of multinational forces on its soil.

Without Khartoum's consent, few countries will contribute to the creation of an effective international force to deal with Darfur, because that could put them into direct conflict with the Janjaweed, if not the Sudanese army. The US and the UK are now intensifying diplomatic pressure on Sudan in a last-ditch effort to speed up deployment of UN peacekeepers and restore humanitarian aid to the displaced civilians of Darfur.

Khartoum's foot-dragging seems to reflect a certain amount of confidence that given its strategically important oil reserves, it can count at least on China and Russia, both veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, to protect it from the UN acting unilaterally and entering Darfur without Sudan's permission. China and Russia are two countries that have proven time and again they place grandiose hegemonic aspirations before the humanitarian concerns of their own populations - much less people in remote corners of Africa.

It is frustrating enough to observe how long the international community has ignored the suffering in Darfur, but it is worse to watch China and Russia play their cynical games to undermine UN efforts there. Where is the international community - which was capable of putting an end to the suffering of the Lebanese in one month - while Darfur, which UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described as the "worst humanitarian catastrophe" two years ago, is allowed to languish in endless atrocities without hope?