posted by K.M. at 11:23 AM
The African Union's decision to triple its force in Sudan's Darfur region was a "big step" but falls short of what is needed to protect civilians and quell violence, a senior U.N. official said.
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But Egeland said it was frustrating that African Union soldiers, considered aggressive and thoughtful, were spread so thin in Darfur, 23 months after a decision was made to set up the force. Humanitarian workers number about 11,000.
"In our view there should be as many soldiers and police as (relief) workers if civilian populations are really going to be protected and the militia are going to be disarmed," he said.
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Hopefully, more vehicles and helicopters would make the African Union troops more mobile, Egeland said. He contended the brutal attack on the village of Khor Abeche on April 7, where Arab militia killed, looted and scorched homes, was avoidable.
"There were ample warning signals but no one was able to intervene," he said.
Another problem, he said, was a shortage of funds despite generous pledges, for southern Sudan and Darfur. The United Nations has received some 28 percent of the 1.5 billion requested so "we are appealing for donors to front load" their pledges, Egeland said.
"We are hanging in by our finger nails in many areas, surrounded by militia and armed gangs," he said. "Time is not on our side because we have more and more armed groups that seem to take orders from no one."
posted by K.M. at 11:16 AM
posted by Steve Dillard (aka Feddie) at 11:58 PM
The United States is prepared to make a quick commitment of $50 million to $60 million to support an expanded African Union peacemaking mission in an effort to halt the violence in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, U.S. officials say.
Under political attack for not doing enough to end a crisis it has described as genocide, the Bush administration is pursuing a multinational strategy that U.S. officials believe could yield results in the next couple of months.
posted by K.M. at 2:27 PM
posted by K.M. at 1:55 PM
Last week, the Senate unanimously passed the Darfur Accountability Act as part of the Iraq-Afghanistan emergency supplemental appropriations bill. Led by Republican Sam Brownback of Kansas and Democrat John Corzine of New Jersey, the act appropriates $90 million in U.S. aid for Darfur and establishes targeted U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese regime, accelerates assistance to expand the size and mandate of the African Union mission in Darfur, expands the United Nations Mission in Sudan to include the protection of civilians in Darfur, establishes a no-fly zone over Darfur, and calls for a presidential envoy to Sudan.
The Darfur Accountability Act is now with the House, and Republican leaders there -- no doubt under pressure from an evangelical movement that has been aiding civilians in Southern Sudan since the outbreak of a civil war nearly 20 years ago -- are similarly joining with Democrats to push for a more robust humanitarian response to the unfolding genocide in Western Sudan. In a recent meeting with Sudanese dissidents on Capitol Hill, Congressman Tom Tancredo, a conservative Colorado Republican who first visited Sudan in 2001, discussed the urgency of passing the bill. “Pressure is the only thing that Khartoum will respond to,” Tancredo said. “The only time they will act is when they think they are on the precipice.”
Yet in an April 25 letter from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis obtained by the Prospect, the administration signaled its desire to strike the Darfur Accountability Act from the supplemental. Couching its reservations in a suggestion that the act may impede a separate peace accord reached between Khartoum and the rebels in south Sudan, the administration is now leaning on its congressional allies to scuttle the bill. "We are hearing that House Republicans will try to pull it out of conference," a well-placed congressional source told the Prospect.
The administration's assault on the Darfur Accountability Act reveals its belief that further coercion aimed at forcing the Sudanese regime to stop the killing is simply not productive. Prendergast says that the Bush administration seems to feel the need to constantly remind Khartoum that congressional pressure is not reflective of the White House position on Sudan. Now, with the attempt to scrap the act, the Bush administration is sending that message very clearly on a daily basis.
All the while, Darfur is burning by the hand of the Khartoum regime.
posted by K.M. at 12:57 PM
The 15-strong AU council did not discuss newly announced talks with NATO on possible logistical support or strengthening the current mandate, Djinnit said. But after the four-and-a-half hour meeting, he added that the "scope" of the mandate would be further increased to allow greater protection of civilians, convoys and checkpoints.The New York Times looks at the challenges the International Criminal Court faces in trying cases stemming from the genocide in Darfur.
Yassin said the prosecutor of this special court would regard the list of 51 individuals as a "guide and not obligatory," the Sudan Media Center reported.Sen. John Corzine has an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post called "The Nightmare Continues"
It would not take much to save tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lives. Last week, the US Senate passed legislation, the Darfur Accountability Act, introduced by myself and Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican from Kansas. The legislation, which now must be accepted by the House of Representatives, establishes sanctions against those responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur. It also calls for a UN Security Council resolution imposing sanctions against the government of Sudan, an effective arms embargo against the government, a military no-fly zone over Darfur, and an expanded African Union peacekeeping force with the mandate to protect civilians. Thus far, none of these steps has been taken.
posted by K.M. at 9:27 AM
The Bush administration has forged a close intelligence partnership with the Islamic regime that once welcomed Osama bin Laden here, even though Sudan continues to come under harsh U.S. and international criticism for human rights violations.
The Sudanese government, an unlikely ally in the U.S. fight against terror, remains on the most recent U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. At the same time, however, it has been providing access to terrorism suspects and sharing intelligence data with the United States.
Last week, the CIA sent an executive jet here to ferry the chief of Sudan's intelligence agency to Washington for secret meetings sealing Khartoum's sensitive and previously veiled partnership with the administration, U.S. government officials confirmed.
posted by K.M. at 9:03 AM
The African Union said it had agreed to give its force in Darfur a stronger mandate to protect civilians who face attack in the troubled western Sudanese region.
The AU's Peace and Security Council said it would increase its military and police force in Darfur to 7,731 from 3,320 by September, and give it stronger powers to intervene in the violence in which tens of thousands of people have been killed.
The force will be increased to 12,300 by spring of 2006, the AU's Commissioner for Peace and Security, Said Djinnit, told reporters. The force currently has orders to monitor a shaky ceasefire signed just more than a year ago, with only limited powers to protect civilians.
"The force will have an enhanced scope to include protection of civilians and internally displaced people as well protecting food convoys and to stop looting," Djinnit said.
posted by K.M. at 5:12 PM
Civilians in Darfur continue to suffer from atrocities on a massive scale because the world is doing far too little to protect them, international aid agency Oxfam said today. The agency called on the international community and parties to the conflict to urgently step up efforts to protect civilians from continuing attacks.
Every morning in hundreds of camps and towns across Darfur, nearly 2 million people made homeless by fighting wake up to another day of harassment, robbery, and violent attacks. Every week women and girls are viciously beaten or raped while collecting water and firewood. Some of them die as a result of their injuries.
posted by K.M. at 5:09 PM
Sen. Jon Corzine said Thursday he planned to travel to Sudan and Iraq this weekend to see firsthand the humanitarian conditions in the two countries.
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The senator's trip to Sudan represents his deep interest in the region. Last week, Corzine said people cannot stand on the sidelines while a genocide is taking place in the country's Darfur region.
"People from outside Sudan need to visit and report back and raise issues and create a voice for those that are displaced and who are under attack," Corzine said in a conference call with reporters. "This issue has gotten enough attention to have our Secretary of State declare a genocide after the House and Senate did that."
Corzine, along with Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, has spearheaded measures regarding Darfur in the Senate. Corzine's Darfur Accountability Act calls for sanctions against the Sudan and the establishment of a special presidential envoy to the region.
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Corzine said he hoped to get a visa to travel to Sudan, but if not, he would go to eastern Chad and visit with Sudanese refugees there. When Corzine traveled to Sudan last summer, he did not get a visa to enter the country until hours before he left the United States.
posted by K.M. at 5:08 PM
The African Union agreed today to more than double the size of its peacekeeping force in Sudan’s western Darfur region, a spokesman for the group said.Keep in mind that the initial size of the force was 3,300 and that over the last six months the AU has not been able to get even that many troops into the region.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council approved boosting the force from 2,200 to more than 7,700, including nearly 5,500 troops, 1,600 civilian police and some 700 military observers, said African Union spokesman Assane Ba.
posted by K.M. at 3:34 PM
Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters in Khartoum President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had approved the request by the African Union (AU) for logistical support.
"We welcome any help whether logistical or technical help that NATO could offer to the AU in Darfur," he said. "(But) the position of Sudan here is very clear -- the Darfur case is ... under the control of the AU so there is no way for personnel from NATO to be on the ground in Darfur."
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Ismail said Sudan would cooperate fully with the AU on the extra troops. But he had reservations about any extension of their mandate towards protecting civilians.
"The U.N. Security Council asked the government of Sudan to be fully responsible for the protection of civilians," Ismail said. If any AU resolution contradicted this, "then definitely we need to remove this contradiction."
posted by K.M. at 1:27 PM
These wildly swinging numbers claimed by the various interests groups united only in their deep animosity toward Sudan can have only one explanation – pure politics. Not only does the truth become yet another casualty in the tragedy of Darfur, but these exaggerations serve no purpose save that of encouraging the rebel groups to keep on fighting and thus preventing a real peace process in Darfur from gaining traction. The cynicism involved makes it clear that stopping the conflict is secondary to the goal of “keeping the pressure on Khartoum.” It is high time that the American sense of honest, transparent goals and fair play replace the cynicism of the biased interest groups which have only served to prolong the tragedy.For the record, when they do talk about it (which is rare), leaders in Khartoum insist that not more than a few hundred have died in Darfur.
posted by K.M. at 12:30 PM
A senior African Union peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region has told the BBC of the frustration his job entails.It should be noted that the AU troops in Darfur are "frustrated peacekeepers" mainly because they are not peacekeepers. They are there merely to monitor a non-existent cease-fire.
Colonel Anthony Mwandobi from Zambia, sector commander for the Zalingei area, said his forces are "understrength".
"I need to have enough troops, I need to have communications equipment, I need to have transport - they are all in short supply," he said.
Sudanese president and Leader of the ruling National Congress (NC) party Omar Hassan al-Bashir has reiterated his solemn pledge that no Sudanese national will ever be handed over for trial at a foreign court, the official SUNA reported yesterday.The Sudanese government is also repeating its refusal to allow any non-African troops into Darfur (this is obviously a response to recent reports that the AU has asked NATO for assistance.)
"Some people think we are afraid of America, Europe and the UN; but we are not because we believe that nothing will ever touch us unless it is decreed by God Almighty," he said.
A USC student was nearly executed during his two-week stay in Darfur, Sudan, as a humanitarian worker.
Justin, a senior majoring in international relations who declined to give his name for fear of his safety, visited Sudan with a non-profit organization in a humanitarian effort to assist the refugees in that region.
"I got into a situation where I had to come home because I was facing execution. I had to leave the country," said Justin.
posted by K.M. at 9:11 AM
"I believe that by May 5 most, not all but most, of the people who were opposed to Iraq but were previously Labour voters will come back to us because they will weigh up the overall success of this Labour government and what we do to meet their values in terms of overseas aid and foreign policy, to get a state of Palestine, to get peace in Kashmir, to get justice against the people committing genocide in Sudan... which only we in a Labour government can deliver."Obviously, this is not an official declaration, but it seems important nonetheless.
posted by K.M. at 1:01 PM
Genocide is an inconceivable crime. You can try to wrap your head around it, but the sheer cruelty of exterminating a people and culture is so alien to what we know that it is nearly impossible to render it real. The struggle to even call the crime genocide shows this. Historically, the strategy of genocidal perpetrators is to deny the crime by ridiculing the idea of genocide itself. Surely no one would do this, they argue, and it's hard not to believe them. Who could be so cruel? Yet the logic of mass slaughter exists, and is aided by aparthy masquerading as disbelief. The act of the global community in naming the situation in the Sudan as genocide is therefore a large victory. Still, even when genocide is considered, the crime is so big, so morally horrific, that it seems unconquerable and unstoppable, looking like a tangle of warring parties instead of an assymetrical slaughter of the innocent. This bill - and the action of my Senate colleagues - is beginning to overcome this inexcusable attitude that has prevented effective action against genocide many times this century.
One big myth about genocide is that it is unstoppable. The reality is that those committing this genocide could be stopped with a relatively modest intervention, and deterred by the threat of real sanctions.
The Darfur Accountability Act provides this deterrent. The act provides for sanctions against those responsible for genocide, calls for a new UN Security Council resolution imposing sanctions against the Government of Sudan and a high-level U.S. diplomatic initiative to achieve that resolution, calls for a military no-fly zone over Darfur, calls for the extension of the arms embargo to cover the Government of Sudan, and calls for the expansion of the mandate of the African Union force in Darfur and UN troops to include the protection of civilians.
Our failure to intervene in Rwanda eleven years ago only taught warlords around the world that what they do to their own people may cause handwringing in the West, but nothing more. This act, if it is included in the final version of the supplemental appropriations bill, will begin to undo that morally perverse lesson.
At the same time, acting on this matter is good for our national security. Failed states are fertilizer for terrorism and instability, and can only be fixed with the type of global engagement and cooperation this act implies. Additionally, potentially catastrophic problems, such as global warming, new diseases of epidemic proportions, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, can only be addressed within a global context. Like the moral travesty of not acting to prevent genocide in Darfur, these problems are nonpartisan and affect every person on the planet. It is especially heartening therefore that there is bipartisan support for this bill - my cosponsor in passing this legislation was Senator Sam Brownback. President Bush's second term carries with it the opportunity for us to work with the international community on a range of critical issues, including the genocide in Darfur. Whether we as a global community can do so will determine whether this young century is one of prosperity or one where we seek to manage the horrific consequences of the global catastrophes that today we may be allowing to spiral out of control.
posted by K.M. at 12:35 PM
Tensions are running high between police and war victims in Darfur's largest camp for about 150,000 people who fled fighting in the remote region, the United Nations said in a report released on Wednesday.
One camp resident was shot dead at close range when he was stopped at a police checkpoint and fuel demanded from him on April 21, the report said.
It outlined another incident where police fired over the camp causing people to flee for their lives and said police began firing directly into the camp on April 23.
U.N. spokesman George Somerwill said talks on a local and central level had taken place about the violence in Kalma camp, a few kilometres outside Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state. It has continued sporadically for at least the past 2 months.
Asked what explanation the police gave for their actions, he replied: "Clearly they believe there is a security situation in or around the camp."
Local officials have said they believe rebel elements live in Kalma and last year accused the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) of launching an attack from within the camp on the police base outside.
posted by K.M. at 12:28 PM
A Hartford Courant photographer working on a freelance assignment in Sudan has been detained and placed under house arrest, the newspaper reported Wednesday.
Brad Clift, who was covering refugees in the African country, was detained by security forces and placed under house arrest Tuesday, the newspaper reported.
"I was arrested unjustly for trying to do something good," Clift told a Hartford Courant reporter.
Clift had been working as a freelance photographer in Sudan's Darfur region since Thursday, when he traveled to Africa and met up with a relief group from the Hartford Catholic Worker.
U.S. State Department officials confirmed Tuesday afternoon that Clift has been ordered to remain at a U.S. Agency for International Development office near Nyala until a hearing can be scheduled before Sudanese officials.
posted by K.M. at 12:15 PM
In the face of genocide and crimes against humanity, the consequences of our inaction are staggering. Sudan's January peace accord holds the high promise of a shared future for Muslims and Christians, united under a secular self-government. Their success may model a means for reconciliation in other religio-political hotspots.
Creating peace is costly, but it is well worth our persistence. Paul Aciek Ater, a Sudanese pastor in Kansas, says of the people in Darfur, "They are God's children, and they are suffering terrible injustice."
posted by K.M. at 12:13 PM
request by the African Union (AU) for support in Sudan's Darfur region, in what could be the alliance's first mission in Africa.
Nato said the AU - whose troops monitor a fragile truce between Darfur rebels, government forces and pro-government militias - is seeking logistical help.
Nato ambassadors agreed "exploratory talks" should begin, a spokesman said.
posted by K.M. at 12:11 PM
posted by K.M. at 10:30 AM
63-146,000 "excess" deaths can be attributed to violence, disease, and malnutrition because of the conflict. Wildly divergent death toll statistics, ranging from 70,000 to 400,000, result from applying partial data to larger, nonrepresentative populations over incompatible time periods. Violent deaths were widespread in the early stages of this conflict, but a successful, albeit delayed, humanitarian response and a moderate 2004 rainy season combined to suppress mortality rates by curtailing infectious disease outbreaks and substantial disruption of aid deliveries.A recent survey by the Coalition for International Justice put the death toll at nearly 400,000, more than two and a half times the State Department's highest estimate and more that six times higher than its lowest estimate.
posted by K.M. at 10:02 AM
The United Nations World Food Programme announced today that thanks to a rapid donor response, the agency will not be forced to carry out expected ration cuts in May for close to two million people living in Sudan's western region of Darfur. The reprieve follows WFP's warning three weeks ago of impending ration cuts due to a lack of funds which remains a concern.Of course, the basic problems that led to the threatend ration cuts still remain
As a last resort due to severe under-funding, WFP had planned to halve the non-cereals part of the daily ration for general distributions in Darfur in May. However, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Food for Peace has stepped in and redirected to Sudan around 14,000 metric tons of non-cereals already on the high seas.
However, WFP warned that despite this stop-gap measure for the current non-cereals shortfall, the overall emergency operation in Darfur still remains severely under-funded. Of the US$467 million WFP needs for the Darfur operation, only US$281 million has been received, leaving a 40 percent shortfall.
posted by K.M. at 2:21 PM
1. protect civilians and relief agencies in Darfur by reinforcing AU peacekeepers with a stronger mandate and more troops -- up to at least 10,000 total -- that are properly resourced; enforcing the arms embargo and military flight ban over Darfur; neutralising government-controlled militias and enabling IDPs and refugees to return home;
2. implement accountability by getting the proposed Sanctions Committee operational; by widening targeted sanctions; and aiding the International Criminal Court investigation;
3. build a Darfur peace process by devising a blueprint for negotiations and appointing a lead senior mediator from the AU as well as U.S., EU, and UN envoys to lend support;
4. implement the existing peace agreement for southern Sudan by deploying the proposed UN mission rapidly; effectively managing the oil sector; pressing for security sector reform; and ending the capacity of Khartoum hardliners to use the Ugandan insurgency, the Lord's Resistance Army, to sabotage stability in southern Sudan; and
5. prevent new conflict in the east, before it becomes the next major civil war.
posted by K.M. at 11:53 AM
The United States is playing down the crisis in Sudan and should take the lead in global efforts to resolve the conflict, said a leading international advocacy group on Tuesday.
The International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental body that seeks to promote solutions to conflicts worldwide, also called for African Union troop monitors in Sudan to be increased fivefold and for the appointment of a high-profile international mediator on the Sudan conflict.
The group's special adviser on Sudan, John Prendergast, took aim at U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick for his comments during a visit to Sudan this month in which he said between 60,000 and 160,000 people had died in Sudan's Darfur region.
"For Zoellick to float 60,000 as a low end number is negligent criminally," said Prendergast, whose group estimates as many as 10,000 people or more die each month in Darfur.
"It's a deliberate effort by the Bush administration to downplay the severity of the crisis in order to reduce the urgency of an additional response. I find that to be disingenuous and perhaps murderous," he added in a conference call to discuss a report on Sudan by the group.
posted by K.M. at 10:07 AM
Sudan on Tuesday announced new procedures to simplify aid access to the country to facilitate a huge expected humanitarian operation following a peace deal ending more than two decades of war in the south.Or perhaps not
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The government would immediately begin registration of all aid agencies working in Sudan. The goods they bring into the country will be exempted from all customs and taxes, avoiding lengthy bureaucratic procedures.
Most importantly, Hamid said, was that permission would no longer be needed to travel to areas where there are no security concerns, removing a huge obstacle to aid workers traveling through the vast country.
Special procedures to deal with the Darfur humanitarian crisis, where violence has raged for more than two years, would continue for another three months at least, the minister said.The UNHCR says Sudan continues to burn abandoned villages as a message to residents not to return.
Aid workers traveling to Darfur are guaranteed visas within 48 hours.
That and other procedures to facilitate aid to Darfur, where more than 2 million people have fled their homes to makeshift camps, were put in place after an agreement in May last year with the United Nations.
Health Minister Ahmed Ballal Osman said that mortality rates in the camps in Darfur had fallen below the emergency threshold to less than one per 10,000. "This is now considered a normal threshold for mortality," he said.
"In Darfur, where we are acting ... with the full authority of the United Nations and the Security Council, we have a $30 million programme but have received only $2 million," said Chamberlin, a U.S. citizen.The Weekly Standard article mentioned yesterday is now on-line at the Sudan Tribune.
posted by K.M. at 9:38 AM
The impact has been dramatic, both on the workers and on those they seek to help. Roads have been closed; aid organizations are withdrawing staff. Drivers for the World Food Program have refused to transport food because of frequent muggings. After a worker for the U.S. Agency for International Development was shot and wounded last month near the Kass camp, home to more than 80,000 people in South Darfur, the United Nations closed the road to the site, saying it was too dangerous. The rutted desert track has been closed dozens of times because of the lack of security, leaving the displaced people in the village without food and medical supplies.
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In recent weeks, aid groups said, relations have worsened following a U.N. resolution that authorizes sending Darfur war crimes suspects, including government officials and rebel leaders, to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Although grateful for the humanitarian help, some Sudanese officials accuse aid agencies of giving the United Nations wrong information, a charge aid workers deny.
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Five months ago, Lanya arrived in Darfur, in the city of El Fasher. On his first night, he saw a village on fire. He remembers the smell of straw huts burning, along with teapots, sandals and blankets. He remembers the women with babies on their backs, screaming and running.
The government said its troops were fighting rebels who were using civilians as human shields; the rebels claimed to be defending the local populace. Witnesses said government forces burned the villages in retaliation for a rebel attack. But neither side came to help the women, Lanya recalled.
posted by K.M. at 7:10 PM
Chinese President Hu Jintao met with his Sudanese counterpart Omar el-Bashir here on Saturday and reached consensus on further consolidating and expanding their mutually-beneficial cooperation.The Weekly Standard has a new article "The Darfur Disaster
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The Chinese president told his Sudanese counterpart that China will strengthen its ties with Sudan and is committed to developing bilateral mutually-beneficial cooperation, said sources from the Chinese delegation.
Hu also expounded the Chinese government's positive attitude toward developing bilateral ties, saying the two countries enjoy profound and traditional friendship. The two countries have maintained good political ties since they established full diplomatic ties 46 years ago.
Sudan's largest opposition party led a move Sunday to boycott the constitution-drafting process due to seal a peace deal between Khartoum and southern rebels ending more than two decades of conflict.A UNESCO-supported documentary is in the works
The Umma party of former prime minister Sadeq al-Mahdi and 10 other opposition groups issued a joint statement charging that the makeup of a committee tasked with drafting the interim constitution was not representative of the country's political landscape.
[A] production team traveled recently to Darfur to start shooting “The Children of Darfur”, a 24’ youth documentary about the daily stories of children living in Darfur’s refugee camps.
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TV director Camilla Nielsson (Denmark) reports: “It is the hardest political environment I have ever shot in, and tensions in the camp and with the military affects our shooting every day. The sandstorms and the 45 degrees are not helping either; however we have had 3.5 days in the camp with cameras now. I'm filming in Kalma, the biggest camp in Darfur, with 150.000 people. We have found a great character, 15 year old Somaya, who fled her village 11 months ago, when her school was attacked and 17 students, including her cousin were killed. We are telling her story - as well as we can with the time and security constraints”.
posted by K.M. at 10:12 AM
It's morning, and Eric Reeves is gripping his mug of coffee, preparing for his daily battle with two life-or-death foes. His first fight is against leukemia, so he opens a bottle of pills. The second is against mass killings in Sudan, so he spreads his recent research out on a table.The continuing analysis Reeves' has been providing has been absolutely vital to our understanding of the genocide. I urge you all to visit his website and consider dropping him a note thanking him for his work and courage as he faces his own health problems.
Reeves, a tall man in Harry Potter spectacles, has devoted his life to calculating the rising death toll in Darfur, a remote western province. Reeves's calculations, which now estimate 400,000 dead from attacks, starvation, and disease, have helped push the United Nations to dramatically increase its own death toll estimate and have pressured governments to do more to address the crisis. His work has won praise from human rights advocates and governments, as well as the ire of Sudanese officials.
Reeves is not an epidemiologist. He's a literature professor at Smith College, waging a lonely battle from his laptop, with no formal training in estimating mortality rates. He has made his share of enemies, as his words have bludgeoned the world into greater candor about Darfur. But the only enemy he worries about is time.
posted by K.M. at 12:16 PM
The lowest Darfur mortality number previously cited came from the World Health Organization. Last year it reported that 70,000 people had died, and many observers repeated this number without explaining it. WHO's estimate referred only to deaths during a seven-month phase of a crisis that has now been going on for 26 months. It referred only to deaths from malnutrition and disease, excluding deaths from violence. And it referred only to deaths in areas to which WHO had access, excluding deaths among refugees in Chad and deaths in remote rural areas. In other words, the 70,000 estimate from WHO was a fraction of a fraction of the full picture. The 60,000 number that Mr. Zoellick cited as low-but-possible is actually low-and-impossible.
Other authorities suggest that mortality is likely to be closer to 400,000 -- more than twice Mr. Zoellick's high number. The component of this estimate involving deaths by violence is based on a survey by the Coalition for International Justice, a nongovernmental organization operating under contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development, which asked 1,136 refugees on the Chad-Darfur border whether family members had died violently or gone missing. These interviews yielded a death rate of 1.2 per 10,000 people per day. Extrapolating for all of Darfur's displaced people, John Hagan of Northwestern University estimates that 140,000 people have died violently or gone missing since the start of the conflict. It's possible that the refugees in Chad experienced atypical rates of violence, making that extrapolation unfair. But a study of camps for displaced people within Darfur, published last October in the Lancet, a medical journal, found that more than 90 percent of fugitives had fled their villages because of violent attacks, making the extrapolation appear justified.
What of nonviolent deaths? According to the WHO's misquoted survey, which is based on interviews with nearly 17,000 internally displaced people, the mortality rate from malnutrition and disease comes to 2.1 per 10,000 people per day. Again, extrapolating for all displaced people, Mr. Hagan estimates that 250,000 people have died from malnutrition and disease since the conflict began, so that the total of violent and nonviolent deaths comes to 390,000. Mr. Hagan suggests that this number is conservative, because it assumes that only displaced people are at risk. Many people who remain in their villages have been exposed to violence and food shortages.
posted by K.M. at 12:10 PM
Moreover, the oil that started to flow as recently as 1999 has given President Bashir an indispensable international ally.
Almost unnoticed by the outside world, China has become the key player in Sudan's oil industry.
Beijing has invested £8 billion in Sudanese oil through the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), a state-owned monolith. The cost of Khartoum's new refinery alone was about £350 million.
Freshly painted billboards in Khartoum carry pictures of smiling Chinese oil workers and the slogan: "CNPC - Your close friend and faithful partner". But this faithful friend is secretive about its stake in Africa's largest country. China's embassy in Khartoum and its commercial office declined to talk about oil.
A CNPC spokesman said: "We are a shareholder in a number of operating companies here. We conduct our operations through them. If you want to learn more, you must contact the mines and energy ministry."
Yet CNPC's annual report discloses that about half of all its overseas oil comes from Sudan. It deployed 10,000 Chinese workers to build a 900-mile pipeline, linking Heglig oilfield in Kordofan province with Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
The company's report trumpets this achievement as its "first long-distance crude pipeline constructed and operated abroad".
In fact, China shamelessly curried favour with Mr Bashir by speeding up this mammoth project so it could be finished in June 1999 - the tenth anniversary of the coup that brought him to power.
China is now dependent on Sudan for seven per cent of all its oil imports. Hence Beijing has gone to great efforts to shield Mr Bashir.
posted by K.M. at 11:26 AM
ZEINAB ABUKAR was terrified. We found her cowering with a group of women among the thorn bushes and scrub of the bone-dry Abu Ghadim wadi. Like a rabbit caught in the headlights, her black eyes flashed quickly from side to side as she calculated whether or not to make a run for it.
“If they find us, they will kill us,” she said of the pro-government Janjawid Arab militia who still roam at will across this barren landscape near Sudan’s border with Chad.
“Who are you? What do you want?” another woman, a small child strapped tightly to her back, shouted. Waving a small plastic bottle, half full of dirty water, she imitated the sound of explosions and pointed to a vast, empty desert of swirling dust devils.
They had heard the approach of a large United Nations helicopter ferrying yet another top official on yet another fact-finding mission to Darfur and feared the worst.
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“The ICC list has increased insecurity in that people, local Janjawid and even government officials, are frightened of being picked up. They make no distinction between aid workers and UN international staff. It has increased hostility towards us all,” a senior UN official said.
posted by K.M. at 11:13 AM
If Sudan's regime aimed to pacify Darfur with its bloody military campaign, it may have achieved the exact reverse. The two years of fighting have stirred up a hornets' nest of tribal hatreds that could take generations to heal and render peace almost impossible.
In Darfur's squalid refugee camps, victims of atrocities talk openly of revenge. Arab gunmen raided Hawa Azrag Ahmed's village and burned alive her crippled mother, Fatima Abdullah, 60.
"Even now I remember that picture of my mother inside the burning hut,'' said Mrs Ahmed, 40. The gunmen also killed her husband, Mohammed, 50, and her daughter, Amira, 25.
Today her desire for revenge encompasses all Arabs. "It's too difficult for me to forgive," said Mrs Ahmed. "If Arabs ever live nearby, I will remember what they did and fear it could happen again. When my children see someone wearing Arab clothes, they run away."
posted by K.M. at 11:11 AM
Arab militias burned down a village in West Darfur state as a warning to its non-Arab residents not to return to their homes, a man from the village said on Friday.
Ibrahim Adam, 23, took a Reuters witness to the freshly burned village, southwest of el-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state.
All the about 200 homes had been razed, with blackened cooking pots and utensils lying around on the charred ground.
No one was killed in Monday's attack, Adam said. The village was deserted, because all the residents had fled across the border to Chad after militias attacked about a year ago.
They did not burn the village then, he said, but came back again on Monday to warn those who had returned from Chad to nearby camps that they should not try to go home.
posted by K.M. at 1:44 PM
Sudan defended its handling of the bloodshed in Darfur Friday and said it would never hand over war-crime suspects for trial at the International Criminal Court.
The comments by Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismael came as the U.N. warned of new clashes between rebels and Arab militiamen in the Darfur region.
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Ismael, speaking to leaders at the two-day Asian-African Summit in Jakarta, denied allegations that "the intertribal violence" in Darfur amounted to genocide, and defended the sending of government security forces to the Darfur region.
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"The Sudanese judiciary is, and has always been, willing and capable of assuming its responsibilities," Ismael said. "The government has brought before the courts persons involved in violations of human rights. Scores of such persons have already been arrested and tried."
posted by K.M. at 11:02 AM
The U.S. Senate on Thursday unanimously passed a measure sponsored by Sen. Jon Corzine demanding that the genocide in the war-ravaged Darfur region in Sudan be stopped. The Senate also approved a Corzine amendment adding $90 million for humanitarian aid to the region.Brian Steidle was on the "News Hour with Jim Lehrer" last night, discussing his service with the African Union and the genocide in Darfur.
French and German forces could be sent to stop the violence in Sudan's Darfur region as part of a European Union peacekeeping mission that is one of several ideas to be discussed by EU foreign ministers next week, officials said yesterday.Sudan Watch reports that the SPLM/A is offering to deploy 10,000 SPLA troops to Darfur.
The proposed EU peacekeeping force would support an African Union observer mission made up largely of Nigerian and Rwandan troops already in the region but in too few numbers to have a significant impact.
The EU contingent, if agreed, was likely to give logistics support to the African observers but EU ground forces had not been ruled out, provided there was the consent of the Sudanese government and the AU, the officials said.
Civilians caught up in the fighting have had to flee their homesThe New York Times has this article
A series of ceasefire agreements between the Sudanese government and the rebels has halted major offensives and ended bombing by the Sudanese air force.
But if the large scale attacks have stopped, smaller clashes have not.
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Fighting around the town of Nyala in the past two months has driven an additional 50,000 people from their homes.
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Fighting around the rebel stronghold in the Marra mountain is intense with almost daily clashes.
There are tens of thousands of refugees in the area but it is too dangerous for the UN to work in the area.
On the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, the besieged people in this hardscrabble village in Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region on Thursday skipped their usual all-night vigil at the mosque.The U.N. General Assembly authorized a budget of $595 million for the 10,000 strong peacekeeping operation in southern Sudan.
There was also no butchering of a cow this morning, and therefore no feast to honor the prophet's entrance into the world. No drumming filled the air. Nobody danced. It was far too dangerous for all that.
So on what was supposed to be a joyous day, the men and women here did what they now do every day. They sat in the shade and mulled their grim fate.
posted by K.M. at 9:25 AM
New Analysis Claims Darfur Deaths Near 400,000
Experts estimate 500 people a day are dying
In the most comprehensive statistical analysis to date, experts have concluded that close to 400,000 people have died in Darfur since the conflict began over two years ago. The Washington-based Coalition for International Justice (CIJ) and experts from Northwestern and Toronto Universities estimate that 140,000 people have been killed by Sudanese government forces and their proxy militia and 250,000 Darfur civilians have died from either disease, starvation or exposure.
"This is the first thorough review of data which recorded deaths from violence, disappearances, disease, starvation and exposure during flight in the largest geographical area yet available in Darfur," said John Hagan, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Law at Northwestern University, who led the analysis of the estimated 140,000 deaths by violence.
Hagan and his colleague University of Toronto researcher Patricia Parker reviewed data culled from 1,136 interviews of refugees from Darfur conducted by the Coalition for International Justice last summer, as well as data presented in the World Health Organization's survey of deaths in refugee camps last year. Based on their analysis of the combined data, they estimate that the number of persons who have died or disappeared between February 2003 to April 2005 is close to 400,000.
The initial CIJ survey was initiated by the US State Department and led the US government to conclude last September that the events in Darfur constituted genocide.
"These numbers continue to grow as the attacks persist and aid organizations are denied access to civilians in urgent need of international assistance," said Stefanie Frease, CIJ's Director of Programs, who led the international team that interviewed refugees from Darfur in Chad last summer. "Despite the death toll so far, not enough is being done to save the thousands who will inevitably die unless the world community supports the type of intervention needed to stop the killing."
Analysis of the combined CIJ and WHO surveys reveals that about 15,000 deaths are occurring per month, or about 500 deaths per day.
The analysis of CIJ interviews was independently initiated by Hagan, Parker and CIJ.
posted by K.M. at 2:57 PM
14. The gravity of sexual and gender-based violence in Darfur was highlighted in an important and thorough report released on 8 March by the non-governmental organization Médicins Sans Frontières. According to the report, 500 rape victims were treated in the region between October 2004 and February 2005. This figure is all the more shocking when set against the reality that many survivors of sexual and gender-based violence do not seek treatment, owing both to the social stigma attached to rape and fear of negative repercussions. Human rights observers have documented several cases of survivors, their family members and community leaders who came forward to seek justice only to face serious problems, including intimidation by various governmental entities. It was also shocking to learn from agencies on the ground that there is a widespread practice of counter-prosecution against rape victims. In Bindisi, for example, several pregnant victims of rape were detained on charges of adultery and, although eventually released, they were beaten and sexually assaulted while in detention. This not only discourages victims of sexual and gender-based violence and others from registering their complaints with the local police but adds to the climate of impunity characterizing this issue. It is unconscionable that further suffering is inflicted on women and girls who have endured such heinous crimes; it is all the more unconscionable when this suffering is inflicted by the very authorities who are responsible for their protection.
19. It is also important to address property rights and related issues before greater numbers of displaced civilians voluntarily return to their places of origin. There are concerns, for example, about problems associated with non-owners squatting on land belonging to people who have been displaced, thereby making it more difficult, and potentially dangerous, for the displaced to return home.
23. The number of conflict-affected persons increased slightly from 2.4 million in February to 2.45 million in March, owing mostly to new registrations and assessments. The population of the camps for internally displaced persons remained steady at 1.86 million as of 1 March. It is hoped that the Darfur-wide mass registration campaign spearheaded by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which commenced in Kutum town, Northern Darfur, on 1 March, will further improve registration and allow for better targeting of beneficiaries. The apparent stabilization of the number of conflictaffected persons reflects the concentration of serious security incidents in relatively small areas. However, the depletion of coping mechanisms has led to food shortages in more remote areas, particularly in Northern Darfur. As a result, rural populations are in some cases beginning to move into gatherings of the displaced. In March, a small but noticeable number of people — about 2,000 — arrived in Abu Shouk and Zam Zam camps, citing food shortages in addition to insecurity as reasons for their displacement. This is a worrying trend, suggesting that the drought could seriously affect the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people.
28. Preparations have begun to conduct a World Health Organization commissioned mortality survey throughout the region following clearance from the Government. The survey, tentatively scheduled to commence towards the end of April, will provide important information on which parts of Darfur require additional support.
31. A series of highway robberies targeting humanitarian goods and personnel in several areas has also caused localized difficulties for both agencies and displaced populations. The suspension of movement on roads outside Geneina town between 10 and 19 March temporarily affected assistance to more than 330,000 beneficiaries. Although most of the roads were cleared on 19 March, all areas north of Sirba are still classified as no-go areas for United Nations agencies. This affects the provision of assistance to approximately 96,000 people. In Southern Darfur, the attack on a convoy of the International Rescue Committee and USAID that occurred on 22 March on the road between Nyala and Kass, resulting in serious injury to a USAID staff member, led to the closure of the regularly used Nyala–Kass road for United Nations traffic until further notice.
32. Funding requirements for the Darfur operations outlined in the United Nations 2005 work plan for the Sudan are 42 per cent covered. Of the total required amount of $675 million, an estimated $516 million was needed by the end of March to effectively meet the needs in Darfur. As of mid-March, $291 million had been provided towards Darfur activities outlined in the work plan, equivalent to 56 per cent of the estimated requirements by the end of March. Almost 88 per cent of the contributions were in the form of food aid, mostly in-kind cereals, leaving other food requirements and most other critical sectors heavily underfunded. I again appeal to donors to meet these requirements without further delay.
40. AMIS is operating at nearly its full mandated military strength, and has been effective where it has been able to deploy. The total uniformed strength of the Mission now stands at 2,259 out of an authorized strength of 3,156. The balance consists of the remaining civilian police officers and military and civilian headquarters staff, whose deployment dates are not yet determined. The Mission is awaiting the arrival of military personnel from Chad, who would constitute the last major deployment for the AMIS protection force. The total number of military observers on the ground is now 440, broken down as follows: African Union, 362; Chadian mediation, 18; Sudanese parties, 46; partners, 14. Deployment of civilian police continues to lag. Only 170 officers have deployed in the mission area out of a total mandated strength of 815. In seeking to deploy the balance of the AMIS civilian police component, the African Union is focusing on the recruitment of female police officers in recognition of the fact that most protection concerns in Darfur relate to the plight of women and children.
posted by K.M. at 1:53 PM
The United States urged NATO on Thursday to respond quickly to any request for help in the Darfur conflict, but France insisted the alliance could not be the "gendarme of the world."
Despite NATO hints it would be ready to help a 2,000-strong African Union mission struggling to monitor a shaky ceasefire in the region, the AU has so far not made any request for support.
But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who raised the conflict at wide-ranging NATO talks in Lithuania, said it should be ready to offer help with logistics and planning if asked.
"If there is a request, I would hope NATO would activate quickly … We all have a responsibility to do what we can to alleviate the suffering in Darfur," she said.
However French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier disagreed that there was a role for NATO in Darfur and stressed that Africans should retain the lead in peace efforts.
"NATO does not have a calling to be the gendarme of the world," he told a news conference at the same meeting.
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French officials see the European Union as better suited to helping in the region than NATO. The alliance's involvement would mean a further U.S. presence on a continent where former colonial power France is keen to retain strategic influence.
posted by K.M. at 12:42 PM
The resolution, passed by consensus and adopted without a roll call vote, had support from Sudan and other African nations, the United States, the European Union and others. It was approved after the EU withdrew a more strongly worded document.UN High Commissioner for Refugees Wendy Chamberlin is calling on the international community to contribute more money for humanitarian relief for Darfur
The final resolution was the result of weeks of negotiations between the EU, the United States and African nations.
The African countries agreed to remove wording that praised the Sudanese government's steps to improve the situation in Darfur, while the Western countries dropped specific condemnation of the Sudanese government.
The resolution said, "The commission condemns continued, widespread and systematic violations by all parties of human rights and international humanitarian law" in Darfur. It specifically condemned "the violence against civilians and sexual violence against women and girls, destruction of villages, widespread displacement and other violations."
Although the resolution didn't specify the government, human rights organizations have accused Khartoum of being responsible for much of the violence either directly or through militias it backs in putting down a rebellion.
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Sudanese Ambassador Elsadig Almagly said Sudan joined in the consensus "on the understanding that cooperation is the best means" to improve the situation in Darfur.
Welcoming the lack of a specific condemnation of the government, Almagly said "naming and shaming" countries on a selective basis amounted to holding "double standards."
"These people desperately, desperately need the kind of assistance we provide," she said in West Darfur on the third day of a five-day visit to the region. "UN agencies simply do not have the funding to provide them the assistance they desperately need to survive."Julie Flint, author of the Human Rights Watch report "Darfur Destroyed," warns that Darfur-like trouble is brewing in eastern Sudan
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Zaina Abakar, a 35-year-old widow with three children, told members of Chamberlin's team that she and others living in the wadi have to eat seeds they find on the ground, seeds that are so tough they have to be boiled for three days.
Zaina said she, the other women and their children live in fear, and, ironically, were frightened even by the arrival of Chamberlin's helicopter.
"We are living here, yes, but we are scared," Zaina said, cuddling her year-old baby boy Mohammed. "We are scared of everything. When we saw your plane (helicopter), we thought of running away. Whenever anything happens we think of running."
Still, she said, she and the other women wanted to come back to Darfur from their four-month exile in Chad. "This is our place, our country. Even our donkey, when it gets lost, it comes here. Even when our goats walk, they come here." She begged the UN to bring food, water, and above all, security.
Today many believe there is a danger that the new focus on Darfur will obscure early-stage conflict in another of Sudan's peripheries: the Red Sea hill area in eastern Sudan, on the border with Eritrea, that is home to the Beja people.
posted by K.M. at 9:24 AM
Clashes between rebels and Arab militiamen in Darfur killed seven people over the past week, the United Nations said Wednesday, warning of possible new fighting as militias move to cut off rebel positions.
Militiamen have increased harassment of non-Arab civilians in the western part of the conflict-torn region, according to villagers there, with four women reporting rapes in the Sisi region, said Radhia Achouri, spokeswoman for the U.N. special representative to Darfur.
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Rebels from the Sudan Liberation Army clashed with militiamen a number of times over the past week, including a battle in the Abdul Bagir region of northern Darfur that killed seven people and wounded another, Achouri told reporters in Khartoum.
She warned of possible new violence in South Darfur, where she said Arab militiamen are reportedly moving near the town of Neitega in an attempt to cut off rebel links in the region, and there is "likely to be a reaction" from rebel group.
posted by K.M. at 2:01 PM
Comments made during a recent trip to Sudan by US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick suggest a significant effort is underway by the Bush administration to downplay the catastrophe in Darfur. Not only did Zoellick make a series of comments that fully justify the Financial Times headline of April 15, 2005 (“Zoellick reluctant to describe Darfur violence as genocide”), but he offered a disturbingly, indeed untenably low estimate of human mortality in Darfur over the past 26 months of conflict. Zoellick also endorsed a level of troop strength for intervention in Darfur that clearly cannot address in adequate fashion any of the security issues defining the crisis; nor has Zoellick or the US State Department explicitly called for a peacekeeping mandate for forces operating in Darfur.
The ultimate purpose of this statistical and semantic lowballing of Darfur’s urgent requirements and brutal destruction is evidently to forestall any need for a US commitment to humanitarian intervention. Unable to fashion a policy that halts genocide in Darfur, the Bush administration has instead committed to a strategy of re-definition.
posted by K.M. at 12:25 PM
The 4.5 billion dollars promised in aid to Sudan at a donors' conference in Oslo last week is unlikely to materialise, and would be ''silly'' if it does, a leading development expert told IPS in an interview.
The promise was never realistic to begin with, Dr Tim Allen from the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) said. ''At donor conferences it becomes politically correct to make all sorts of promises,'' he said. ''Whether that corresponds to actual transfer of capital is another matter; often it doesn't.''
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''Is it coming out of existing aid flows or is it new money?'' he said. ''Is it being transferred from other parts of an aid budget?'' The whole package promised has to be seen against the source of this aid - and even whether it really is aid at all, he said.
''What is being promised may not be capital transfer at all,'' Dr Allen said. ''It may be cancellation of debt that was not going to be paid anyway, and declared as capital transfer. Many countries have often shown debt cancellation as a part of aid flow.''
Worse, it might even have been money lent for military purposes, he said. ''So, aid might not mean what it appears to mean.''
posted by K.M. at 11:05 AM
On April 7, 1994 Rwandan soldiers and trained militias armed with machetes unleashed a murderous campaign to destroy the minority Tutsi population.It is widely acknowledged that the world largely ignored the genocide in 1994 and failed the people of Rwanda. A decade later, it is worth asking if our priorities have changed.
On April 8, Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain was found dead in his home from a self-inflicted gun shot wound.
On April 15, an estimated 20,000 Rwandans who had sought shelter Nyarubuye Church were slaughtered by government forces and members of the Interahamwe militia.
On April 22, former President Richard Nixon died and his funeral was held five days later.
On May 5, Michael Fay, an 18 year-old US citizen, was caned in Singapore as punishment for vandalism.
In mid May, the International Red Cross estimated that 500,000 Rwandans had been killed.
On June 17, OJ Simpson led police on a slow speed chase in a White Ford Bronco.
On July 4, the rebel army took control of the Rwandan capitol of Kigali and the genocide came to an end in a country littered with nearly one million corpses.
On September 8, 2004 "60 Minutes" ran a controversial story regarding President Bush's service in the Air National Guard that relied, in part, on forged memos.Ten years ago, a genocide unfolded right in front of our eyes, but the media was more focused on the legal problems of various celebrities than it was on the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Africa.
On September 9, former Secretary of State Colin Powell officially declared that genocide was taking place in Darfur, Sudan.
On October 4, Romeo Dallaire, the head of the UN mission in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide warned that the world was responding to the crisis in Darfur much in the same way it responded to the genocide in Rwanda – with complete indifference.
On October 6, comedian Rodney Dangerfield died.
On January 24, 2005, Johnny Carson died.
On January 25, the UN released a report chronicling "serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law amounting to crimes under international law"; among them the "killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence."
On March 11, Brian Nichols overpowered a deputy, stole her gun and killed three people in an Atlanta courthouse before escaping.
On March 14, the United Nation's estimated that at least 180,000 people have died in Darfur in the last year and a half.
posted by K.M. at 10:03 AM
Like other young Darfuri women, Hawa Yehya used to be terrified to go out to look for firewood in case she was attacked and raped by Arab militia. Today the young mother is no longer afraid to make the trip.Khartoum is warning the UN Human Rights Commission not to appoint a special human rights rapporteur for Sudan, calling it an "irrational" move that would only complicate the Darfur crisis
This is not because the militias known as Janjaweed have made peace, but because African Union (AU) forces are patrolling the routes women use around Zalengei town in central Darfur.
"They are wonderful. We want them to stay," Yehya said. "Now we are not so scared to leave the camps," she said as she returned home with a large bundle of wood on her head.
"The unwise tackling by the (UN) Security Council of the Darfur conflict now prevails in the deliberations of the Human Rights Commission as manifested in the insistence of the European group to place the Sudan under the special rapporteur article," State Foreign Minister Naguib al-Khair Abdel Wahab told reporters.Sudanese Foreign Affairs Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail has unveiled an eight-point "road map" for dealing with Darfur.
He described two UN Security Council resolutions passed earlier this month on Darfur as "irrational" and warned that Khartoum would also refuse to cooperate with a rights rapporteur if one was appointed.
"A resolution under Article Nine will not contribute to resolving the Darfur crisis but will, instead, further complicate the situation there," Abdel Wahab said.
posted by K.M. at 9:06 AM
Darfur women who said they were chased from their villages by Janjaweed militia told visiting Acting High Commissioner Wendy Chamberlin on Tuesday that they were terrified to go home anytime soon.
In a women's centre in El Hamadya camp for displaced people, some 50 women told her they don't even feel safe inside the camp.
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When the women receive donations of plastic sheets and tents, armed men come into the camp in the middle of the night and steal the goods, the women said.
"Midnight – that's when the AU is not there, "said Chamberlin, referring to the African Union troops who are spread throughout Darfur – the size of France – to provide a measure of safety for civilians traumatised by the two-year conflict.
"We in the UN refugee agency know protection means presence," Chamberlin said. "Unfortunately, the AU, we and the NGOs are not in the camps all the time."
UNHCR has gotten the AU to send soldiers to protect women from rape when they leave the camp to collect firewood. Still, the women told Chamberlin that security was their top concern along with food and education for their children.
When Chamberlin asked the women if they feel safe to go home to their villages, they replied loudly and unanimously, "La," – No in Arabic – with dramatic negative hand gestures.
posted by K.M. at 3:25 PM
It sometimes gets over 110 degrees during the day. And the wind blows so hard that it hurts.
Somewhere amid this heat and desolation, genocide occurs. The citizens of Darfur, Sudan don’t live, they survive.
Nate Wright (COL ’06) saw the devastation of genocide first hand over spring break as he traveled to Darfur with a team of two additional students from Boston University and Swarthmore College, as part of a special MTV-U television delegation.
Wright, vice president of GUSA and one of the founders of Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, an on-campus human rights advocacy group, said he won’t soon forget what he saw there.
“While there are so many reasons not to talk, [the people in Sudan] really believe that when someone in the U.S. or Europe hears these stories, they will have to act,” Wright said.
posted by K.M. at 10:57 AM
Arafa Abdullah Hadi hid for a week in a dry creek outside her Darfur village, fearing the Arab militiamen she saw shoot dead her two uncles and brother-in-law would come back.The International Committee for the Red Cross says that attacks on aid convoys have increased over the past two weeks, stopping urgently needed food from getting through
Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, rampaged through Hadi's previously rebel-held town of Khor Abeche in South Darfur state 11 days ago, burning, killing and looting all in their path.
"They came early, at 6 a.m.. I heard the screaming first and then shooting," Hadi, 19, said.
She ran outside with her family to see the Janjaweed turn up on horses and camels and in vehicles with machine guns on top.
They killed about 30 people that day, she said, dressed in a colorful wrap but shyly covering her face.
Unidentified attackers ambushed and looted numerous aid trucks with essential items for remote villages and refugees forced to flee their homes by fighting in the western Sudan region, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. The international relief group said the attacks were denying help to people who lacked even the most basic necessities. The attacks had been carried out against a number of aid agencies and had not targeted the ICRC itself, a spokesman said.Acting UN High Commissioner for Refugees Wendy Chamberlin is visiting Sudan and says its government will be held responsible for failing to protect its own citizens.
posted by K.M. at 9:42 AM
Clashes between the Government and rebels in Sudan's western Darfur region, attacks against international aid workers, rape and the persecution of its victims, abuse of children, and torture by security forces, underscored a continuing dire situation, according to the latest United Nations report on the region released today.
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While attacks on the civilian population decreased marginally and the Government redeployed some troops in South Darfur, these positive steps were overshadowed by the increased military activity and attacks against international personnel, and the security situation saw no improvement in relation to February.
posted by K.M. at 1:54 PM
Henderson native Marian Spivey-Estrada underwent about four hours of surgery to restore her face Wednesday, but she is doing well now, her sister said.
"She came out fine," Sarah Simon said. "She will be in the hospital through (today), and I will fly out (this) afternoon to be with her for the weekend."
Spivey-Estrada was injured during a humanitarian mission to the Sudan in late March. She had been working for the U.S. Agency for International Development and was in a four-vehicle convoy when she was shot.
"She's in really good spirits, and is very happy to be home to Washington, D.C.," Simon said.
posted by K.M. at 1:32 PM
Moreno-Ocampo cannot completely avoid the diplomatic influences on the ICC, yet his focus is unwaveringly on the victims of war crimes.
"We want to make sure we are not exposing the victims of ongoing conflicts to more violence.
"Their interests come first," he said.
posted by K.M. at 12:54 PM
Survivors of militia attacks in Darfur have accused African Union forces of doing nothing to stop the bloodshed and demanded peacekeepers be sent into the war-torn region.
Hassan Abdel Karim said African Union (AU) troops were just 5 km (3 miles) away when Arab militiamen rampaged through his home village of Thor, killing 22 people.
"They were so close they would've heard the shooting but they did nothing," said Abdel Karim, who told how he fled for his life as gunmen burned and looted homes.
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"This attack could have been avoided had they (AU troops) intervened to stop it," he said, tears welling up in his eyes. "But they just come afterwards and make useless reports."
More than 2,000 AU troops are deployed in Darfur to monitor a shaky ceasefire between non-Arab rebels and the Arab-dominated central government.
But they are not mandated as peacekeepers and have limited powers to protect civilians in Darfur, a region the size of France in western Sudan.
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"These attacks are continuing constantly -- all over this region," tribal leader Adam Abdel Karim Muhajir said.
"(African leaders) need to order them (the troops) to become peacekeepers. Otherwise there's no point to them being here."
posted by K.M. at 11:08 AM
Violence in the western Sudanese region of Darfur has continued to affect humanitarian operations during the past two weeks, international humanitarian agencies said on Monday.
The Danish Refugee Council reported that a local staff member was shot and killed on Friday evening in Golo, in the Jebel Marra region of West Darfur state.
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Ongoing insecurity was impeding efforts to help people who lacked even the most basic necessities and were becoming increasingly dependent on external aid, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.
"Until now we have not changed our operations in Darfur, but we are very concerned about the ongoing insecurity," Lorena Brander, spokesperson for the ICRC in Khartoum, told IRIN.
posted by K.M. at 11:06 AM
Sudan said Saturday initial oil drilling operations in the troubled Darfur region indicate there is abundant oil in the area.Sudan Watch has more.
Sudan Energy Minister Awad al-Jaz told reporters in Khartoum an oil field was found in southern Darfur and it is expected to produce 500,000 barrels of oil per day by August.
There are other risks to what would be a large, expensive, and long-term deployment in a forbidding region. But as the third year of genocidal conflict grinds on, let us be clear about the costs of inaction or further pretense that the African Union alone can respond adequately to this vast episode in deliberate human destruction. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians will die. They are as vulnerable to the consequences of insecurity, famine, disease, and the Janjaweed as the Tutsis and moderate Hutus of Rwanda were vulnerable to the violence inspired by the Interahamwe. The 11th anniversary of the terrible events of 1994 only makes more conspicuous our failure, again, to intervene.Nicholas Kristof also continues to write about Darfur.
posted by K.M. at 9:19 AM
Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, as my colleagues know, I have a special interest in Sudan. I have spent much time there on an annual basis for the last several years participating in various types of work--mission work, some medical work, as well as a Senator.
Three weeks ago, a USAID team member working in the Darfur region of Sudan was shot and wounded. By now, most Americans know the Darfur region is a huge region, about the size of France, in the western part of Sudan, a vast country in and of itself.
This USAID worker was traveling in a clearly marked four-vehicle convoy on a road that was considered safe and secure. The convoy was ambushed, and the 26-year-old aid worker was shot in the face. As a result of that attack, she has lost vision in her right eye and has had and will continue to have to undergo facial reconstruction.
First and foremost, our thoughts and prayers go out to this courageous and compassionate young woman and to her family whom we all know must be in tremendous grief. What happened is a tragedy that deeply troubles us all.
I am informed that the shooting was not random. The attackers intentionally targeted the humanitarian convoy in order to intimidate the world. For 2 years, the jingaweit death squads have terrorized the people. With the backing of the Government, these criminals have killed nearly 50,000 innocent Darfur Africans.
A British Parliamentary report issued last month says as many as 300,000 Sudanese may have died since the Khartoum Government started the fighting 2 years ago.
The exact numbers, as always, are difficult to confirm.
Access to these areas is very limited. Khartoum simply does not want the world to know what those numbers are.
It was just last August that I made a trip to the region. I was denied permission by Khartoum to travel to Darfur properly. Nevertheless, I went and spent time just to the west, in the adjacent country of Chad, and went along that Chad-Darfur border. I wanted to see with my own eyes so I could come back and report, which I did, my observations in a part of the world where, to my interpretation, to our interpretation, there is genocide occurring.
We visited refugee camps on that Chad-Sudan border. We met with survivors. They told us the heartrending stories of women and girls being abused, mass rapes, land destroyed, crops destroyed, villages burned, water supplies actively polluted. As a product of all that, there is the forced displacement, moving out of villages, out of homes of over 1.2 million people.
It is clear, as I mentioned, that what is going on--the destruction, the death, the killing--is genocide. This body has said that. The jingaweit are killing the Darfur people because they are ethnically different and because they do not support Khartoum.
Since October of last year, the State Department has formally recognized the conditions in Darfur as genocide. Congress has also acted, placing sanctions on Sudan's Government and authorizing about $100 million in aid.
This week, at a special international donors conference for Sudan, the United States pledged $1.7 billion in aid over the next 2 years, more than any other country. As a condition of that aid, the Khartoum Government must demonstrate that it is taking action to stop, to end, to terminate this killing.
The United States, under President Bush's leadership, has led on this issue from the beginning. The United States has provided over 70 percent of the supplies going to the survivors now in Darfur and eastern Chad, and the United States has been providing assistance to the region, indeed, for years.
Robert Zoellick, our Deputy Secretary of State, is currently traveling in the region to observe the situation on the ground. What he will see when he is there and what he will report back, I am sure, when he comes back to us, no doubt, will deeply disturb him, as it did me and others in this body who have traveled to that region.
In the last Congress, I worked with a number of our colleagues--Senators BROWNBACK, FEINGOLD, BIDEN, LUGAR, and before that, former Senator Helms and many others--to enact a bill called the Sudan Peace Act. That bill provided the framework for the peace negotiations in Sudan between the northern and southern regions.
In addition, last year, we in this body voted unanimously to urge the Secretary of State to take appropriate actions within the United Nations to suspend Sudan's membership on the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
While I am heartened by the aid pledges made this week by the international community, a lot more work absolutely must be done. Global pressure must be brought to bear.
I urge the United Nations to formally recognize the reality of the crisis in Darfur. What is happening there is genocide. The Khartoum Government will not stop this killing until it is faced with stiff international pressure.
Every day the world fails to act, Khartoum gets closer to its genocidal goal, and every day the world fails to act, it compounds its shame. We must not let this happen. We cannot fail the Darfur people. They are pleading for our help, and, indeed, they are pleading for their lives.
posted by K.M. at 11:52 AM
Stand at the center of this teeming refugee camp and the tents, mud huts and lean-tos stretch all the way to the horizon - to the north, the south, the east and the west.
The population has grown by almost 50 percent since December so that now it is a city with as many as 100,000 residents living solely on international aid. More arrive every day. But what really has some aid workers and others here concerned is that none of the residents of this or other camps in Darfur, here in western Sudan - two million refugees in all - have any intention of leaving.
No, we cannot go home," said Abdul Latif, 26, who said he walked here from the west late last year. "Too afraid."
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David Killingsworth, a director of the United States Agency for International Development in Darfur, said he had not seen anything but increases in population in all the camps spread across Darfur. As for anyone leaving to move home, he said, "No, no, the security situation is too bad."
posted by K.M. at 11:47 AM
A Chadian diplomat was injured when unidentified gunmen opened fire on his vehicle in the troubled western Sudanese Darfur region, Sudan's foreign ministry said on Friday.
"The consul-general of Chad was on his way back to El-Geneina in West Darfur state from the Chadian border town of Adre on Thursday evening when unidentified gunmen opened fire on his vehicle within Sudanese territory," a statement from the ministry said.
A Chadian government official who declined to be named said the diplomat was seriously hurt. He is based in El-Geneina which is very close to the Chadian border.
posted by K.M. at 1:06 PM
But at a press conference after meeting Vice-President Ali Osman Taha, Mr Zoellick was clearly unwilling to repeat that assertion.Refugees International has this press release
"I don't want to get into a debate over terminology," he said, when asked if the US believed genocide was still being committed in Darfur against mostly African villagers by Arab militias and their government backers. He said it was Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, who had "made the point" in his testimony to Congress.
Whether to describe the violence in Darfur as genocide became a heated issue in Washington last year. Mr Powell was under intense domestic pressure, notably from Christian lobby groups, to reach the genocide definition. But some officials argued against, saying the debate over words was irrelevant and time-wasting and would prejudice efforts to finalise a separate peace accord ending decades of civil war between Khartoum and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement in the south.
While distancing himself from the previous determination of genocide, Mr Zoellick appeared to move closer to the position of the United Nations. He used the UN description of "crimes against humanity" and asserted the need for accountability through legal processes and sanctions as agreed by the UN.
In the refugee camps in eastern Chad, programs for children and youth are almost non-existent. Non-governmental organizations identified child protection programs as a critical need, but there are few NGOs with the expertise needed to implement these programs. Separated and unaccompanied children, orphans, and youth are particularly vulnerable. According to an aid worker, "Sadly, there is currently not much going on in terms of child protection and a great deal of work needs to be done to sensitize NGOs on child protection and make it more of a priority."Passion of the Present has links to several stories on David Kilgour's decision to leave Canada's Liberal Party over the government's failure to confront the crisis in Darfur.
Darfur cannot afford to wait another decade or more before the ethnic cleansing ends. Rather than another conference far down the road in which nations pledge billions more dollars to rebuild villages, plant new crops and bring refugees back, it makes sense to increase the African Union forces now and ensure that they have the equipment and transportation they need to stop the latest bloodbath.
posted by K.M. at 12:28 PM
Nearly 400 refugees from Sudan's Darfur region have reached the West African country of Ghana, travelling thousands of kilometres to seek asylum in the home country of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
"We've already processed about 200 of them and they've got refugee status now. They're in a settlement in the western region (of Ghana)," Jane Muigai, protection officer for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, told Reuters.
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Police in the capital of Ghana on Wednesday rounded up 180 Sudanese asylum seekers who were living on a horse-racing course and dropped them off in an unfinished building in the city to await immigration formalities.
posted by K.M. at 12:25 PM
While we are grateful to African leaders for their contributions thus far, we need thousands more - and not today or tomorrow but yesterday.
After all, giving aid without protection is like putting a Band-Aid on an open wound. Unarmed aid workers, while vitally necessary, cannot defend civilians from murder, rape or violent attack. Our collective failure to provide a much larger force is as pitiful and inexcusable as the consequences are grave for the tens of thousands of families who are left unprotected.
We saw this all too well in Bosnia a decade ago. Back then, Bosnian civilians watched the aid trucks continue to roll while their neighbors were gunned-down in full daylight. "We will die with our stomachs full," they used to say. Are we now going to stand by and watch a replay in Darfur?
posted by K.M. at 12:14 PM
During the Q&A session, I asked Kabeir for his response to charges that the Sudanese government was aiding the Arab muslim militias in killing non-Arab civilians in Darfur. He gave a long and rambling discourse about the complexity of the situation in Darfur, and how it was difficult to tell the difference between Arab and non-Arab Darfurians (but then he contradicted himself and said the nomads in the region were Arab and the farmers were the non-Arab black Sudanese).
It's worth noting that, in his entire rambling response, Kabeir never flatly denied that the Sudanese government was helping the militias kill civilians.
posted by K.M. at 10:47 AM
African Union (AU) personnel in the western Sudanese state of North Darfur have started providing armed escorts for displaced women and girls to protect them from attacks, an AU official told IRIN on Wednesday.Darfur: A Genocide We Can Stop has posted some photos taken by the African Union mission (warning: they are graphic.)
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However, Leslie Lefkow, a researcher for the Africa division of Human Rights Watch (HRW), and co-author of a new briefing paper on sexual violence in Darfur, told IRIN on Tuesday that the AU did not yet have the resources to extend such protection to the rest of the region.
"This is a great interim solution that could be replicated across Darfur, but the AU does not have the capacity to do that at the moment," she said.
The only way to save Darfur is to dispatch a large and capable military expedition. But Security Council members France, China and Russia have blocked a U.N. decision on armed intervention because they covet trade ties with Sudan.
That still leaves the possibility of civilized states acting independently of the U.N., as they did in Kosovo. But the only nation with a serious military capacity, the United States, is overstretched in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The European Union should step into the breach. Its economy is as big as the United States' and its population is even bigger. But it has chosen to spend its euros on extravagant handouts for its own citizens rather than on the kind of armed forces that might bring a ray of hope to the "heart of darkness." Although the European members of NATO actually have more ground troops than the U.S. — about 1.5 million soldiers — only about 6% are readily deployable abroad. The Europeans could still scrape together the 25,000 to 50,000 soldiers it would take to pacify Darfur, but it would be a stretch for them given their existing commitments, and not one they're willing to make.
As a last resort, even if they're not willing to send their own troops, the U.S. and the EU could offer to provide much more logistical support to allow the African Union to dispatch more of its own peacekeepers to Sudan. That's not asking a lot, yet it's more than anyone has been willing to do so far.
posted by K.M. at 9:16 AM
Voting on the Darfur Accountability Act and an important Darfur-related amendment is expected to take place on the floor of the Senate as early as Wednesday, April 13 or Thursday, April 14. Please use the automated-letter system lower on this page to send an email to your Senators’ offices in support of these amendments!You can send a message to your Senator here.
Introducing the Darfur Accountability Act in early March, Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) [on behalf of himself and co-sponsor Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ)], said
"This bill reiterates that the atrocities taking place in Darfur are genocide, it calls for sanctions in the UN Security Council. It also calls for accelerated assistance to the African Union force in Darfur, for the establishment of a military no-fly zone in Darfur, for an extension of the multilateral arms embargo to include the Government of Sudan, and it freezes the assets and property of criminals and denies visas and entry to them while also calling for a multilateral effort to do the same. In addition, it calls for a Special Presidential Envoy for Sudan, and states that the United States supports accountability through a competent international court of justice, and requires that the administration report to Congress on such efforts."
The Darfur-related amendment, proposed by Senators Brownback and Corzine, along with Senators Mike DeWine (R-OH) and Richard Durbin (D-IL), calls for changes to the FY05 Emergency Supplemental Appropriation bill. The amendment requests an additional $53 million to help expand and strengthen the African Union mission in Darfur, and $40 million for additional disaster aid (a total an additional $93 million in support).
It is crucial that you contact your senators today and ask them to support both the Corzine-Brownback-DeWine-Durbin Sudan Amendment to the FY05 Emergency Supplemental and the Darfur Accountability Act.
posted by K.M. at 8:58 AM
I was the commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda at the time of the genocide. When 10 of my men - Belgian paratroopers - were killed at the beginning of the slaughter, there was an opportunity. There was attention and outrage in West. But the decisions taken were a travesty.
The countries with troops in the small UN monitoring force in Rwanda decided to pull them out. The Belgian government faced negative public opinion at home. Other Europeans remained totally uninterested. The United States was determined that nothing should be done through the United Nations. It was clear that a UN resolution that even mentioned the word genocide would never see the light of day.
There were plenty of excuses: The Belgians had lost men; the Europeans were heavily committed in Yugoslavia; the Americans were wary after the fiasco in Somalia. Everyone was focused on upcoming elections in South Africa. Rwanda just wasn't on anyone's agenda.
But these excuses rest on uncomfortable assumptions - in particular, that African lives are vastly less important than other lives, and that genocide does not mean, as it should, that business-as-usual is suspended. If there was any doubt about this, it was played out in front of me over the days that followed.
posted by K.M. at 1:36 PM
posted by K.M. at 10:53 AM
Relatives and friends of the many innocent civilians slaughtered last week in the village of Khor Abeche (South Darfur, east of Nyala) may be forgiven for concluding that piously irresolute UN Security Council resolutions offer little protection from ongoing Janjaweed attacks. In a savage, daylong attack on April 7, 2005, militia forces from the neighboring village of Niteaga “rampaged through the village [of Khor Abeche], killing, burning and destroying everything in their paths and leaving in their wake total destruction” (“Joint Statement by the African Union Mission in Sudan and the UN Mission in Sudan,” April 7, 2005). The attack is described by the UN and AU missions as “savage,” “pre-meditated,” and ultimately a function of “deliberation official procrastination” that prevented the deployment of AU observers who might have been able to forestall the clearly impending attack.
The dead and surviving residents of Khor Abeche may also be forgiven for concluding that mere referral of war crimes to the International Criminal Court will do nothing to deter ongoing, ethnically-targeted civilian destruction in Darfur. Certainly none of the three resolutions recently passed by the UN Security Council made the slightest difference to those victims whose brutal murder led the UN and the AU to declare their “utter shock and disbelief of the relentless daylong attack on Khor Abeche.” But neither “shock” nor “disbelief” is any longer an appropriate response to the genocidal violence in Darfur. As the third year of conflict grinds on in Darfur, as the African tribal populations and villages of the region continue to be destroyed as part of Khartoum’s unspeakably brutal counter-insurgency warfare, there is no basis for either “shock” or “surprise.”
posted by K.M. at 10:16 AM
The United States on Tuesday pressured Sudan to quell bloodshed plaguing the African country's western region, with the State Department's second-in-command proclaiming "the eyes of the world are on Darfur."Zoellick said this after the US had already pledged nearly $2 billion to the country. Demanding that Sudan hold people "accountable" for the genocide is somewhat ironic, considering that the entire world seems to be unable to hold Sudan accountable for the genocide.
"The world knows what is happening in Darfur and the government cannot escape the consequences of that knowledge," Robert Zoellick, top deputy of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, told donors at an international conference for Sudan.
He called on the Khartoum-based government to stop Arab militias and hold people accountable for atrocities as well as assist the African Union to monitor military flights over the bloodied swath of Sudan.
The United Nations World Food Programme has warned that unless donations are rapidly forthcoming, nearly 200,000 refugees who have fled into Chad from the Darfur conflict in neighbouring Sudan risk going hungry in the months ahead.Human Rights Watch says that "women and girls who have fled ethnic cleansing in Darfur are being raped and subjected to sexual violence around the camps where they have sought refuge."
WFP is appealing for US$87 million in food aid to cover needs in the refugee camps of eastern Chad until the end of next year. However, contributions are urgently needed to ensure sufficient stocks are delivered to the camps ahead of this year's rainy season, during which road transport becomes all but impossible across most of the region.
"We need food now," said WFP Chad Country Director Stefano Porretti. "With the rains only a matter of two or three months away, it is absolutely imperative that we move food to the places where it will be needed later this year. This process has already begun but is far from complete."
"Once the rains begin, most of the camps become completely inaccessible by road. Getting supplies in place now will go a long way to avoid the necessity of expensive airlifts and air-drops further down the line. We need to get food here by road before it is too late," Porretti said.
posted by K.M. at 10:41 AM
How would you evaluate what the African Union has been able to do to date and what more would you hope they could do?
The good news is that the African Union, despite its relative newness - since it just replaced the OAU two years ago - has stepped up to this problem. Where they are on the ground, they are making a difference. And that's the universal report. Jan Pronk [from the United Nations] has said that. Our own people who've gone out on the ground have said that. The Europeans say that. Where they've been on the ground, for instance, we've seen the violence dissipate, particularly this alarming growth in rapes and violence against women who are trying to gather firewood outside the camps.
Unfortunately, they're having a lot of teething pains and we in the international community are supporting them as best we can. The problem really is there are not enough of them. The real test will come when there's enough of them on the ground .
One of the fears I've got, is that the Janjaweed and whoever else is doing this - and it's more than just them - still have plenty of free space to roam, and they may just be moving away from where the AU is. The violence and the rapes are still going on, but they're just not in the zone where the AU is. If we put more AU on the ground, we may finally find out if the Janjaweed are going to be more than a bandit problem, if they will push back. I don't think so. The history of this kind of operation is that it disappears when confronted with a superior force. But we're not there yet. And we haven't got a lot more time to wait.
posted by K.M. at 12:28 PM
Millions are starving in southern Sudan, including tens of thousands of returnees drawn back by the promise of peace and displaced persons fleeing Darfur in the west, according to aid workers here.A summit on Darfur among leaders from Chad, Libya, Nigeria and Sudan has been postponed for logistical reasons.
As donors meet this week in Norway to consider billions in post-north-south war aid for Sudan, relief agencies and the Roman Catholic Church are appealing for urgent assistance to avert a new humanitarian catastrophe that they say threatens what is supposed to be a peace dividend.
"These people are literally starving in the south," said Ceasar Mazzolari, the Catholic bishop for the diocese of Rumbek, the war-shattered town that under a January peace deal will be the interim capital for an autonomous south.
"The tragedy of Sudan is not known," he told visiting reporters at the Gordhim Catholic mission in central Sudan's Bahr el-Ghazal region. "People are living on the brink of survival."
"The food situation is very bad," said one aid worker who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We are into the severe months of a hunger period."
You face genocide in Sudan with the international partners you have, not the ones you might wish to have. If the United States does not lead on Darfur, nobody else is going to. Leadership means getting a much larger peacekeeping force into Darfur, so that attacks on civilians cease and humanitarian workers can reach all parts of the territory. To achieve that objective, Mr. Zoellick needs to break the collective paralysis by changing the way the Chinese, Russians, Europeans and Africans think; his most important mission is not this week's visit to Khartoum but future trips to Beijing, Moscow and so on. Mr. Zoellick must argue that nations calling themselves civilized cannot stand by while hundreds of thousands are massacred. He must ask America's partners to judge themselves not by whether they have made sympathetic gestures, nor even whether they have done "their share," but rather by the one standard that matters: Is the genocide continuing?The Sudanese cabinet has approved the UN Security Council resolution sending 10,000 peacekeepers to Sudan to help implement the north-south peace agreement.
posted by K.M. at 9:10 AM
More than 350 militiamen destroyed a village in Sudan's conflict-wracked Darfur region in the worst attack since January, the United Nations and the African Union said.
A joint statement issued Friday by the top U.N. envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk, and the top AU envoy, Baba Gana Kingibe said the names of the militia leader and his known collaborators will be turned over for possible U.N. sanctions and prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
The two organizations expressed "utter shock and disbelief" at Thursday's daylong attack on the South Darfur village of Khor Abeche by armed militia from the Miseriyya tribe of Niteaga under the command of Nasir Al Tijani Adel Kaadir.
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According to the statement, more than 200 of Al Tijani's militiamen, reinforced by 150 additional fighters from Niteaga, "rampaged through the village killing, burning and destroying everything in heir paths and leaving in their wake total destruction with only the mosque and the school spared."
The statement did not give any casualty figures but said the attack was the most savage since the sacking of the South Darfur village of Hamada in January which killed about 100 people.
posted by K.M. at 11:08 AM
Four million in Darfur face severe hardship amid crop failure: UNI would also like to highlight a few key points from Eric Reeves' latest update
Some four million people in Sudan's strife-torn western region of Darfur face deeper hardship over the next 18 months because local crops have collapsed, the UN Children's Fund said Friday.
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About four million people are threatened by food insecurity and one million under five year-olds are suffering or will suffer from severe malnutrition," Personnaz added.
U.N. warns of "time bomb" in Darfur
The United Nations human rights investigator for Sudan has demanded that the government disarm militia who continue to kill and rape civilians in Darfur, warning of a "time bomb" that could explode.
Emmanuel Akwei Addo, the independent U.N. expert on the situation of human rights in the Sudan, said on Friday that 2,000 African Union troops lacked power to deter crimes in the remote region where aid workers were pulling back due to deteriorating security.
[O]ne nongovernmental organization (NGO) that has had an especially important reporting presence in Darfur indicates confidentially that it received explicit threats from the Janjaweed and Khartoum officials in February 2005 to the effect that if there were an ICC referral from the UN, “there would be an explosion of violence against NGO and UN workers”; “Musa Hilal [the most notorious of the Janjaweed commanders] will join Osama bin Laden; the Janjaweed will become a branch of al-Qaeda---these were the types of threats we heard.”
A Darfuri in exile, with exceptionally good contacts on the ground in Darfur, also reports that in the wake of the UN’s referral of Darfur war crimes to the ICC, there is a “feeling among the NGO and humanitarian aid community that the Janjaweed would escalate their attacks on foreigners.” This source also refers to Khartoum’s opening of “camps for training foreign Janjaweed and Arab mujahadeen from other countries to fight [foreigners]. These people may now target the foreign [humanitarian aid] community in Darfur.”
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“Sudanese officials greet the ICC recommendation [by the UN Commission of Inquiry] with a combination of annoyance and arrogance. Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail recently threatened the 800 to 1,000 international humanitarian workers in Darfur by warning that referrals to a criminal court could lead to ‘a direct threat to the foreign presence... Darfur may become another Iraq in terms of arrests and abductions.’ A [paramilitary Popular Defense Force] official told Refugees International that ‘if the wanted on the list are penalized, it will not solve the problem. It will start war again.’ His colleague added, ‘There will be an explosion.’”
posted by K.M. at 3:29 PM
Unless peace can be achieved on the ground in Darfur in the coming months, the situation for women and children is likely to get worse. Over two million people have been affected by the crisis, and with the conflict deteriorating and a severe drought looming, UNICEF Special Representative Keith McKenzie says people in Darfur are going to require continued assistance in the months ahead.
posted by K.M. at 12:00 PM
With the memory of Rwanda still with us, with repeated acknowledgments from the Bush administration and Congress that genocide is taking place with special sessions of the UN Security Council convened to tackle this problem, and with broad public awareness, how is it that genocide continues in Darfur? Is it that no viable political or military options exist? Is the world no more prepared to stop genocide in the 21st century than it was in the 20th?You can read the transcript here (pdf file).
posted by K.M. at 9:44 AM
Starting in May, WFP will have to cut by half the non-cereal part of the daily ration. This is a last resort to help stretch current food supplies through the critical months of July and August -- the region's traditional lean months, when food needs become most acute.
While the reduction will not affect programmes for malnourished children and nursing mothers, it will impact significantly on the diet of more than one million poor and vulnerable people. A cut by half in non-cereals – the most nutritious part of the ration - means that the daily minimum recommended diet of 2,100 kilocalories per person will drop to 1,890.
posted by K.M. at 9:26 AM
All signs are that physical security for humanitarian operations in Darfur continues to deteriorate at a very serious rate. The current reality and future risks of armed attacks on workers (both national and expatriate), humanitarian convoys, and humanitarian resources are reflected in a wide range of published and confidential reports. The latter have come to this writer in very considerable number from sources within the community of aid organizations, the UN, Darfuris in exile, refugee and human rights organizations, as well as other intelligence sources.
Together, these reports suggest that in the run-up to the rainy season (May/June through September) overall humanitarian capacity has begun to decline, transport of food is badly compromised, the pre-positioning of food (especially in West Darfur) is far behind schedule, disease is starting to bite more deeply within a badly weakened population, and water-supply issues have become critical. This occurs even as the conflict-affected population continues to rise, and certainly now exceeds 3 million if we include the refugee population in Chad (which has also begun to show signs of growing severe malnutrition, according to the UN High Commission for Refugees). Food inflation in the region ensures that ever-greater numbers of people cannot obtain food at market prices and thus become dependent on humanitarian food assistance.
posted by K.M. at 9:17 AM
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posted by K.M. at 12:51 PM
Sudan's main opposition party says it has been banned from political activities after police stormed its headquarters in the city of Omdurman.
Dozens of Umma party members were arrested by armed police on Wednesday, party officials said.
They said the party was targeted because its leader, former Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi, backed sending Sudanese war crimes suspects to court.
posted by K.M. at 11:47 AM
“We have reached a point at which the commission's declining credibility has cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole, and where piecemeal reforms will not be enough,” Mr. Annan told delegates.The Voice of America reports on the Genocide Intervention Fund's efforts to raise money for the AU mission in Darfur.
The raid came hours after the party said officials ordered it to cancel planned celebrations to mark the anniversary of an April 6, 1986, uprising that ended the military rule of Gaafar Nimeiri in Sudan. The revolt was followed by the first free election since 1969, bringing the Umma Party leader, Sadeq al-Mahdi, to the prime minister's post.
Al-Mahdi was prime minister until his government was toppled in a 1989 military coup led by the current president, Omar Bashir.
posted by K.M. at 9:02 AM
Relief workers have reported an upsurge in severe malnutrition among Sudanese refugees from Darfur at three camps in eastern Chad.
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Stefano Poretti, the World Food Program (WFP) Country Representative in Chad, said there were probably several reasons for the increase in malnutrition noted by MSF, not all of which were related to food shortages.
"There are several possible explanations, for instance the improvement in the surveillance system might have allowed for more precise screening, the lack of hygiene and water and certain cultural practices, such as preventing sick children from eating, might all have contributed to the increase in kwashiorkor cases," he told IRIN.
However, Poretti acknowledged that WFP had encountered logistical difficulties in trucking food supplies to the refugee camps across the Sahara desert from the Libyan port of Beghazi on the Mediterranean coast and this had resulted in the refugees receiving reduced food rations for several months.
Poretti noted that the standard WFP food ration was 2,100 calories per day, but this had been cut to 1,800 at present and had dipped as low as 1,400 in February and November.
posted by K.M. at 4:22 PM
Serious reporting on [Darfur] largely has been absent on the networks and on cable. Last year the three network nightly newscasts aired a meager total of 26 minutes on the bloodshed, according to the Tyndall Report, which monitors network news. ABC devoted just 18 minutes to Darfur, NBC five and CBS three. By contrast, Martha Stewart's woes received 130 minutes, five times as much.For those who are unfamiliar with what is taking place in Darfur, we encourage you to read this piece by Brian Steidle, a former Marine who spent six months working as cease-fire monitor with the African Union force in Darfur.
posted by K.M. at 11:30 AM
While there are many similarities between the Rwanda and Darfur crises, two differences give Prendergast hope. For one, there is still time to respond today in Darfur. As gruesome the statistics are, the Rwanda genocide took place swiftly - killing 800,000 over 100 days - the genocide has been slower in Sudan. Nevertheless, the violence and refugee starvation is still rampant, and Prendergast said he believes we must act now.Nicholas Kristof has another column on Darfur
President Bush and other world leaders are honoring John Paul II in a way that completely misunderstands his message. We pay him no tribute if we lower our flags to half-staff and send a grand presidential delegation to his funeral, when at the same time we avert our eyes as villagers are slaughtered and mutilated in the genocide unfolding in Darfur.British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says members of the Security Council are putting commercial or political interests ahead of their responsibility to protect the people for Darfur.
Only time will tell the ultimate impact of student activism for Darfur. However the lesson from this week is clear: Leadership can come from unexpected sources, and before the cynics criticize the idealism of youth, they should look to these students to see how, with intelligent and savvy execution, ideals can be transformed into reality.
posted by K.M. at 9:05 AM
An internal African Union (AU) report has called on the 53-member bloc to double the size of its military force in Sudan's troubled western region of Darfur over the next four months, diplomatic sources said Tuesday.The AU has struggled for months just to get 2,000 troops into Darfur, so the idea that it is going to deploy 12,000, or even 6,000, is a bit unrealistic. Furthermore, Sudan would have to agree to such an expansion, but more importantly, the AU troops need a mandate to provide security to people at risk - a mandate Sudan will more than likely oppose.
The report, compiled by officials from the African Union, the European Union and the United Nations who toured Darfur last month, recommends that the AU mission be expanded to 6,000 troops by August, the sources said.
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The report, the findings of which must still be approved by the AU's Peace and Security Council which must authorize such an expansion, also says the pan-African body should decide in September whether to increase the mission even further to 12,000 troops, the diplomat said.
posted by K.M. at 10:57 AM
The state-owned mobile phone company MobiTel had publicized the protest march through a text message sent out to many subscribers on Monday evening.Reuters reports
Serge Brammertz, deputy ICC prosecutor for investigations, took charge of 9 large boxes of documents at the Hague court -- the world's first permanent global criminal court established in 2002 to try cases of genocide and major human rights violations.Keep in mind that Sudan vows that it will never hand any of its citizens over to the ICC.
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Chief ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will meet U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan later on Tuesday in New York to take charge of a sealed list of 51 people, who the U.N. commission has accused of involvement in crimes in Darfur.
In December, Sudanese officials in Nyala obtained "confessions" of several foreign aid workers who were detained and threatened with indefinite detention and criminal charges, including capital offenses, if they did not apologize on film. In a program broadcast on Sudanese state television on March 22, excerpts of this footage were manipulated and used out of context as part of a program that accused aid workers of fabricating the testimonies of displaced people in the Darfur camps.Under pressure from student activists, Harvard has decided to sell its shares of PetroChina because of the company's ties to the Sudanese government.
posted by K.M. at 9:01 AM
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan is expected to transmit to the International Criminal Court (ICC) tomorrow a sealed list of 51 names of people blamed for war crimes and crimes under international law in the conflict between the Sudanese Government, allied militia and rebels in the country's western Darfur region.
posted by K.M. at 3:38 PM
Wednesday, April 6: Press Conference Launch of the Genocide Intervention Fund and CongressRUSH
Join the Genocide Intervention Fund and Senator Brownback (R-KS), Senator Corzine (D-NJ), U.S. Rep. Payne (D-NJ) on Capitol Hill to publicly launch the 100 Days of Action Campaign at a press conference at 11:00 am in Room 216 of the Senate Hart Building. Then participate in CongressRUSH. The 100 Days of Action Campaign aims to raise $1,000,000 and produce 100,000 letters. The money raised will help bring security to the people of Darfur by supporting the under-funded, UN-supported African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur. The letters will show our elected officials that we demand our government do more to stop this genocide. CongressRUSH will follow the press conference. We will break into teams to meet with our senators and representatives to urge them to sign the Darfur Accountability Act and other pertinent legislation. We will provide lunch and training before the CongressRUSH.
posted by K.M. at 2:59 PM
Like their counterparts in more the well-publicized conflict in Sudan's troubled western Darfur region, the ethnic minority Eastern Front complain they are being ignored by the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum.The Sudan Liberation Movement rejected a peace summit to be held in Egypt this month with leaders from Chad, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria and Sudan to try to find a solution to the Darfur crisis. Rebel groups had refused to attend peace talks until the crimes in Darfur had been referred to the International Criminal Court. That happened last week and now the UN envoy to Sudan says "There's no reason anymore to fight, you don't have any reason anymore not to negotiate." The government of Sudan has openly rejected the Security Council's referral to the ICC.
"Our region lacks hospitals, schools, water, transport systems, everything," says the front's newly-elected president, Musa Mohamed Ahmed.
"If the government is ready to solve the problem peacefully, we are also ready," he told AFP here at a rebel base north of Kassala near the Eritrean border where the Eastern Front gathered this week to plot strategy.
"If they are not, we are also ready," said Ahmed, who clad in a dark-green combat uniform seems to be readying himself to command troops.
Today at 10:30 a.m., the United Front for Divestment, a coalition of many campus student groups, is assembling to protest Harvard's investment in PetroChina, which is a subsidiary of the China National Petroleum Company. The CNPC is an oil company almost solely owned by the Chinese government and has been the subject of much student controversy given its involvement with the Sudanese government’s genocidal regime.
posted by K.M. at 9:33 AM
Tribal leaders from villages near this capital of South Darfur province convened for a government-supported conference last week to talk about how to make peace and find justice after two years of war in the region. They discussed how many huts were burned, how much livestock was stolen and how many lives were lost in several attacks late last year.
Over several days, participants argued intensely. Witnesses were called. Payments of blood money were discussed. And the conference ended with a promise to meet again soon and to continue searching for solutions.
Ibrahim Ahmed Omar, right, secretary general of the ruling National Congress Party, leaves a party meeting in Khartoum. Sudanese leaders say they won't let atrocity suspects be tried by International Criminal Court.
"We didn't work everything out," said Ibrahim Sulieman, leader of a nomadic tribe with Arab origins. "In fact, some of the tribes still hate each other. But the conference was a start."
posted by K.M. at 1:12 PM
"It is a humanitarian crisis, it is a moral crisis, and it is a crisis that is extraordinary in its scope and in its potential for even greater damage to those populations. So I think this is a different situation, frankly," Rice added.Finally, I encourage you all to read this David Bosco piece in Foreign Policy on the ramifications of the ICC vote. Bosco seems to be the only one willing to say that referring to crimes in Darfur to the ICC will probably not stop the atrocities and that the ICC is a sorry substitute for intervention
The ICC may eventually become an important judicial complement to international police action. But the world is not there yet. When a crisis is still unfolding, the human rights community should stay focused on generating the political and moral will to intervene effectively. As the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation passes, it is worth remembering that the legacy of Nuremberg will be hollow if it means more trials but no fewer genocides.
posted by K.M. at 11:32 AM
A CEASEFIRE monitor who spent six months in Darfur has lifted the lid on the continuing slaughter of civilians by Sudanese government-backed militia - and warned that the death toll is set to rise dramatically.
Captain Brian Steidle, a former US marine, described how African Union (AU) troops could only stand and watch as scenes of carnage unfolded in front of them. He said he had personally witnessed Sudanese government gunships strafing villages, setting them alight, and found the bodies of torture victims with ears cut off and eyes plucked out.
And he warned that, with the security situation deteriorating and aid agencies unable to reach large parts of the region, the death toll from illness and disease - currently running at about 10,000 people a month - was likely to rise by as much as 50 per cent to 15,000 a month.
posted by K.M. at 11:29 AM
But if the United Nations cannot act, NATO should. The United States and its European allies have already imposed a visa ban on traveling Sudanese government officials; they should also pursue an arms embargo and freeze Sudanese assets. But right now, military intervention is essential. George W. Bush, whose own former secretary of state, Colin Powell, was the first leading official to call this genocide "genocide," should issue the call, help rally the American people to the cause, and offer every available means of U.S. support.
posted by K.M. at 11:21 AM
But judicial intervention may not be the wisest course—at least not yet. Those clamoring for the ICC to take the lead want to establish the precedent that atrocities will be punished. Instead, they may be handing cautious politicians an excuse for continued inaction while unnecessarily dividing the United States and Europe.
posted by K.M. at 4:41 PM
Tenth District Congressman Donald M. Payne, Ranking Member of the House International Relations Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Relations, announced today that the Congressional Black Caucus will hold their annual Mid-Year Brain Trust on Africa on Wednesday April 6, 2005 from 9am - 11am in Room 2226 of the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC. Congressman Payne will lead a distinguished panel of experts on the topic of “Genocide in Darfur: What Ever Happened to ‘Never Again’?”
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Invited panelists include: Rwandan Ambassador Zac Nsenga, John Prendergast – Special Assistant to the President at International Crisis Group, Salih Booker – Executive Director of Africa Action, Brian Steidle – former US Marine Captain embedded with the African Union’s monitoring team in Darfur and Abdelbagy Abushanab – President of the Darfur Rehabilitation Project.
posted by K.M. at 4:09 PM
Monday April 4th, 7PM
John F. Kennedy School of Government (FORUM)
DARFUR: HOW CAN THE WORLD STOP THE HORROR?
Speakers: Haile Menkerios, Alex de Waal, Samantha Power and John Prendergast
Tuesday, April 5, 3pm
Fainsod Room 3rd Floor, Littauer Building Kennedy School
THE HUMANITARIAN PERSPECTIVE
A Discussion with Kenny Gluck, Director of Operations, Doctors without Borders
*Time and Location subject to change
Wednesday April 6th, 7.00PM
John F. Kennedy School of Government (Weiner Auditorium)
GENOCIDE INTERVENTION FUND
Speakers: Mark Hanis, Gayle Smith, Bec Hamilton, Lt-Gen. Romeo Dallaire
Moderated by: Samantha Power
Thursday April 7th, 5PM
Harvard Yard, Boylston Hall (To Be Confirmed)
FILM SCREENING, "Messages From Home - Interviews with survivors from Darfur"
Introduction by Film maker Jen Marlowe
Followed by: Advocacy workshop Moderated by: Chad Hazlett & Sabine Ronc
Friday 8th April, 12.30PM
Harvard Law School , Pound Hall 101
IS ACCOUNTABILITY A PRE-REQUISITE TO SUSTAINABLE PEACE?
Speakers: Justice Goldstone, Michael Ignatieff, Ian Martin
Moderated by: Martha Minow
posted by K.M. at 2:38 PM
"We will not allow any arrest or trial of a Sudanese official, unless they will arrest the 30 million Sudanese people and try them," Abdul Galeel Nazeer Karori, a leading Islamist and member of Sudan's ruling National Congress party, said on state-run TV.More from Reuters
"This is a direct intervention in the affairs of the country, it is meant to ban the government from carrying out its mission," he added.
Sudan on Friday slammed a U.N. resolution sending Darfur war crime suspects to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and signalled it would not cooperate in handing its citizens over to face justice abroad.
The National Congress Party, which dominates the government and parliament, issued a statement making clear its strong opposition, saying the U.N. Security Council position contravened Sudan's rights.
"The leadership council ... emphasises its rejection of the prosecution of any Sudanese national outside of the country."
posted by K.M. at 12:31 PM
The Sudanese government on Saturday welcomed a US decision to lift restrictions on Sudanese diplomats' movements. "We welcome Washington's decision," Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Othman Ismail told reporters.The Sudanense government continues to turn a blind eye to the humanitarian situations in Darfur - so why were the restrictions lifted?
The United States issued an order in 2004 to restrict free movements of Sudanese diplomats in Washington and New York and of those who visited the two cities.
The restriction was slapped as Washington accused the Sudanese government of turning a blind eye to the humanitarian situations in its western Darfur region, where a two-year conflict killed thousands and displaced over one million.
posted by K.M. at 12:27 PM
[International Criminal Court] Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo plans to travel to U.N.headquarters in New York within weeks to receive a sealed list of suspects names, prosecution spokesman Christian Palme said.
The prosecutor has also asked a U.N.-appointed commission of inquiry to hand over thousands of pages of documents it used to compile a report in January which said the Sudanese government and its militia allies had committed major crimes.
posted by K.M. at 11:15 AM
After the mass slaughter in Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s, the world said “never again”. Yet the world has stood by while genocide, or something like it, has been perpetrated in Darfur. America, with its reluctance to back the ICC, is not the only culprit: China has blocked effective sanctions, fearing the consequences for itself if precedents are set for tough UN action against human-rights abuses. But America’s dilemma over Darfur has been especially acute: on the one hand, it has been in the forefront of pressing for tough action against Sudan; on the other hand, the White House’s vehement rejection of what President George Bush calls a “foreign court” with “unaccountable judges” has made it highly reluctant to “legitimise” the ICC by agreeing to send suspects for trial. The compromise reached at the UN this week is an ugly one, with the immunity offered to American citizens creating double standards. But it seems to have been the only way forward.
posted by K.M. at 10:33 AM
In the six months I spent in Darfur as a "ceasefire observer", I saw entire villages burned down with Sudanese locked inside their huts.
I saw villagers with their eyes or ears plucked out, or men who had bled to death after being castrated. I interviewed women who had been gang-raped while out collecting firewood.
I saw evidence of summary executions. I walked through a field where it was impossible to move without stepping on human bones.
The killings in Darfur, described by the UN last year as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, have been going on for two years now. While the big powers have been debating whether the war crimes being perpetrated in Sudan's western region are genocide, and how to punish them, the massacres of the mainly black African population by the Arab militias have continued unabated.
posted by K.M. at 9:06 AM
