Annan's Translator Not Arrested?

From Reuters

Sudan's top U.N. envoy said on Tuesday that U.N. chief Kofi Annan's translator had not been arrested but only harassed by authorities after talking to rape victims in Darfur's largest camp.

Earlier, Jan Pronk had told reporters the translator who entered a small reed hut with Annan to talk alone with rape victims in Kalma camp in South Darfur state on Saturday had been arrested, violating a public promise made by the government not to harass or detain those who spoke to Annan during his visit to the troubled region.

But later on Tuesday night he released a written statement retracting his earlier comments.

"The interpreter has been harassed but not arrested," Pronk's statement said. He said the interpreter had been asked numerous times to report to the authorities in Darfur, but after discussions the local authorities dropped the request.

Earlier Pronk said the government had broken its promise not to harass those who spoke to Annan during his visit by arresting the translator.

What Does Jan Pronk Know That Nobody Else Does?

From UPI

U.N. envoy to Sudan Jan Pronk said Tuesday Secretary-General Kofi Annan was "impressed" by improvement of the situation in war-torn Darfur.

"Mr. Annan was really impressed by the improved situation in Darfur, which he visited on Saturday," Pronk told a press conference in Khartoum.

He said Annan could see for himself the positive development "although there are still many things to work on in order to restore peace and security to the province."

"Foreign press reports, especially in the American press, which speak of no progress in Darfur are completely untrue," he added.

Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide

Via this comment, we learned about this new book, due out in September, from Gerard Prunier, author of the widely respected "The Rwanda Crisis"

In mid-2004 the Darfur crisis in Western Sudan forced itself onto the center stage of world affairs. Arab Janjaweed militias, who support the Khartoum government, have engaged in a campaign of violence against the residents of Western Sudan. A formerly obscure ‘tribal conflict’ in the heart of Africa has escalated into the first genocide of the twenty-first century. In sharp contrast to official reaction to the Rwandan massacres, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called the situation in Darfur a "genocide" in September 2004. Its characteristics–Arabism, Islamism, famine as a weapon of war, mass rape, international obfuscation, and a refusal to look evil squarely in the face–reflect many of the problems of the global South in general and of Africa in particular.

Journalistic explanations of the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe have been given to hurried generalizations and inaccuracies: the genocide has been portrayed as an ethnic clash marked by Arab-on-African violence, with the Janjaweed militias under strict government control, but neither of these impressions is strictly true. Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide explains what lies behind the conflict, how it came about, why it should not be oversimplified, and why it is so relevant to the future of the continent.

Gérard Prunier sets out the ethnopolitical makeup of the Sudan and explains why the Darfur rebellion is regarded as a key threat to Arab power in the country—much more so than secessionism in the Christian South. This, he argues, accounts for the government’s deployment of "exemplary violence" by the Janjaweed militias in order to intimidate other African Muslims into subservience. As the world watches; governments decide if, when, and how to intervene; and international organizations struggle to distribute aid, the knowledge in Prunier’s book will provide crucial assistance.

Witness to Darfur

This is the first of five posts by Jane Wells written for the Huffington Post

I try to disappear, sliding my hot and sticky body down the back seat of the SUV as it bounces along an unmarked dirt road. I realize for the first time since arriving in Sudan that I am actually terrified. Our cell phones have quit working, and now the VHF radio signal is gone. My companions, part of the relief group, the International Medical Corps (IMC), don’t have to tell me that these could be signs of an impending Janjaweed attack.

Security protocol gives us another 5 minutes before we must turn back from our mission, an assessment of need for a new health care clinic at a village called Kabbum. We have just passed a group of about 15 men in flowing white djellabas, or robes, carrying kalashnikov rifles. I can spot another group of 25 men on camels up ahead. Dina, in charge of this expedition, seems impassive, but when she sees the rifles, she announces, “OK, that’s it. We’re turning back.”

Be sure to read the entire post.

Day 141 of Bush's Silence

The latest from Nicholas Kristof

A reader from Eugene, Ore., wrote in with a complaint about my harping on the third world:

"Why should the U.S. care for the rest of the world?" he asked. "The U.S. should take care of its own. ... It's way past time for liberal twits to stop pushing the U.S. into nonsense or try to make every wrong in the world our responsibility."

And while that reader wasn't George W. Bush, it could have been. Today marks Day 141 of Mr. Bush's silence on the genocide, for he hasn't let the word Darfur slip past his lips publicly since Jan. 10 (even that was a passing reference with no condemnation).

Daily Darfur

There have been a series of arrests in Darfur:

From Reuters

A Sudanese translator who accompanied U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to hear rape victims in Darfur's largest refugee camp has been arrested, Sudan's top U.N. envoy said on Tuesday.

Also from Reuters

Sudan arrested a second aid worker from the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) aid agency on Tuesday over a report on hundreds of rapes in the troubled Darfur region, the agency said.

Vince Hoedt, Darfur coordinator for MSF Holland, said he was under arrest and police were escorting him to Khartoum. It was not clear if he was charged with the same offenses as the country director who was arrested and released on bail on Monday.

Likewise from Reuters

Sudan arrested the local head of an international aid agency on Monday over a report on hundreds of rapes in Darfur in the first such action against a top relief worker since a rebellion in the area began in 2003.

Paul Foreman, the country head of the Dutch branch of aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), told Reuters he had been arrested but was being freed on bail.

From the AP

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan met here Sunday with an ex-rebel leader who told him that the postwar return of hundreds of thousands of refugees to their homes in southern Sudan is mushrooming into a humanitarian crisis.

From The Scotsman

Confidential African Union (AU) reports have provided damning new evidence of the involvement of Sudanese government forces and their Janjaweed militia allies in the murder and rape of civilians in the Darfur region.

AU monitors have collected photographic evidence of Sudanese helicopter gunships in action attacking villages, and their reports conclude that the Sudanese government has systematically breached the peace deals that it signed to placate the United Nations Security Council.

Reports from Darfur indicate that air attacks on villages have continued amid defiance of UN resolutions calling on the Khartoum regime to disarm the Janjaweed, with the latest helicopter attack in south Darfur reported to have taken place on 13 May as the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, was preparing to visit the province.

Of course, China's official news agency reports

Top UN envoy in Sudan Jan Pronk said here Monday that the situation in Sudan's conflict-plagued Darfur region is improving.

Temporary Hiatus

I am going to be unavailable to post until next Tuesday. As such, I recommend that you check out Passion of the Present for all the latest Darfur news.

And after that, I recommend that you add it to your regular reading list.

Daily Darfur

From the AP

International donors pledged an additional $200 million Thursday to fund the African Union peacekeeping operation in Sudan's western Darfur region during a conference to discuss the ongoing violence.

Canada made the largest new pledge, promising $134 million. The State Department's senior representative on Sudan, Charles Snyder, said Washington was adding an additional $50 million to the $95 million already pledged to end what he called "acts of genocide" in the ongoing conflict.

[edit]

"We are running a race against time," said United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was at the conference along with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

"If violence and fear prevent the people of Darfur from planting and growing crops next year, then millions will have to be sustained by an epic relief effort," Annan said.

From the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters

The exact number of deaths in the Darfur region due to the conflict will probably never be known. But most certainly, it is far too many. Estimating mortality in conflicts is a notoriously difficult exercise, even more so in Darfur where the conditions causing death are extremely variable. Malnutrition, epidemics and violence occur sporadically, claiming many lives in some areas and none in others. Recognising the importance of tracking mortality and estimating deaths, humanitarian aid agencies working in the region have undertaken mortality surveys among their beneficiaries at different times to assess the condition of their status and the severity of the crises.

You can get the CRED report here (pdf).

Kofi A. Annan and Alpha Oumar Konare have this op-ed in the Washington Times

While no one knows for sure how many people have died in the conflict in Darfur, western Sudan, more than 2.6 million are suffering because of it, and urgently need assistance.

From Christian Aid

The two-hour drive from Nyala in south Darfur to the former rebel stronghold of Labado provides a snapshot of the devastating military tactics used by both rebels and the Sudanese government and its ally, the Janajaweed.

It is a scene of utter desolation, not a human being or animal to be seen. All the villages are abandoned and many are burnt-out. Scorched pots lie on the ground; the constant wind blows sand into the empty, forlorn huts. The once fertile fields still have the stubble from last year’s crops.

From Reuters

Mothers in southern Sudan are feeding their children leaves to stop them starving to death after rich countries failed to heed months of appeals to prevent the region's worst food crisis in seven years.

Young women on Thursday crushed foliage torn from trees then boiled it over fires outside their huts, draining the green-tinged water before their children devoured their sole meal for the day with their hands.

"I'll get diarrhoea from eating this, but there's nothing else," said Nyankir Malek, 35, chomping on bitter leaves used as food of last resort in southern Sudan.

The AFP takes a look at the Darfur section of the recent Amnesty International report

"Thousands of civilians were killed and tens of thousands made homeless. Others were abducted. Hundreds of villages were destroyed or looted. Thousands of women were raped, sometimes in public, and many were taken as sexual slaves by soldiers or Janjaweed militiamen," Amnesty said of conflict in the western region of Darfur.

Darfur Needs Bolder International Intervention

A new letter from the International Crisis Group (via Passion of the Present)

Despite repeated pledges to stop the violence, the Sudanese government has utterly failed to do so. Political negotiations have stalled and, despite the presence of AU troops on the ground and the UN Security Council's important action in relation to accountability and sanctions, the civilian population of Darfur continues to grievously suffer.

This is a highly complex situation, and there are multiple elements in the necessary international action plan -- as spelled out by Crisis Group in its Policy Briefing, A New Sudan Action Plan, of 26 April 2005. But two issues in particular require, urgently, a bold new approach: the mandate of the international troop presence, and its size and capacity.

Complexity as an Excuse for Inaction

A few weeks ago, PBS aired a made-for-HBO film about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda called "Sometimes in April." Following the presentation, journalist Jeff Greenfield held a panel discussion about world's lack of response to Rwanda and the similarities to the current genocide in Darfur.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz was among the panelists and during the discussion made the following points

Wolfowitz: One of the things that bears thinking about from the Rwanda experience, and everyone of these cases is different, and I think one ought to recognize that. But it seems to me that the thing that stuck me as unique about the Rwanda experience, on the one hand the sheer horror of it, with the exception of the Holocaust and even then at a sort of per day rate, this was probably the worst genocide ever. But secondly, and we'll never know this for sure because you never know the course that wasn't taken, but it was seem as though a relatively modest military action aimed at eliminating that regime could have ended the genocide and ended it rather quickly.

What strikes me and seems to me is true in Rwanda, is true in Bosnia, is true in World War II, is true in Cambodia, this kind of systematic, one-sided elimination of a population is not done spontaneously by another ethnic group, it's organized by a criminal gang and if that criminal gang had been eliminated in Rwanda the genocide would have ended.

But that comes to my last point which is, then it depends on how do you conceive of the peacekeeping operation and nobody proposed, that I know of, going in and taking out the government.

Greenfield: Should they have?

Wolfowitz: I think so, yes.

[edit]

Wolfowitz: This is not a simple problem. The Rwanda case, I think, is striking because it at least it looks in hindsight to have been so simple to prevent something that was so horrible. But most of these cases are complicated ... In a way the Rwanda case is helpful for thinking about things but in some ways it's misleading because most cases are a little more difficult.

Wolfowitz openly argued that the world should have intervened in Rwanda, but them makes the strikingly disingenuous argument that Rwanda was somehow "simpler" than the current situation in Darfur.

Rwanda is only "simpler" because it is now over and hindsight allows us to see just how, where and why the world failed. But in 1994, with bodies filling the streets, Rwanda did not appear to be simple at all

U.S. Opposes Plan for U.N. Force in Rwanda
By PAUL LEWIS
12 May 1994
The New York Times

UNITED NATIONS, May 11 -- As rebel forces of the Rwanda Patriotic Front pressed their attack today against the capital, Kigali, the United States criticized a new United Nations plan to send some 5,500 soldiers into the heart of the Rwandan civil war to protect refugees and assist relief workers, saying it is more than the organization can handle.

[edit]

While not excluding any course of action, Ms. Albright said it remains unclear whether African countries are ready or able to send forces for such a dangerous and complicated mission at the epicenter of a raging civil war.

Ten years later, it now appears as if a few relatively simple measures backed by the necessary political will could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. But in 1994, the genocide appeared massively complex and that complexity was routinely cited as a justification for not intervening.

And Wolfowitz is making exactly the same justification for not intervening in Darfur today.

Were there feasible solutions to Rwanda? In hindsight, the answer is obviously "yes." Are there feasible solutions to Darfur? It is hard to say because right now it seems so complex, but there certainly are if the world powers can muster the will to address them.

But unfortunately, it is far more likely that ten years from now, when perhaps another one million Africans have needlessly died, we'll wonder why we did not act when "it looks in hindsight to have been so simple to prevent something that was so horrible."

Daily Darfur

The AU is reportedly seeking $460 million to more expand its peacekeeping force in Darfur

Said Djinnit, chairman of the AU’s Peace and Security Council, said the AU may also consider bringing the force up to 12,000 by September, which would cost an additional $240 million. That decision would not be made until July 3, he said.

Human Rights Watch issued this statement

International donors and African countries meeting Thursday to boost support for the African Union mission in Darfur must ensure that more AU troops are quickly deployed to protect civilians in the western Sudanese region, Human Rights Watch said today.

This can't be good

Sudanese rebels kidnapped three ruling party politicians as they returned from a conference aimed at preventing conflict in Sudan's east, a government official said on Wednesday.

One of the two main Darfur rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said in a statement it had joined forces with eastern rebels to kidnap the three men who were leaving the government-organised conference in the town of Kassala near the Eritrean border on Tuesday.

From the ICRC

Food supplies in Darfur are running critically low and millions of people there are now dependent on food aid. The prospects for farmers being able to sow their fields this planting season are not encouraging. During the last planting season, less than 30% of arable land was cultivated. This proportion is set to decline further. If people cannot plant crops, there will be chronic food shortages. A depleted harvest at the end of the year will mean that increasing numbers of Darfuris remain completely reliant on humanitarian aid for their survival, trapped in a cycle of dependency for at least another 18 months.

UNHCR has this article

As morning dawned, instead of a joyous meal with dancing and drumming, some 30 gun-wielding members of the Janjaweed Arab militia – already infamous for driving more than 2 million Dafuris from their homes – rode into town on camels and horses to terrorize men, women and children on the pretext of searching for a stolen camel.

"It's just an excuse," said Haroun Adam Abdalla, the town's Arabic teacher. "They came purposefully because it's a holiday. If they found people celebrating, they would attack them," despite the fact that the Janjaweed are Muslims just like their victims. Everyone in the village just froze in silence until the Janjaweed rode away without harming anyone this time.

"I feel unhappy," said Haroun a few hours after the daunting display by the Janjaweed, who control the countryside of western Sudan's Darfur region and are accused of killing up to 400,000 people "Today is supposed to be a day of celebration, but it is the opposite. We are living in fear."

UN Commission on Darfur Driefs Prosecutor of ICC

From the AP

Members of a special U.N. commission on Sudan briefed the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Tuesday about human rights abuses in the country's western Darfur region.

[edit]

Court prosecutors have begun field work in Darfur and are expected to launch a full scale investigation in coming months.

Commission members Mohammed Fayek of Egypt and Hina Jilani of Pakistan briefed Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo during several hours of talks on their investigation tactics and experiences in documenting war crimes in Sudan.

"We were able to see the involvement of certain persons and we felt the accounts we heard and the indications we heard were strong enough for us to name them as possible leads for determining criminal responsibility," said Jilani.

The ICC prosecutor is determining if the crimes in Darfur fall under those he is authorized to investigate _ war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide committed since its jurisdiction took effect on July 1, 2002.

Open Letter to President Bush on Darfur

From Africa Action

Dear President Bush,

In September 2004, your Administration rightfully recognized that the crisis in Darfur constitutes genocide. Yet the U.S. has failed to respond to this genocide with the urgency that is required. As the death toll in Darfur continues to mount, it is clear that nothing short of international intervention can protect the people of Darfur. We call on you to assert U.S. leadership to ensure such an international intervention takes place as a matter of the greatest urgency.

Up to 400,000 people have lost their lives in Darfur since the government-sponsored genocide began in 2003. More than 2.5 million people have been displaced, their livelihoods and villages destroyed by government forces and their proxy militias, and many thousands of women and girls have been raped by these forces. Recent reports confirm that the government-sponsored violence continues in Darfur, and that the security situation is deteriorating. The humanitarian crisis that forms part of the genocide is escalating, as the government of Sudan continues to obstruct humanitarian operations, creating famine conditions for millions of vulnerable people.

Mr. President, our most important priority must be providing protection to the people of Darfur. The African Union (AU) has shown important leadership, and its mission in Darfur is doing what it can on the ground in the face of growing insecurity. But the AU cannot address this crisis alone, and nor should it have to. Genocide is an international crime, a crime against humanity, and it requires an international response.

Unless there is an urgent international intervention in Darfur, up to a million people may be dead by the end of this year. An international intervention is essential to support the AU’s efforts, and can achieve four critical purposes: (1) stop the killing and provide security for millions of internally displaced people (IDPs); (2) facilitate the urgent delivery of humanitarian assistance; (3) enforce the cease fire and provide a stable environment for meaningful peace talks to proceed; and (4) facilitate the voluntary return of IDPs to their land and the reconstruction of their homes by providing a secure environment.

The U.S. is to date the only government that has rightfully recognized that genocide is taking place in Darfur. We urge you to immediately take the following steps to support an urgent international intervention to stop genocide in Darfur:

First, the U.S. must assert leadership at the United Nations (UN) by circulating a resolution calling for a stronger civilian protection mandate for the African Union mission and for a broader international force under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.

Second, the U.S. must encourage the UN to quickly approve and assemble a robust international force, under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, to integrate or co-deploy with the African Union and reinforce its efforts. Such a force can be assembled with troop contributions and financial & logistical support from additional countries within and outside the African continent.

Mr. President, genocide is a unique crime and it requires a unique and urgent response. We can still save thousands of lives in Darfur if we act now. We look to you to provide strong leadership to stop the genocide in Darfur by supporting an international intervention force to protect the people of Darfur as a critical first step to bringing peace and stability to this troubled region.

Top WFP Official Urges Funding to Avert Disaster

From the World Food Program

A top official of the United Nations World Food Programme indicated today that the crippling shortage of funds for WFP operations in southern Sudan must be corrected urgently to avoid serious suffering for those who experienced famine in 1998 in Bahr El Ghazal, in which tens of thousands of people died.

Halfway through 2005 and at the start of the leanest time of year in Sudan, WFP’s operation to feed a total of 3.2 million people in the south, transitional areas and east, including returnees in need, has a massive shortfall of US$224 million (74%) out of the US$302 million required.

WFP Senior Deputy Executive Director Jean-Jacques Graisse, recently back from Khartoum, southern Sudan and Darfur, said pockets of severe malnutrition had already been identified as well as areas where households had exhausted their food stocks.

“I am worried some areas may suffer a disaster if we don’t have the resources to save lives,” said Graisse, who witnessed the 1998 famine in Bahr El Ghazal.

In addition, results just released from a WFP-coordinated assessment in the long-neglected east of Sudan shows chronic malnutrition after decades of drought and poverty. This year, many people in the east are being pushed to their limits with the added burden of fast-rising food prices.

Malnutrition rates are comparable to the south and Darfur. The east is part of the overall appeal (seeking US$302 million) for the south so an immediate response from donors is essential.

The total number of people requiring food aid across Sudan is more than six million.

Daily Darfur

From Reuters

NATO will offer airlift, training and other logistics support to African Union (AU) forces struggling to end the civil war in Sudan's Darfur region, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Tuesday.

De Hoop Scheffer said envoys to the 26-country alliance had agreed a package of measures to be offered to the AU at an international conference in Addis Ababa on Thursday.

"The scene has been set," de Hoop Scheffer told Reuters. He said the NATO contribution would be fully coordinated with efforts by the European Union and the United Nations.

Kofi Annan is heading to Darfur and co-chairing a pledging conference to gain support the AU mission in the Darfur.

From Reuters

Hundreds of armed police and army soldiers surrounded a Sudanese refugee camp south of Khartoum on Tuesday, the scene of violent clashes which killed at least 17 police and residents last week, witnesses said.

"We are surrounded since this morning and are waiting to see if they will start something again," said one camp resident, who declined to be named.

Mohamed Ahmed Abdel Gader Arbab, a lawyer and spokesman for the people of Soba Aradi, said the armed forces have sealed off the entire area, about 30 km (19 miles) south of the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

"They have cordoned off all areas and have taken tough measures to stop people leaving," he said.

Eric Reeves in DC

Via Passion of the Present, we learn that Eric Reeves will be delivering a lecture in DC tomorrow night

THE GENOCIDE IN DARFUR, lecture by Smith College Professor of English Language and Literarture Eric Reeves on the ongoing Sudanese crisis. True Reformer Building, 1200 U St. NW. Tue., 5/24, at 7 p.m. Free. (508) 753-3588.

One Dead, Nine Wounded in Clash at Darfur Camp

From UN News

One person died and nine others were injured in a recent clash between police and merchants in Darfur's largest camp of about 150,000 people who fled fighting in the remote region, the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said today.

UNMIS reported that on 19 May, a clash between police and merchants in Kalma camp housing internally displaced persons (IDPs) in South Darfur state reportedly resulted in one civilian death and nine injuries – six IDPs and three policemen.

Following the incident, police from the African Union (AU) mission in Darfur and elements of the AU Protection Force established a round-the-clock presence at the camp. The situation appears to have calmed, and yesterday, agencies were allowed to re-enter the camp to resume humanitarian assistance.

United Nations Sudan Situation Report

From the United Nations Country Team in Sudan

Key Developments

Late on 19 May, a conflict between police and IDP merchants in Kalma camp, in South Darfur, reportedly resulted in the death of one IDP and the wounding of six IDPs and three. AU Civ Pol and elements of the AMIS Protection Force established a 24/7 presence on 21 May. At 10:00 this morning, humanitarian organizations were allowed to re-enter Kalma. The situation appears to be calm and agencies resumed humanitarian assistance.

Security Issues

South Darfur: The incident at Kalma camp sparked a violent reaction among the residents of the camp. On 20 May, a large number of IDPs gathered near the Kalma market, destroyed two "tea houses" frequented by GoS police, then proceeded to torch the HAC compound and Land Cruiser before stopping short of attacking the GoS Police base located opposite the camp. AU Civ Pol and military personnel worked with GoS Police to decrease tension and encourage dialogue with the authorities. However, the state government refused humanitarian access to the UN or INGOs until after "investigations" were completed. Only on the morning of 22 May were agencies were allowed back into the camp. The situation appears to be calm and agencies have resumed humanitarian assistance.

[edit]

West Darfur: Heavy fighting reportedly broke out near Golo, Jebel Marra between SLA and GoS forces on 16 and 17 May. On 17 May, the village of Moro, four km from Nertiti was attacked by armed tribesmen and GoS forces. An estimated 200 people are reportedly missing, including many students and six teachers were reportedly killed. This report remains unconfirmed.

It was reported that on 19 May, a series of cattle-rustling related incidents between nomads and local farmers and Chadian-Zagawa nomads north of Seleah resulted in several deaths. The situation in Seleah presently is calm, but tension is still high, and the probability of further conflicts is also high. UNMIS has not yet suspended movement through Seleah, but is monitoring the security situation closely.

[edit]

Health

West Darfur: WHO and MoH could not carry out polio vaccination activities in Bir Saliba, west of Seleia, due to insecurity. • South Sudan: The civil service strike in Juba has hampered the work of Juba Hospital. The 14 ICRC staff members are currently struggling to provide services and have requested assistance from the Sudanese Red Crescent. The GoS military has reportedly sent 25 nurses, and UNICEF is assisting in the provision of meals to inpatients.

Sudan Censors English Language Daily

From Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Without Borders voiced outrage today at the action of the Sudanese state security police in banning an entire issue of the English-language Khartoum Monitor newspaper in the earlier hours of 21 May after the editor refused to withdraw a report and an editorial, and then returning the following evening to scrutinize the content of the next day's issue.

[edit]

State security police went to the Khartoum Monitor's printing press on the night of 20 May and ordered the withdrawal of a Reuters dispatch and an accompanying editorial that were to have appeared on the front page. They were about rioting on 18 May in a camp for displaced persons at Soba Aradi, south of the capital, in which six civilians including a baby and a teenager, and 14 policemen died.

Fighting broke out at the camp when police tried to forcibly "relocate" its inhabitants, most of whom are from Darfur or the south, in accordance with a vast government plan to reorganise reception centres for the hundreds of thousands of refugees in Khartoum state. Refugees reportedly attacked a police station after the police fired tear gas and real bullets at them.

At around 3 a.m. on 21 May, after the newspaper's editors refused to withdraw the dispatch and editorial, the police ordered the cancellation of the entire issue. Acting editor William Ezechiel said this would result in a loss of 6 million Sudanese pounds (20,000 euros) in advertising and sales.

The state security police returned to the newspaper on the evening of 21 May to examine the content of the next day's issue, announcing that they would henceforth come every evening to ensure that no articles "cross the red line."

Reuters quoted an unnamed state security official as saying : "We follow the newspaper but there is no censorship. We talk on the telephone with them because there are some subjects which we ask them to treat responsibly."

Sudan is still under a state of emergency, with many civil liberties suspended. The Khartoum Monitor, which has consistently defended the population of the south, has already been the target of coercive measures in the past, as have many other journalists and newspapers. The Arabic-language daily Al Adwaa, for example, had to withdraw an article criticising the continuation of the state or emergency and the behaviour of the state security police from its 12 May issue.

East Sudanese Frustrated at Government Neglect

This is how Darfur began

Eastern Sudanese tribal leaders passionately decried the lack of development and the marginalisation of their region to a high-level government delegation in the eastern town of Kassala on Monday.

East Sudan is one of many outlying regions of Africa's largest country where residents complain of neglect at the expense of central Sudan around the capital Khartoum where most of the ruling elite hail from.

EU To Airlift Troops to Darfur

From Reuters

The European Union pledged on Monday to provide the air transport needed to send thousands of extra African troops to Sudan's Darfur region to help end its two-year civil war.

"As soon as the troops are ready, we'll be ready to transport them to theatre," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said after EU defence ministers agreed to offer more help to an African Union mission fighting to quell a conflict that has cost 180,000 lives through violence, hunger and disease.

Winds of Madness

The Dartmouth Lawyers Association has released a report called "Winds of Madness" that

recommends immediate actions by the United Nations and the government of the United States and other world leaders to help alleviate the plight of those displaced from their villages by two years of civil war. It includes several recommendations to Congress and the Bush administation which require immediate attention. The Committee is now exploring whether a class action may be brought on behalf of the displaced Sudanese against the Government of Sudan and commercial enterprises supporting the government.

Daily Darfur

The African Union is asking for six helicopter gunships, 116 armored personnel carriers and other equipment for its peacekeepers in Darfur.

Sudan says that it will set up a court to try Sudanese citizens accused of war crimes in Darfur within the next three months.

Illinois lawmakers have voted to have the state sell off about $1 billion worth of investments in companies doing business with Sudan.

Doctors Without Borders offers this testimony from one of its volunteers

The first things that started to emerge were from men saying that their women have been taken by armed groups for several days and raped. The women told the same story in a shy way because they didn't want this to be a challenge for the men to go and fight because of it. But it was amongst a lot of other evidence that there was a whole range of violent abuse taking place against civilians.

The "Two Darfurs": Redefining a Crisis for Political Purposes

The latest analysis from Eric Reeves is now available - it includes this bit of information

An important “open letter” to President Bush, demanding that he do more to halt genocide in Darfur, will be released (along with a full list of signatories) at a media briefing hosted by Africa Action in Washington, DC on May 24, 9:30am in the John Hay Room at the Hay Adams Hotel, 16th and H Streets, NW. The letter has support from several members of Congress, as well as many national organizations and religious denominations.

Daily Kos on Darfur

Kudos to Armando over at the Daily Kos blog for highlighting and raising awareness about the genocide taking place in Darfur.

Eugene, wouldn't it be nice if Daily Kos would join the CFD?

Daily Darfur

The Famine Early Warning System Network provides a rain timeline for Darfur

Once seasonal rains start in the region, much of eastern Chad will be cut off. While large towns in Darfur may be accessible, surrounding areas will be difficult to access. All efforts should be made to provide refugees and IDPs with shelter and to preposition or distribute relief supplies to last through the rainy season. Already rains have begun in the southern most parts of Darfur. Normally within the next three weeks, the rains will start in all of South Darfur. Northern areas, like El Fasher will start to experience heavy seasonal rains by the end of June. By the end of July, the rains will cover the entire region.

The USA Today has another article on Darfur

The last time he saw his village, Sheik Haroun Ishag was running for his life. In 30 minutes one morning in December 2003, gunmen on horses and camels slaughtered 37 of his neighbors. They burned homes, stores, the school and the mosque. They stole every cow and goat in sight. They even took the school's tin roof.

Now, there's nothing here. But the government wants Ishag to move back.

IRIN has an interview with Sudanese minister for humanitarian affairs

QUESTION: What is your assessment of the situation in Darfur?

ANSWER: The security situation in Darfur is better now. And it's not our own evaluation - it's also the evaluation of the UN and the international community. The movement of assistance and people is better, as we introduced the so-called "fast-track system" for humanitarian assistance. It is for the whole Sudan, to ease the movement of humanitarian efforts. We also made progress in social reconciliation, and last week's tribal reconciliation meeting in North Darfur was very successful. It was agreed that all fighting would be stopped.

All political parties have committed to the ceasefire and reconciliation efforts are underway to bring them to the negotiating table. We are now waiting for the African Union (AU) to announce the date for the resumption of the Abuja peace talks. It is time for peace now.

We think that things are better in every respect. More than 70 international organisations are now working in Darfur with more than 700 cars and more than 10,000 staff.

Q: How do you reconcile your assessment with the latest Darfur report by the UN in which the UN Secretary-General expresses his concern about the increase in incidents of banditry and attacks on humanitarian aid workers?

A: I don't think there is a serious problem of relief-targeting. Most of the attacks on humanitarian workers are from the rebels, and it was once stated during our joint meeting with the UN that rebels are responsible for the attacks. This is why the tribal leaders asked the rebels not to attack, not only the convoys, but all the movements. It is not the tribal militias who are attacking. There is a lot of pressure on the rebels to go for peace now, and not for fighting.

Kofi Annan is scheduled to visit Khartoum next week.

Corzine and Payne on Darfur

From the Chatham Courier

Back from Africa where he saw the horrors firsthand, Senator Jon Corzine, D-N.J., Sunday called for greater U.S. engagement in combating genocide in Darfur.

Corzine and Rep. Donald Payne, D-10, spoke to the congregation of the United Methodist Church in Chatham as part of an effort by the N.J. Coalition of Religious Leaders and the N.J. Council of Churches to increase area awareness of an ongoing genocide that has already claimed the lives of thousands.

[edit]

In northeast Africa, the Sudanese government is murdering the black Sudanese of the western province of Darfur, using Arab Janjaweed militias, the Sudanese Air Force, and organized starvation, according to the Save Darfur Coalition. “Over a million people, driven from their homes, now face death from starvation and the militias’ attempts to prevent humanitarian aid from reaching them. The Janjaweed have destroyed the people of Darfur’s villages and crops, and poisoned their water supplies, and they continue to rape, murder and terrorize.”

On Sunday, Corzine described the Janjaweed as “a roaming band of criminal thugs, lawless groups of folks.”

[edit]

“Good morning, Church,” Corzine said after he had ascended the altar and stood at the lectern. “It is wonderful to have the opportunity to come and speak about a subject that Congressman Payne and I are passionate about – to ask for your help.”

The senator started by emphasizing the bi-partisan nature of his work on this issue, noting that Senator Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, is championing the battle against genocide on the other side of the aisle.

“No one really knows how many have been killed in Darfur,” said the senator. “We don’t know if it’s 250,000 or 400,000. What we do know is that a great tragedy has befallen a people. It is a tragedy to see man fight man, particularly when it’s encouraged by a sovereign power.”

Corzine said he has visited the neighboring country of Chad along the border of Darfur twice in the past nine months. He returned from his latest trip to the area ten days ago, where he saw refugees in the border camps, desperate to get out of Darfur.

“There are two and a half million refugees in Darfur and Chad,” he said. “There is a great human tragedy building in those camps. Our government and our society have provided tremendous amounts of refugee aid, but the nutritional needs for the people in those camps are still not what they should be. …Humanitarian aid and medical care needs to flow freely into those camps.”

Payne said we need to learn from the lessons of the holocaust.

“After World War II, there was the statement, ‘never again,’” said the Newark congressman. “In the months leading up to the war, we looked the other way when Jewish people were being killed. This is a situation. This is a quiet genocide, not being covered much by the press.”

Payne urged people to call Rep. Chris Smith, R-4, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights, and International Operations, “to mark up Bill 1424, where it is languishing.”

Citing a letter to the Government of Sudan written by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, which praises the Sudanese for help in the war on terror, Payne said he fears the Bush Administration is allying itself with a brutal government while downplaying the genocide.

“The war on terror has become the only issue,” said Payne. “During the Cold War, thousands and millions of people died in our quest to keep countries from communism.

“If we are going to abandon all of our principles, we are in trouble,” Payne said. “We have to decide what is principal and what we stand for, or at one point we will stand for nothing other than the so-called war on terror.”

Member States Lack the Political Will

From the AP

A top aide to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan reflects a lack of political will by U.N. member states.

"Everybody wants to stop Darfur (from) happening. Nobody wants to put their own troops in harm's way," Mark Malloch Brown, Annan's chief of staff, told the House International Relations Committee on Wednesday. The panel is pushing for reforms at the United Nations in light of recent scandals.
Malloch Brown told the panel that "all this talk we've had of U.N. reform will ultimately amount to nothing if Darfur happens on our watch," he said.

Daily Darfur

From IRIN

At least 30 people were killed on Wednesday in clashes that erupted when Sudanese security forces tried to forcibly relocate internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Soba Eradi camp, 30 km south of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, officials said.

[edit]

Sources said the unrest began when trucks loaded with armed men rolled into Soba Eradi, an IDP camp housing 26,000 people, at 5 a.m. (0200 GMT) on Wednesday morning.

Kirsten Zaat, UN advocacy officer in Khartoum, told IRIN the aim of the operation was to move the IDPs to Jebel Alial and El Amal town, about 50 km south of Khartoum.

Other sources said the IDPs did not want to be relocated. They gathered at a local bus station to protest, but at about 9:40 a.m. (0640 GMT) the police officers opened fire on them, the sources told IRIN.

The Guardian reports

NATO ordered its planners yesterday to begin urgently drawing up proposals to help out in Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and more than a million displaced.

NATO's 26 ambassadors, meeting in Brussels, approved a request for help from the African Union, the pan-continental organisation, which has 2,600 troops on the ground.

Janjaweed leader Musa Hilal, who is suspected to have been included on the list of 51 names the UN commission handed over the ICC, now says that he is on a mission of peace.

NATO Agrees to Explore Darfur Options

From NATO

On 18 May the North Atlantic Council agreed to task the Alliance’s military authorities to provide, as a matter of urgency, advice on possible assistance NATO could offer to the African Union in Darfur.

This advice will be prepared in full consultation and transparency with the African Union, the European Union and the United Nations.

The decision by the North Atlantic Council follows a request on 26 April by the African Union for consideration by NATO of the possibility of providing logistical support to the African Union’s peacekeeping operation in Darfur.

On 17 May, Mr. Alpha Oumar Konare, the Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union, visited NATO, providing details on the kinds of assistance that the African Union would require.

The Secretary General is due to attend talks on international support for the African Union’s operation in Darfur in Addis Ababa on 26 May.

Taking three weeks to authorize authorities to "provide advice" on "possible assistance" makes me think that NATO does not really see this "as a matter of urgency."

Militia Blocks Aid Delivery to South

From the BBC

Part of a major UN aid operation in Sudan has been suspended and is under review after a militia leader blocked the delivery of food.

[edit]

The delivery was stopped when a local pro-government militia leader demanded that the quantity of rations be doubled.

When the UN rejected his request, he insisted the 150 tons of grain be taken away, depriving the 6,000 people of New Fanjak, as well all those in other villages down this tributary of the Nile.

With the militia upset, it has been deemed too dangerous to continue.

Delays and Complications

The genocide in Darfur began more than two years ago. Since then, more than 400,000 people have died and the international community has yet to take any concrete action toward stopping the violence or helping the nearly 2 million displaced return to their destroyed villages and resume semi-normal lives.

And the longer the world delays, the more complicated the situation seems to become.

Just last week, the UNHCR was forced to pull its staff out of four refugee camps in Chad after five of its workers were wounded in protests over food distribution. The same day, two refugees and two Chadian police officers were killed during a clash in another camp.

Also last week, two drivers for the World Food Program were killed and rebels abducted but later released 17 members of the African Union ceasefire monitoring force.

The UN reported that militia attacks have intensified in the last month and there are now reports that rebels in the East have amassed along the border with Eritrea, potentially creating a Darfur-like conflict there as well.

All the while, the world makes symbolic gestures of concern and assistance. The AU has decided to expand its force in Darfur but lacks the troops, money and logistical resources necessary to fully do so. Help from NATO has been requested but has not yet materialized. For domestic political reasons of its own, Canada recently pledged to send 100 troops to Darfur but has since backed off because of objections from Sudan. Meanwhile, leaders from Egypt, Libya, Chad, Nigeria, Sudan, Gabon and Eritrea jointly announced their rejection of "any foreign intervention in the Darfur problem."

The crisis in Darfur is by no means simple and solutions are going to require serious thought and real political will. Unfortunately, Darfur has not yet been able to garner either. But the longer the world refuses to deal with this, the more complicated the situation is going to become.

Daily Darfur

Marc Lacey has this article in the New York Times

Darfur's dead have been tossed into the bottoms of wells, dumped into mass graves, interred in sandy cemeteries and crudely cremated. Children have been snatched from the arms of their mothers and thrown into fires, villagers dragged on the ground behind horses and camels by ropes strung around their necks.

All of which makes the important and politically charged task of counting the precise number of victims of the two-plus years of war in western Sudan a virtually impossible exercise.

Is the death toll between 60,000 and 160,000, as Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick told reporters during a recent trip to the region?

Or is it closer to the roughly 400,000 dead reported recently by the Coalition for International Justice, a Washington-based nongovernmental organization that was hired by the United States Agency for International Development to try to determine whether the killing amounts to genocide. (Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called the Darfur killing genocide last year, but Mr. Zoellick has studiously avoided the issue.) The State Department has said the higher mortality figures offered by some groups are "skewed" by overestimates of the number of deaths from violence in Darfur, rather than from disease and other causes.

Those trying to tally the terror are engaging in guesswork for a cause. They say they are trying to count the deaths to shock the world into stopping the number from rising higher than it already is. Sudan has not issued an estimate of its own, although officials in Khartoum label the numbers floating around as propaganda.

The USA Today ran this story on its front page

Once, this was the season when Khartoma Ibrahim prayed for the rains to come. She was a farmer then, before the troubles here in Darfur changed everything, even her prayers.

The rains should come any day now, but this year Ibrahim, 35, has no fields to plant. She, her husband and their six children languish in a refugee camp whose 20,000 residents survive almost entirely on international food aid — aid that will be difficult to deliver once the seasonal rains turn West Darfur's dirt roads into quagmires.

And so, against every instinct, she asks that the rains hold off, inshallah— God willing.

The transformation of rain from blessing to curse illustrates how much life has changed since civil war broke out two years ago, destroying hundreds of farming villages, killing tens of thousands of people, and driving a third of Darfuris into camps like the one here. Darfur, a region usually self-sufficient even in the worst of times, can no longer feed itself. Because of the fighting, last year's harvest was ruined, much of this year's seed destroyed and more than half the farm livestock slaughtered, stolen or run off.

Food prices have doubled, immigrants' remittances have been cut off, and the demand for day labor and homemade handicrafts has collapsed. And now the region enters the annual hungry season — gafaf, they call it — when food from the last harvest runs low and daily meals drop from three to two to one.

It all means that Darfur, so benighted that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan likened it to "hell on earth," faces another curse: famine. A Tufts University study released earlier this year says that because of problems unprecedented even in Darfur's tortured history, "regionwide famine appears inevitable."

AFP has this report

The European Union and NATO offered military support but no troops to an African peacekeeping mission in Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region, downplaying signs of tension over who should help.

[edit]

Providing support has, indirectly, been a source of tension between the EU and NATO; more precisely, between France and the United States.

France is opposed to a NATO role in Sudan -- playing "the world's policeman" in the words of French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier -- and Solana and NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer were clearly aware of the problem.

"There will be a meeting later in month of all the contributors, the European Union and NATO, the member states ... meeting in Addis (Ababa, Ethiopia) to see how things can be done better," Solana said.

De Hoop Scheffer, for his part, said that the Alliance was looking into how it might be able to help Darfur in "full transparency with the European Union".

"I'm confident that NATO will be able to answer the call," he said, alluding potentially to what would effectively be the first Alliance mission in Africa.

"NATO does not have the ambition of being the world's policeman," he went on, and said it would be possible "to imagine a certain division of responsibilities."

"Who would do what, is a little early to say," de Hoop Scheffer added.

And for your daily dose of irony, the genocidal regime in Khartoum in Guantanamo demanding prosecution and punishment of those responsible for allegedly desecrating the Koran in Guantanamo

The Sudanese government on Tuesday called for a rapid investigation into the alleged desecration of the Islamic holy Quran by US troops in Guantanamo Bay detention.

"We have been acquainted with what the US magazine of Newsweek reported on the issue and we felt with tremendous resentment and strong rejection to this barbarian and repugnant action," said a statement issued by the Sudanese Foreign Ministry.

The Sudanese government demanded the prosecution and punishment of those "who committed the crime (of desecration) when this odious behavior is proved true," it added.

Sudan Compensates Darfur Conflict Victims

I haven't seen this reported elsewhere, so I am posting it here - from Agence France Presse

Sudan on Tuesday started the long task of handing compensation to people affected by the conflict in Darfur, insisting that it would pay out to all those hit by strife in the war-torn province.

The process began with Sania, a village in South Darfur State whose inhabitants who have recently returned to their homes, the SUNA news agency reported.

The state-run news agency said payments ranging from 20,000 to 700,000 Sudanese dinars (80-2,800 dollars) per person were made on Tuesday in a ceremony held in the village.

It said the ceremony was attended by State Governor Al-Hajj Atta al-Mannan Idriss, who affirmed his government's commitment to paying full compensation to all persons affected by the conflict.

"This is a national, religious and ethical duty upon the government," Idriss was quoted by SUNA as saying.

He congratulated the villagers on their return and pledged to provide them with their needs "so as to enable them to carry on with their normal living."

The villagers expressed satisfaction with the compensation, affirming readiness to rebuild their village and demanding seeds so as to catch up with the farming season, SUNA said.

It added that a member of the compensations and damages committee, Ali al-Disouqy, said his committee would carry on with its task of considering individual cases and paying compensation in all parts of Darfur.

Marked by mass killings, torture, rape and pillage, the conflict has left more than 300,000 dead and 2.4 million people displaced, according to a British parliament report.

UNMIS

The United Nations Mission in the Sudan finally has a website which will hopefully provide timely and useful information.

Also, UN News has this article

The UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), meanwhile, reported the security situation in the western region of Darfur – site of a separate conflict – over the weekend was reported to be fairly calm in terms of clashes between the Government and rebel groups and armed tribesmen, although some reports were received of attacks and clashes.

Widespread banditry continues to prevail in the three Darfur states, with hijacking and detention of humanitarian staff reported in South and North Darfur.

Canada Will Not Send Troops to Darfur

From the Globe and Mail

Canada will respect the will of the Sudanese government and not send its troops into the ravaged Sudanese region of Darfur, senior federal officials said yesterday in response to Khartoum's cool reception of a recent Canadian aid proposal.

Federal officials moved to appease the concerns of the Sudanese in relation to last week's $170-million proposal, which included a plan to send up to 100 Canadian troops to Sudan.

The plan never stated that troops would go into Darfur, but it didn't reject that notion, raising concerns among Sudanese officials, who say that only African troops should enter the region.

Canadian officials insisted yesterday they will act in concert with the African Union, which is spearheading the assistance effort in Darfur. As a result, any Canadian troops sent to Sudan are likely to work out of the capital city of Khartoum.

As much as we would like to be helpful in terms of action on the ground, it's clear the United Nations has authorized the African Union to do this mission, and the African Union and the Sudanese have told us, 'No European, no non-African troops,' " Defence Minister Bill Graham said.

Retired general Roméo Dallaire, who is now a senator, said it would be a mistake to go against the will of Sudan.

"What we don't need are Canadian troops fighting their way into Darfur and, before getting there, having to fight against the Sudanese," Mr. Dallaire said in an interview.

AU Calls on NATO for Fast Darfur Help

From Reuters

The African Union asked NATO to support its forces in Sudan's Darfur region with transport, communications and other facilities on Tuesday, but stressed there was no role for the military alliance on the ground.

AU President Alpha Oumar Konare also met European Union officials to study how the EU could help end a civil war that has cost 180,000 lives through violence, hunger and disease.

"We asked for logistical support ... It is important we get the security situation under control very quickly," Konare said after meeting NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels.

African Leaders Reject Foreign Intervention

From the AP

Seven African leaders meeting in the Libyan capital rejected Tuesday any intervention by a non-African nation in Sudan's western Darfur region, and authorized Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to carry on trying to get conflicting parties to reach a settlement.

In a statement issued at the end of the two-day meeting, leaders of Egypt, Libya, Chad, Nigeria, Sudan, Gabon and Eritrea decided to "reject any foreign intervention in the Darfur problem and dealing with it should be through its African framework."

The Darfur Collection

All Things 2 All has collected posts from around the blogosphere.

Give them a read.

Daily Darfur

Egyptian President Mubarak said any foreign interference in Darfur will only will further complicate the situation.

AFP reports

An African mini-summit in Tripoli on peace efforts for Sudan's war-torn Darfur region was due to end Tuesday with an agreement to resume talks between Khartoum and rebels within the next two weeks in Nigeria.

African leaders at the seven-way summit in Tripoli also offered strong political support to Sudan's government, ignoring calls by Darfur's ethnic minority rebels to try the presumed perpetrators of war crimes in international courts.

Emily Wax has another article in the Washington Post

Tarjab Jalab, a sinewy, bearded rebel commander in the Sudan Liberation Army militia, limped across this scarred and half-empty village on a bandaged foot. Dozens of leather pouches hung from his arms and legs, each containing Koranic verses. The amulets had not saved Jalab from being shot by pro-government militiamen, but he was still eager for battle.

"We will keep fighting," he vowed one recent morning, as young men clanking with guns and grenades listened to his combat instructions, then clambered into three pickup trucks and roared off in clouds of dust. "Darfur is not over."

Salon has an interview with Eric Reeves

Why was the world so slow to react to the genocide?

In October 2002, the Sudan People's Liberation Army signed a cessation of hostilities agreement with Khartoum, and major fighting between the South and the North began to slow down. And on Jan. 9, 2005, the parties signed a comprehensive peace agreement.

The United States so wanted a peace agreement. If you look at the lack of commentary from the key Western negotiators in the North-South peace process -- Norway, the U.K. and the United States -- they were deliberately muting their criticism of Khartoum over its genocidal behavior in Darfur in order to get the North-South agreement completed.

Convinced that the West [really] wanted a North-South peace agreement, Khartoum [figured] that if they could string out a final agreement, the West wouldn't press them on Darfur. The signal Khartoum sent was: "Don't push us too hard on Darfur. We're not quite ready." In December 2003, the U.N. special envoy for humanitarian affairs reported that Khartoum was deliberately obstructing humanitarian aid to areas where the African population was concentrated. Yet, nobody else picked up on it, either inside or outside the U.N.

Back in January 2004, I would have conversations with my contact at USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] to figure out whether we inhabited the same moral universe as the people around us. It was mind-boggling. We could see what was happening in Darfur, and nobody else could see it. If they saw it, they'd have to react.

Great Progress In Sudan?

Last week the UN announced that

Senior United Nations officials are headed to Sudan to discuss ways the UN can help with the various peace processes underway, particularly the African Union (AU) mission in Darfur.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Adviser Lakhdar Brahimi and the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno tomorrow will begin weeklong visits to Africa's largest country.

Today Xinhuanet, the state news agency in China, reported

UN special envoy to Sudan Lakhdar Brahimi expressed satisfaction on Monday over the "great progress" made in Sudan's western Darfur region.

In a statement to the Sudan News Agency (SUNA) following meeting with Sudanese First Vice President Ali Othman Mohammed Taha, Brahimi said the United Nations "is satisfied with the great progress in the security, humanitarian and social situations in Darfur".

"What we saw in Darfur is very different from what was circulated through international news agencies and the external reports," he said, adding that a great action was underway to help the displaced people of Darfur return to their homes after peace and stability are restored.

The UN official who just returned to Khartoum from a two-day visit to Darfur also appreciated the Sudanese government's cooperation with the UN humanitarian teams in Darfur. Brahimi said his meeting with Taha also tackled the implementation of a peace agreement signed between the Sudanese government and the southern rebel group in January and the deployment of UN mission forces.

Given the close ties between China and Sudan, Xinhuanet is little more than an mouthpiece for the regime in Khartoum. As no other media outlet has reported on Brahimi's remarks, it remains to be seen exactly what he really has to say about the situation in Darfur.

Unconditional Talks

From UPI

Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail said his government is ready to enter unconditional talks with the opposition in war-torn Darfur.

[edit]

He said his government is open to unconditional negotiations with the opposition in Darfur "to discuss political and economic issues because we feel that the people of Darfur should have a share in power and the economy."

The Arab Janjaweed militia, which is blamed for racial cleansing and massacres against African tribes in the province, "are a bunch of thieves and killers and the Sudanese government has no relation with them whatsoever," he said.

Once Again

This article appeared in the Washington Post over the weekend

Once Again: Nations Agree Genocide Must Be Stopped. Can They Find the Mechanism to Do It?

Just over a year ago, on the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan announced a five-point plan with only one concrete element: the appointment of a special adviser on the prevention of genocide. That adviser, he said, would serve as an "early warning mechanism" and would recommend "actions" to prevent genocide.

But just as Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin once asked how many divisions the pope had, today's dictators in places such as Sudan must be asking themselves: How many divisions does Kofi Annan have?

The answer, of course, is none.

Daily Darfur

Sudan is reportedly refusing to allow Canadian troops into Darfur but Canada intends to move forward with the deployment despite Sudan's objections.

A two-day summit on Darfur is beginning in Libya but the rebel groups have refused to attend.

The African Union has dispatched a team led by the chairman of the joint ceasefire committee to verify the positions of government troops and rebels Darfur.

In an interview with a Syrian newspaper, Sudanese minister of state for foreign affairs Nejib al-Khari Abdelwahab said

"There are world powers which do not care about the unity of Sudan. We can even say that these powers want to dismember Sudan and replace this government with another one that serves their strategic interests, represented in obliterating Sudan's Arab identity."

[edit]

Top among these powers is the Zionist lobby, which considered the Darfur issue primarily a Jewish issue requiring solidarity between the Jews and some African tribes, which claim to be in conflict with Arab tribes.

From the AP

Survivors of the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide and the war in Bosnia joined a protest Sunday calling for Britain to help stop violence in Sudan's Darfur region.

About 200 demonstrators held a rally near the gates of Downing Street, where Prime Minister Tony Blair lives. Some protesters unloaded a coffin symbolizing the victims of unrest in Darfur from a hearse.

There are reports that rebels in the east have amassed along the border with Eritrea

Like rebels in Sudan's troubled western region of Darfur, the ethnic minority Eastern Front charge their region has been neglected by the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum.

Canada Creates Special Advisory Team

ReliefWeb reprints this press release from the Canadian government

Prime Minister Martin has asked the Prime Minister’s Personal Representative for Africa Ambassador Robert Fowler, Canada’s Special Envoy for Peace in Sudan Senator Mobina Jaffer, and Senator Romeo Dallaire to focus Canada’s efforts and resources in Darfur.

“The advisory team, led by Ambassador Fowler, will report directly to me, and will work with the Sudanese government, the AU and the international community to support the peace process in Darfur,” added the Prime Minister.

Can Somebody Tell Me What is Going on at the UN?

On Tuesday, the UN reported

While there were comparatively few systematic attacks in April, troop movements and the illegal occupation of new positions increased, as did harassment, burning of unoccupied villages, kidnapping, banditry (including carjacking, armed robbery and theft of livestock), attacks on civilians and rape by militia.

On Thursday, the UN reported

As Darfur peace talks remained stalled, militia attacks intensified last month and are the greatest cause of terror and suffering among civilians in the western Sudanese province, a senior United Nations peacekeeping official told the Security Council today.

Daily Darfur

From UN News

As Darfur peace talks remained stalled, militia attacks intensified last month and are the greatest cause of terror and suffering among civilians in the western Sudanese province, a senior United Nations peacekeeping official told the Security Council today.

From the UNHCR

UNHCR is deeply concerned about violence in camps in Eastern Chad earlier this week which resulted in the deaths of four persons. The camps are now reported calm.

Clashes occurred in Goz Amer refugee camp on Wednesday, which resulted in the death of three refugees and one gendarme. Several people were also wounded, including two refugees, two aid workers from an NGO partner of UNHCR and one Chadian gendarme. The clashes were triggered by the arrest on Tuesday of refugees who were reportedly selling plastic sheeting at the local market within the camp. Chadian gendarmes, who are responsible for guarding the 12 refugee camps in Eastern Chad tried to prevent such sale and arrested three refugees.

From the Sudan Organisation Against Torture

On 10 May 2005, police officers from Kalma Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in Nyala arrested fifteen IDP leaders. The IDPs were arrested from Nyala market.

The IDPs were taken to an area inside the market where they were subjected to torture for over an hour. The police officers beat the fifteen IDPs with their hands, sticks and the butt of their guns. The officers also shaved the hair of the IDP's, including their beards.

From the Harvard Crimson

Samantha Power, a lecturer on public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, and the International Crisis Group (ICG) recently released a written call to action to 100 universities, encouraging them to investigate their investment portfolios and divest from stocks connected to the Sudanese government.

Confirmation

I had twice cast doubt on reports that rebels in Darfur had kidnapped a dozen or so AU troops, mainly because the government controlled media had been the only outlet reporting it.

But now Reuters is reporting it as well and I stand corrected

Darfur rebels abducted but later released 17 members of the African Union ceasefire monitoring force, the AU said on Wednesday, calling it a flagrant violation of ceasefire agreements signed by the group.

The AU said the 17 were detained on May 10 and later released the same evening, but the force was unable to return to their base until the following day so as not to travel at night.

"The forceful detention of any AU personnel while performing their lawful duties is unacceptable and a flagrant violation of the commitments undertaken by the parties," the AU statement said.

"The AU force headquarters have been instructed to take all necessary measures to prevent a recurrence and make it clear to all concerned that there will be consequences should similar incidents occur in the future."

The rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) said it had detained the 17 in South Darfur because a representative of the group was not with the AU patrol and the AU had not notified the rebels.

Violence in the South

Via Passion of the Present we get this

At least 75 people have been reported killed and thousands more displaced in southern Sudan's Lakes State since interclan violence, sparked by cattle rustling and disputes over pasture and water, erupted on 24 April, aid workers said on Wednesday.

"About 4,000 people, mostly women and children, fled when their villages in Yirol and Awirial [counties] were attacked," Rene McGuffin, spokesperson for the UN World Food Programme (WFP), told IRIN. "It was reported by local villagers that at least 75 people were killed."

The Scramble for Southern Sudan

From Reuters

Businesses seeking a slice of a $4.5-billion aid pledge for southern Sudan thronged an investment conference hosted by former rebels on Thursday, hoping for deals in everything from tea to telecoms.

Companies from Africa and beyond are poised to exploit a surge in demand in sectors as diverse as construction, banking and farming offered by the end of a 21-year civil war in January that had barred all but the hardiest entrepreneurs.

"It's a scramble for southern Sudan," said Paul Enright, a consultant with Nairobi-based Risk Management Initiatives, one of hundreds of delegates who attended the start of the two-day conference in the capital of neighbouring Kenya.

"There's been talk of billions of dollars of deals and I think everybody wants to see if they can get a slice of it," he said on the sidelines of the meeting.

Daily Darfur

The World Food Program reports that two WFP drivers were killed on May 8

The United Nations World Food Programme today strongly condemned the killing by bandits of two drivers of WFP-contracted trucks in South Darfur and warned that a spate of attacks this month were sabotaging its efforts ahead of the rainy season to provide food aid for more than two million people in the Darfur region.

On May 8, two WFP-contracted trucks were attacked by gunmen in two separate incidents in the same area on the road between Ed-Daen and Nyala in South Darfur. Two drivers were shot and killed and the drivers' assistant on one of the trucks was shot and wounded.

In the first incident, a WFP-contracted truck carrying WFP food on the route from Ed-Daen to Nyala was attacked between Assalaya and Yassin and the driver was shot in the head. The truck, with its cargo intact, was recovered the next day when drivers of other vehicles found it on the road.

In the second incident, a WFP-contracted truck was attacked at Assalaya as it returned from Nyala to El-Obeid on the same route after delivering its load. The driver was shot and killed and the assistant, although wounded in one leg, managed to drive the vehicle back to Ed-Daen. Three other WFP-contracted trucks were shot at in the Yassin area on the same day but no one was hurt.

The Los Angeles Times has this story

The Bush administration has offered Air Force transport planes and crews to airlift thousands of additional African peacekeeping troops into Sudan's war-torn Darfur region this summer, State Department officials say.

The airlift proposal is part of a larger effort, including at least $50 million in U.S. aid and offers of equipment and military advisors from other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to help African countries more effectively enforce an unstable cease-fire in Darfur, the officials said in recent days.

But the offer of help to the African Union, a regional organization of countries, also reflects what the United States has decided not to do in Darfur, where predominantly Arab militias allegedly supplied by the Sudanese government have been attacking black villagers since 2003.

The Bush administration has rejected suggestions that it toughen its sanctions against the Sudanese government in Khartoum, as well as calls from Congress for a U.S.-enforced "no-fly" zone to prevent suspected government bombing of villages in Darfur.

Reuters reports

Two rebel groups and local officials from Sudan's Darfur region vowed in an accord they signed in Libya to respect a shaky ceasefire in the region, five days before a summit in Tripoli, Libyan state media said.

Jana news agency said on Wednesday that Sudan Liberation Movement and Justice and Equality Movement rebels and four local government officials from Darfur signed a truce and humanitarian aid agreement before Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli.

Neither side has respected this ceasefire since it was first signed last year.

The AFP has this report

The UN special envoy for Sudan said that stability has returned to the troubled western region of Darfur which has been hit by civil war since February 2003.

"We have very good news today, there is now stability in Darfur as far as the government and rebels are concerned," Jan Pronk told a news conference in the Sudanese capital.

Perhaps Pronk didn't get a chance to read the latest report to the Security Council

In April, both the rebel movements and the militias continued to manoeuvre to improve their positions while the peace talks remained stalled. Both sides are thus guilty of violating existing agreements and previous resolutions. However, militia attacks are by far the greatest cause of terror and suffering for civilians. While it has been noted that the Government has restrained its forces, it has still not taken action to stop militia attacks and end the climate of impunity that encourages those responsible for ongoing violations.

Following the adoption of resolutions 1591 (2005) and 1593 (2005), tension in the Darfur States and Khartoum has increased, and with it the risks of hostile action against the United Nations and other elements of the international presence in Darfur. I urge the Government to make clear its acceptance of all recent resolutions
relating to the Sudan and Darfur, and to ensure that a cooperative policy is reflected in word and deed by its officials at all levels.

Events in April demonstrated clearly that, without progress on the political level, the suffering of the civilian population of Darfur will continue. Innocent people will continue to be driven into camps and terrorized into postponing their return. Militia groups will continue to steal, rape and kill with impunity. Rebel movements will continue to fight with whatever capacity they can acquire, be it in violation of the arms embargo, or be it by armed robbery from organizations that have come to aid the very people the rebels claim to represent.

Khartoum is reporting that the Sudan Liberation Movement has released the AU troops it kidnapped. No media organization other than the government controlled press has even reported on the alleged kidnapping or the release.

Four Killed in Chad Camp

From Reuters

Four people were killed in a camp for Darfur refugees in eastern Chad on Wednesday, the same day the U.N.'s refugee agency said it pulled staff from four other camps along the border with Sudan over security concerns.

Two refugees and two Chadian police officers were killed when a group of refugees started trying to sell the plastic sheeting used to make their tents, a U.N. official in N'Djamena said.

"There was a clash between refugees and police officers at (the town of) Goz Beida, in the Goz Amer camp. Two refugees were killed along with two police officers," the official said.

Monthly Report of the Secretary-General on Darfur

ReliefWeb publishes this overview of the most recent report

While there were comparatively few systematic attacks in April, troop movements and the illegal occupation of new positions increased, as did harassment, burning of unoccupied villages, kidnapping, banditry (including carjacking, armed robbery and theft of livestock), attacks on civilians and rape by militia.

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International aid workers and even internally displaced persons have been threatened with retaliation in the event of international action pursuant to resolution 1593 (2005). If the Government were to allow the aid community and United Nations staff to be endangered as a consequence of legal action to prosecute the perpetrators of crimes and atrocities, it would be failing in its most basic responsibilities as a government, namely to protect, and to see that justice is done. I call on the authorities to make clear their support for steps to end impunity, and to take all necessary measures to prevent hostile action against those who have come at the Government’s invitation to help save the lives of its people. S/2005/305

In April, the number of conflict-affected persons rose to 2.45 million, of whom 1.86 million are internally displaced. Overall, the environment for humanitarian operations and conflict-affected persons in Darfur remains volatile, with pockets of severe insecurity. The situation in Southern Darfur is especially bad.

The protection situation for the civilian population of Darfur has not improved and some areas have experienced a significant deterioration. Following the attack on 7 April on the village of Khor Abeche in Southern Darfur, the World Food Programme conducted an immediate food distribution to some 5,000 internally displaced persons hiding north of the village. Much more assistance is needed and humanitarian agencies have requested a strengthened AU presence in the area before resuming operations.

The month of April witnessed a sharp decline in the security of humanitarian staff, operations and access, in particular in Southern Darfur. On several occasions clearly marked humanitarian vehicles came under fire, causing the serious injury of one humanitarian worker and considerable damage to humanitarian assets.

The entire report is available here (PDF file).

UNHCR Pulls Out of Four Chad Camps

From Reuters

The U.N.'s refugee agency said on Wednesday it had pulled its staff from four camps for Darfur refugees in eastern Chad after five of its workers were wounded in protests over food distribution this week.

UNHCR said in a statement it had withdrawn staff from the Iridimi, Touloum, Mile and Kounoungou camps. Other aid groups also withdrew their workers, it said.

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The UNHCR statement said a group of demonstrators armed with sticks and stones wounded five UNHCR personnel and two other humanitarian workers at the Iridimi camp on Monday.

Three refugees were also wounded, including one woman who was badly hurt and evacuated to the capital N'Djamena.

Refugees from Darfur were initially welcomed in Chad by villagers who are often from the same ethnic group, but tensions have risen as locals vie with them for scarce resources.

A UNHCR official in N'Djamena said refugees were unhappy about the way food was being distributed.

The UNHCR said refugees in Iridimi and Touloum refused this week to be registered. In the other two camps, the refugees refused to take part in a new food distribution scheme which aims to verify the number of people in each family.

Sudan Reports AU Peacekeepers Kidnapped

I encourage you to be suspicious when things of this nature are first reported by the Sudanese media, as it is tightly controlled by the government. This has not been reported anywhere else, as of yet.

That said, this is from Xinhua

A group of African Union (AU) forces were kidnapped by rebels in northern Darfur, the Sudan News Agency reported Wednesday.

Eleven AU peacekeepers were held hostage Tuesday evening in Um Kaddada town in the northern Darfur state by the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), one of the two major rebel groups in Darfur.

A representative of the other major rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), was also kidnapped.

Musa Hilal Rejects ICC

Nothing really new here except for the odd threat to take up arms. As a leader of the Janjaweed, Hilal took up arms two years ago and has used them to help kill some 400,000 people

An Arab tribal chief accused by the United States of leading a dreaded militia in Darfur said on Wednesday he would not go to a court outside Sudan but would accept a fair trial in the country.

But speaking at a military camp in his home area, Musa Hilal told Reuters that if national trials for war crimes in the western region were unjust or political, he would fight this with all the means at his disposal.

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"I respect my homeland and so I have to respect a national court," he said in the camp in North Darfur. "As for a foreign court, this I do not agree with."

But if a domestic trial was not fair and he failed to defend himself by legal means, "then people have a right to defend themselves using all means at their disposal."

Hilal declined to elaborate, but family sources said they would take up arms if he was made a scapegoat.

IDPs Unlikely to Return Home

From IRIN

A large number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the western Sudanese region of Darfur are unlikely to return to their homes in the immediate future, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report to the Security Council, which called for the strengthening of the African Union (AU) mission in Darfur.

"Large-scale returns are not expected during this phase [June to August 2005], and this is only partially due to continuing violence," Annan said in the report released on Monday.

"Even if a secure environment were established throughout Darfur, the lack of food security, the devastation of the economy, and the almost total disruption of normal patterns of life would limit the number of returns in the near future," he added.

The Attention it Deserves

The Coalition for Darfur has two goals: to get bloggers writing about Darfur and to raise money for worthy organizations providing life-saving assistance to the people of Darfur.

So far, we are not doing particularly well on either count.

Outside of Instapundit, very few of the "big blogs" seem to be paying much attention to Darfur, which is why it was nice to see Kevin Drum finally address the issue a few days ago.

In his post on the topic, Drum made an important point about the genocide

But hope is not a plan, and right now it strikes me that the only realistic option for stopping the genocide is to be prepared for a full-scale invasion and long-term occupation of Sudan. I could probably be talked into that if someone presented a serious military plan showing where the troops would come from and how they'd get there, but I haven't seen it yet.

It is probably an oversimplification to say that full-scale invasion and occupation of Sudan is the "only realistic option" for dealing with the genocide, but the key point to be understood here is that nobody knows what it will take to stop this because almost nobody is even thinking about it.

Lt. General Romeo Dallaire, the head of the failed UN mission to Rwanda, estimates that it would take 44,000 troops to stop the violence and Brian Steidle, a former Marine who spent six months serving with the AU mission in Darfur, estimates that it will take anywhere from 25,000 - 50,000. There is also talk of imposing a no-fly zone and an arms embargo and expanding the AU mandate to allow it to protect civilians. But after more than 2 years of violence, these things still remain little more than talk.

As far as can be determined, nobody (not the US, the EU, NATO, or the UN) has even seriously contemplated what sort of military action might be necessary in order to stop the genocide. Foreign policy journals and think tanks have likewise been silent on the issue. The only people who appear to be seriously thinking about what needs to be done in Darfur are journalists like Bradford Plumer and activists like Eric Reeves.

For two years, rhetorically pressuring Sudan to disarm and reign in the Janjaweed and stop the genocide has not worked. Many hoped that the Security Council's referral of the crimes in Darfur to the International Criminal Court might force Khartoum to back down, but unfortunately that has not happened. If anything, the ICC referral may have made the situation on the ground worse - and open discussion of possible military intervention might make things worse still. It is impossible to say.

Nobody wants a large-scale invasion of Sudan, but more importantly, nobody wants to even think that such an invasion might be necessary and how it will need to be carried out. It is a sign of just how little serious concern the genocide in Darfur is generating that those who might theoretically be called upon in the future to intervene do not appear to even have begun examining the feasibility of such an intervention. Darfur might not require military intervention, but it certainly requires more than the few small steps currently being contemplated. And until those in power begin to give the genocide the attention and serious thought it deserves, there is little reason to believe that there will soon be an end to the violence.

This genocide will end in one of two ways: either the international community will begin to take its responsibility to protect the people of Darfur seriously and take whatever steps are necessary to ensure their survival or it will end when the Africans in Darfur have been completely eliminated.

The choice is ours.

Daily Darfur

This makes me want to cry - so much money poured in for disaster relief after the tsunami in December that Doctors Without Borders raised four times the amount it needed and now has to try to track down donors in order to return the money or get permission to redirect it to places like Darfur.

The free-lance photographer who had been detained by the Sudanese government has finally been released after 15 days.

Jan Egeland told the U.N. Security Council that rich nations are not adequately funding the needs in Africa

"There is an inbuilt discrimination in the sense that ... if we all agree that a human life has the same value wherever he or she is born, there should be the same attention to northern Uganda as to northern Iraq, the same attention to the Congo as there was to Kosovo," he said.

"That is not the case today," Egeland said. "A majority of our appeals in Africa are badly underfunded."

The New York Times' Marc Lacey has an important piece in the International Herald Tribune

The dead from Darfur have been tossed into the bottom of wells, dumped into mass graves, interred in sandy cemeteries and crudely cremated.

Also among the dead were children who were snatched from the arms of their mothers and thrown into fires, not to mention other villagers dragged on the ground behind horses and camels by ropes strung around their necks.

All of which makes the politically charged task of counting the precise number of victims of the war in western Sudan nearly impossible.

Is the death toll between 60,000 and 160,000, as Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said during a recent trip to the region? Or is it closer to the roughly 400,000 dead reported last week by the Coalition for International Justice, a Washington-based nongovernmental organization that was hired by the United States Agency for International Development to try to determine whether the killing amounts to genocide?

That was what Colin Powell, the former U.S. secretary of state, called the Darfur killings last year. But Zoellick avoided the issue this month and has recently accused advocacy groups of overstating the number of dead to force Washington to adopt much tougher policies against the Sudanese.

Those attempting to tally the terror are engaging in guesswork with a cause. They say they are trying to count the deaths to shock the world into stopping the number from rising higher than it already is.

The long-delayed summit of five African leaders to discuss Darfur has been delayed yet again and moved to Libya.

Another Coalition for Darfur

Kudos to Senator Jon Corzine and Joe Scarborough for raising awareness of the genocide taking place in Darfur over at the Huffington Post (LvLL&L).

Girdwood Nurse Tends to Sick Babies In Darfur

From the Anchorage Daily News (registration required, but the entire article is available at Passion of the Present)

Jennifer Pahl was no stranger to death and dying. As a nurse at the Alaska Native Medical Center, she'd seen her share of trauma patients.

As a Peace Corps volunteer and later as a nurse for Doctors Without Borders in western and central Africa, she'd witnessed poverty and starvation firsthand.

But none of that quite prepared Pahl, 31, for what she saw last summer during two intense months in the civil war-ravaged Darfur region of western Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of villagers have been routed from their homes.

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After taking a brief vacation last spring, Pahl joined one of the earliest international relief efforts to western Sudan in summer 2004. Her flight from the national capital of Khartoum to West Darfur is still vivid in her memory. Along the way, she kept noticing "these little black splotches on the ground" and wondered what they were.

"It wasn't until you got lower with the plane and you were about to land that you realized that these black splotches you'd seen the whole way were villages the janjaweed had come and burned to the ground and made literally craters in the sand," she said.

One of her first tasks was to assist an Italian epidemiologist interviewing refugees to determine how many people were dying in Darfur. The mortality rate was 5.6 deaths per day per 10,000 people near the Chad- Sudanese border, they found.

"When you get a number of 1.0, that signals a massive emergency, and it's severe," Pahl said. "And we had 5.6 ... numbers that were not believed by many people until we ended up proving them right."

Daily Darfur

From the AP

Two main rebel groups in Sudan 's war-torn Darfur region declared Monday their commitment to a cease-fire, and to unconditionally resuming talks with the Sudanese government.

Sen. John Corzine has this post over at The Huffington Post

There are real, pragmatic reasons for intervening to ameliorate this situation, but first I want to make the moral case. That case is simple. Stopping the slaughter of an entire people is the greatest moral challenge of our time. Evil on this scale is unimaginable to most, which is why historically we do not act on genocide until it is too late. But this time we can act, and stop this new holocaust. And we should. In the wake of demanding democracy in the Middle East, our nation's value system requires it.

But even if you put aside the moral case for ending genocide for a moment, consider our own interests in the matter. The failed state that is being created in the wake of this horrific crime will be a hotbed for global instability. I was there, and I saw what's happening. As I stood in the refugee camps of Eastern Chad, into which hundreds of thousands of desperate people are pouring over the border, I realized how dangerous to America the situation has become. Not only is Darfur a lawless part of an unstable state, but the conflict there is destabilizing Chad.

The refugees, even when they are receiving food and shelter, have nothing to do. Resentment is building. And Eastern Chad, which has insufficient resources for its own population, cannot accommodate the refugees for long. We must stop this genocide, and we also must bring about a long-term political solution to this crisis. With two million people in refugee camps in Chad and camps for displaced persons in Darfur, we are creating the conditions for the collapse of law and order in an entire region and, potentially, for terrorism.

Marian Spivey-Estrada has been released from the hospital

Marian Spivey-Estrada was released from Georgetown Medical Center in Washington, D.C., Monday morning after she was hospitalized this past weekend for an infection, her father said.

"They did a biopsy on the infected area (of her cheek) and gave her antibiotics to take care of the problem," Henderson resident Dan Spivey said. "She just has to stay home and rest more."

Spivey-Estrada was injured while on a humanitarian mission to the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan in late March. She had been an aid worker for the U.S. Agency for International Development and was part of a 20-member disaster assistance response team in Sudan.

The former Henderson resident has had two surgeries, one in Kenya and another at Georgetown Medical Center, both of which have lasted a total of roughly 9.5 hours, her father said.

He added that Spivey-Estrada is still on leave from her job with the U.S. AID office.

This pretty much speaks for itself

The Sudanese Presidential Political Advisor, Qotbi Al-Mahdi, has affirmed the government appreciation of the concern of France with the situation in Darfur, the official SUNA reported.

The Sudanese official made this statement when he received Monday at the Republican Palace the Ambassador of France Christine Robichon to Sudan.

Al-Mahdi said at the meeting that France can play an important role for boosting realization of peace in Darfur by calling on Darfur rebels to cooperate with the African Union and participation in the negotiations in Abuja.

The Ambassador of France said that the crisis in the relations between the two countries, which was due to the Security Council's resolution 1593, was surpassed, indicating that there is now progress in the bilateral relations in all domains.

The Toronto Star has this editorial on the proposed dispatch of Canadian troops to Darfur

What possible difference can a handful of Canadian military advisers make in Darfur, Sudan, where a raging civil war has left 200,000 dead and 2 million homeless?

Enough to matter.

The United Nations Joint Logistics Centre has provided an update of the situation in Darfur.

Effective Where Deployed

From the UN News Center

The African Union's (AU) "groundbreaking" mission in Sudan is effective where deployed and needs strengthening to enable it to expand its presence to cover more of the vast and difficult terrain in Darfur, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in a report out today.

The African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) has accomplished a remarkable amount in a very short time and despite significant constraints, Mr. Annan says in his report to the Security Council on how the UN can assist the AU's efforts to foster peace in troubled Darfur, where a two-year long conflict between the Government, its allied militias and rebels has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 1.8 million people from their homes, some 200,000 of them over the border to neighbouring Chad.

Describing the current situation in Darfur as "misleading," the Secretary-General says that while attacks on civilians are not occurring on the massive scale encountered in 2004, the violence continued – notably a brutal attack last month on the village of Khor Abeche, in southern Darfur – and the general level on insecurity remained unacceptable.

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In all this however, Mr Annan stresses that the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) can provide the AU with only "limited assistance," as UNMIS will have to focus all of its resources and attention on deploying is support of the implementations of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) covering the just-concluded separate conflict between the Government and rebels in the south.

Continuing Insecurity

From the Sudan Organization Against Torture

May 5: On 3 May 2005, armed officers from Gedel Haboub, North of Nyala attacked four girls and one boy aged six (yrs) 3km northeast of Outash Internally Displaced (IDP) Camp in Nyala.

The children were fetching firewood outside the camp. The armed officers flogged the children, and raped two of the girls (name withheld) aged 14 and 12. The other three children escaped and returned to the camp.

The children families initially reported the incident to police officers inside Outash IDP camp who allegedly were not active in pursuing the perpetrators even though the two rape victims identified three soldiers from Gedel Haboub military camp.

May 9: On 3 May 2005, armed militias under the command of an army officer named as Sergeant Jomm’a arrested Mohamed Abdel Hamead Neel, (22 yrs), a student belonging to the Zaghawa tribe. Mr. Mohamed was arrested from Kashalengo village, Southeast of Nyala and taken to a military camp in Kashalengo where he was detained.

While in detention, Mr. Mohamed was subjected to torture. Sergeant Jomm’a and other officers tied Mr. Mohamed’s legs, beat him with the butt of their guns on his head and flogged him all over his body. They also confiscated 3 million Sudanese dollars and accused him of supporting the armed rebel group in Darfur.

On 7 May 2005, Mr. Mohamed was released and is facing no official charges.

From Amnesty International

Amnesty International is calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Dr Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, who was arrested yesterday in Khartoum on the eve of his departure to Ireland to receive an award from the Dublin-based Front Line, the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders.

The award is to be presented by the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, on 13 May. Dr Mudawi Ibrahim was chosen to receive the award by a jury of members of the Irish and European parliaments.

Members of the National Security and Intelligence Agency arrested Dr Mudawi Ibrahim, an engineer with four children and the Chair of the Sudan Social Development Organization (SUDO), in Khartoum North on 8 May along with two other SUDO workers -- Yasir Salim and his driver, Abdallah Taha. They are being held incommunicado without charge, reportedly in the National Security Centre in Khartoum North.

Update on Marian Spivey-Estrada

Sprivey-Estrada, a USAID worker serving in Darfur, was shot in the face on March 22nd - from The Gleaner

Marian Spivey-Estrada was readmitted to Georgetown Medical Center in Washington, D.C., Friday to fight an infection stemming from one of the two surgeries to her face, according to her father, Dan Spivey.

The Henderson native was injured while on a humanitarian mission to the war-torn western Darfur region of Sudan in late March. She had been an aid worker for the U.S. Agency for International Development and was part of a 20-member disaster assistance response team in Sudan.

Spivey-Estrada has had two surgeries, one in Kenya and another at Georgetown Medical Center, both of which have lasted a total of roughly 9.5 hours, her father said. He added that Spivey-Estrada is still on leave from her job with the U.S. AID office.

"She will probably be released on Monday," Spivey said. "It's just a precautionary measure."

Rains Will Hamper Relief Operations

From Reuters The early arrival of seasonal rains in Sudan's South Darfur state is expected to spread throughout the entire region during the coming weeks, hampering humanitarian operations, an early-warning agency reported.

"Already rains have begun in the southern most parts of Darfur," the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS Net) said in a report released on 5 May. It detailed how rainfall would affect relief efforts in the crisis-hit region of western Sudan.

"Northern areas, like El Fasher will start to experience heavy seasonal rains by the end of June," the report added. "By the end of July the rains will cover the entire region."

FEWS Net warned that once the seasonal rains started, much of eastern Chad, where thousands of Sudanese refugees live, would also be cut off. While large towns in Darfur could remain accessible, surrounding areas would become difficult to reach.

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"We are looking at a worst-case scenario of more than three million people needing food assistance in Darfur from August," he added.

Latest Analysis From Eric Reeves

Eric Reeves' latest is now available

Proposed Increases in African Union Monitoring Presence in Darfur: Still no serious response to insecurity facing civilians, humanitarian workers

Despite recent announcements that the AU will seek NATO logistical help in augmenting its woefully under-sized and under-equipped monitoring force in Darfur, there is no sign that the international community is serious about addressing the acute insecurity threatening civilian populations and humanitarian operations in Darfur. On the contrary, the force size and mandate of the international presence in Darfur continue to be defined by AU capacity and the lowest common political denominator at the UN. Instead of asking seriously what force could address the multiple, urgent security needs in Darfur, the international community is content to ask what the AU can muster, and what will escape a Chinese veto in the UN Security Council.

If we want to understand the meaning of the proposed increase in the AU force---to 7,500 by August 2005 and possibly 12,300 by spring 2006---we must see that these numbers represent the maximum the AU political leadership believes may be effectively promulgated. They are certainly not defined by a credible assessment of security needs in Darfur.

Daily Darfur

Canada is preparing to send 150 military personnel to help the African Union and a United Nations missions in Sudan.

Human Rights Watch is calling on the UN and AU to deploy an expanded force to Darfur immediately

We urge you to commit to and deploy the 12,300 military, police and civilian personnel without delay and not wait until Spring 2006.

Reuters has an article that begins thusly

Darfuri Sumaya Hassan Mohamed was kidnapped, beaten, raped and then given money to go and buy soap to wash the blood off herself.

Passion of the Present reports that the Genocide Intervention Fund needs our help.

All Things 2 All is requesting submissions for blog posts about Darfur.

The Financial Times has this editorial

The failure of the international community to halt the ethnic cleansing, mass rape and killings in Darfur in western Sudan is a disgrace to our time. For two years the world stood by while Darfur burned. In place of action there was a grotesque debate over whether we should call it genocide.

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The big danger is that intervention in Darfur will collapse the peace deal between Khartoum and the south. This is no small consideration. But the former enemies now find themselves sharing interests in the new status quo.

Intervention would threaten this settlement. So be it. Enduring peace for all Sudan cannot be built on a carve-up between two military dictators. Their accord must be implemented, but it should in time be superseded by a broader one bringing in the people of Darfur and restless east Sudan.

There was a time when Tony Blair might have championed such intervention, as he did in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. Mr Blair (like George W. Bush) is now irrevocably tainted by Iraq. But the doctrine of humanitarian interventionism must be preserved. This is the moment for an untarnished leader to pick up its mantle.

More Complications

This is not directly related to Darfur, but considering that Olusegun Obasanjo is the president of Nigeria as well as the head of the African Union, it could certainly have implications

Less than 24 hours after the House of Representatives set up a committee to compile constitutional breaches by President Olusegun Obasanjo, the Senate yesterday rose from a three-hour closed session and unanimously resolved that the proposed "unilateral" decision by President Olusegun Obasanjo to review the Appropriation Act 2005 "if effected, will be illegal, unconstitutional and unacceptable." The Senate also said that it will constitute a ground for initiating impeachment process.

Rainy Season Starts in Darfur

From Reuters

According to the latest 'Rain Timeline' report by NOAA and FEWS NET "Once seasonal rains start in the region, much of eastern Chad will be cut off. While large towns in Darfur may be accessible, surrounding areas will be difficult to access. Efforts to preposition relief supplies to last through the rainy season have already started and must continue. Already rains have begun in the southern most parts of Darfur. Normally within the next four weeks, the rains will start in all of South Darfur. Northern areas, like El Fasher will start to experience heavy seasonal rains by the end of June. By the end of July the rains will cover the entire region."

Daily Darfur

The Washington Post reports that President Bush met yesterday with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who also happens to be the head of the African Union.

During the 45-minute meeting, Obasanjo also updated Bush on African Union peacekeeping efforts in Sudan's Darfur region, where hundreds of thousands of people have died in two years of fighting that Bush has labeled a "genocide." The African Union, which Obasanjo chairs, has decided to double the number of troops in the region and is seeking NATO help in deploying the new peacekeepers.

"The president thanked him for his strong leadership in Darfur and talked about the importance of resolving the situation in Sudan," McClellan said.

It should also be noted that Obasanjo is refusing to turn Liberia's deposed president Charles Taylor over to the UN sponsored court in Sierra Leon to stand trail for crimes against humanity, which raises serious questions about Obasanjo's and the AU's commitment to deal with the crimes in Darfur and the International Criminal Court.

The Washington File also reports on the meeting.

Marc Lacey has an article entitled "The New African Dream Is to Escape the Nightmare of Darfur" in today's New York Times

Escaping Darfur's madness is the dream of many - but the reality of few.

Most of the displaced people in western Sudan have settled just down the road in makeshift camps. Even those who crossed Sudan's western border into Chad remain within walking distance from their villages, though it is a rugged walk, through harsh desert terrain.

But some who are fleeing further afield. They are arriving in Ghana, more than 1,000 miles away. They are showing up in Britain and the United States. To get away from the bloodshed that began in 2003, they have trudged, hopped on the back of trucks, hidden in cargo ships, or, if they have had the means, settled into airplane seats - sometimes one or two or all of the above.

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What these refugees find is not always a warm welcome. In Ghana, they are housed in a former jail while their applications are processed. In other countries, they are being sent back where they came from by officials who do not believe their accounts of suffering.

From The Globe and Mail

The federal government is ramping up a military assistance and humanitarian aid package to help the international peacekeeping operation in the blood-soaked Darfur region of Sudan.

Canada's top general has just returned from a fact-finding trip to Africa and is preparing an action plan for the cabinet.
General Rick Hillier, the chief of the defence staff, said the Canadian Forces will be ready to deploy a large contingent overseas for "significant operations" by late summer after a year of recovery and rebuilding.

Reuters reports that Egypt is planning to host a five-way summit with Sudan, Libya, Nigeria and Chad in May to discuss the consequences of a United Nations resolution on bringing to justice people suspected of war crimes in Darfur.

There will be a rally to “Stop the Mass Murder in Darfur” in Central Park on Sunday.

Sudan's Aviation Industry

From AllAfrica

Following the recent peace pact that ended Sudan's 21-year civil war, the country's aviation industry has become the focus of investors and the government, which wants to see it regain its leading position as Africa's busiest aviation network in the next three years.

[edit]

A number of airlines among them British Airways, East African Safari Air and KLM have already made plans to start flying to Rumbek, the capital of southern Sudan. China and Malaysia have invested a billion dollars each in this sector, which is expected to not only expand it, but bring in skilled labour into the country.

[edit]

Afraa says that the need to rejuvenate Sudan's aviation industry stems from three major factors; discovery of oil, the end of war and the World Bank and IMF-imposed economic conditionalities, which are yielding results. "The country is beginning a new life with the government resuming diplomatic relations with several countries and the national carrier, Sudan Airways, expanding its network to other parts of Africa and Europe," the association says. One of the most notable developments was the resumption of flights to the UK in March after a suspension lasting over 10 years.

[edit]

The oil drilling industry, a major economic activity, usually rotates crew frequently between places of work and home base. This has seen many charter operations flying into and out of Sudan. These workers travel with their families and visit home during holidays, thus creating considerable air traffic opportunities.

The country's tourism potential and the activities of humanitarian non-governmental organisations are also expected to boost air travel.

White House Press Briefing

From today's briefing with Scott McClellan

Q And then on to Sudan, some of your critics are saying you just haven't done anything. They want soldiers in there and some other things other than humanitarian aid to help stop the situation in Darfur. What is the President willing to do in the midst of these talks?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, they must not be following the situation very closely, because the United States has been providing the leading role when it comes to addressing the problems in Sudan. We have been strongly engaged in efforts to end the suffering in Darfur, and to forge peace in southern Sudan.

John Danforth was someone who worked very closely with the government of Sudan and the opposition rebels to forge a north-south agreement. We continue to urge the government of Sudan and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement to move forward expeditiously to establish a unity government and implement the comprehensive peace agreement. We also urge the government of Sudan and the rebels in Darfur to resume their peace talks, as soon as possible to end the crisis in Darfur. The violence must end in Darfur. We've made some important progress in Sudan. But the violence must end in Darfur. And both parties have an obligation to work to make that happen. And we have been very supportive of the Africa Union mission. President Obasanjo, as Chairman of the African Union, is working to expand that mission and increase the number of peacekeepers who will be in the Darfur region. And that's very important.

And in terms of humanitarian aid, we have provided more than 80 percent of the food to Darfur this year. And we hope the rest of the donor nations will follow through on their commitments that they have made, as well.

Q If you think the violence must end, why not send soldiers?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, the African Union is sending -- we support the efforts of the African Union and want to do what we can to provide help, as they work to expand --

Q Why not U.S. soldiers --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- as they work to expand -- we're working

--

Q -- if concerned?

MR. McCLELLAN: This is something that affects all those countries in Africa, and we're working to support their efforts to expand their forces there.

Think Progress takes issue with McClellan's responses.

Humanitarianism Is Not Enough

The New York Review of Books reviews "The Turbulent Decade: Confronting the Refugee Crises of the 1990s" by Sadako Ogata. It concludes thusly

Despite many pious assurances made after the Rwanda genocide two fundamental questions remain. Will powerful governments be willing to intervene with all necessary force in violent humanitarian disasters wherever in the world they may be? And will those governments, and especially the United States, who are calling for radical improvement at the United Nations, also be willing to address their individual and collective responsibilities not only for past failures but for dealing with such disasters in the future?

Canada Planning Major Darfur Aid Initiative

From Reuters

Canada is planning a major foreign aid initiative to help alleviate the crisis in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, the Ottawa Citizen newspaper said on Thursday.

If Ottawa carries through with the plans it could also help the survival of Prime Minister Paul Martin, whose minority Liberal government will need the support of an independent legislator currently demanding Martin do more to help Sudan.

The Citizen quoted officials as saying Martin is personally directing the initiative, under which Canada would send 100 military advisors to the region and add to the C$70 million (C$56 million) it has already committed in aid.

[edit]

A spokesman for Martin declined to confirm the report, saying "if Canada finds itself in a position to do something more to help relieve suffering and fashion stability in Sudan, one would expect that Canadians would be proud."

The Citizen said the Canadian military advisors would assist an African Union military and police force in Darfur, which currently numbers around 3,320 personnel.

Martin discussed the situation in Darfur this week with independent legislator David Kilgour, who wants Canada to become more involved in the region.

Kilgour is one of three independent parliamentarians whose votes will be crucial in a vote on non-confidence in the minority Liberal government which could come as early as this month. He says he has not yet decided how he would vote.

EU to Provide Air Cover to Darfur Region

I found this article in European Voice (no link available)

THE EU is likely to offer equipment and advice to the peacekeeping efforts in Sudan following a request for help from the African Union (AU).

The humanitarian crisis in the conflict-riven Darfur province is expected to dominate the visit by Alpha Oumare Konare, chairman of the African Union Commission and Mali’s former president, to Brussels on 17 May. Last week he asked the EU and NATO to assist the AU-led military force in Darfur, which has been expanded from 3,000 to 7,600 soldiers and police officers.

France, Germany and the UK have informally been discussing a plan on providing air surveillance to the region, where both local rebels and the pro-government Janjaweed militia continue to violate their 2004 ceasefire.

Diplomats say the most likely scenario is that the EU will offer several options to the AU. As well as air surveillance, this could include dispatching police officers to advise on improving security.

The EU’s military staff is eager to improve the chain of command in the African military force in Darfur, believing that the current structure lacks coherence and co-ordination. An assessment mission to Sudan in March concluded that the force was only operating at half its full capacity, while just 120 of the 815 civilian police officers envisaged to assist the force had actually been deployed.

Next week the European Parliament is to debate the idea of appointing an EU envoy to Sudan. This suggestion has been mentioned in Brussels circles for some months, though insiders say it has not gathered sufficient momentum to become a reality.

Despite general agreement that the EU should provide a greater contribution to the peacekeeping effort in Sudan, many member states are anxious that the AU should continue to take the lead there.

The Khartoum government has stated that it will not accept non-African troops in Darfur, though it is amenable to logistical support.

Some Africa analysts have urged that the EU should impose an oil embargo on Sudan if it wishes to have leverage with its government. But France and Belgium are strongly opposed to that measure. Total, the Franco-Belgian firm, has major interests in Sudan, holding a 120,000 square km concession in the south. The official French view is that economic sanctions would cause too much hardship for the Sudanese population.

Ulrich Delius, an Africa specialist with the German Society for Threatened Peoples, rejected that position. "Everybody in the human rights community is quite convinced that an oil embargo is the only initiative which could lead to a change of policy by Khartoum," he said. "Its awful military junta will only move if it comes under international pressure."

The International Crisis Group has called on the EU to sponsor a peace process for Darfur. It recommends that an international conference should draw up a plan for negotiations.

The two-year conflict in Darfur has caused 180,000 deaths and uprooted two million people. Humanitarian groups estimate that 10,000 people - mostly civilians - die from its effects every month.

Daily Darfur

Mother Jones has a piece by Bradford Plumer entitled "Do Something ... But What?"

There are two ways to look at Darfur. There's the raw graphic encounter, first of all. Click over to the website of Brian Steidle, a former U.S. Marine, who contracted with the African Union monitoring team in Darfur and took hundreds pictures of the devastation there. See the children with their backs torn open by bullets. See the villages torched and strafed by government gunships. See the refugees crammed into camps, parched and starving. A few minutes of this is enough to make one scream for someone, anyone, anyone at all to just do something.

And then there's the second way, to ask: "What exactly is to be done?" And here's where things get trickier.

Power Line's John Hinderaker links to Human Rights Watch's "Darfur Drawn" and argues

My view is that ordinarily, the United States should intervene abroad only when our own national interests are at stake, and, in addition, humanitarian interests are served, or at least not compromised. It's hard to see any purpose other than the purely humanitarian in stepping into Sudan. That would, ideally, make it a job for the United Nations, I suppose, but the U.N. doesn't do anything that useful--it's too busy denouncing America and Israel--and, truth be told, many U.N. members don't especially disapprove of the conduct of the government of Sudan toward its [African] minority. So that leaves us; and, for now at least, we are engaged elsewhere.

The UN Security Council will hold a meeting on May 18th to discuss the peace situation in Sudan as well as the steps taken by the Sudanese government to fulfill its international commitments.

The Sudanese government continues to denounce aid organizations

The Governor of Southern Darfur State, Al-Haj Atta al-Mannan has strongly criticized the conduct of some international agencies working in the state. He said the American NGO Care, had caused problems amongst people in the refugee camps as a result of its ignorance of the local society's customs and values.

The UN reports that thousands of Sudanese have fled their homes in the south to escape increasing and brutal raids by the Lord's Resistance Army of Uganda.

The Harvard Crimson published an opinion piece arguing for the use of private security firms or even mercenaries to provide security to the people of Darfur.

Instapundit highlights genocide taking place in Darfur

Kudos to Professor Glenn Reynolds for using his powerful blogosphere voice to bring attention to the genocide taking place in Darfur.

And be sure not to miss the article Reynolds links to in his post, "Darfur through the eyes of innocents."

Eugene, wouldn't it be great if we could get Instapundit to join the CFD?

Forced to Choose Between School and Water

From UNICEF

Abdallah Hurry, a teacher at the Musbat elementary school in North Darfur, is losing students. Malnutrition and ongoing conflict have contributed immensely to the problem. These days, however, Abdallah is loosing students because there isn’t enough safe drinking water.

Extreme thirst is forcing students at Musbat and other schools in the area to spend their days trudging through the parched landscape. Besides dehydration, excursions into the surrounding landscape to find water expose children to other dangers, including sexual abuse from marauding rebel militias.

Across the North Darfur region, access to water is becoming scarce. Very little rainfall has caused scores of watering holes to dry up, while other wells have been poisoned by carcasses of dead animals. In addition, Government neglect of the water infrastructure has rendered half the area’s pumps inoperable.

“What’s happening here is an emergency within an emergency,” warned Keith Mackenzie, UNICEF’s Special Representative for the Darfur Crisis. “We’ve seen large scale displacement because of the conflict. Now it’s happening because of the lack of food and water.”

Humanitarian Emergency Fact Sheet #31

Some highlights (if you can call them that) from the recently released USAID report on Darfur (PDF file)

DARFUR EMERGENCY – NUMBERS AT A GLANCE

* Conflict-Affected Persons in Darfur and Eastern Chad: 2.61 million people

* Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)in Darfur: 1.85 million people

* Sudanese Refugees in Eastern Chad: 199,000 people in camps

* Conflict-Affected Persons in Darfur Receiving Food Assistance: 1.4 million people during March - 1.6 million people during February

Total FY 2005 USG Humanitarian Assistance for the Darfur Emergency (to date) ..........$369,863,374

Total FY 2003 – 2005 USG Humanitarian Assistance for the Darfur Emergency..............$628,309,054

The Office of the U.N. Security Coordinator (UNSECOORD) reported that the Jebel Moon area north of Geneina is currently a “no go” area for U.N. travel due to reports of fighting among factions of the National Movement for Reform and Development (NMRD).

According to the USAID/DART, the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) has obtained consent from the Government of Sudan (GOS) to move forward with the second round of the WHO-led interagency mortality survey designed to estimate crude and under-five mortality rates, including causes of death, during the previous six months. The survey will be conducted using cluster survey methodology compatible with the first survey done in August 2004 among IDPs living in camps. The second survey will expand to include a comparison group of IDPs and other recipients of WFP food assistance not living in camps. WHO anticipates releasing survey protocols during the week of May 1 and hopes to begin survey implementation by mid-May. WHO estimates that a preliminary report will be released in mid-June..

According to the USAID/DART, prospects for food production in Darfur are bleak over the next two years as a result of limited access to secure land, a dramatic decline in livestock herds, and poor climatic patterns. Despite predictions from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that the amount of land planted will be slightly higher than last year in some locations, poor rains and the potential for crop destruction as a result of continued conflict will limit actual crop yields.

According to WFP, more than 3 million people will require emergency food assistance at the peak of the hunger period from July to October 2005. If sufficient and necessary conditions exist to enable farmers to prepare for the agricultural season, the number of beneficiaries could fall slightly in November and December 2005.

A Darfur Mother’s Dilemma

Karama Neal from So What Can I Do? alerted us to this piece in Bahiyah Woman Magazine

In the grey light that comes just before dawn, 38-year old Muna awakens to a heart-wrenching choice. Should she leave the relative safety of this camp for displaced people in the Wadi Salih region of West Darfur and go out into the surrounding plains and forests to collect firewood for cooking and grass to feed her donkey? If she does, there's a chance she will be attacked, beaten or raped. If she doesn't go out, she won't be able to cook breakfast for her five children. Even the donkey might starve. The piles of rotting carcasses along one edge of the camp are a constant reminder that many other animals have suffered a similar fate.

Not collecting firewood or fodder would have other consequences as well. Like hundreds of thousands of families in Darfur, Muna and her children receive monthly food distributions from the World Food Programme. The staple grains, protein-rich flour (a blend of corn and soya) and cooking oil are a welcome contribution, but Muna needs a few other ingredients to prepare even the most basic meal. So she will sell some firewood in the local market to earn a few extra dinars to buy onions, tomatoes, dried okra or chillies to supplement her family's diet. Without the firewood, she will have to sell a portion of the food ration itself in order to buy the additional items - but the amount she receives each month is already barely enough to survive.

Sudan Blames Rebels for Killings

From Reuters

Khartoum on Wednesday blamed the main Darfur rebel group for killing two Sudanese aid workers and kidnapping another in the east of the country, a charge the rebels denied.

In a statement, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs expressed its "deep regret that the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and armed elements from the Rashidiya tribe attacked a team from the Sudanese Red Crescent in Kassala." The Rashidiya are an eastern Arab tribe.

[edit]

Rebels from Darfur, which is in its third year of open revolt, have bases in the Eritrean capital, and Sudan has accused them of having training camps near the eastern border with Eritrea.

But an SLM rebel spokesman denied involvement, saying the group had no troops in the east of Sudan or on the Eritrean side of the border.

A Very Delicate Balance

The United States has played a leading role in attempts to deal with the crisis in Darfur by donating hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid, providing logistical and financial support to the AU mission, and pushing for various resolutions and sanctions in the UN Security Council. In September, the Bush administration even took the unprecedented step of labeling the situation "genocide."

But now it appears as if the Bush administration is intentionally lessening its pressure on Sudan.

On a recent visit to Sudan, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick backed away from the earlier genocide designation and offered an oddly low estimate of the death toll in Darfur. Shortly thereafter, the State Department released a fact sheet claiming that an estimated "63-146,000 'excess' deaths can be attributed to violence, disease, and malnutrition because of the conflict;" a figure that is less than half the commonly accepted estimate. Noted Sudan expert Eric Reeves wrote of the State Department's estimate "This is not epidemiology: this is propaganda" and claimed that it called into question "not only the motives of those who have compiled it, but the moral and intellectual integrity of those ... who would cite it."

And last week, Mark Leon Goldberg reported that the administration was working to kill the Darfur Accountability Act.

On the same day, the Los Angeles Times reported that Sudan had become an key source of intelligence information for the CIA and that Sudan's intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Salah Abdallah Gosh, a man widely thought to be responsible for directing military attacks against civilians in Darfur, had been brought to Washington for a meeting with intelligence officials aboard a CIA jet.

The LA Times report revealed that Sudan had provided valuable information regarding al Qaeda's operations, captured and handed over Islamic extremists operating in Sudan, and even detained militants moving through Sudan on their way to join forces with Iraqi insurgents.

There is no doubt that Sudan feels it deserves to be rewarded for this assistance and it remains to be seen what, if anything, the Bush administration intends to offer in return.

These new revelations raise complex questions about our priorities as a nation and serious questions about the future of Darfur. But what must not be ignored in this debate over realpolitik is that millions of people are still in desperate need of humanitarian aid. Thus, we ask you to join the Coalition for Darfur as we seek to raise money for organizations providing life saving assistance to the people of Darfur.

Daily Darfur

House and Senate negotiators agreed to an emergency spending bill to fund Iraq and Afghanistan war costs - it includes $240 million in international rood aid and as much as $50 million to support African Union mission in Darfur.

The UNHCR has opened its the 12th camp in eastern Chad designed to ease congestion in the other camps and to relocate refugees from Darfur.

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier was interviewed by the Washington Post and the topic of Darfur was discussed

On intervention in Darfur: Our position or attitude is that we be very responsive, speedily responsive to any requests coming in from the African Union. . . . They need the logistics, they need the planning, the transport, the sanitation, the health care. We have to be ready for that. Is it NATO, is it the European Union? We've got to come up with a speedy and pragmatic response to that. . . . And we will endorse practical solutions. And we need to do more.

This is from the Canadian Jewish News but the basic point applies to the US as well

Rabbi Reuben Poupko recently blasted the Canadian media for giving so much space to the federal government sponsorship inquiry and virtually ignoring the continuing "genocide" in the Darfur province of Sudan.

"Why is the media expending huge amounts of time and money covering a two-bit scandal that will mean nothing ultimately in history while people are being murdered en masse in Darfur? Will we be asking 10 years from now why this genocide was not on page 1?" Rabbi Poupko said at a demonstration held outside the downtown headquarters of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a United Nations agency.

Interview with Ken Silverstein

Democracy Now interviewed Ken Silverstein, the author of the recent Los Angeles Times article on the close intelligence ties between the US and Sudan (Salih Booker, Director of Africa Action, and Rep. Donald Payne we also interviewed)

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you talked to [Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Salah Abdallah] Gosh?

KEN SILVERSTEIN: I was able to interview him. And he simply confirmed that the Mukhabarat had an ongoing close partnership with the C.I.A. He was very open about that. I also spoke to a number of former top officials at the Mukhabarat, who are still -- two of them in particular who were among the most powerful men in the country. They both had offices in the Presidential Palace in Khartoum. And they were very open about the relationship. They said -- one of them said that we have completely normalized our relationships with the C.I.A. He said the C.I.A. was helping to try to smooth the broader political relationship between Sudan and the Bush administration. They were open about the relationship. I think, in fact, that they feel that they -- I think to a certain extent they cooperated with me and allowed me access because they feel that they want recognition for some of their efforts that they feel have not been noted. And they want rewards. I mean, there's no question about it. The United States, Sudan, all governments, no one does anything for free. The Sudanese are hoping that we will lift long-standing economic sanctions that were imposed during the Clinton Administration. And they want to get off the list of state sponsors of terrorism where they've been since 1993. So this is a pragmatic deal for both sides. And the Sudanese want to be rewarded for it.

Dishonestly Dumping Darfur

Eddie Beaver has the following post on his blog To New Frontiers (in January, Beaver published "The Need for Leadership in Darfur" in the Weekly Standard)

The White House has decided to support genocide in Sudan, now what?

There is no other acceptable explanation for recent Bush administration actions other than a coordinated plan to ignore Sudan’s responsibility for the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Deputy Secy. Of State Robert Zoellick ventures to Sudan and with a serious face, claimed the death toll from the violence was only 60,000 to 160,000 lives (an interesting claim, as every other informed, serious estimate is anywhere from 300,000 to 400,000) while refusing to address Sudan’s lead role in planning and coordinating the genocide. The White House has moved to block the Darfur Accountability Act, Congress’s effort to take action on Darfur created by a bipartisan group of senators (Christian evangelical Sam Brownback [R-KS] liberal Jon Corzine [D-NJ] ) that represents the best effort to take action on Darfur. The CIA invites one of the men accused of orchestrating the genocide, Sudanese national security chief Salah Abdala Gosh, to confer with it about anti-terrorism and intelligence operations.

[edit]

Abandoning Darfur to achieve better ties with a terrorist government like Sudan’s is a disastrous ploy that dishonors the lives of the brave Americans who have sacrificed their lives for freedom in Iraq, Afghanistan and every other war America has fought to stop the murderous aggression of tyrants in our rich history. It casts aside the lessons of 9/11, lessons dipped in American blood that tolerance of radical Islam (like the kind espoused by Sudan’s regime), oppressive Arab states (Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria) and tyrants in general was a clear and present danger to American security. It is nothing short of a disgusting betrayal of America itself, a bitter and callous miscalculation that will only cost this nation dearly in the end.

It is high time that Americans get involved and raise hell over the genocide, the White House’s betrayal of those being exterminated and the lack of bold, strong leadership on Darfur from a president who has until now embodied those traits.

Two Aid Workers Killed in Eastern Sudan

From Reuters

Two Sudanese aid workers were killed and one was kidnapped after their vehicle was attacked in eastern Sudan, the Sudanese Red Crescent said on Tuesday.

[edit]

"They were on their way from al-Aboudi camp ... near the Sudanese-Eritrean border ... when they were attacked by gunmen," said Red Crescent spokeswoman Afaf Bukhari.

She said two people were killed, a third was seriously injured and one other person was abducted in the attack, which took place on Sunday.

Daily Darfur

If you didn't get a chance to watch the Discovery Times documentary "Surviving Sudan" last night, we urge you to try and catch one of the repeat showings during the week.

The Washington Post's Emily Wax has a new article on the front page of today's paper on how Sudan's leadership works to deflect international criticism of its human rights record

Last fall, when Jan Pronk, the U.N. special envoy to Sudan, visited Darfur, Ismail strode with him through a burned camp, which film footage showed had been destroyed by government soldiers. Ismail, standing amid the charred rubble, turned to Pronk and asked, "So where's the evidence?"

Around that time, the government also declared that a coup had been launched, a claim largely viewed by diplomats as political theater. Officials held news conferences warning that if the United Nations imposed sanctions on Sudan, it could end up in chaos, becoming a failed state and even a threat to the war on terrorism.

"Taha has perfected the art of divide and confuse," said John Prendergast, an analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. "He became the peacemaker in the south while he was the orchestrator of the counterinsurgency strategy in Darfur. Now he has attempted to make himself indispensable to the West on the peace process and counterterrorism."

Supporters of the government assert it has evolved with the needs of the country and is not to blame for defending itself in Darfur. But other observers say Sudanese officials have consistently outwitted international leaders while crushing political dissent at home.

It was the Bashir-Taha government that "introduced torture, executions and deliberate targeting of civilians to stay in power and achieve its military objectives," said analyst Ted Dagne of the Congressional Research Service, speaking from Washington. "They are a political class that is here to stay."

Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, has an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled "Repeating Clinton's Mistakes"

In his willingness to confront evil head-on, President Bush likes to think he's more decisive than that mushy-headed multilateralist Bill Clinton. But when I look at the Bush administration's response to what it has itself called genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, I can't help thinking I've seen this movie before. It recalls the early Clinton administration (in which I served) and its initially ineffectual stand against genocide in Bosnia.

Nicholas Kristof continues to write about Darfur, noting that it has been 113 days since President Bush has mentioned Darfur

So I'm going to start tracking Mr. Bush's lassitude. The last time Mr. Bush let the word Darfur slip past his lips publicly (to offer a passing compliment to U.S. aid workers, rather than to denounce the killings) was Jan. 10. So today marks Day 113 of Mr. Bush's silence about the genocide unfolding on his watch.

PRI's "To the Point" discussed "Sudan and Political Compromise in the War on Terror" last evening.

Leaders of the JEM rebel movement are demanding that any international court created to prosecute crimes against humanity and war crimes in the region be located in Darfur.

Investor's Business Daily examines the close oil ties between China and the regime in Khartoum.

Senator Maria Cantwell is visiting Darfur.

Bloggers Writing About Darfur

In recent days, there have been several good posts about Darfur and the world's responsibility from bloggers who are not members of the Coalition for Darfur that I think are worth reading

Brad Plumer: "Half-Solutions in Darfur"

Laura Rozen at War and Piece

Nadezhda: "The AU takes another step on Darfur"

Justin Logan: "In Which I Play Liberal Internationalist"

These links should not be taken to imply that the coalition’s founders or members support these views - we are offering them mainly because substantive posts on this topic are sadly quite rare.

Khartoum Accuses Rebels of Burning Homes

From AFP

A group of rebels set ablaze 15 homes in a village of Sudan's war-torn Darfur region in a raid in which a man was killed, a pro-government news service reported Monday.

The attack on Reel village in South Darfur state occurred on Sunday and was aimed at sabotaging the return of displaced persons to their homes, said the Sudanese Media Centre.

It quoted an official as saying the torching of the grass-thatched huts was intended to discourage "the voluntary return programme of the IDPs (displaced) to their villages by showing that there is no security and stability in the region".

It must be remembered that just last week the UNHCR had reported that it was Janjaweed militias who were burning villages in order to prevent IDPs from returning.

This is an obvious attempt by Khartoum to use the state-run media to confuse the issue and hide its own responsibility.

Darfur Mortality Update

The latest analysis from Eric Reeves is now available in which he takes on recent State Department's assertions claiming that the death toll in Darfur is much lower than previously reported

The State Department document from which these figures are derived had been classified prior to a Washington Post editorial that appropriately excoriated Zoellick’s mortality estimate (“Darfur’s Real Death Toll,” The Washington Post, April 24, 2005; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12485-2005Apr23.html). The State Department decision to de-classify the document was evidently intended to indicate that serious analysis lay behind Zoellick’s numbers. In fact, the effect of de-classification was just the opposite: the document (now available at http://www.state.gov/s/inr/rls/fs/2005/45105.htm) is an obvious tissue of unsubstantiated assertion, intellectual and methodological confusion, factual error, and deliberate misrepresentation. Its failings are so many and conspicuous that one must assume political motives animated its composition and promulgation. It is a disgrace to reason and justice.

Daily Darfur

The New York Times reviews "Surviving Sudan," a documentary airing tonight on Discovery Times.

The Telegraph reports on tribal leaders stealing humanitarian aid for their own use.

The New York Times Mark Lacey wonders if Darfur is "too broken to fix."

Oxfam is warning that the crisis in Darfur could drag on until 2006 if peace and security do not return soon.

The director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies weighs in on the debate over the death toll in Darfur

The State Department's surprisingly low estimate of the death toll in Sudan -- 60,000 to 160,000, as compared with the 400,000 estimated by human rights groups [editorial, April 24] -- is disturbingly reminiscent of a controversy involving the State Department during the Holocaust.

In November 1943 Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, who was in charge of the Roosevelt administration's immigration policy, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee concerning a congressional resolution urging creation of a U.S. government agency to rescue refugees from Hitler. Long, who was privately anti-Semitic as well as bitterly opposed to refugee immigration, sought to undercut the rescue resolution. Trying to demonstrate that a new rescue agency was unnecessary, Long testified that "we have taken into this country since the beginning of the Hitler regime and the persecution of the Jews, until today, approximately 580,000 refugees."

But the actual number of immigrants was not more than 250,000, and many of them were not Jews. Long's wild exaggeration backfired. His testimony set off a firestorm of criticism from the media, Jewish organizations and members of Congress, giving important new momentum to the campaign for U.S. rescue action.

Today we know why the State Department in 1943 presented an implausibly high estimate of Jewish immigration to the United States. By contrast, we do not know what shaped the State Department's recent decision to embrace an implausibly low estimate of the Sudan death toll. All we can say is that today, no less than in 1943, government officials have an obligation to present statistics that are not tainted by political considerations.

Accuracy and a determination to stop genocide should be their only motives.