Darfur Remains an Angry, Explosive Mess

From Sleepless in Sudan

Darfur remains an angry, explosive mess.

The rumour mill in Nyala this morning is heavy with new arrests in Kalma camp, and everyone is bracing themselves for more unrest after last weekend's riots and hostage taking incidents.

Attacks on buses, trucks and aid convoys (particularly those trying to deliver food to the camps) are not getting any less violent - every day, there are new reports of drivers getting shot and public transport being looted. Brutal new attacks of villages like Tama (South Darfur) are confirming that the militia are still just as active as the looters and the splintered rebel factions behind the (euphemistically termed) 'banditry' incidents.

Uganda/Sudan: Two Deminers Killed in LRA Ambush

From Reuters

Two deminers were ambushed and killed in southern Sudan on Monday by suspected Ugandan rebels who take refuge in the lawless, war-devastated area, the United Nations said.

The deminers, from the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD), were travelling in a convoy towards the Ugandan border, the United Nations said in a statement. The nationalities of the two were not immediately clear.

"The victims of the attack were in the lead vehicle when they were stopped by armed men, taken out of the truck and killed," the statement said. The occupants of the other vehicles took refuge in a Sudanese army camp.

Initial reports indicated two Sudanese soldiers were also wounded in the attack, which the United Nations said appeared to be the work of the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

Chad: Deby Dissolves Presidential Guard Following Desertions

From IRIN

President Idriss Deby has dismissed the 5,000-strong military unit acting as his presidential guard, days after the government failed to reel in scores of defecting soldiers who have regrouped in the volatile east of the country.

A presidential decree signed on Friday and released at the weekend declared: “The Republican Guard is dissolved. … All persons and equipment of the Republican Guard are to be reverted to the army.”

Analysts say the move is a sign that Deby has moved into survival mode.

"The decision to dissolve the [Republican Guard] hints at panic within the regime and suggests that Deby - a military strategist of some merit - has moved beyond damage limitation strategies into full-blown regime survival mode," said Chris Melville of the London-based research group Global Insight.

Congo: UN Tries to Banish Rebels

From Reuters

U.N. and Congolese troops opened fire on rebel bases in a national park on Monday to flush out fighters believed to be holed up in its mountains and jungles a month after a deadline for their pull-out expired.

U.N. attack helicopters whirred overhead as armoured personnel carriers ploughed through forests in Virunga National Park in Democratic Republic of Congo at the start of a five-day offensive that prompted at least 15 rebels to surrender.

Troops set fire to huts in several apparently deserted rebel camps dotted around the park, a World Heritage Site that is a diverse landscape of swamp, steppe, savannah, lava plains and soaring mountain peaks roamed by endangered gorillas.

"This operation aims at securing Virunga park, which has been identified as a logistical and training base for the militias, especially the Rwandan rebels," said Lt. Col Mayank Awasthi, a spokesman for the U.N. mission in DRC.

Awasthi said 500 U.N. troops and 2,000 Congolese soldiers were involved in the joint operation targeting about 5,000 Rwandan Hutu rebels and 3,000 Congolese Mai Mai militiamen whom experts estimate have pitched camp in Virunga park.

About 1,000 Ugandan rebels are also believed by regional security officials to be in the region.

Darfur: Kilgour Urges NATO Push in Sudan

From the London Free Press

Pressure by young people helped end the Vietnam war 30 years ago and today it can stop genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, students at the University of Western Ontario were told yesterday.

Edmonton MP David Kilgour, a former Liberal now sitting as an independent, urged an audience of nearly 150 people to lobby MPs to have Canada push for NATO intervention in the civil-war ravaged region where the death toll exceeds

Kilgour has lobbied Prime Minister Paul Martin to increase aid for Darfur in exchange for Kilgour's support for the minority Liberal government.

"This works particularly well in a minority government in an election year," he said on the third day of a conference considering the ongoing crisis in Darfur.

Kilgour recommended personal visits to the offices of MPs, letters, e-mails, phone calls and other means to push Canada's political leaders into action.

He said Canada should use its good standing with African nations to persuade them that they have been ineffective in stopping the Sudan government-backed killing of Africans in Darfur and NATO must be called.

Darfur: Rebel Dispute Could Divide Movement

From IRIN

The reconciliation meeting called on Sunday by Darfur's main rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), could fail to unite the movement after its president, Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur, refused to attend, observers fear.

Growing rifts between both political leaders and military commanders as well as between the Zaghawa and Fur factions of the SLM/A have led to a breakdown in the movement's command structure.

It has also created a disconnect between political aspirations at the peace talks in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, and military operations on the ground, observers noted.

Darfur: Kalma Camp

The latest from Sleepless in Sudan

The bottom line is, living in Kalma camp is not easy: it's overcrowded, it's tense, and it's not particularly safe (it's got the population of a mid-sized city, but no police or any other effective authority to uphold order - riots, assaults, murders and attempted lynchings are not uncommon in Kalma).

The local government authorities hate Kalma camp (they're not so keen on a huge crowd of angry armed men so close to a state capital and major airport) - as far as they're concerned, everyone would be much better off if the people of Kalma camp would just go back home. In this spirit, they have done a pretty impressive job in making people's lives even more miserable than they already are through the economic blockade of the camp, attempted relocations and more recently a stubborn refusal to cary out headcounts that would allow those who are still not registered to finally receive ration cards. (A successful headcount did take place this month, though it was preceeded by yet another failed attempt - for which the police conveniently forgot to show up.)

One of the more worrying decisions in recent weeks has been the Nyala governor's refusal to renew the contract of the Kalma camp manager, a very capable and dedicated NGO. Since the end of August, Kalma has not had a camp manager (the NGO has not even been allowed to enter the camp) - which means the displaced people have no central authority that they can approach with their concerns or grievances.

Instead, people continue to rely on their tribal leaders, the sheiks, to solve their problems. The problem with this is that not all of the sheiks really have their community's interests at heart - while some are genuinely representative and trusted by their people, many of the newly crowned kings of Kalma camps are corrupt, power hungry and overly politicised. Who - as we saw this week - won't stop short of detaining aid workers to make a point.

As usual, it's the regular residents of Kalma - particularly the women, children, elderly people and other marginalised groups - who are suffering the most. Because of the riots, two sectors of Kalma are currently without water (not surprisingly, the state water company whose staff were taken hostage have not yet returned to the camp). Tensions continue to rise, trust between all actors is eroding, and addressing the needs of those who are the most vulnerable is becoming increasingly difficult.

Darfur: Mediators Try to Salvage Rebel Meeting

From Reuters

Mediators from Darfur's main rebel group arrived at a unity meeting on Sunday to try and reconcile its two leaders whose differences have stalled African Union-sponsored talks to end the conflict in western Sudan.

The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) began its congress to elect a new leadership amid heavy security on Saturday, after delaying it for many days awaiting the arrival of its President Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur.

Nur refused to attend saying he was not consulted in the preparations of the conference but Secretary-General Minni Arcua Minnawi did come and urged Nur to join him. Personality differences have meant they rarely present a united front.

"We arrived this morning from the headquarters (in the mountainous Jabel Marra region) where we met the president and some field commanders," said Ahmed Abdel Shafiq Yagoub, one of the chief negotiators at peace talks in Nigeria.

"We are worried that this situation now is going to divide the movement," he told Reuters.

Darfur: Weekly News Briefs

The Genocide Intervention Network has a good round-up of the week's Darfur news

Last week the Janjaweed attacked government forces, this week refugees took aid workers hostage. With the SLA gathering to work towards unity, the government of Sudan poised to become the chair of the African Union, and the JEM threatening to pull out of AU sponsored peace talks, the coming month will be one of the most critical yet.

Representatives from the UN warn that the situation is seriously deteriorating. International action from now until the end of the year will mean the difference between a resolution and a full scale dissent into civil war. Some in the U.S. government feel that a diplomatic solution can be reached in this time, but Congress and the President continue to stall on taking real action.

Uganda: UNICEF Suspends Aid

From SA

The UN children's fund Unicef has joined other charities in suspending aid activities in northern Uganda after guerrilla attacks on relief convoys left two dead and four injured, officials confirmed on Saturday.

"We are also affected. There is a temporary suspension of operations. This weekend, there is going to be a suspension.

"There will be a revaluation of the security situation on Monday," Unicef's spokesperson in Kampala, Hyun Chulho, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The Lord's Resistance Army was blamed for this week's attacks on vehicles belonging to the Christian Children's Fund in Lira district and on a Catholic relief group, Caritas, in which two Ugandan relief workers were killed and four injured.

Aid agencies, including MSF-Holland, the Catholic Relief Services, Oxfam and CCF have temporarily suspended their activities while others, including Care, the Canadian Physicians for Aids and Relief (CPAR) and MSF Spain have restricted their operations in Gulu, the main city in the war-ravaged region.

Sudan: Human Rights Groups Ask Appeals Court to Give Genocide Victims Relief

From the AP

For the people of Sudan, a case slowly moving through the courts holds great potential _ a lawsuit that claims a Canadian energy company aided in genocide in its pursuit of oil in the violence-wracked African nation.

But winning relief in a court half a world away will depend on how many people will be able to join in the lawsuit.

A federal judge recently limited the scope of the 2001 lawsuit brought by the Presbyterian Church of Sudan against Calgary-based Talisman Energy in U.S. District Court in Manhattan by refusing to grant class-action status.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will decide by the end of this year whether to consider the class-action issue before the case goes to trial in January 2007.

The plaintiffs say class-action status is crucial to set the stage for a potential large payout to Sudanese victims and to set a precedent for U.S. courts to aid suffering people worldwide who cannot find relief in their own courts.

Without it, "thousands of victims will be effectively denied any opportunity to pursue legal redress for acts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes," said Beth Van Schaack, assistant professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law.

She submitted court papers on behalf of human rights groups and activists asking the appeals court to hear the issue.

The lawsuit alleges that Talisman, Canada's biggest independent oil and gas exploration and production company, joined the Sudanese government in ethnic cleansing, killings, war crimes, property confiscation, enslavement, kidnapping and rape.

The company adamantly denies the allegations.

Last month, Judge Denise Cote ruled that the case cannot proceed as a class action because issues concerning individual plaintiffs were distinct and could not be decided as a class.

Van Schaack said victims of genocide are left with nowhere else to turn if U.S. courts force them to seek justice in the country where they are oppressed.

Congo: UN Mission Expanded and Extended

From the UN News Center

Expressing serious concern about the continuing hostilities by militias and foreign armed groups in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the threat to elections in the country, the Security Council today extended the United Nations Organization Mission (MONUC) there until next September, with an additional 300 troops.

Unanimously adopting a resolution under Chapter VII of the Charter, which covers "threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression," the Council authorized the deployment of an infantry battalion in Katanga province, with its own air mobility and medical support, to beef up security during the electoral process.

Sudan Should Focus on Peace Accord and Human Rights

From the UN News Center

The new Sudanese Government should implement a comprehensive peace agreement and a new constitution without delay, while focusing on protecting and promoting human rights people, a United Nations expert on the country has told the General Assembly.

Sudanese officials should also work closely with the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) to deploy police in vulnerable areas in Darfur to protect civilians – particularly in camps for internally displaced person (IDP) – from harassment and murder, and to prevent rape and violence against women, the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights to Sudan, Sima Samar, told the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural (Third) Committee on Thursday.

The Rapporteur, who is an unpaid expert serving in an independent personal capacity, just returned from a weeklong visit to Sudan, which she said has embarked on a difficult path of peace building, reconciliation, and reconstruction. She noted that the Government's process was marked by delays in implementing the peace agreement in Darfur, and it is experiencing challenges in harmonizing the national legislation with the Interim National Constitution, particularly along the lines of protecting international human rights.

A culture of impunity for perpetrators of human rights violations still exists, and while authorities have acknowledged the violence, they have contested accounts of its magnitude, she said.

Sudan: Road to Nowhere

From the Hot Zone

The rainy season has just ended, but this stretch of south Sudan savannah is already dry and turning brown. It's called Mayom Deng Akol and was once a bustling village with two markets.

It emptied out when Arab militias began raiding it during Africa's longest civil war. Nearly all of the villagers fled as Mayom Deng Akol, like so many other border towns, was torched.

Now, with an elusive peace finally at hand, they're beginning to trickle back. But here they are finding so much less than what they remember.

Just five days ago Lungar Machar arrived back in Mayom Deng Akol from the western Darfur region with his two wives and seven children.

They walked for 16 days straight; beginning at 6 p.m. in the evenings, when it was cooler, and ending at sunrise. It was a strenuous and perilous journey, especially with children as young as two and three years old. But Machar had no idea that the greatest difficulty would begin once they got here.

"I'm proud to be home," he says. "This is where I was born. But I'm really concerned because there is no food or water."

[edit]

But it could be more than nine months before the family can harvest food to eat. Confronted with this reality, Machar says he can only do what he can do. After that, he says, it's in God's hands.

Machar and his family, like many others in the region, depend on food from the United Nation World Food Program. It is literally dropped from the sky once every two months from giant C-130 cargo planes.

The planes fly low and push out 50-kilogram (110-pound) sacks of grain -- more than 800 at a time -- which are collected by local officials on the ground and distributed to the people in the community.

But one tribal chieftain says so many people are returning to the region that the food only lasts a month.

The village also has only one source of water, a well that was drilled just a week ago with the help of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and that must supply potentially thousands of people.

Darfuris Crowd Rebel Town Awaiting Unity Congress

From Reuters

The logistical problems facing rebel delegates who have come from the United States, Italy, and England, as well as those who drove hundreds of miles through militia territory has delayed the start until Saturday.

The delay did not dent the enthusiasm for the thousands already arrived, who waited patiently under trees, playing cards, banging drums and singing songs about freedom.

"The youth of Darfur, free Sudan," women draped in bright pinks, oranges and greens sang as they banged drums made of clay pots with skins drawn tightly over the lids. The home-made instruments proudly sported "SLA" painted in red on their covers.

Darfuris, passionate about the conference, risked their lives to make the journey to Haskanita near the eastern border of Darfur, a vast desert region the size of France. Some lost their lives on the way.

"We were attacked by armed men from the JEM (Justice and Equality Movement) along the border," said Abakr al-Tom, who came from a refugee camp in Chad across the western border of Darfur. "We had to run away but seven people were killed."

[edit]

Haskanita village, a usually dozy place, was transformed as trucks loaded with fuel, young soldiers with bleached dreadlocks and weapons invaded its main square. White signs with SLA slogans covered every available fence, wall and tree trunks.

Armed men sat waiting under the shade of the bright green bushes.

Sudanese from southern Sudan, and even Arab tribes also came to see what the SLA has to say. "We want to see what they will do," said southern Dinka Salman Garang. "I'm not in the SLA but we want peace," he said.

Cote d'Ivoire: Government Recruits Child Soldiers in Liberia

From Human Rights Watch

In anticipation of renewed fighting with rebel forces, the Ivorian government is recruiting Liberian children alongside hundreds of other former combatants in Liberia’s civil war, Human Rights Watch said today.

Since September, Ivorian army officers and Liberian former commanders have been conducting a recruitment drive seeking ex-combatants in Liberian towns and villages bordering Côte d’Ivoire.

“The Ivorian government is bolstering its military manpower by recruiting children who fought in Liberia’s brutal civil war,” said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch. “The international community must do all it can to ensure that these children are demobilized and that their recruiters are prosecuted.”

Great Lakes Region: Meeting to Discuss Rebel Menace Not Held

From IRIN

A meeting of representatives of the governments of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda on ways of handling foreign armed groups based in northeastern DRC did not take place on Thursday in Uganda as had been announced earlier, a Ugandan government official said.

The permanent secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Julius Onen, told IRIN on Friday that the announcement of the meeting "was not properly made and this gave an erroneous impression that we are going to host a meeting".

However, Onen said a delegation of the UN Security Council was scheduled to tour the region in early November.

Darfur: A Stroll Through the Market

From VillageSoup

In the Islamic World, Friday is the day of rest. It’s the day that many devout Moslems go to their neighborhood mosque, if they live in an urban area like Nyala. For foreigners like me, it’s a time to check e-mails, write reports, read a book or even take a stroll through the town’s market.

My Sudanese colleagues tell me that Nyala is Sudan’s second-largest city. I doubt that anyone has more than a vague idea of how many people actually live here these days. The violence of the past 18 months has changed Darfur’s demographics in ways that will take years to sort out. Nyala’s urban dwellers have taken in relatives and friends fleeing the violence of the countryside.

Seven camps for Internally Displaced Persons sprawl along the city’s fringe. Driving toward town from the airport, there are hundreds of white, plastic sheeting roofs glistening under the desert sun. Those are the smaller camps of Otash and Dereig, with a combined population of close to 30,000. On the opposite side of Nyala, with its population of 160,000 people, Kalma Camp is reportedly the largest IDP camp in the world.

Rusesabagina Urges U.S. Help for Africa

From the AP

The man whose work to save 1,200 refugees from death squads in Rwanda's 1994 genocide was featured in the movie Hotel Rwanda urged Americans to press their government to help stop wars in Africa.

"Stand up and let your leaders know all that is happening all over Africa," said Paul Rusesabagina in a speech at Iowa State University. "What we need is you, as a stronger country, to help them to talk, bring negotiations, discussion and dialogue," he said Wednesday. In Rwanda's genocide, an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 people were killed in just 100 days.

Rusesabagina criticized the UN and western countries for not stepping in to stop the killing and said the world's most powerful and wealthiest nations continue to ignore atrocities.

He said a bloody war in the Congo has taken nearly one million lives since 1996.

"Nobody lifts a finger to save them," he said.

"In Burundi people have been killing people. Nobody talks about Burundi," he said.

In Darfur, a region of western Sudan, millions have been displaced and sleep in the harsh temperature extremes of the open desert with no food, clothing or shelter, he said.

"That is a shame to mankind," he said.

Darfur: Rebels Delay Start of Unity Meeting

From Reuters

Darfur's main rebel group delayed the start of a meeting to elect new leadership on Friday after members found it difficult to cross the rocky terrain to reach the secret location in Sudan's war-ravaged west.

"The conference is delayed because some members had problems to come today because they are coming from far away," said chief organiser Ibrahim Ahmed Ibrahim, adding the conference would now begin on Saturday.

"It is very difficult to reach here by road we have no helicopters," he added at the secret site in the far east of South Darfur state where a large white tent sits empty waiting for the meeting to begin.

The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) congress, the first of its kind for the rebels, hopes to produce a joint position for peace talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja and unite rank-and-file field commanders under a new, elected executive.

Factionalism within the main rebel SLA and escalating violence in Darfur has hampered African Union-sponsored peace efforts, which ended a sixth round on October 20 in Nigeria with little progress.

Field commanders said they called the congress because they were worried about stand-offs between their leaders.

Darfur: Rebels Beset by Problems

From the BBC NEWS

The Sudan Liberation Army begin their unity congress in crisis.
Once seen as fighting for the rights of brutalised people, Darfur's biggest rebel movement have become part of the problem.

International observers have watched in despair as the SLA has looted humanitarian convoys, split into two factions and obstructed peace talks.

[edit]

With the leadership now distant and confused - rebel discipline began to slip and banditry and attacks on humanitarian convoys increased.

Peace talks in Nigeria - which should have addressed fundamental issues of power and wealth sharing have instead been dominated by wrangling over who should represent the SLA.

No substantive discussions took place at the sixth round of negotiations which ended in Abuja on the 20 October. For three weeks the SLA argued among themselves over the make up of their delegation.

UN Reform: Responsibility to Protect

From VOA

While unwilling to define terrorism or address the issue of nuclear non-proliferation, experts say U.N. member states agreed on an important principle: to intervene in cases of genocide or ethnic cleansing.

Mr. Evans says that became known as "the responsibility to protect."

"And the principle has now been adopted that, yes, the front-line responsibilities for dealing with internal situations of this kind, does rest with the sovereign states themselves," he continued. "But if the particular sovereign state abdicates that responsibility, either through incapacity or ill will, then the 'responsibility to protect' the citizens of that country shifts to the wider international community. And ultimately, that responsibility can take the form, in really extreme situations, of a responsibility to intervene militarily, to stop the genocide or other disaster that's occurring."

Mr. Evans cautions, that the "responsibility to protect" is not a synonym for military action. He says any military venture must first get the approval of the U.N. Security Council.

General Scowcroft says the "responsibility to protect" is a sensitive issue.

"The 'responsibility to protect' is a very touchy point, because the United Nations was founded on the sovereign independence of its member states and indeed, the Charter itself, says the U.N. may not interfere in matters that are essentially within the jurisdiction of the member states," he explained. "And what we tried to do was frame it in a way that laid out more specifically what was the line between intervention and non-intervention. And what we came up with was when a country is unable or unwilling to protect the large masses of its people, then it is the mandate of the United Nations to intervene."

Africa: World is Ignoring Hunger, WFP Chief Says

From the UN News Center

Even as the number of hungry people has been rising, mainly, in Africa by about 6 million a year, food aid is in sharp decline, the Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) James T. Morris said today.

"Globally hunger claims more lives than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined," Mr. Morris told a special event on the food crisis in Africa organized by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Speaking at the same event General Assembly President Jan Eliasson called it "shameful that we are still not good enough in providing emergency assistance when it is needed."

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) there are now 852 million hungry people worldwide and the number has been increasing by 6 million annually since 2000. Over five million children die of hunger and malnutrition every year.

Eritrea/Ethiopia: Backing the Favourite

From the Economist

WHAT better way to settle an ugly third-world border dispute than through arbitration? What better example of conflict resolution to press upon two rancorous rivals, Ethiopia and Eritrea, who in 1998-2000 fought a bitter border war that cost 70,000 lives? That is why, as part of the peace deal that ended the war at the urging of America, the European Union and the Africa Union, the two countries asked the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague to fix their border. But the court awarded the most hotly disputed piece of turf, the town of Badme, to Eritrea—the smaller nation, with a repressive little regime and few foreign friends. Ethiopia has since refused to accept the court's ruling and none of its powerful foreign allies seems inclined to try to make it change its mind.

As a result, both impoverished countries are armed to the teeth and a costly UN peacekeeping mission is hunkered along the border. And every so often come rumblings of another war, as has happened this month when Eritrea banned the UN from overflying its territory, drawing accusations from Ethiopia that it was shifting troops to the border.

The UN Security Council was due to discuss the crisis on October 27th. It fears for the safety of the 3,300 UN peacekeepers who are deployed on the border and have no mandate, or desire, to intervene in fresh fighting between two of Africa's best-organised armies. The peacekeepers are mostly on the Eritrean side, and have therefore been unable to man almost half of their 40 observation posts since their helicopters were grounded. Some observers—including John Bolton, the American ambassador to the UN—are now asking what purpose the mission serves.

Uganda: NGO Attacks Condemned

From the BBC NEWS

The United Nations has condemned attacks on aid workers in northern Uganda as the charity Oxfam announced it was suspending its operations there.

At least two workers were shot dead in three separate attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday by suspected members of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

The BBC's Will Ross in the capital, Kampala, says the LRA has until now left aid workers alone.

The ambushes follow international arrest warrants issued for LRA leaders.

The International Criminal Court announced it wanted the five top LRA commanders on war crimes earlier this month.

This move may have changed the LRA's tactics, our correspondent says.

The LRA is accused of widespread murder and torture during nearly 20 years of fighting against the army and have kidnapped thousands of children.

"It is unconscionable that the LRA is carrying out these vicious attacks on unarmed humanitarian worker," UN emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland said in a statement.

"The people of northern Uganda are heavily dependent on humanitarian aid, and access to them is already precarious."

Oxfam say they have suspended their operations in Kitgum and Pader districts due to "unprecedented" and serious nature of the attacks.

"We work with about a quarter of a million people in about 10 camps and we've had to suspend movements of staff and people who work with us in the field," Oxfam's Emma Naylor told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

Darfur: Refugees Urge Rebel Leaders to Unite and Make Peace

From Reuters

Refugees from Darfur's bloody 2-1/2 year conflict urged rebel leaders to use an upcoming meeting to end their bickering and get on with the task of making peace with Sudan's Khartoum-based government.

Some of the millions of people who fled to dusty refugee camps to escape marauding bands of so-called Janjaweed militia said they hoped Friday's Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) congress will heal a rift in the rebel leadership that has hindered African Union-sponsored peace talks with Khartoum.

Divisions between SLA Secretary-General Minni Arcua Minnawi and President Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur allowed the sixth round of the talks to end last week with little progress towards bringing peace to Sudan's western region of Darfur.

But many people hope the congress will bring a united SLA position that will help the SLA forge a deal to bring an end to violence the United States has described as genocide.

"They need to unite and go back to the talks united," said Yehya Mohamed Adam, who was chased from his home town Tawila in North Darfur to the Abou Shouk camp almost two years ago.

"Once they unite they will be strong and can begin to stop the looting and robbery," he said.

Darfur: Increasingly, America Seems Content to Appease Sudan

Eric Reeves has this article in the New Republic

Early in his first term, after reading a memo outlining American acquiescence during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, President Bush jotted in the margin, 'Not on my watch.' Bush seemed to be making a promise to himself that, should he ever need to, he would act to prevent genocide in Africa. But now genocide is taking place in Africa on Bush's watch, and the president has done little to stop it. Worse, in the last six months the administration's stance towards the genocidal Sudanese government seems to have shifted towards one of appeasement--at a time when the situation in Darfur grows more dire by the day.

Darfur: Rising Violence Threatens Harvest, Aid

From Reuters

Escalating violence throughout Sudan's vast Darfur region poses a threat to next month's critical harvest as well as to aid programmes, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Thursday.

Scores of civilians and fighters have died in clashes, tribal violence linked to cattle looting and access to grazing pastures, as well as banditry over the past two months, the humanitarian agency said.

The ICRC voiced concern at the upsurge in violence in all three Darfur states, where it deploys 600 staff working on food distribution, farming assistance, water supply and medical services.

"The escalating violence is a threat to the much-anticipated November harvest and has further hampered the seasonal migration of livestock," it said in a statement.

"This could have disastrous consequences for the recovery efforts of the last 18 months -- including an extensive ICRC agricultural assistance programme -- and intensify the cycle of dependency on humanitarian aid."

Uganda: Humanitarian Staff Attacked

From the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Three separate attacks on humanitarian aid workers in northern Uganda in the past two days have resulted in the death of two individuals and the injury of four others.

Earlier today, a staff member from the non-governmental organization (NGO) Caritas was shot dead in an ambush seemingly perpetrated by members of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Kitgum district, in northern Uganda. The attack, which occurred in an area eight kilometers north of Kitgum Town, involved two Caritas staff members who were riding on a motor bike unescorted. One of the riders fled, while the other was shot and killed while trying to escape, according to an eyewitness.

Also today, in Pader District, LRA rebels ambushed aid workers from the NGO Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development (ACORD), killing one and critically injuring two. The rebels attacked a vehicle visibly marked with the agency's emblem. The attack took place four kilometers from Pader Town.

The murders follow yesterday’s attack on a vehicle of the Christian Children’s Fund (CCF) in Okwango, Lira District. Two CCF staff were injured in that attack, one of whom remains in intensive care. The vehicle, which carried CCF-Uganda identification, was reportedly sprayed with bullets.

“This is a tragedy for those who have been killed, for their families, and for their organizations. It is unconscionable that the Lord’s Resistance Army is carrying out these vicious attacks on unarmed humanitarian workers,” said Jan Egeland, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. “The people of northern Uganda are heavily dependent on humanitarian aid, and access to them is already precarious. These attacks threaten the provision of life-saving assistance to nearly 1.7 million people.”

Does "Never Again" Mean Anything?

From David Kilgour in Embassy Magazine

We live in unusual times when Gérard Prunier, a respected expert on East Africa and its Great Lakes region at the University of Paris, can publish a book about a government-created catastrophe, which continues even as his work appears. For his decade-old study on a similar event in Rwanda, the carnage had ended approximately nine months before that publication reached book stores.

The author is clear that the mass killings, gang rapes and slow deaths of internal refugees--being "African" Darfuri, at the hands of "Arab" Janjaweed -- are continuing despite the collapse in most outside media attention and the fact that U.S. President George Bush, for example, went almost five months this year without a single public comment on the situation.

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The peace negotiations nonetheless continued with few outsiders being willing to admit that any comprehensive peace agreement with a regime capable of what it was continuing to do in the West while it talked peace for the South would quickly prove worthless. Eric Reeves, the leading American scholar on Darfur, repeatedly reminded the world that the el-Bashir government "lies repeatedly, shamelessly, egregiously and without consequences", but governments (including Canada's) continued to treat Darfur as a humanitarian emergency only. By the time the essentially paralyzed UN Security Council held a meeting in Kenya in Nov. 2004 demanding "an immediate end to violence", the government of Sudan knew that as long as it demonstrated good faith in the peace talks it could, as Mr. Prunier notes, "do what it wanted in Darfur."

The final part of Ambiguous Genocide assesses candidly the roles to date of various actors in Darfur, including the media, humanitarian NGOs, American diplomacy, the European Union, the UN and the African Union. Mr. Prunier concludes that what is continuing in Darfur is genocide under the 1948 UN definition, a coordinated attempt to bring about the physical destruction of a group in whole or in part, but not under his own definition, which requires "an attempt at total obliteration" of a pre-defined group. Correctly, he concludes, "The horror experienced by the targeted group remains the same, no matter which word we use."

In the meantime, as Eric Reeves recently noted, there are currently about 3.5 million "conflict-affected" Darfuris dependent on vulnerable humanitarian operations, with more than 6,000 now dying per month from various unnatural causes. An estimated 200,000 have already been murdered. Like others, Canadian readers can only ask as they finish the book: "Does 'never again' mean anything?"

Chad Asks Sudan to Disarm Fleeing Army Deserters

From Reuters

The government of Chad has asked neighbouring Sudan to disarm a group of army deserters who fled to the Darfur region, acting Defence Minister Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour said on Wednesday.

Nassour said the deserters had escaped into Sudan after government troops laid siege to their hideout in the eastern town of Hadjer Hadid, where they sought refuge earlier this month.

Leaders of the deserters say they number around 600 soldiers and are demanding the resignation of Chad's President Idriss Deby, according to media reports. They call themselves the Platform for Change, National Unity and Democracy (SCUD).

The government said only 40 soldiers had deserted but some had subsequently given themselves up.

"The national army went to hunt down the insurgents ... They then fled into Sudan," Nassour, also minister of territorial administration, told reporters.

"We hope the Sudanese government will disarm them as soon as possible or will let us do so instead."

Sudan: The Hot Zone

The Hot Zone dispatches this week are from southern Sudan

The civil war itself was Africa's longest and deadliest. The conflict lasted more than two decades, taking the lives of more than two million people (mostly through famine and disease) and creating a small nation of four to six million internally displaced people.

It is a struggle that has pitted black Sudanese, Christians and animists from the south against Arab Muslims in the north. Southern Sudanese say they have always been marginalized and discriminated against by what they call the northern Arab "elite."

The last straw came in 1983 when the Sudanese president at the time imposed Islamic Sharia law across the land, prompting Garang to leave the Sudanese military and lead the SPLA's rebellion.

All across the south you see the remnants of the war -- buildings bombed into standing jigsaw puzzle pieces -- and almost everyone has a story of loss to tell.

In a circle of 20 SPLA fighters, I ask them to raise their hands if they have lost an immediate family member in the fighting. Every hand goes up.

Looming Catastrophe

In the last few weeks, there have been a series of warning signs that the situation in Darfur, already horrific, is rapidly deteriorating.

Two weeks ago, Juan Mendez, the UN's Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, returned from Darfur and warned that the situation was worsening, stating frankly that "the situation much more dangerous and worrisome than I expected it to be." Shortly thereafter, the UN declared that, due to insecurity, large portions of the region were deemed "no go" areas, which in turn cut off aid access to at least 650,000 people. The UN also evacuated all non-essential personel from West Darfur.

All the while, attacks on the displaced continued and seven AU monitors were killed in an ambush. Not long after that, the New York Times reported that the Janjaweed militias, equipped and supported by the Sudanese government, were acting with complete impunity and were "now emboldened enough to turn their guns on the government."

That was followed by a frantic statement from Antonio Guterres, the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees, that "everything is getting out of control" and that the international community had just weeks to attempt to restore order in Darfur or risk "a very serious degeneration of the situation."

That, in turn, was followed by a report that "more than 100,000 people are now believed to have died in the Darfur region of Sudan since the United Nations Security Council set a 30-day deadline last year for the Khartoum regime to begin to resolve the crisis in the area." That is on top of the several hundred thousand who had died prior to UN-issued deadline.

Amid all of this, and mostly ignored by the press, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told an audience that the world had failed to "fully face" the genocide in Darfur. That is something of an understatement, but considering that it was Powell himself who first declared that what was happening in Darfur was indeed genocide - more than one year ago - it is certainly worth noting.

One year ago, the world knew it was genocide and did nothing. One year later, UN officials are warning that "everything is getting out of control" and that Darfur risks descending into utter anarchy, bringing with it an untold loss of life ... and still the world does nothing.

Philippe Gaillard was head of the International Committee of the Red Cross mission in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide - and though the following quote refers to international community's failure to respond to the atrocities in Rwanda, it could just as well apply to the failure to respond to Darfur

In such circumstances, if you don't at least speak out clearly, you are participating in the genocide. If you just shut up when you see what you see -- morally, ethically you cannot shut up. It's a responsibility to speak out. It did not change anything, and it …[did not] move the international community. I just can say that they cannot tell us or tell me that they didn't know. They were told every day what was happening there. So don't come back to me and tell me, "Sorry, we didn't know." No. Everybody knew.

Sudan/Uganda: Southerners Long for Capture of Rebel Leader

From Reuters

Their own long war just over, southern Sudanese are praying for the capture of a brutal Ugandan rebel boss whose cross-border revolt is souring their first taste of peace.

Believed hiding in the vast and rugged terrain of southern Sudan, Joseph Kony and other leaders of his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) face a new offensive from three different armies: Uganda, Sudan, and ex-southern Sudanese rebels.

Local people hope it will be the last stand for the self-styled mystic whose brutal tactics have turned him into Africa's most wanted rebel leader following arrest warrants from the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC).

"We'd like him to be taken out and to be killed," said John Iokova, 19, who works at a market in Juba, the capital of southern Sudan. "We don't like him here in Sudan. He's killing people, cutting them with knives."

Ripples of Rwanda's Genocide Still Rock the Eastern Congo

A piece from John Prendergast in the Globe and Mail

Imagine if the entire population of Alberta, or Toronto, was slowly wiped out, community by community. The media would be transfixed by such a spectacle, and everyone would surely know who was suffering and where it was happening.

Yet while some four million people have lost their lives in eastern Congo and Rwanda over the past 11 years, how many of us could even point out those places on a map? And who has ever even heard of a Rwandan Hutu militia group called the FDLR (Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda)?

Yet here we are, 11 years after the organizers of this militia tore through Rwanda during the fateful 100 days of the 1994 genocide. Washing up in neighbouring Congo, they have fuelled a conflict that has led to four times as many deaths as in the Rwandan genocide itself. Now that a peace deal in the Congo is finally beginning to be implemented, and elections are to be held within the next year, it is crucial to deal once and for all with the FDLR, and the legacy of the genocide that this group represents, because its members are one of the principal drivers of continuing Congolese conflict.

Lobbyist to Put In a Good Word for Sudan

From the Washington Post

As they say in Washington, "If you've got a phone -- and a half-million or so bucks -- you've got a lobbyist."

So the government of Sudan, which has been getting just dreadful press in recent years -- having your troops and their militia allies committing genocide often upsets people -- has hired a Washington lobbyist to help out.

Robert Cabelly , a former State Department hand who worked in the Bush I and Clinton administrations on African issues, and his firm have a contract worth $530,000 a year, not including transportation expenses, to represent the murderous regime.

This did not sit well with Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who has been spearheading the drive in Congress to stop the slaughter in the Darfur region. Wolf took to the House floor last week to condemn the agreement -- "Where will the lobbying wheel of fortune stop next?" he asked -- and to blast the State Department for waiving sanctions on doing business with Sudan so Cabelly could get the contract.

President Bill Clinton issued the executive order imposing the sanctions. Congress last year passed a resolution regarding genocide in Sudan, and President Bush has repeatedly labeled the actions in Darfur as genocide. The United Nations is investigating.

Wolf wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice , saying that "increasingly this town has appeared up for grabs to the highest bidder, with well-reputed lobbying shops representing the interests of some of the world's most unsavory governments." But "I would have hoped for more from the American government."

The State Department, asked about Wolf's letter, issued a response saying that "we believed that Robert Cabelly, in advising the Sudanese Government, would provide a perspective on U.S. concerns and policy that would be useful in advancing the peace process and resolving the crisis in Darfur."

But Wolf has yet to receive a response from Rice. "I would hope and expect they will reverse" the waiver, he told us, adding that "nobody would have represented the Soviet Union during the days of Ronald Reagan ."

The Los Angeles Times reported in the spring that the head of Sudanese intelligence was secretly flown here in April for meetings with U.S. officials about terrorism. (Sudan, an official state sponsor of terrorism, according to the State Department, knows a lot about these things.) So the Sudanese should surely have an adequate "perspective on U.S. concerns and policy."

What part of G-E-N-O-C-I-D-E don't they get?

Darfur: Rebel Group Threatens to Quit Peace Talks

From Reuters

Darfur rebel group said on Wednesday it would pull out of African Union (AU) mediated talks trying to bring peace to the western region of Sudan if the presidency of the body moved to Khartoum. Khalil Ibrahim of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said the AU-mediated talks in Nigeria could not be impartial if the presidency of the pan-African body moved to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's government in Sudan as scheduled next year. JEM is one of two main Darfur rebel groups that took up arms against the Khartoum government in early 2003, accusing it of monopolising wealth and power. The Darfur conflict has forced some 2 million people from their homes to camps.

"The African Union is mediating the peace process in Abuja. Also, the AU has troops on the ground in Darfur. We cannot imagine that Omar al-Bashir will be the chairperson of this organisation," Ibrahim told Reuters by telephone.

JEM has a number of other leaders who head different factions but the AU considers Khalil the head of the group and he represents it at the peace talks.

"If he (Bashir) becomes chairperson of the AU, the Movement (JEM) will pull out of the peace talks in Abuja because the AU becomes part of the problem itself and cannot solve the problem."

Interview: Sleepless In Sudan

Seth Chalmer has conducted a lengthy interview with Sleepless in Sudan

Q: What has surprised you most since you’ve been in Darfur?

SIS: I knew the conflict was very complex, but I was not aware it's as complicated as this (and the readings I have recommended on ethnicity are only one tiny little part of much huger issues). It is nearly impossible for an outside to understand what things really mean in Darfur, or what is going on - even the locals struggle.

Every day, I learn that a clash we describe as politically motivated might instead by a completely normal part of the annual seasonal migrations, or that a fight between two tribes in one village might have no significance in a village 30 minutes away, where the same two tribes are best mates. The localised nature of the conflict is constantly underestimated, causes and effects are confused, analysis is based on false or partial information. I have stopped believing about 80% of what I hear or read.

These days, all that I know for sure is that Darfur is completely unpredictable, and that I go to bed most nights utterly confused.

Read the entire thing.

Uncommon Leadership for Common Values

An upcoming event sponsored by the Aspen Institute

According to conventional wisdom, Americans have never been more divided. Differences in ideology and culture are supposedly driving us apart. Yet, in recent years internationally-mined liberals and conservatives have joined forces to fight HIV/AIDS, promote debt relief for the world’s poorest countries and lend support to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. We see an historic opportunity to build on these steps by generating support across the political spectrum for American leadership on a wide range of human rights and humanitarian issues.

We believe this is the right thing to do and smart for our country. Especially in this era, it matters whether people in troubled societies have hope and whether they believe America is on their side. This event serves as a call for all Americans, liberal and conservative alike, to put aside political differences with the aim of helping people everywhere live richer, freer lives. A network of nongovernmental organizations is striving in every part of the globe to end abuses, promote democracy, save lives and empower the poor. This network depends on private citizens and public advocates to spread the word, volunteer, raise money and lobby governments. It also depends on political support. We believe such backing is essential and should be bipartisan. Disagreements among political leaders on some matters should not block wholehearted cooperation on humanitarian issues and human rights.

During the conference on November 1, we will explore ideas for bipartisan cooperation on four major human rights challenges: 1) preventing genocide; 2) halting trafficking in human beings; 3) promoting religious liberty; 4) caring for refugees and the displaced. Speakers will include prominent Republicans and Democrats who are leaders on human rights, and each session will be moderated by a nonpartisan expert. Confirmed speakers include Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), General Wesley Clark, David Gompert, the Hon. Frank Wolf (R-VA), Rabbi David Saperstein, Reverend Richard Land, Gary Haugen, Nina Shea, George Rupp and John Prendergast.

See the program schedule and sigh up to attend here.

Darfur: Appeasment Watch

From Mark Leon Goldberg at TAPPED

Last week Representative Frank Wolf sent a concerned letter to the State Department asking them why they would issue a waiver to let a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., sign a contract with the government of Sudan. Sudan, after all is under U.S. sanction, and the lobbyist, Robert Cabelly, would be representing the interests of a government the Bush administration has accused of committing genocide.

It seems, however, that the letter fell on deaf ears. This from a reply to a question at the State Department's October 21 press briefing:

Question: Has Secretary Rice received a letter from Representative Wolf that criticizes the State Department for issuing a waiver to pay for a contractor for the Sudanese Government? If so, what is State's response?

Answer: We work closely with Representative Wolf, value his perspective, and understand his concerns on this matter. Following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement on January 9, 2005, we have seen increased dialogue among the parties, with talks continuing despite the recent increase in violence. In this case, we believed that Robert Cabelly, in advising the Sudanese Government, would provide a perspective on United States concerns and policy that would be useful in advancing the peace process and resolving the crisis in Darfur.

The problem here is two-fold. First, Cabelly does not work for the United States of America. He works for the government of Sudan. He is being paid $530,000 to represent the interests of Khartoum on Capitol Hill. Despite what the State Department said, he is not being paid to advise Khartoum about U.S. concerns. We have high-level diplomats in Khartoum who do that. Cabelly is a lobbyist. If he is any good, he will represent the people who pay him. In the near term, this presumably means helping to defeat the Darfur Accountability Act.

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In the wake of an uptick in violence in Darfur in recent weeks, and the evacuation of UN and NGO personnel in certain regions of Darfur, it’s clear that the State Department needs to come to terms with the fact that the U.S. strategy of appeasing Khartoum is not helping to end the violence in Darfur. Unfortunately, given State's defense of the Cabelly waiver, there's little indication that the Bush administration has anything other than appeasement in mind for the genocidaires of Sudan.

Chad: Aid Workers Return to Camps

From IRIN

Humanitarian groups assisting Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad have redeployed staff to camps in the Hadjer Hadid area despite a breakdown in talks between army deserters and the government.

“Everyone has returned to the camps of Breidjing and Treguine,” said Ginette Le Breton, public information officer for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), speaking from the main eastern town of Abeche.

UNHCR and other aid groups a few days ago cut back their presence amid tension in the region, where the government said dozens of deserters had fled.

Essential services, however, had been maintained in the two camps that are home to 40,000 of the 200,000 Sudanese refugees sheltered in eastern Chad.

Government officials have said the area is quiet and the situation is under control.

The EU/AU Partnership in Darfur: Not Yet a Winning Combination

A new report from the International Crisis Group

The African Union's (AU) intervention in Sudan's Darfur region tests the effectiveness of its own peace and security structures and those of the European Union (EU). The AU has taken the lead both in the political negotiations between the government and the rebels and in deploying a peace-monitoring mission, the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS). It has had to rely on outside support for AMIS, with nearly two thirds of its funding coming from the EU's African Peace Facility. The results are mixed. If Darfur is to have stability anytime soon, and the two organisations are to fulfil their ambitions to be major players in crisis prevention and crisis resolution, AMIS must get more troops and a more proactive, civilian-protection mandate, and the EU needs to find ways to go beyond the present limitations of the African Peace Facility in providing assistance.

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We have argued elsewhere that a NATO bridging force would be the most practical way of achieving this deployment,[1] but unfortunately neither NATO nor the AU appear prepared to consider such a radical measure. Another option, now being widely discussed, is folding AMIS into the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) operation, established in March 2005 to support implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM). Such a "double-hatted" UNMIS would, arguably, be a more efficient way of conducting two inter-related peace operations in a single country, give the Darfur peace operation a more secure financial base, and open up a broader pool of potential troop contributing countries than at present. But the planning and deployment of such an extended mission would take many months, and the AU is for the moment quite resistant to winding up its own distinctively AU-badged operation in Darfur.

While Crisis Group believes the UN -- and NATO -- options need to be very seriously considered further, this policy report focuses on what more can and should be done to meet Darfur's needs within the present organisational arrangements, involving the continuation of AMIS, and on the basis of financial support coming primarily from Europe.

In this context, the most immediate need is to bring AMIS up to its presently authorised size (7,731), a task that is behind schedule, and make it more effective within the limited terms of its present mandate. Beyond that, AMIS urgently needs to become larger and more militarily powerful, with an expanded Chapter VII-type civilian protection mandate, and with the operation sustainable for as long as it takes for normality to be restored. All this will be possible only with greater international support, but the EU's €250 million African Peace Facility is already largely committed and not due for regular review until 2007.

Crisis Group has reported frequently on all aspects of Sudan's complex situation. This policy report, the first in a series that will examine in depth the strengths and weaknesses of the EU's growing crisis response capability and its more ambitious policies in conflict prevention situations around the world, focuses on how the partnership between Brussels and the AU has been working in Darfur and what should be done to make it more effective.

Darfur: Refugees Free Most Abducted Aid Workers

From Reuters

Refugees took 34 aid workers hostage in Darfur's largest refugee camp on Tuesday, but later released all but five, U.N. officials and sources in the aid community said.

The hostage takers were demanding the release of a local tribal leader in the restive Kalma camp who was arrested by the authorities on Sunday, they said.

"We have been told that all but five Sudanese national NGO (non-governmental organization) workers have been released," U.N. spokesman George Somerwill said.

The aid workers involved were from the Sudanese Red Crescent, the governmental water and sanitation agency, and the U.S. CHF aid agency, aid community sources said. Those still held were from the government agency.

Darfur: Could Be Our Last Chance

From Restless Mania

The international community needs to wake up and pay attention to this situation NOW. Although a crisis with two million refugees sounds urgent enough, the situation is getting worse very fast. A news report from Reuters says that things are dangerously close to spiraling completely out of control. Peace negotiations between the rebel groups and the Sudanese army are making no progress and the current cease fires are deteriorating. On top of that, the African Union peace force does not have the resources to protect itself from kidnappings and killings, much less protect the people of Darfur.

Make no mistake, if we don’t intervene now, the whole country of Sudan could slip into civil war, potentially dragging the surrounding region into the conflict as well. If we wait until that happens, if we choose not to intervene until it is really really urgent, the cost in dollars and lives would grow exponentially. This could be our last chance to protect the people of Sudan, neighboring Chad, and the rest of central Africa. If we were waiting for urgency, we finally have it. There is no choice but to act now.

Congo: Governments to Meet Over Rebel Menace

From IRIN

Representatives of the governments of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda are due to meet on Thursday in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, to discuss ways of handling foreign armed groups operating in eastern Congo, UN News reported.

Quoting Kemal Saiki, the spokesman of the UN Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC, UN News said Thursday's meeting would decide on the measures to be taken against all foreign combatants operating in eastern DRC.

Darfur: Update on Seized Aid Workers

From the BBC

It appears the refugees are demanding the release of one of their leaders arrested by police at the weekend.

Negotiations are continuing at the Kalma camp near the South Darfur capital, Nyala.

Some 2m people have been forced from their homes since fighting between Darfur's black African rebels and Arab militias began early in 2003.

The BBC's Jonah Fisher in Sudan says he understands that the refugee leader, or "Sheikh", has now been set free, paving the way for the possible release of the hostages.

Our correspondent says that after spending two-and-a-half years in refugee camps, a social order has been rebuilt, with community leaders at their head.

These men hold a tight grip over the refugee population, often profiting from the distribution of food aid and obstructing attempts by agencies to count the population, our correspondent says.

Details of the hostage-taking are scarce but workers from three different agencies have been seized - two Sudanese organisations and one from the United States.

Sudan: Negotiations

These two stories were discovered via Passion of the Present.

The first

The Sudanese Eastern Front rebel movement said Sunday it would next month meet the government of Sudan for first-ever peace talks, after fighting broke out in June between rebels and government forces.

Amna Marar, the Eastern Front rebel deputy chief, said the meeting, whose venue was not yet known, would be held with United Nations mediation.

"It will be the first-ever peace talks between the government and us. The first step in a long walk," Dirar told AFP.

"The meeting with the government will take place next month, we don't know where yet, and the UN will be the mediator," she said. "We would like Eritrea to be part of the UN mediation."

The second

The main rebel group in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region said it was postponing until Friday a key conference aimed at reconciling its feuding factions ahead of a new round of peace talks with the government next month.

The congress of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) had been due to open Tuesday at an undisclosed location in rebel-held Darfur but organizers said logistical problems had delayed the arrival of foreign observers.

Darfur: Rape Cases are Individual, Says Judge

From the Sudan Tribune

The chairman of the special criminal court for the Darfur states, Mahmoud Abkam, said the rape cases which the court was looking into were individual cases.

He said the court had not found anything on the ground about the cases which Western media always speak about.

Abkam stressed that even if the court went back to the files of the cases in Al-Fashir and Nyala there were no testimonies which indicated that rape was a result of a planned and systematic group act.

Darfur: Refugees Take 34 Aid Workers Hostage

From Reuters

Refugees took 34 aid workers hostage on Tuesday in Darfur's largest refugee camp, demanding the release of one of their leaders arrested by police, U.N. officials and sources in the aid community said.

"We are aware that some NGO (non-governmental organisation) workers have been taken hostage within Kalma camp," U.N. spokesman George Somerwill said.

Another source said negotiations were in progress on the release of the refugees' tribal leader in the hope that this would secure the release of the hostages.

Congo: UN Expert Sees Widespread Rights Abuses

From Reuters

The Democratic Republic of Congo is wracked by "massive human rights violations at all levels," a U.N. human rights investigator reported on Monday.

The situation is troubling throughout Congo's vast territory, but particularly in the east, where government forces and various other armed groups still prey on civilians two years after a 2003 peace agreement ended a five-year civil war, said Titinga Frederic Pacere, the U.N. independent expert on human rights in Congo.

Sudan: Help Africans Help Themselves

An op-ed from Jeremy Barnicle, who works for Mercy Corps, in the Christian Science Monitor

In Darfur, the international community - specifically NATO and the United States - has a unique opportunity to help Africans provide security for their own conflict zones. The village raids have largely subsided, and access for aid workers has improved dramatically in Darfur over the past year, but the countryside is now racked with lawlessness and warlordism. Neither the government of Sudan nor the rebel parties seem able to control the violence.

Within this challenging context, it is critical that Darfurians living in refugee camps start to go home and recover their lives. Peace talks between the government of Sudan and various rebel groups continue in Nigeria, but there is little hope of a durable political agreement in the near future. Meanwhile, the people of Darfur are stuck suffering between no war and no peace.

Their most basic needs are met in displacement camps, but the situation is unsustainable: The longer they are displaced the more expensive it becomes for the international community and the less likely it is that they'll ever get home to rebuild their own communities. Ask a Darfur refugee what she wants and inevitably the answer is "to go home, but only if there is security."

Darfur in the Deepening Shadow of Auschwitz, Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda

The latest from Eric Reeves

A series of extraordinarily dire warnings have recently been issued by various UN officials, a last desperate attempt to force the international community to take urgent cognizance of Darfur’s deepening crisis. Full-scale catastrophe and a massive increase in genocidal destruction are imminent, and there is as yet no evidence that the world is listening seriously. The US in particular seems intent on taking an expediently blinkered view of the crisis (see forthcoming analysis by this writer at The New Republic [on-line], www.tnr.com). But European countries and other international actors with the power to speak the truth are little better; the absence of an effective voice emerging from the Blair government is especially dismaying in light of British willingness to intervene in Iraq.

Even so, there is no possible escape from the most basic truth in Darfur: Khartoum’s National Islamic Front, ever more dominant in the new “Government of National Unity,” is deliberately escalating the level of violence and insecurity as a form of “counter-insurgency” warfare, with the clear goal of accelerating human destruction among the African tribal populations of the region.

In failing to respond to this conspicuous and now fully articulated truth, the world is yet again knowingly acquiescing in genocide. But as the shadows of Auschwitz and Treblinka, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Rwanda fall more heavily over Darfur, we cannot evade this most shameful truth: we know---as events steadily, remorselessly unfold---more about the realities of ethnically-targeted human destruction in Darfur than on any other previous such occasion in history. So much the greater is our moral disgrace.

Sudan: Army, Talisman Closely Linked, Lawsuit Alleges

From the Ottawa Citizen

An oil venture co-owned by Talisman Energy Inc. helped "command the military" protecting its Sudanese facilities at the same time as troops were launching bomb raids on villages from the site, according to documents filed in court this year in a lawsuit against the Calgary firm.

The note is one of dozens of new allegations -- many based on company documents -- that have recently been made public in the four-year-long suit filed in a New York court against Talisman.

The lawsuit, filed under the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act, contends Talisman colluded with the government in genocide and war crimes during the country's bitter war between the Islamic government and mostly non-Muslim rebels in the south.

Congo: Hundreds of Militiants Surrender Arms

From the AP

Over 1,000 militiamen have surrendered their arms in Congo's eastern Ituri province following renewed offensives by the military, a United Nations official said Monday.

But Major Hans-Jakob Reichen, military spokesman for the U.N. in the eastern provinces, said an estimated 15,000 armed militiamen still remained loose in the lawless eastern provinces, the majority of them Rwandan Hutus who fled to Congo after killing in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Help Stop a Weak Senate Resolution and Demand Action, Not Words, on Darfur

From Save Darfur

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) has indicated that he may introduce a Sense of the Senate resolution today regarding Darfur. While the resolution would likely say all of the right things, it would not have the power of law, and could derail the much-needed Darfur Peace and Accountability Act (S. 1462). Basically it would be all words, no action. Please call Senator Frist at 202-224-3344 and tell him that you want real action on Darfur, not a toothless substitute. Urge Senator Frist to instead use his position to pass the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act in the strongest form possible before Congress adjourns for the year.

"Dust People" Starve in Zimbabwe Ruins

From the Sunday Times

SOME call them the “dust people”, others the “people with no address”. President Robert Mugabe’s government has a more graphic term: “Sniff out the rats who have sneaked back in” is the name of the latest campaign by police and soldiers against the city dwellers whose homes they demolished earlier this year but who have refused to flee.

Thousands of Zimbabweans are now living like animals in the midst of rubble, crawling in and out of hovels less than 3ft high, fashioned from cardboard boxes and broken asbestos.

With no means of earning a living — and with aid agencies banned by the government from helping them — they are forced to forage in rubbish for rotten vegetables or prostitute themselves for the equivalent of 10p to feed their children. A doctor who managed to get in said tuberculosis was rife.

These are the victims of Operation Murambatsvina (drive out the filth), Mugabe’s so-called urban beautification campaign which, according to a damning report by the United Nations, left more than 700,000 homeless or without an income.

Yet last week the United Nations flew Zimbabwe’s president on an all-expenses-paid trip to Rome to celebrate World Food Day in defiance of European Union travel sanctions. Flanked by bodyguards, he proclaimed that there was no hunger in his country and blamed its problems on George W Bush and Tony Blair, branding them international terrorists and likening them to Hitler and Mussolini.

Such hypocrisy comes as no surprise to the people squatting amid piles of debris in southern Harare, who feel abandoned by the outside world.

Darfur: U.N. Says Truce in Peril

From the Los Angeles Times via Passion of the Present

The head of the United Nations refugee agency has issued a warning that the cease-fire in Sudan's Darfur region is unraveling, which could lead to a catastrophic increase in deaths in coming weeks and spread instability in sub-Saharan Africa.

In remarks delivered here Friday and made available to The Times on Saturday, Antonio Guterres, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, said he sees "a very serious degeneration of the situation" in Darfur. "People are dying, and dying in large numbers," he said.

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Guterres used the occasion of a U.N. event here to call attention to waning international pressure on the parties in the disputed region, where the pro-government forces have driven hundreds of thousands of Darfur residents from their homes.

The situation threatens to become much worse, and international aid workers, who have been attacked on the roads in the Darfur region in recent weeks, no longer can get around, making them unable to bear witness to what has been happening, he said.

"There is something fundamentally wrong in the world for those things … to be going on, and on, and on, amidst a basic lack of interest from those who might do something," Guterres said. "If there is the engagement of the international community putting pressure mainly on the government of Sudan but also the rebels in the field, there will be a solution. The international community needs to be actively engaged for putting pressure so that things can be settled."

Why Wait on Darfur?

An op-ed by Robert I. Rotberg, director of the Program on Intrastate Conflict at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and president of the World Peace Foundation

''NEVER AGAIN!" promised Washington, London, Brussels and the United Nations after the massacres in Bosnia, Cambodia, and Rwanda. But the killing fields of Darfur are more than two years old, and still the world permits innocent farmers, children, and displaced people to be killed and women repeatedly raped. What is to be done?

Despite the presence of African Union military observers, displaced people living in squalid encampments in Darfur and along the western border have been attacked by marauding janjaweed, Arabic speaking militia on camelback. Official Sudanese military helicopters have reputedly strafed villages in support of janjaweed assaults. Soldiers from several armies of the African Union have ''monitored" many of these attacks, but without interfering.

Their limited and constrained mandate and their insufficient numbers (not yet at the 7,000 target strength for a war-ravaged area the size of France) give the African Union effort more of a cosmetic than a meaningful role in damping down the persistent conflict between the government-backed janjaweed from northern Darfur and their prey from southern Darfur.

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So far, the big powers and the UN have respected the Sudan's sovereignty and avoided forceful intervention. African Union observers have served as proxies for real action, but they are too few, have little equipment, fuel, and ability to patrol, and have their hands tied by wrong orders. Waiting for the AU to become more robust is a recipe of despair, because of the Sudan's prominent membership in the organization. Given the UN's newly endorsed ''responsibility to protect" norm, much more can and should be done to save lives.

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Petroleum exports, worth about $1 billion a year to Khartoum, provide the national lifeline. They are the military government's only means of support. Cutting off exports, easily done at Port Sudan on the Red Sea by one or two American, British, or French frigates, authorized by the UN, would concentrate the minds of the rulers of the Sudan and presumably compel them to restrain the janjaweed and negotiate sensibly in Abuja.

So would the insertion of NATO or European Union troops into Darfur with a clear mandate not to watch, but forcibly to prevent further losses of life. Annan could and should demand such action before thousands more are killed senselessly across the desert wastes of Darfur.

So far the Sudan has called the UN's bluff. It must not be allowed to operate any longer with impunity.

Why wait? It is true that China, which imports oil from the Sudan, might object. So might Russia, or African nation-states attempting to protect the Sudan.

But the UN General Assembly is now on record in favor of ''protecting" innocent civilians within sovereign countries and within war zones. Local commanders of the AU monitoring force also know that they are making little difference in halting hostilities. They have told their governments they feel powerless and frustrated. Darfur is the place to begin showing that the world cares.

Sudan: Rising Violence Threatens Gains in Slashing Malnutrition Rates

From IRIN

Sustained humanitarian aid has resulted in almost halving malnutrition rates in the western Sudanese region of Darfur since 2004, a food security and nutrition assessment found.

However, escalating violence is threatening the aid operation, the survey found.

Preliminary results of the food security and nutrition assessment carried out in Darfur showed global acute malnutrition rates (GAM) among children under the age of five years fell to 11.9 percent in September, from 21.8 percent at the same period in 2004, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said in a statement on Friday.

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The survey showed that coverage of food aid, selective feeding programmes, safe drinking water and sanitation and health programmes had improved in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and surrounding host populations, but that aid to affected populations in the rural areas, particularly in areas not controlled by the government, had been extremely low.

"Assistance needs to reach communities in the rural areas while we continue to sustain ongoing services in the IDP camps and immediate surrounding areas," Keith McKenzie, UNICEF special representative for the Darfur emergency, said. "Women and children in these hard-to-reach rural areas are now the most vulnerable and are at high risk of malnutrition and disease."

WFP Country Director Ramiro Lopes da Silva said the current rise in violence was severely affecting humanitarian work across Darfur.

"What we should be doing now is building on the achievements of the last 12 months of hard work.

"We should be expanding our operation to cover areas of need among rural populations and nomads who are also suffering as a result of the conflict, which is disrupting markets and their entire local economy.

"Instead, because of the violence, much of our time is spent devising contingency plans, just to maintain the gains we've made so far," Lopes da Silva.

Darfur: Rebels to Meet, Choose New Leaders

From Reuters

Darfur's main rebel group will choose a new leadership at a unity conference this week in the troubled region bordering Chad, commanders said on Sunday.

Talks to end the Darfur conflict, called a genocide by the United States, made little headway in a 6th round just ended in the Nigerian capital Abuja. Fighting and rebel splits have hampered progress.

Conference organiser Ibrahim Ahmed Ibrahim told Reuters from Darfur that all the Sudan Liberation Army leadership was urged to attend because this was a call "by the grass roots of the movement".

He added: "There will be voting on the leadership of the movement."

The conference will be held from Oct. 25-28 in SLA areas.

Darfur: Gunfire in Main Town

From Reuters

Heavy gunfire in West Darfur's main town kept aid staff locked in their homes in the latest violence in the remote region bordering Chad, sources in the aid community and U.N. officials said on Sunday.

Aid workers have been confined to el-Geneina after clashes and armed looters closed all the roads out of the town to U.N. staff.

Non-essential staff have been preparing for a possible full evacuation if the violence escalates, U.N. officials have said.

"There was firing heard in seven or eight locations in the town last night," said one source, who declined to be named.

"Police said it was drunk soldiers who had been paid early because of Eid," the source added. Eid is the Muslim holiday which marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Darfur: Sudan Not Trying War Crimes

From Reuters

Sudan arbitrarily arrests and tortures civilians and has failed to try those responsible for crimes committed during a 2-1/2-year revolt in its Darfur region, a senior U.N. rights official said on Saturday.

Sima Samar, the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Sudan, said there was a culture of impunity for those who raped women, especially in Darfur, and that the government's excuses for inaction were not acceptable.

"Gender-based violence continues unfortunately with impunity," she told reporters after a week-long trip to Sudan.

"The government acknowledges the existence of sexual violence but contests the magnitude of the problem," she added.

She said emergency laws in force in Darfur in western Sudan and in the east were also being applied in the capital Khartoum.

"People are arbitrarily arrested and held incommunicado," she said at U.N. headquarters in Khartoum.

"Detention by security forces, torture, ill-treatment and killing of civilians continues," Samar said, singling out mistreatment of people internally displaced by conflicts.

The government admits there are problems with its security forces but says it investigates all rights violations.

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Samar, a Muslim from Afghanistan, said a special national court for war crimes in Darfur had tackled too few cases and had not dealt with crimes committed during the conflict, focussing rather on random looting incidents.

"Unfortunately it was not really the crimes committed during the war in Darfur," she said, adding the court's chief justice had said that of 72,000 complaints filed in Darfur, it had tried only three cases.

The government says the national court will be a substitute for the International Criminal Court (ICC) which is investigating alleged war crimes in Darfur. But investigators have yet to be granted permission to visit Sudan.

"Unfortunately the minister of justice clearly said that they are not going to cooperate with the ICC," Samar said.

Darfur: U.S. Hopes for Deal by Year End

From Reuters

The United States hopes Sudan will secure a peace deal by the end of the year to end a revolt in Darfur and remove an obstacle to lifting U.S. sanctions, a senior State Department official said on Saturday.

The United States has called the 2-1/2 years of fighting between rebels, the Sudanese army and Arab militias genocide, and held Khartoum and the allied militias responsible -- a charge Khartoum rejects.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the fighting and more than 2 million have been forced from their homes. The International Criminal Court is investigating alleged war crimes.

"We are hoping that at latest by the end of the year that you will have a political solution to the crisis in Darfur," Jendayi Frazer, the U.S. assistant secretary of State for Africa, told reporters in Khartoum. "We are not satisfied with the level of progress there (in Darfur)."

Darfur: Agony Goes on as the UN Fails to Act

Also from the Scotsman

FIFTEEN months after the United Nations' Security Council issued an ultimatum to the government of Sudan to clean up its act in Darfur or face action, shocking new evidence of atrocities is emerging. Various governments have labelled the campaign of murder and forced displacement in Darfur as genocide and the UN last year described Darfur as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Yet according to the UN's own situation reports and accounts of investigations by African Union (AU) peacekeeping forces, the black African farmers targeted in the initial wave of violence continue to face the daily threat of violence.

This is a very well-written and important piece and I urge you all to read it.

Darfur: Death Toll Tops 100,000 Since UN Directive

From the Scotsman

MORE than 100,000 people are now believed to have died in the Darfur region of Sudan since the United Nations Security Council set a 30-day deadline last year for the Khartoum regime to begin to resolve the crisis in the area.

Humanitarian agencies and the African Union are warning that the situation in Darfur is again deteriorating, with five AU peacekeepers killed in the past week and parts of the region inaccessible after an aid convoy was ambushed and the staff stripped and beaten.

Shocking new evidence of atrocities committed by the Sudanese government and its janjaweed militia allies in Darfur region has emerged in previously confidential African Union reports, and in the United Nations' own briefing papers. The evidence includes accounts of rapes, murders and the razing of entire villages - accounts which have been confirmed by AU monitors.

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On 30 July last year the UN security council gave the Sudanese government 30 days to make progress on pledges to resolve what is now widely recognised as genocide, and what the UN itself described as the world's worst humanitarian disaster.

Since then, thousands more people have died. Exact figures remain hard to come by, but World Health Organisation's estimates suggest about 100,000 have died since that deadline was set. WHO estimated that about 10,000 people a month died last year, and although that figure has now fallen to about 5,000 a month, the death rate among children under the age of five is double the overall average and the situation is described as "extremely fragile."

World Has Just Weeks to Save Darfur

From Reuters

The world has just weeks to help restore peace in Sudan's Darfur region or risk watching it slide back into civil war with repercussions for the whole region, U.N. refugee chief Antonio Guterres said on Friday.

A patchy cease-fire was falling apart as the two main rebel groups began to disintegrate, an African Union (AU) peace force was hopelessly undermanned, under-equipped and under-funded and the world appeared to have lost interest, he said.

"Everything is getting out of control. This is happening on both sides," Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told Reuters. "The crucial moment is from now to the end of the year."

"We are close to a moment in which a new major tragedy might occur in Darfur," he added at the launch of a DVD of a concert last December to raise money for refugees from the strife-torn region the size of France.

"It would have a major impact on the neighbours ... and on the whole African region."

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Security in Darfur has deteriorated in recent weeks, especially in the area bordering Chad, where militias have attacked refugee camps and AU personnel have been abducted by dissident rebels.

Guterres said that if Darfur, where banditry is rife and aid agencies are virtually unable to operate, collapsed into civil war again it could not only destabilise the whole of the vast country but the entire area.

"Even our staff there can barely move. There is no security," he said. "What we are witnessing on the ground is a very serious deterioration."

Yet the international community -- which had appeared to have focussed its attention on Darfur a year ago and persuaded all sides to talk -- had turned its eyes elsewhere.

He urged the United Nations, the European Union and other major international players like China to refocus their efforts to reinvigorate the peace talks and give the 6,000-strong AU force the ability to operate effectively.

"The engagement of the international community is absolutely crucial," he said. "Darfur became a forgotten crisis."

"The African Union force cannot effectively protect the people of Darfur ... and in some cases even themselves," he said, likening the task facing the fledgling force to placing one policeman in London and asking him to stop all crime there.

Sudan: C-R International Llc

According to this page, here is the info for C/R International LLC, the PR firm hired by Sudan to improve its image in the US

C/R International LLC
1150 17th St NW
Washington, DC 20036-4603
Phone: (202) 861-6490
Business Types: Public Relations Consultants

C/R International LLC
1150 17th St NW
Washington, DC 20036-4603
Phone: (202) 331-4151
Business Types: Public Relations Consultants

Congo: African Nations Want Sanctions on Militias

From Reuters

Nations in Africa's Great Lakes region called on Friday for international sanctions against armed groups operating in eastern Congo, and said militia fighters should be disarmed using all means necessary.

Senior officials from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) held two days of talks after a group of Uganda's notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels fled into the Congolese jungles last month.

In a statement, the officials from the four nations said armed groups in eastern DRC had continued to attack civilians in Congo, and in neighbouring countries.

They said legal, political and military action must be taken, including for the first time "legal prosecution, extradition and trial of leaders of negative forces; visa and travel bans; fundraising and financial restrictions".

Uganda: Fighting a Phantom

From Kevin Sites' Hot Zone

Pvt. Joey Ongala of the Uganda People's Defense Force (UPDF) has seen so many clashes with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) he can't remember them all. But he does see a pattern.

"They're always young; they're always in tatters," he says. "They also seem very hungry, but they still try to fight us."

Ongala is waiting to lead his squad into a thickly forested area about two miles from an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Amida, northern Uganda.

"I've had to kill many of them -- unless they surrender. I sometimes feel bad, but these children are firing at us," Ongala says.

This area used to be a frequent target of the LRA, whose fighters would scavenge for food or attempt ambushes. But Ongala says they haven't had any contact around here in weeks.

In fact, many UPDF commanders say the LRA is finished -- that their numbers have been depleted from a high of about 30,000 in the late '90s to just a few hundred fighters today.

But why, many people are asking, has it taken the Ugandan government 20 years to put a stop to an insurgency that can accurately be described as a child-snatching, terroristic cult?

Part of the difficulty has been the group's founder and leader, Joseph Kony, who wants to establish a Ugandan government based on the Ten Commandments. He may be bizarre, but many consider him a brilliant battlefield tactician.

Kony's movement seems to be spiritual in name only.

The LRA is accused of committing a litany of atrocities from murder to mutilation. But its main stock in trade has been the widespread kidnapping of children, who are then turned into fighters, servants or even wives for LRA rebels.

Kony uses this strategy, former abductees say, because he knows he can more easily brainwash children than adults. By replacing their family with his, he makes them both vulnerable and obedient.

He has often tested their loyalty by sending them on missions to kill their own parents and family.

Congo/Uganda: Kinshasa Rejects Kampala's Proposal to Redeploy Troops

From IRIN

The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has rejected a proposal by Uganda to redeploy its troops to eastern Congo to hunt Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels as well as other Ugandan rebels groups there, Congolese government spokesman and Minister for Information Henri Mova Sakanyi said on Friday.

Saying Uganda should forget the proposal, he said: "The best way to fight the LRA rebels is by decimating them when they are in Uganda where they have been based for more than 20 years."

Darfur: Annan Calls for International Action

From IRIN

The escalation of violence in Sudan's western region of Darfur may threaten peace negotiations in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, and the international community needs to apply concerted pressure to reach a successful outcome, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in his latest report on the strife-torn region.

"The frequency and intensity of the violence committed by the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Popular Defence Forces, government-aligned tribal militia and the armed movements - including in particular the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army [SLM/A] - reached levels unseen since January 2005," Annan said in the report to the UN Security Council.

"Because of the urgency of the present situation, the international community's efforts must be immediate, coordinated and determined," he said.

He urged the international community to put "decisive and concerted pressure on the parties" to the conflict.

New Law Threatens Aid Organizations in Sudan

Send a message via Human Rights First

In the coming weeks, the Sudanese National Assembly could turn a temporary measure restricting the operation of nongovernmental organizations in Sudan into a permanent law.

In war-torn Sudan, where human rights violations are massive and the humanitarian crisis is worsening, this law would prevent necessary protection and aid from reaching the millions who need it.

The Organization of Humanitarian and Voluntary Work Act affects both local and international organizations that provide humanitarian aid and monitor human rights. Among many harmful provisions, the law gives government ministers broad and unchecked power to summarily close organizations and place heavy restrictions on receipt of foreign funding.

With support from people like you, we can protect the right of independent organizations to function. A first step is making sure that the Voluntary Work Act conforms to Sudan's constitution and to its obligations under international law so that human rights organizations can continue their critical work.

Sudan: Lobbying

Save Darfur alerts us to this

The [Bush] Administration has also this week issued the Sudanese government a special waiver allowing them to hire a Washington lobbyist to improve their public image and fight any legislation they deem as hostile. Several Members of Congress, including Virginia Republican Frank Wolf, have expressed their outrage that Sudan would be allowed to hire lobbyists here in the U.S. while they continue to aid the Janjaweed militias in Darfur.

Here is a link to Rep. Frank Wolf's denunciation

Mr. Speaker, here we go again. First it was Patton, Boggs trying to polish the image of Saudi Arabia. Then we had Akin, Gump trying to assist China in buying a U.S. oil company. Now comes the shocking news that a Washington lobby shop has landed the Government of the Republic of Sudan as a client. Where will the lobbying wheel of fortune stop next?

The Government of Sudan has hired Mr. Robert J. Cabelly, managing director, C/R International, to lobby on its behalf. How can an American company use such bad judgment and represent a country whose leaders are suspected of organizing and arming militias to commit genocide? And why did the United States State Department sign-off on such a plan?

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But make no mistake, Sudan is hiring this firm to help counteract the ongoing worldwide campaign against the government’s policy in the Darfur region of the country. This American company is taking money to wage a lobbying war against the hundreds of organizations and more than 130 million Americans who have voiced their concern about the situation in Sudan. While coalition groups work every day to call the world’s attention to the regime in Khartoum and its condoning of the action of a violent militia which is raping and killing innocent women, men and children and pillaging villages in Darfur, they might be surprised to learn that one of the Government of Sudan’s contract employees in working against it right here in Washington. Just last week there were new reports that the violence in Darfur is growing worse. The Sudan government has not reined in the janjaweed militia.

There is no question about what is occurring in Sudan. Last year the United States clearly stated that genocide is occurring in Darfur. This Congress passed a resolution affirming it. President Bush has called the actions in Darfur as genocide on repeated occasions. The United Nations has referred the case to an international tribunal to investigate war crimes.

Congo/Uganda: Kampala Seeks Approval to Redeploy Troops to Congo

From IRIN

Uganda sought approval on Thursday from the Democratic Republic of Congo to redeploy troops into eastern Congo to hunt members of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) who entered the country in September, Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa said.

"The LRA is a terrorist organisation, which has been operating out of Sudan for the last 10 years, now they are moving into DRC, which brings a new dynamic," Kutesa said in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, when he opened a security conference for Africa's Great Lakes region.

Silently, Malawi Begins to Starve

From the Guardian

Farayi Mutsa is slumped in the shade outside Nsanje district hospital, gently holding his daughter, Azineyi. Her wrists are barely thicker than an adult thumb and her mouth is stained purple where nurses have applied zinc oxide cream to her sores. She looks six months old; she is three years.

Mr Mutsa, 33, planted maize, rice and bulrush millet but the rains never arrived and he had no crops to bring home last April. He survived on the pittance he earned from working as a traditional "African doctor" but his unguents could not protect his daughter from the hidden hunger that threatens the lives of five million people in Malawi.

Last week the entire country was declared a disaster area by its president. Aid agencies warn that nearly half the country's 12 million population could starve in the next six months without massive and immediate food donations. So far, it has not been forthcoming. The UN World Food Programme still needs $76m (£43.3m) to feed 2.9 million Malawians until the harvest in April. Sheila Sisulu, deputy executive director of the WFP, described international inaction over Malawi as "deplorable".

Zimbabwe: Security Agencies Warn of Violent Mugabe Ouster

From ZWNEWS.com

State security agencies fear President Robert Mugabe’s government could be overthrown in a popular uprising, warning that worsening economic hardships were fast eroding the patience of long suffering Zimbabweans, according to confidential internal police communication shown to Zim Online.

In a bid to forestall possible mass uprising, the Joint Operations Command (JOC), comprising the police, the spy Central Intelligence Organisation and the army, has drawn up a list of 55 political and civic leaders it says are the “most dangerous individuals” who must be kept under surveillance to ensure they do not mobilise Zimbabweans to rise up.

Main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party leader Morgan Tsvangirai tops the list that also includes Mugabe’s former chief propagandist and now independent parliamentarian, Jonathan Moyo.

The Globe and Mail: One-Woman Mission Works for Peace

From The Globe and Mail

Betty Bigombe wants the United Nations to help end the civil war now raging in northern Uganda, but the recent decision by the UN's International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for rebel leaders isn't the kind of intervention she had in mind.

Ms. Bigombe has worked as a one-woman peace mission for the past 20 months in an effort to end the conflict between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Uganda government in her native region.

Backed by a Vancouver-based non-governmental organization, she travelled to New York this week to lobby for the Security Council to pressure the warring sides to work for peace.

She said there appears to be a double standard at work at the council, which has taken modest steps to end slaughter in the Darfur region of Sudan, but ignored the war across the border in Uganda.

"Why has Darfur attracted so much attention and yet you have a situation of one of the worst humanitarian disasters and the international community still doesn't think it should go to the level of the Security Council?" she demands.

Ms. Bigombe says the Ugandan civil war is a test of the UN's newly enunciated principle that it has a "responsibility to protect" those civilians whose governments can't or won't protect them.

Uganda Wants Joint Operations Against LRA

From Reuters

Uganda should join forces with Congolese soldiers and U.N. peacekeepers against Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, some of whom have fled into eastern Congo, Uganda's foreign minister said on Thursday.

Sam Kutesa told a regional meeting called to discuss the LRA's incursion into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that there had been no progress on routing foreign fighters still camped in the lawless east of the vast African country.

He said Uganda wanted to work with the Congolese government and U.N. peacekeepers to deny the rebels a safe haven.

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As well as officials from Uganda, DRC, Rwanda and Burundi, the two-day meeting is being attended by the U.N. special representative in Congo, William Swing, and Donald Yamamoto, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for African Affairs.

US Intensifies Focus on Sudan

From the AP

Members of the US Congress inaugurated the first "Sudan caucus" to try to focus attention on that embattled country, which despite a truce still struggles for true peace after 30 years of civil war.

"This is not about Sudan, which is a small part of the world and not important. This is about humanity," said Republican Michael Capuano of Massachusetts, one of four chairmen of the bipartisan caucus.

What is happening, Capuano and others said on Wednesday, is the government of President Omar el-Bashir is pulling back on agreements he made in January since the rebel leader, John Garang, died in a July plane crash three months after he was sworn in as Sudan's first vice-president.

Garang was the first Christian vice-president for the country run by Arab-descended Muslims.

The members of the House of Representatives also are denouncing violence in the western Sudan region of Darfur, which began in 2003, even while the North-South negotiations were in progress.

Capuano said, "I find embarrassing as a human being" that the Sudanese government is not being held accountable for Darfur or for lack of full implementation of the peace agreement with the south.

Sudan/Uganda: LRA Attacks Hampering Aid Effort

From IRIN

Continued attacks on civilians in southern Sudan by the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), are making humanitarian access to the region's vulnerable populations increasingly difficult, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said on Wednesday.

It said the impaired access was preventing relief agencies from forming a clear picture of the numbers of affected populations and delivering much-needed aid, the UN News Service reported.

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UNMIS also said continued extortion and forced conscription of returnees by local militias was of concern to humanitarian agencies operating in Sudan's south, a region emerging from a 21-year war. Humanitarian agencies expect some four million southern Sudanese refugees to return home in the near future.

In the three states of western Sudan's troubled Darfur region, UNMIS said armed clashes and banditry had also hampered humanitarian access to populations in need - villagers throughout the region had reported continuous harassment by nomads and militia through looting, banditry and forced payment of "protection taxes".

In West Darfur alone, aid to some 170,000 people had been temporarily restricted, while in North Darfur, three separate and serious clashes had been reported over the past six days involving government troops, rebels and militia.

Darfur: Peace Talks to Adjourn to November

From Reuters

The sixth round of African Union-mediated talks to end the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region will adjourn until November, mediators and delegates said on Thursday.

The talks, which began on a sluggish note in the Nigerian capital Abuja in mid-September, have been stymied by rebel disunity, growing violence in Darfur, a political standoff in Khartoum and deteriorating relations between Sudan and the AU.

"The sixth round of talks was planned for one month and it is one month now. Everybody is tired so we are going on break to resume on Nov. 20," an AU spokesman said.

Much of the negotiation has centred on technical points rather than tangible issues of wealth and power-sharing needed to end the conflict, which started in early 2003 and has driven 2 million people from their homes to refugee in camps in the vast arid region and across the border in Chad.

Darfur: AU Extends AMIS Mission

A press release from the AU

The Peace and Security Council of the African Union met today in Addis Ababa to extend the mandate of the AMIS, which, after one year of operations in Darfur, expired today, October 20, 2005.

The AU Peace and Security Council expressed deep concern at the deteriorating security situation in Darfur and resolved to take all necessary measures to help restore peace and stability in Darfur.

At the end of their deliberations, The Council requested the Chairperson of the African Union, Prof.Alpha Omar Konare, to make, within two months, a detailed report to the Council on all aspects of AMIS operations in Darfur during the past one year, including the need to review, as appropriate, the mandate and rules of engagement of the AMIS Forces.

Darfur: UN Denies Withdrawal of Aid Workers

From Xinhua/ST

A senior official of the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) on Wednesday denied the allegations that the UN aid agencies would pull out of Darfur due to the worsening security in the region.

UN Deputy Representative for Sudan Amanuel Aranda Da Silva told a press conference here that the international humanitarian community is accustomed to work in severe circumstances in Darfur, therefore, is determined to continue its humanitarian mission there.

Darfur: Fighting Hinders Aid

From the AP

Fighting and insecurity throughout Darfur is hindering food and relief aid to tens of thousands of people and forcing more displaced Sudanese into already crammed refugee camps, the United Nations said Wednesday.

A recent spike in violence, marked by increased banditry and attacks on African Union peacekeepers, has led to the closure of many roads, particularly around the West Darfur capital of Geneina where 170,000 people have had relief assistance temporarily restricted, U.N. spokesman George Somerwill told reporters.

"Some aid is not being delivered to those who need it, which is making people desperate and driving them into camps," Somerwill told The Associated Press.

Republic of Congo: Army Moves Against Ex-Rebels

From Reuters

Explosions and gunfire rocked a neighbourhood of the Congo Republic's capital on Wednesday as government security forces moved to dislodge former rebel fighters sheltering there, state radio said.

Witnesses saw local residents fleeing the fighting in Brazzaville's southern Bacongo district, where six people were killed last week in clashes between police and former rebel fighters known as Ninjas.

The radio said an army operation was in progress to dislodge the Ninjas and it appealed to the population to remain calm, saying the military had the situation under control.

Congo: Militia Frees Hostages

From Reuters

Congolese militiamen have released 43 local disarmament officers they had threatened to burn alive unless they were paid cash for handing in their weapons, officials said on Wednesday.

More than 500 "Mai Mai" militia took the hostages in Luvungi disarmament camp, near the eastern town of Bukavu, late on Tuesday to demand an initial payment of $110 each they say the national disarmament commission owes them.

"They thought the money they are owed had been stolen but I contacted one of them and explained that this is was not true," said Mbo Wassa, a senior disarmament commission official.

"I told them they would have their money by the weekend and thankfully calm has now returned. Our people are fine."

Stomp Out Genocide

Timberland has released a new boot, designed by Don Cheadle, to highlight the genocide in Darfur.

Darfur: Nomads Face Adversity in Isolation

From IRIN

Still energetic at the age of 65, Mahmud Mohamed Masar guides a small herd of camels across a windswept plain near Eid El Nabak. Although life had always been difficult for his clan, it has never been as hard as in the past two years, when he lost three sons and 10 relatives.

Mohamed Masar is a clan leader of the 10,000-strong Riziegat-Jalul Arab nomadic community. They had temporarily set up camp approximately 40 km east of Kabkabiya town in North Darfur, where the scattered ruins of villages bear witness to the destruction that took place in this region.

As large numbers of villages were levelled or abandoned in a government-led campaign that started in 2003, the region's economy was destroyed, markets were closed and nomads were cut off from their traditional sources of food and medical assistance.

"Since the war, we lost many of our people and a lot of animals. We also lost our clinics and markets," explained Mohamed Masar.

Agricultural communities of African descent, such as the Fur, also fled the countryside. While these groups found a certain measure of relief from humanitarian agencies in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) around the main towns, most nomadic communities stayed out in the field, fending for themselves in a highly volatile and insecure environment.

Due to the increasingly polarised political atmosphere, many of Darfur's residents equate Arab nomads with the notorious "Janjawid" - government-allied militiamen who have been accused of terrorising the region's non-Arab tribes.

As a result, nomads - which make up an estimated 20 percent of Darfur’s 6 million population - rarely come to IDP camps to ask for assistance. Besides being reluctant to give up their lifestyle and freedom, they fear being lynched by the predominantly African IDP community.

Congo: An Action Plan

A new report from the International Crisis Group

The Democratic Republic of the Congo will likely relapse into mass violence unless the Congolese parties and the international community take urgent measures.

A Congo Action Plan, the latest policy briefing from the International Crisis Group, lays out a comprehensive and urgent set of actions to save the peace process and produce a successful transition to elected government by June 2006. Reunification has been plagued by government corruption and mismanagement, failure to reform the security sector, the ongoing threat of the Rwandan Hutu insurgency FDLR based in the eastern Congo, and a weak UN peacekeeping mission (MONUC) that is not adequately protecting civilians.

"With elections already postponed for a year, security sector reform, good governance and justice cannot await a new government", says Suliman Baldo, Crisis Group's Africa Program Director. "They must be prerequisites for elections or the transition process will continue to crumble, and the country will descend into renewed ethnic violence".

Congo: Militia Takes 43 Disarmament Officers Hostage

From Reuters

Militiamen have taken 43 Congolese disarmament officers hostage and are threatening to burn them alive unless they are paid cash for handing in their weapons, officials said on Wednesday.

More than 500 "Mai Mai" militia were holding the officers in Luvungi disarmament camp, near the eastern town of Bukavu, to protest against not receiving an initial payment of $110 each they say the national disarmament commission owes them.

Uganda: Peace Talks May Yet be Possible with LRA

From Reuters

Peace talks with brutal Uganda guerrillas to end 19 years of civil war may yet be possible despite international arrest warrants against their leaders, the mediator between the government and the rebels said on Tuesday.

Betty Bigombe, a former Ugandan minister who tried for years to persuade the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to end 19 years of abducting, raping and killing children, said she had thought recent arrest warrants by the new International Criminal Court would wreck any chances for negotiations.

But now Bigombe said, "I am in the process of analyzing and understanding what is doable and what is not doable, what factors can we use to bring out those that are not indicted."

"I am looking at the possibility of restarting the peace process," she told a news conference.

Bigombe was appealing to key diplomats and U.N. officials for help in presenting a peace plan to LRA followers. Other speakers at the news conference hoped for U.N. pressure on Uganda's army to step up patrols and on Sudan, where the LRA is based.

[edit]

John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group think tank, who has been helping Bigombe, said the international community could assist in a peace plan and put pressure on Sudan, where the LRA has its base.

"Now is the time to press forward with a peace proposal that would end the war once and for all," Prendergast said. But he acknowledged no one knew how Kony "would be neutralized" -- by death, capture or agreeing to a peace deal -- so all three had to be pursued.

He said the Uganda government was protected by African nations, who did not want any issue that could violate sovereignty raised in the Security Council. And he said the United States respected Uganda's support for counterterrorism and the Iraq and Afghanistan war.

"Therefore, the United States is not going to challenge Museveni on this question in northern Uganda," he said.

Darfur: US Now Sees Darfur Rebels as Part of the Problem

From The East African

The United States is growing increasingly critical of rebel forces in Sudan’s Darfur region – to the point where Washington is holding the rebels and government-allied militias equally responsible for the continued violence in Darfur.

[edit]

The conflict between the rebels and the pro-government Janjaweed militias "has gone on for far too long," Mr Ereli added, saying "it is an incumbent on all sides to take actions" to promote peace in Darfur.

Jendayi Frazer, the assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, is scheduled to travel to Darfur and to Khartoum on October 20 and 23 when she will presumably reiterate US demands on both the rebels and the Sudan government.

US denunciation of rebel violence should be seen more as a shift in tone than a change of policy, the US had never expressed support for the rebellion in Darfur.

"We hold no brief with the rebels," a senior State Department official told reporters more than a year ago. "Their political positions are not particularly attractive to us."

American policy in regard to the Darfur conflict thus differs markedly from Washington’s position on the separate rebellion that raged for many years in southern Sudan. There, the US clearly sympathised with the rebel forces led by John Garang, although the State Department did occasionally criticise the southern Sudan guerrillas.

Until recently, the Bush administration took the position that the Sudan government and its allied militias were almost entirely to blame for the violence in Darfur, which has resulted in an estimated 300,000 deaths.

In fact, top US officials, including President Bush, have said that forces aligned with Khartoum are carrying out genocide in Darfur.

But Washington’s rhetoric has changed in the past few weeks. While continuing to fault the Janjaweed forces and their sponsors in Khartoum, the US is openly expressing exasperation with the rebel groups. This shift in emphasis coincides with a worsening rift within the rebels’ own ranks.

Sudan: Escaping Africa's Longest Civil War

From the Mail & Guardian

Despite the hardship, this is part of the “peace dividend” from Africa’s longest civil war. With a deal agreed between the largely Arab north and the southern rebel group, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), hundreds of thousands of the four-million who fled the fighting have started the dangerous journey back.

Not all are going “home”. More than two decades of conflict have produced a generation who were not yet born when their parents fled or are too young to remember anything except life in overcrowded camps. United Nations officials expect 580 000 to move between now and March in the start of what could be the world’s biggest return of displaced people. They are going to one of Africa’s poorest regions, where war has destroyed much of what was only a flimsy peacetime infrastructure of schools and health clinics.

Adding to the looming crisis is the so-called “Darfur distraction”, the fact that the main donor governments have switched attention to the victims of Sudan’s most recent war.

Overseeing a mound of suitcases and sacks filled with clothes, John Gideon helped his wife and six children clamber out of a launch at Malakal this week after an overnight journey from Melut. It was the latest ordeal on a 1 400km trek that included three different minibuses from Khartoum and will continue on a barge to his hometown of Juba. Her arms swollen with mosquito bites, his wife dipped a bowl into the Nile, soaped and rinsed her children, and dressed them in clean outfits on the quayside. The family had to sell some of their bedding and furniture to raise about R3 000 needed for their fares.

Like half the war’s displaced people, Gideon escaped to Khartoum, where those from the south were herded into sprawling camps, which the Arab authorities periodically cleared out, forcing people further into the desert, sometimes at gunpoint.

This year’s peace deal allowed people to think seriously of returning to the south at last, but for many the trigger to pack up was an outbreak of violence after a helicopter crash killed John Garang, the SPLM’s veteran leader. At least 200 people died and tensions have not abated.

“They burned the barber’s shop I owned. I can’t work there any longer,” said Gideon.

Their journey so far had been without violence, but others were not so lucky. On the wharf at Kosti, where people sometimes wait for three weeks for a place on a barge, a woman breastfeeding a child said soldiers often harassed women at night.

At N’bal, a remote area in the Nuba mountains, where up to 1 000 displaced people returned two weeks ago, Siham Alamba recounted how armed men in government uniforms and balaclavas had ambushed the lorry she was on.

Several passengers were injured in the shooting, while she and her 15-year-old son, who had money from his stepfather to pay for his schooling, were robbed along with the others. “Once we got there, we had to finish our journey with a 12-hour walk,” she said.

Darfur: Obama and Bolton

Here is an exchange between Sen. Obama and John Bolton at the hearing mentioned in the previous post

OBAMA: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Ambassador Bolton, thank you for taking the time to be with us.

Let me jump back to a question that was raised just a few moments earlier by several of my fellow committee members, and that's related to Darfur.

I have complimented this administration for having pushed on this issue more than some of the other Security Council members have. And I appreciate, I think, the seriousness that Secretary Rice and others in the administration have taken the Darfur situation in the past.

I am concerned, as you indicated in your testimony just now, that certain reports indicated a deterioration in Darfur. We've got a situation in which the Sudanese government has not arrested or removed any of the Janjaweed or Sudanese government officials suspected of carrying out and ordering atrocities. The peace process in Abuja seems to be going nowhere. The A.U. forces seem to be failing in deterring violence. And the political process seems to be failing to bring peace.

And so I would just like to know from you, before we move on, what the current status of U.S. efforts are to ramp this up in the United Nations. And, specifically, you might also just address with respect to the security situation: What approach do you think we should be looking at in terms of strengthening the A.U. forces in the area? Do they need a greater mandate? Do we need to stand up a U.N. peacekeeping force, some sort of hybrid U.N.-A.U. force? What are the tools in the tool kit right now that would allow us to make real progress here?

BOLTON: I don't think I have anything that I can say that's new today other than what we've said before.

BOLTON: But I can say that -- again, to come back to this meeting of the Security Council we discussed earlier -- you know, one of the things that struck me as the discussion was going on was that many of the governments present said there has to be a political solution in Darfur and it has to be through the Abuja process. And it became a kind of a mantra, and everybody said it and nodded, and everybody was seriously in agreement.

And I finally said, but what are we going to do if the Abuja process, which isn't exactly making a lot of progress, doesn't seem to hold out the prospect of a political solution that we all desire?

In other words, it's not enough in the Security Council that we all come and we read our prepared statements and we all get up and leave. This was part of my frustration, if I can put it that way, because I think the -- particularly against the background of what is a deteriorating security situation, where we now see and it's reported I think in the press that the Janjaweed are now fighting with the government of Khartoum forces that had been their organizers, suppliers and financers.

That this suggests that the earlier plans that we had made through the A.U. to provide forces for security in the region are maybe becoming outdated. And we are looking at a number of possible ways that can -- and we have taken several steps to strengthen the A.U. force. Deployment remains -- has been slow, as you know, and obviously it's not getting the job done.

So the question of how long that strategy can continue I think is something that we're looking very closely at.

One of the things that we did speak about specifically and I think warrants very close consideration is both enforcing the existing sanctions against weapons into the country and possibly extending the sanctions more broadly, because it's obviously not sufficient.

So it's not that we're not -- we have not said by any stretch of the imagination we're satisfied with what's being done. It's a difficult situation given the politics within the A.U. and with the League of Arab States, but it's a very high priority.

OBAMA: Well, I appreciate that sense of urgency.

OBAMA: Just a statement, I guess: I would urge that the administration and your office in particular maintain that sense of urgency. And I would note that I completely agree with you, you've got to have a backup plan.

The Abuja process hopefully works. We want to do everything we can to make sure it works. Obviously, given the death of John Garang, things are more complex than they were just several months ago. But we have to do whatever we can.

We do need to have a backup plan, as you suggested. And I'm glad you believe that. It takes a long time to stand up a U.N. force, if that ends up being one of the options that we're looking at. So I hope that we don't find ourselves six months from now suddenly recognizing that we need to be doing something and haven't laid the groundwork to do it.

BOLTON: If I may, that is entirely consistent with what we've been thinking. I would just point out at this stage, where we've got 17 existing peacekeeping operations with close to 80,000 personnel deployed, including in the Congo, a very difficult, complex operation, this is why U.N. officials have been saying we can't undertake any more peacekeeping operations. We're overburdened.

The Security Council has not done the job that it should be doing in trying to resolve some of these other existing disputes where we've deployed peacekeeping forces so that we're in a better position when something like Darfur transpires, that we can do more than one thing at a time and that we're not faced with what is essentially a bureaucratic excuse: Oh, we're busy elsewhere. It's hard to do all this stuff at once.

That's not something we should accept.

But as a practical matter, these are constraints that we have to deal with.

OBAMA: Right.

Darfur: Biden and Bolton

Ambassador to the UN John Bolton testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations today where he was asked about blocking a UN briefing on Darfur

BIDEN: I have one question before I get to reform, and maybe you could clarify for me.

There was a report that the secretary general's special adviser on the prevention of genocide wanted to brief the Security Council on Darfur and make recommendations. And the report indicated -- I have no idea if it was accurate -- that you joined Russia and China in refusing to authorize the special adviser to brief the Security Council and offer recommendations.

BIDEN: Is that true?

BOLTON: It is not true.

BIDEN: Good.

Thank you very much.

Now, I'd like to...

BOLTON: Could I add to that?

BIDEN: No, go ahead, I'm not trying -- I'm just genuinely trying to find out what happened.

BOLTON: This is an example, to me, of how to waste the Security Council's time and a source of frustration and really the reason that prompted me to call for the PERM 5 meeting.

The meeting in question had been called to hear a report on Darfur and on the security situation in Sudan generally by Assistant Secretary General Hedi Annabi of the peacekeeping department under, in effect, the number two official in the peacekeeping department.

And it was a report that was going to take advantage of the monthly report from the secretary general, which had not yet been issued. And it was a very disturbing report, I might say, that in quite some detail laid out that the security situation in the Darfur region had been deteriorating consistently over time.

A number of states asked for an additional briefing by another secretariat official, and that was objected to by China and Algeria.

Now, normally, this sort of thing within the Security Council is just worked out in advance. Our respective staffs get together and it's not much of an issue.

But this was something that, for their own reasons, China and Algeria -- and, I think, some others -- didn't want to hold this. And after about 15 or 20 minutes of discussion on this point, while we were sitting there waiting to hear Assistant Secretary General Annabi's report, I finally said:

"Look, isn't there some other way to get this done? Why don't we have a written report? We could schedule something later. Let's hear Annabi's report and then move on so we can discuss steps that we thought we ought to take to address what we thought we in fact were going to hear," which is about the deteriorating security situation in Darfur.

And that, ultimately, was what was decided. We found out later that there was actually a written report that this additional representative had written that had not been submitted to us.

If we had taken what turned out to be close to 40 minutes of discussion, if we had read the report during that 40 minutes instead of having the discussion, we would have had the advantage of it and perhaps been in a better position to do something.

This is the kind of thing that, as I remember it...

BIDEN: Sounds like the Senate.

BOLTON: I wouldn't say that, Senator.

(LAUGHTER)

BIDEN: On the floor, not in committee.

(LAUGHTER)

BOLTON: I'll go along with that.

In those halcyon days of the Bush 41 administration, the PERM 5 beforehand would have worked that out, would have worked that out.

And that would -- I just think it is a question of efficiency as much as anything else. But I did not object to it.

BOLTON: And I'd be happy to supply -- I better check before I say this, but I'd be happy to supply the reporting cables that talk about what went on.

BIDEN: No, no, look, one of the things that a lot of us on this committee are very concerned about, Darfur and other events in Africa, and one of the things that everybody gets Andy Warhol-style, 30 minutes on the stage.

And my concern is Darfur has, sort of, had its day and is, sort of, dropping off the radar, and I think things are getting worse, not better. And I was of the view that if there was a report with recommendations, that the Security Council just heightens it. It just raises the profile, which I think is important.

And I think you do too. I mean, I'm not suggesting the administration isn't concerned about the deterioration.

And so that's the reason I ask. And I wondered, A, why if we didn't, why China and Russia resisted; what their calculation was.

And then there was a quote -- you saying, "We need action, not more talk." And the impression I had was the report was going to suggest action points, which would have put everybody in the council in the position of having to say -- not literally vote, but be put on the spot of saying, "Good idea, bad idea, no idea." And that's the reason I was asking.

BOLTON: And we were prepared -- and, unfortunately, we didn't get as far as we wanted to in that very meeting about talking about stricter enforcement of the existing sanctions and consideration of whether further sanctions, largely against the bringing of weapons into the Darfur region, could have been considered.

I said later -- you know the old joke, "How many people does it take to screw in a light bulb?" -- you know, how many people does it take to give a secretariat briefing?

We had an excellent briefing by the assistant secretary general. It turns out there was a written report by the individual in question. Just as a matter of efficient processing of information, if we had had a chance to read the report and ask him questions, we probably could have gotten more done.

This was the sort of thing I thought was an indication of effective process in the council so that we could get to the point not just of posturing about Darfur but about doing something about it.

BIDEN: Well, I hope you and the administration will push, will keep this on the front burner. And I, for one, think there have to be additional authority given to the African forces that are there. I think there's more that has to be done.

But that's for another time. And you've answered my question and I appreciate it.

Darfur: The Need for APCs

From Sleepless in Sudan

There are currently 105 armoured personnel carriers stuck in a warehouse in Senegal - waiting to be transported to Darfur so that the African Union soldiers can use them in their patrols. Unfortunately, the Sudanese government - which has very little concern about the safety of people in Darfur - is refusing to let the shipment come into the country unless it gets a certain degree of control over their use. After much negotiation, it seems that 35 have now been granted permission to come here.

While I have not seen these big new trucks arrive here yet (or know much about the negotiations and lobbying that are taking place behind the scenes about this), I do know what sort of impression a fully-equipped military can have on the perceptions of people on the ground.

Read the whole thing, especially the comments to the post as one appears to come from someone familiar with the AU operations in Darfur.

International Justice: Mugabe Must Face Trial

From The Courier-Mail

AUSTRALIA is pressing the world's most powerful nations to put Zimbabwe's brutal dictator Robert Mugabe on trial in the International Criminal Court.

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer stepped up his attack on the Mugabe regime for crimes against its own people.

"The thing about President Mugabe is he's not a threat to anyone else . . . but he is a terrible threat to his own people," he said.

The Australian Government was pushing the UN Security Council to refer Mr Mugabe and his henchmen to the global court.

Zimbabwe is not a signatory of the court so can only be prosecuted by a Security Council resolution.

Darfur: What John Bolton Got Right

From the New Republic

Our controversial ambassador to the United Nations has been creating controversy again. This time, he obstructed a Security Council briefing on Darfur, in the process siding with Sudan's closest allies. But John Bolton insisted he was trying to strengthen, rather than soften, the line on Darfur. "My concern with this briefing is that we don't simply react from incident to incident, but that the Council try and look at the bigger picture and try to put a more effective, more comprehensive policy in place," he explained to a perplexed press last week. "We have to consider whether the sanctions that are in place are working or whether there are other steps the Council should take, steps other than talking." Diplomatic eyebrows rose in response.

There's been some skepticism as to the motivations behind Bolton's latest outburst. Perhaps he was really concerned about a discussion of the dreaded International Criminal Court. Or perhaps he just wanted a chance to bash international institutions. But let's, for a moment, take Bolton at his word: He's concerned about too much talk and too little action. And, with that in mind, let's briefly review the U.N. record on Darfur.

[edit]

A lot of talk and not enough action. It's no wonder, then, that the violence in Darfur has continued--and lately escalated, with rebel attacks on peacekeepers and government militia assaults on refugees and internally displaced persons. It's no wonder that humanitarian work is largely at a standstill. That the Sudanese government has made "no visible effort" to disarm its militias. That, as recently as last weekend, Khartoum was so unconcerned that it reiterated its call for the United States to remove old sanctions on Sudan, since "there were no more pending issues between them."

If the United States really wants to end the killing in Darfur, or even if it just wants to demonstrate that the United Nations is an inefficient institution, it needs to lead by example and offer better alternatives along with its U.N. criticisms. Otherwise, there truly is no need to hear further updates on the situation in Sudan.

Chad: Food Running Out for "Forgotten Refugees"

From Reuters

Thousands of "forgotten refugees" who fled banditry in Central African Republic are running out of food in camps in neighbouring Chad, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.

Some 11,000 refugees have poured into arid southern Chad since armed gangs began storming villages across the border in Central African Republic in June, shooting randomly, looting homes and terrorising their inhabitants.

With United Nations' camps already overflowing with 32,000 refugees who fled a 2003 coup in Central African Republic, aid workers have been overwhelmed by the latest influx.

"Food supplies will run out at the end of the year unless we receive new contributions. These are among the forgotten refugees of Africa," the WFP's Chad country director Stefano Porretti said in a statement.

"People have been arriving in extremely poor shape and in need of urgent assistance," he added.

Uganda/Sudan: The Hunt for Kony

A good piece from Reuters regarding the hunt for Kony and the LRA

Uganda says it knows where Kony is hiding -- in a Sudanese government-controlled area near the small town of Liria, about 50 km (30 miles) southeast of the southern capital Juba.

In an unprecedented move, Sudan has given Uganda permission for its forces to attack LRA rebels anywhere in the south.

So Kampala has rushed tanks, armoured cars and hundreds of soldiers over the border, its campaign given added urgency by the International Criminal Court's (ICC) issuing of arrest warrants for the LRA leadership.

From Tuesday, Ugandan helicopter gunships will for the first time operate out of the southern Sudanese town of Yei.

But the rebels are fast, mobile and know the area well. Many believe they have some local help. And the latest operations against them have not got off to the best start.

LRA fighters massacred 16 farmers near Juba on Oct. 7, and at least two Ugandan soldiers were killed on Friday in an LRA ambush near Yei in south Sudan, according to Uganda's military.

Kony's deputies, Vincent Otti, Okot Odiambo and Raska Lukwiya, are also believed to be on the run in south Sudan too.

Uganda's upbeat President Yoweri Museveni has told diplomats he expects the LRA chief to be captured, or killed, within weeks. But he has frequently said that in the past.

"We are sceptical, because we have heard all this before," said one Western diplomat.

Uganda/Sudan: UPDF, SPLA Launch Joint Operation Against LRA

From Xinhua

The Uganda People’ s Defense Force (UPDF) and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) have launched a joint operation against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels who ambushed a UPDF convoy in southern Sudan on Friday, local press reported on Tuesday.

SPLA sources from the southern Sudanese town of Yei were quotedby The New Vision as saying that the army had for the last three days engaged both ground troops and helicopter gunships to hunt about 40 LRA rebels who killed UPDF and SPLA soldiers.

By Monday afternoon, the army had intensified the battle on theSudan-Congo border, after receiving information that LRA deputy chief Vincent Otti commanded the October 14 ambush on the convoy of the UPDF 79th battalion commanding officer Lt. Col. John Byoma.

Darfur: Chaos Grows as Militias Turn on Government

From the New York Times

The outlaws who rode into Geneina on camelback one recent afternoon represent the latest grim chapter in the desert war in western Sudan.

Janjaweed militias have focused their wrath on innocent villagers for most of the two and a half years of the conflict in the Darfur region. But on Sept. 18, in a scene that aid workers described as something out of a Hollywood western, the militiamen surrounded the police station along Sudan's border with Chad, roughed up the chief and freed several of their members from jail.

The fact that militias trained and armed by the government are now emboldened enough to turn their guns on the government is a sign of trouble. It was government support of the janjaweed at the outset that ignited the fighting in Darfur that killed tens of thousands of people and displaced two million villagers.

The standoff in Geneina, which together with other incidents prompted the United Nations to evacuate many of its personnel, is part of an overall deterioration in Darfur. The conflict has grown even more confused and chaotic in recent months. Now, rebels fight other rebels, the ties between some janjaweed fighters and the government have frayed, and the African Union troops charged with quelling the conflict find themselves targets as well.

"Darfur is no longer under control," said Eltayeb Hag Ateya, head of the Peace Studies Institute at the University of Khartoum. "It's not just the government against the rebels anymore. There's this armed group and that armed group. It's getting more complicated by the day."

Spotlight On Darfur 2

The "Spotlight on Darfur" is now up on Live From The FDNF

Darfur: National Call-In Day

From Save Darfur

National Call-In Day for Darfur

On Tuesday, October 18, join thousands around the country in a National Call-In Day for Darfur! With your help, we can ensure that Congress passes substantive legislation to help end the crisis in Darfur. If the 18th conflicts with a religious holiday or for whatever reason does not work for you, please consider calling later on this week or next. While targeting calls on a single day can help draw attention to an issue, it's the volume of constituent calls, regardless of when they come in, that Congressional office really pay attention to.

Why it’s important to call:

Last year, Congress and the Bush administration declared that genocide was underway in Darfur, a region the size of California in western Sudan. Today, even amidst reports of spiraling violence, Congress has failed to take action to address this ongoing crisis. Just last week, the government-sponsored Janjaweed militias continued their attacks against civilians in refugee camps, against humanitarian aid workers, and most recently, directly against the African Union (AU) peacekeepers who serve as their only protection.

Without pressure from Congress, the Bush Administration will not take the necessary steps to end the crisis and ensure the people of Darfur can return to their homes in peace. And without pressure from people like you, Congress will not act.

So please, take a moment to call your Representative and Senators and ask them to support the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act (H.R. 3127 in the House of Representatives and S. 1462 in the Senate). Your call will make a difference! Thank you for joining the National Call-In Day for Darfur!

How to call:

The easiest way to contact your Representative and Senators is by calling the capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and asking for them by name or by your zip code. You can also find them by clicking here and looking them up online.

What to say:

Below are two basic scripts to use on the phone. As you’ll see, version 1 is a bit more complex, and is likely to be a bit more effective. Version 2 is a simpler approach. Whether you use one of these or just talk to the offices in your own words, the important thing is letting your elected representatives know that you care about Darfur and that you want them to act to protect innocent civilian lives and end the genocide.

Sample call script, version 1:

Hi, this is ___ calling from ___. I’d like to know if Congressman/woman/Senator ___ is a cosponsor of the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act (H.R. 3127 in the House of Representatives / S. 1462 in the Senate).

If yes:

That’s great. I would appreciate a written response on what he/she is doing to make sure that this bill gets a vote before Congress adjourns this year. This is just too important to leave undone. And thank you for your time.

If no or unsure:

I’ve heard that this is the only bill with a real chance of passing this year, and that it has bipartisan support. As a constituent, I urge Congressman/woman/Senator ___ to cosponsor the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act. Can you send me a letter letting me know if the Congressman/woman/Senator will become a cosponsor? This bill is just too important to leave undone. And thank you for your time.

Sample call script, version 2:

Hi, this is ___ calling from ___. I would like to let the Congressman/woman/Senator know that I support the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act (S. 1462/H.R. 3127) and hope that he/she will too. If possible I’d like a written response letting me know his/her position. Thanks.

Again, thank you for your willingness to take action and for your continued commitment to saving lives in Darfur.

War and Faith in Sudan

An event at the Holocaust Museum on Wednesday, October 19th

Gabriel Meyer, author of War and Faith in Sudan, discusses the affects of the Sudanese government's war on the people of the Nuba Mountains region. He traveled to Sudan multiple times between 1998 and 2004, and offers his insight into the cultural, religious, and racial faultlines of the conflict. Dr. Francis Deng will offer commentary on the how the issues of the book relate to the dynamic situation in Sudan today. Photographer James Nicholls, who accompanied Mr. Meyer on several of his travels to Sudan and whose work is featured in the book, will also present some of his images

This event is free and open to the public. It is held at U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Pl, SW, Washington, DC, 20024. Metro: Smithsonian.

Darfur: Khartoum Against Rejects the ICC

From the BBC Monitoring Service - no link available

The [Sudanese] government has renewed its objection to refer any Sudanese national to the International Criminal Court [ICC], saying that Sudan was an independent and sovereign state that had a capable, self-reliant and impartial judiciary.

Speaking to the media after meeting with the special rapporteur on human rights in Sudan, Samar Sima, the minister of justice, [Muhammad Ali al-Maradi], said that in his response to a question by the special rapporteur on the Darfur trials, he had said that the government was committed and determined to convict the suspects through the national judiciary system, and that there was no need for the ICC prosecutor.

He went on to say that Sudan had not signed the Rome charter and therefore it was not compulsory for it to be under the jurisdiction of the ICC, although it was ready to cooperate with it, provided it was not a substitute to the national judiciary.

He also explained to the special rapporteur that the criminal court which was set up to try the Darfur suspects was not a special court as it was not set up by regular forces [as published] or through exceptional decisions but was formed by the chief justice and was headed by a supreme court judge who was implementing the ordinary law, and the crimes which were committed were provided for in criminal law.

Al-Maradi told the special rapporteur that there were a number of crimes which had already been ruled on, including murder and rape, and the reports being published by western media against Sudan were baseless.

Chad: Aid Groups Reduce Staff After Troop Desertions

From IRIN

Humanitarian organisations on Monday said they have pulled some non-essential staff from parts of eastern Chad, where the government says it has "surrounded" dissident soldiers and the situation is calm and under control.

The government said on Friday that at least 40 Chadian soldiers had deserted their posts in the capital, N'djamena, and fled to the volatile east of the country, where the United Nations and aid organisations are assisting some 200,000 refugees from Sudan.

[edit]

Humanitarian workers assisting Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad meanwhile have reduced staff in the sub prefecture of Hadjer Hadid, near where the deserters are said to have fled.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has cut its personnel in half, UNHCR public information officer Ginette Le Breton said from the main eastern town of Abeche.

"Given the situation HCR and its other humanitarian partners decided on Sunday to reduce by 50 percent their teams on the ground in Hadjer Hadid," Le Breton said. The area affected includes two camps - Breidjing and Treguine - housing about 40,000 refugees, she said.

Le Breton said essential services for the refugees at the two camps are not affected.

Medecins Sans Frontieres, Oxfam, Premiere Urgence and a handful of other NGOs also have staff in the Hadjer Hadid area, she said.

A humanitarian worker in the region, who wished not to be identified, said aid organisations are cutting back staff but that services to the refugees are being maintained as previously.

Responsibility to Protect: Meaningless Without Political Will

From the AP

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday defended September's world summit against critics, pointing to new agreements to protect civilians against genocide, help war-ravaged countries build peace, and help eradicate poverty.

[edit]

Annan said the agreement to protect civilians against crimes against genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity is historic "on the conceptual level."

"But it by no means guarantees that the Security Council will act swiftly and decisively - in Darfur or anywhere else where action is needed," he said.

"It is not a substitute for the political will and military strength that governments will always have to muster when push comes to shove," he warned.

Darfur: Sudan Accuses Rebels of Cease-Fire Breach

From UPI

The Sudanese army Monday accused Darfur rebels of violating a cease-fire in the troubled province in Western Sudan.

Gen. Mohammed Daby, who represents the government in the joint committee monitoring the cease-fire, said rebels from the Movement of Liberating Sudan bombarded Katem, the province's second largest city, for more than an hour Sunday with mortars and heavy guns.

He said rebels sneaked to the outskirts of the city and opened fire, inflicting casualties on army troops as well as civilians.

"The army repelled the rebels' attack and inflicted big losses among the attackers," Daby said.

He said the Sudanese government had lodged a complaint with the delegation of the African Union which is monitoring the cease-fire in Darfur.

There is also this from the AP

Sudanese soldiers heavily bombarded rebel positions in retaliation, after rebels attacked a Sudanese army outpost in North Darfur, the African Union said Monday.

It was unclear if there were any casualties in the fighting, which took place early Sunday southeast of the town of Kutum, according to the African Union, which has been monitoring a shaky cease-fire deal in Darfur.

The A.U. condemned the violence, which it said in a statement included the "heavy bombardment" by the Sudanese army of suspected positions of the rebel Sudanese Liberation Army.

Soldiers then chased the rebels into the nearby villages of Kenin and Nadi, the A.U. said.

Malawi: Drought Highlights Food Shortage

From the AP

Dona Kijani dives into a crocodile-infested river for water lilies, gambling with death to pull up tubers that are barely edible and give her children diarrhea. She says it is her only source of food.

For Kijani and many of her neighbors in the dirt-poor southern tip of Malawi, water lilies have become a staple part of the diet as drought withers corn crops, worsening a malnutrition problem aggravated by poverty, corruption and AIDS.

"I have nothing else to give to my children," the widowed mother of three young children said with a grimace, holding out some of the small, bitter-tasting, gnarled roots.

With the food crisis worsening, President Bingu wa Mutharika declared all of the southern African nation a "disaster area" Saturday and appealed for international help. He warned that 5 million people, almost half the population, are threatened with hunger.

Opposition politicians and civic leaders complained that the declaration should have come much sooner. But the president has been snarled in an impeachment battle with parliament leaders he has accused of hindering his campaign to clamp down corruption.

Darfur: Powell Says The World Has Not Fully Faced Genocide

From All Africa

Violence in the Sudanese region of Darfur continues to be "a situation that the world has not fully faced," former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday night as he was presented an award for "distinguished humanitarian service" at the annual Africare dinner in Washington, DC.

"Last year, I called it what it was - genocide - and that was the correct term for what was going on," he said. "It is time now for the rebels and the government to end this tragedy and negotiate the peace." It is estimated that between 70,000 and 400,000 people have died due to violence, starvation and disease in Darfur, and more than 2.5 million people have been displaced. He called the peace accord that ended decades of civil war between the north and south in Sudan "one of the proudest moments of my career," and said the Darfur situation should not be allowed to unravel that accomplishment.

You can watch Powell's remarks here.

Darfur: Clashes Kill Five

From Reuters

Clashes between Darfur rebels and Sudanese armed forces killed five civilians in the latest violence to tear at the frayed ceasefire in Sudan's western region, the African Union said on Monday.

"African Union monitors in Kutum, North Darfur heard sustained heavy bombardment in the south-east of Kutum," AU spokesman Noureddine Mezni told Reuters.

He said the main rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) attacked an army outpost and the government responded with mortar fire.

"Five civilians were killed in the two villages affected," he said, adding another five people were injured.

One SLA fighter was killed and one government soldier injured in the clashes, he said.

Uganda: Fifty Thousand Become Refugees Every Night

This week, the Hot Zone reports from Uganda

The hazy Ugandan moon makes them looks like zombies -- ragged shadows, shuffling down a dirt road -- and the years of fear and insecurity, ritualized by this nightly trek, may have indeed killed a little part them.

Nancy Akwon has been coming to the shelter of this girls' school every night for the past 15 years. She has nine children now and before darkness falls they walk the three kilometers here for nothing more than a cold, concrete floor and peace of mind.

They have good reason to make this nightly journey. In 1991 the notorious Ugandan rebel group that calls itself the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) abducted her seven-year-old son. She says she hasn't seen him since.

"I think he's dead," she says, rocking her youngest child in her arms. "I told myself I would never let that happen to any of my other children, which is why we come here every night."

It's called "night commuting" -- and because of the LRA's activities here and the government's anti-insurgency campaign -- it has become a nearly institutionalized phenomenon.

An estimated 50,000 Ugandans (30,000 of them children) from four northern regions walk from their homes in outlying rural areas to what they consider safer urban centers, like the city of Kitgum. They sleep in tents, schools, porches or verandas -- wherever they can find a place to lay their heads.

[edit]

Julina Away says the LRA came to her home in the Kitgum district one night in 1990. She says they forced her, her husband and eight-year-old son Jeffrey on a grueling two-week march. She says the LRA killed her husband, then beat her.

"They stomped on me with their boots until I became unconscious, and then they left me for dead," she says. When she finally regained consciousness they were gone, she says, along with her son. She never saw him again.

Sudan/Uganda: Rebel LRA Kill 2 Ugandan Soldiers

From Xinhua

Ugandan rebels fighting the government have killed two soldiers of the Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF) pursuing them in southern Sudan.

Capt. Anech Mbangizi, military spokesman in charge of northwestern Uganda bordering southern Sudan, told Xinhua by telephone on Monday that the rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) ambushed the convoy of the army’s 79th battalion commanding officer Lt. Col. John Byoma on the Yei-Maridi road in southern Sudan.

Mbangizi said that during the fire exchange, two government soldiers were killed and three others were wounded.

Eric Reeves: UN Evacuation of Humanitarian Personnel from West Darfur

The latest from Eric Reeves

The decision by the UN to evacuate all non-essential humanitarian personnel from West Darfur should not be surprising, even as hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians are affected by this move. In fact, humanitarian operations were largely at a standstill even before the evacuation. The roads out of el-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, have been “red no-go” for weeks, and the general security situation for humanitarian organizations has been steadily deteriorating for months. What is important in the present moment is that we see the developments in West Darfur as broadly symptomatic of a security crisis throughout Darfur. Indeed, in ordering the evacuation, UN officials in Khartoum “warned of a grave deterioration in security throughout Darfur.” We are not looking at a localized security issue; we are seeing the most conspicuous sign of a wholesale collapse in security that might prompt much wider humanitarian evacuations.

In withdrawing all “non-essential staff” from West Darfur, the UN has left “only core staff at the UN’s local headquarters in West Darfur” (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, October 14, 2005). This comes in the wake of a shutdown of all the transport routes out of el-Geneina:

“The UN has declared all roads leading out of [el-Geneina] to be restricted in view of armed clashes in the north, west, and south of the town, and increased banditry along all roads.” (UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs update, October 12, 2005)

The catch-all term “banditry” here deserves particular scrutiny in light of a recent report by Juan Mendez, UN special advisor on the prevention of genocide, following his recent trip to Darfur (September 19-26, 2005). There has long been speculation among humanitarian workers that the “banditry” in many parts of Darfur is not simply violent opportunism by men with guns, but politically and militarily purposeful. In particular, there has been a strong suggestion that the nature of the attacks, including the apparent knowledge of the timing and routes of humanitarian convoys, reflects the use of information originating within Khartoum’s very active intelligence service. In speaking of the many attacks in West Darfur over the past two months, attacks that have also been frequent in South Darfur, and to a lesser extent North Darfur, Mendez says:

“Though government [National Islamic Front] officials attribute these attacks to banditry and common crime, their coordinated planning and apparent use of intelligence to prepare the attacks suggest a decree of organization and fire-power that is consistent with Janjaweed activity, albeit under a different name.” (“Report of the Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide: Visit to Darfur, Sudan,” [UN, New York] October 4, 2005, Paragraph 19)

The Janjaweed, of course, have been repeatedly proven to operate in coordination with Khartoum’s regular military forces and military intelligence (most recently in an extensive indictment issued by the Africa Union on October 1, 2005). Mendez continues:

“With regard to the selection of targets and the time and location of attacks, attackers may have informants within Government of Sudan authorities on the movement of the nongovernmental [humanitarian] organizations.” (Paragraph 23)

Though the language here is exceedingly cautious, there can be no denying that Khartoum’s well-known desire to see international humanitarian organizations exit Darfur is obviously served by the orchestrated “banditry” that Mendez describes.

Darfur: Crisis Can't Be Ignored

From Tennessean

Inside the national Holocaust museum, there is an inscription that reads "You are witnesses."

Taken from the book of Isaiah, it is a reminder that the Nazi killing of millions in Europe during World War II did occur, Jerry Fowler, director of the Committee on Conscience for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, said yesterday at Fisk University.

"It is also a challenge, a challenge to each of us not only to be witnesses of the injustices of yesterday but of the injustices of today," Fowler said inside Fisk Memorial Chapel, where hundreds gathered yesterday for a community forum on Darfur, where tens of thousands of people have been murdered and raped and close to 2 million have been displaced since 2003. Darfur is in the western region of Sudan, a nation in East Africa.

Sponsoring the community forum was a group called Tennesseans Against Genocide, a Nashville-based coalition of academic, religious and civic organizations and individuals formed to educate the community about the crisis in Sudan. Participants such as Sudanese who relocated to the Midstate gave firsthand accounts and described local, national and international responses.

Darfur: SLA Calls Meeting to Mend Splits

From Reuters

Field commanders from Darfur's main rebel group, dogged by splits that are hampering peace efforts, said on Monday they have called a unity meeting to resolve differences within the ranks.

Ibrahim Ahmed Ibrahim, head of the Sudan Liberation Army's (SLA) conference organising committee, said all SLA leaders had been invited to the October 25 conference. But some on the ground were doubtful all the leadership would attend.

"All our members and leaders from all over the world have been invited for the conference," he told Reuters from Darfur.

Ibrahim declined to say where the conference would be held for security reasons, but sources said it was likely to be in South Darfur state.

African Union-mediated peace talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja have faltered because of splits in the rebel ranks and renewed fighting, despite a cease-fire signed in April last year.

The Cease-fire Commission, which monitors violations, met in Chad on Thursday and Friday and called on the parties to stop attacking one another, cease mass troops movements, and inform the Commission of their positions.

The final communiqué obtained by Reuters on Monday also demanded the SLA withdraw from four contested areas in South Darfur, where AU forces alone should be deployed.

Darfur: End the Genocide! Petition

A petition from The ETHIC

Would you make a single phone call if it could stop the genocide in Darfur?

Would you be willing to make that same phone call every day until the killing stopped?

Over the past two years, 400,000 Sudanese have been systematically slaughtered in Darfur. Today the killing continues, alongside rampant rape, castration and other forms of mutilation. Nearly two million people have been displaced and face the prospect of death from disease or starvation. The United States and the international community have done virtually nothing to stop this death and destruction -- arguing about the viability of sanctions and resolutions, debating the definition of genocide, and deliberating over the appropriate level of intervention while the killers continue their methodical work.

In February 2005 at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, General Romeo Dallaire, who led a handful of peacekeeping troops in a heroic attempt to stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, estimated that 44,000 peacekeepers -with a mandate to protect innocent civilians- could stop the cycle of violence in Darfur. (Currently, there are fewer than 3000 peacekeepers in the region.) He went on to say that we possess the collective capacity to exert their will on our government leaders, if only we would use that power. It is in the spirit of General Dallaire's words that we ask you today to make the following pledge on behalf of the people of Darfur.

Please Take the Pledge to Save Darfur:

Until the killing in Darfur stops, I pledge to take the following actions:

1) EVERY DAY, I will call the White House switchboard (202-456-1414) and leave the following message for President Bush: "This is [name] from [state]. Forty-four thousand peacekeeping troops could stop the genocide in Darfur. Please act immediately. Thank you." If calling long distance is a financial hardship or if I can't leave a message due to the volume of calls, I will send an email to President@WhiteHouse.gov every day with the same message.

2) I will recruit at least ONE other person to take this pledge.

3) To ensure that my actions are counted, I will register my pledge with The ETHIC by emailing my name and address to DarfurPledge@peacemail.com.

Chad: Desertions

From IRIN

At least 40 Chadian soldiers have deserted their posts in the capital, N’djamena, and fled to the volatile east of the country, the Chad government announced on Friday.

“The government informs the national and international communities that about 40 members of the Chadian army have deserted the ranks aboard three vehicles,” a 14 October communique said.

[edit]

Eastern Chad – which abuts Sudan’s Darfur region – has been gripped with tension since the Darfur conflict broke more than two years ago. Hostilities have time and again spilled over into Chad, where nearly 200,000 Sudanese refugees are living in camps.

Chadian President Idriss Deby last year accused the Sudanese government of backing a 3,000-strong rebel force operating at the border.

Late last month Deby blamed the Sudanese militia known as the Janjawid for a cross-border attack in which at least 50 civilians were killed in the Ouaddai region.

The Darfur conflict and its spreading hostilities have proved a knotty situation for Deby, a former warlord who took power in a coup in 1990 then was elected in 1996 and 2001. He seized power with the backing of Sudan, but is of the same ethnic group as rebels fighting the Sudanese army and allied militias.

Deby has long faced tensions within the ranks of his armed forces. And diplomats say mutineers that staged an uprising in N’djamena last year are from Deby’s Zagawa ethnic group and were expressing anger at their president’s lack of support for his kinsmen being battered in Darfur.

Reminder: Spotlight on Darfur

Live From The FDNF is hosting the "Spotlight on Darfur 2"

Submissions can be a simple post, a detailed essay, a briefing, a constructive criticism of nation-states, groups and individuals involved (or not involved, as is usually the problem) or a proposal for a radical or innovative idea to help stem the violence, save lives, address Islamic fundamentalism, etc etc. There are an incredible number of intelligent individuals with blogs, I would be humbled to have a few of them participate in this noble effort.

Spotlight on Darfur 2 will be hosted here on Monday 17 October. Please send the following info to this e-mail addres ( eddie080183 ATT yahoo DOT com alternate e-mail: eddie DOT beaver ATT gmail DOT com )for your post by noon (1200) EST Sunday 16 October:

1. The name of your blog
2. The URL of your blog
3. The title of your post
4. The URL of your post
5. A description of your post

As children often read these posts, I only ask that any posts containing profanity carry a warning.

Thank you for helping to raise awareness about Darfur, promote dialogue between bloggers and help inform others about the tragedy.

Africa: Media Coverage

From the Public Eye

Andrew Tyndall tracks the weekday editions of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” “NBC Nightly News,” and “CBS Evening News.” According to Tyndall, Sub-Saharan Africa has received a total of 67 minutes of coverage so far this year (from Jan. to Sept.). That represents 2% of overall foreign coverage for the broadcasts. To put some perspective on these numbers, each network averages 19 minutes of editorial content in each half-hour newscast, for a total of 285 minutes during the weekdays, according to Tyndall. For example, when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the networks spent a total of 263 minutes on the story during the week of Aug. 29-Sept. 2.

This is the region-by-region breakdown, stated as percentages of overall foreign coverage, according to Tyndall:

Middle East/Persian Gulf 51%
Europe (ex-USSR excluded) 24%
Asia/Australasia (Middle East excluded) 14%
Former Soviet Union 2%
The Americas (USA excluded) 7%
Sub-Saharan Africa 2%

Looking at network news in general, much of the coverage of the region and its conflicts is often prompted only when a major U.S. administration official visits the region or, more often, when a celebrity calls attention to it. For example, all three networks covered Condoleezza Rice’s July trip to the Sudan, although much of the content focused on a fracas in which reporters were roughed up by Sudanese officials.

Earlier this week, Public Eye also ran this

One of the regular complaints of media critics is that certain important stories don't get enough coverage. Take the situation in strife-torn Darfur, in western Sudan. Journalists came late to the conflict, even after thousands were killed. And that's if they came at all. "Normally Africa gets the short end of the stick [when it comes to news coverage]," says Andrew Tyndall, who analyzes network news at The Tyndall Report. "The dominance of Iraq compounds that."

But why don't we cover both Sudan and Iraq? Well, one contributing reason may be that researchers believe people don't care about international news unless it clearly relates to them. (It's worth noting here that at the network level, most people on the editorial side will tell you that research has little impact on the final product.) Iraq has an obvious American angle, but stories out of Africa, like the situation in Sudan, the battle against poverty, and the devastation caused by AIDS, do not. People would tune out, Poltrack says, if the nightly newscasts led with a story about Sudan. Journalists may find the topic newsworthy, he argues, but the American pubic thinks otherwise. "It is not considered by most people to be not particularly relevant to them," he says. "That is unfortunate, but it is true. It doesn't tie back to their life. It doesn't affect them directly. So that's a very tough sell."

How does Poltrack know this? For one thing, he can look at the ratings: Neilson now breaks ratings down minute by minute, so analysts can see exactly when an audience tunes out. But researchers aren't just reactive.

Darfur: Talks Stalled by Violence

From Reuters

Talks to end Sudan's Darfur conflict are being stymied by fresh violence blamed on rebel factions, a political standoff in Khartoum, and deteriorating relations between Sudan and the African Union.

The much-anticipated sixth round of African Union-sponsored talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja is coming to an end but analysts say there is little to show for the weeks-long effort.

Much of the negotiation has centred around technical points rather than tangible issues of wealth and power-sharing needed to end the 2-1/2 year conflict, which has driven 2 million people from their homes.

"There is a delay now -- the armed groups and the government are not keen enough to step forwards to reach an agreement," said Faysal el-Bagir, head of the Khartoum human rights centre. He called for more international pressure on both sides.

[edit]

Further adding to complications is a souring of relations between the government and the AU.

The AU, infuriated by the renewed clashes between rebels and government on the ground, and new attacks by Arab militias on refugee camps, voiced its harshest criticism yet of all parties earlier this month.

The head of the AU's Sudan mission, Baba Gana Kingibe, accused the government of coordinating attacks with militia, using helicopter gunships in attacks and obstructing the deployment of essential AU armoured vehicles.

The government denied the claims.

Since then, declarations that the government would cooperate with the AU have evaporated. Instead a senior Foreign Ministry official said he expected the AU to remove Kingibe from his post.

International Justice: Which Should Prevail?

An op-ed with an opposing point-of-view, also from the International Herald Tribune

The first indictments ever issued by the International Criminal Court last week should be seen as a victory for advocates of justice everywhere. The indictees are leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army, a spiritualist rebel group with no clear political agenda that has waged a vicious war against the people of northern Uganda for nearly two decades.

[edit]

Opponents of ICC intervention in northern Uganda argue that the indictments, especially of the LRA leader Joseph Kony, will prompt the rebels to abandon peace talks and go on a killing spree, and perhaps trigger the resignation of the government's highly respected chief peace negotiator, Betty Bigombe. As signatories of the ICC statute, Britain, the Netherlands and Norway would have to end their financial and logistical support of Bigombe's efforts and redirect attention and resources to the enforcement of the arrest warrants. To make matters worse, ICC opponents argue, the Ugandan government's amnesty program, which has granted clemency to over 6,000 LRA combatants, will be in jeopardy.

Some would say that too many concessions have been made to top LRA leaders who have benefited handsomely from the amnesty and that such preferential treatment has shifted the emphasis too far away from the imperatives of justice and accountability. While many LRA returnees face a life of economic deprivation and social stigmatization, former commanders, including Sam Kolo and Kenneth Banya, have been hosted by the government and placed at the helm of controversial and exploitative reintegration projects for former rebels.

Sidelined in the peace-versus-justice debate have been a vast majority of ordinary northern Ugandans, who have rarely been given the opportunity to speak for themselves. Most northern Ugandans do not see peace and justice as mutually exclusive, our recent survey suggests. Three-quarters said that those responsible for abuses should be held accountable. When asked what should happen to the leaders of the LRA, 66 percent were in favor of punishing them, while 25 percent suggested such measures as confessions to the community and compensation to victims.

The chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, Judge Robert Jackson, once remarked: "Courts try cases - but cases also try courts." The ICC's first case will effectively place the court - and by extension, the international community - on trial.

To avoid a potential catastrophe and to ensure that justice is done, governments must immediately follow suit and step into the breach to forge an integrated and comprehensive strategy for peace and justice in northern Uganda. Indicted LRA leaders must be captured and brought before the court. Financial and logistical support must be provided to northern Uganda's criminal justice system so that it can try those responsible for terrible crimes not covered by the ICC indictments. More incentives must be offered to entice rank-and-file LRA rebels to lay down their arms and ensure that they are able to reintegrate fully into society.

International Justice: When Peace and Justice Clash

An op-ed on the LRA arrest warrants in the International Herald Tribune

The International Criminal Court made legal history when it issued its first arrest warrants, for top rebel leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army, a shadowy group that has been terrorizing northern Uganda for 19 years.

The LRA deserves condemnation, but a closer look at this case reveals how irresponsible the ICC was in issuing arrest warrants at this time.

[edit]

Earlier this year, two delegations of northern Ugandan traditional, religious and political leaders traveled more than 4,000 miles to The Hague to express concern that the investigation was "counterproductive to peace in the north," putting thousands of civilians at greater risk of violence.

Even the ICC prosecutor has said that the court cannot provide civilian protection once the warrants are issued. Ocampo agreed to give Bigombe a year, an impossibly short time frame for any peace process. During that time, ICC investigations in Uganda nonetheless continued, sending the rebels a confusing message.

Perversely, the ICC became an obstacle to what the International Crisis Group called the "best opportunity for peace that northern Uganda has had since the war began." Now international aid organizations are scaling back their operations in the north for fear that the LRA will associate ICC arrest warrants with the international community.

The ICC will depend on the cooperation of other states to apprehend the suspects, which could be dirty work. Kony is believed to be sheltering in Sudan, while a couple of hundred LRA rebels crossed into eastern Congo last month. Congolese forces, with UN peacekeepers' support, will have to shoot through a shield of traumatized child captives to reach the leaders. Apprehending them may not even be possible; the Ugandan Army has been unable to do so for 19 years, even with Sudanese cooperation.

Whether the exit options of amnesty, exile or peace talks remain open is unclear. Foreign governments have said that they can no longer support a peace process now that warrants are out.

International Justice: ICC Confirms LRA Arrest Warrants

From Reuters

The International Criminal Court in The Hague on Friday unsealed its first arrest warrants, targeting five leaders of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army cult notorious for a 19-year campaign of brutality.

The ICC said Joseph Kony, the LRA's leader, was one of five people wanted on war crimes charges and confirmed the list of suspects whose names had already been announced by the Ugandan government a week ago.

The warrants are the first ever issued by the court, which is the first permanent global tribunal set up to try individuals for genocide, war crimes and systematic human rights abuses.

"The Chamber concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Okot Odiambo, Dominic Ongwen and Raska Lukwiya ordered the commission of crimes within the jurisdiction of the court," the ICC said in a statement.

The ICC press release is here

The warrant of arrest for Joseph Kony lists thirty-three counts on the basis of his individual criminal responsibility (Articles 25(3)(a) and 25(3)(b) of the Statute) including:

· Twelve counts of crimes against humanity (murder - Article 7(1)(a); enslavement - Article 7(1)(c); sexual enslavement – Article 7(1)(g); rape - Article 7(1)(g); inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering - Article 7(1)(k)), and;

· Twenty-one counts of war crimes (murder - Article 8(2)(c)(i); cruel treatment of civilians – Article 8(2)(c)(i); intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population – Article 8(2)(e)(i); pillaging - Article 8(2)(e)(v); inducing rape – Article 8(2)(e)(vi); forced enlisting of children - 8(2)(e)(vii)).

The warrant of arrest for Vincent Otti lists thirty-two counts on the basis of his individual criminal responsibility (Article 25(3)(b) of the Statute) including:

· Eleven counts of crimes against humanity (murder - Article 7(1)(a); sexual enslavement – Article 7(1)(g); inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering - Article 7(1)(k)), and;

· Twenty-one counts of war crimes (inducing rape – Article 8(2)(e)(vi); intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population – Article 8(2)(e)(i); forced enlisting of children - 8(2)(e)(vii); cruel treatment of civilians – Article 8(2)(c)(i); pillaging - Article 8(2)(e)(v); murder - Article 8(2)(c)(i)).

The warrant of arrest for Okot Odhiambo lists ten counts on the basis of his individual criminal responsibility (Article 25(3)(b) of the Statute) including:

· Two counts of crimes against humanity (murder - Article 7(1)(a); enslavement - Article 7(1)(c)), and;

· Eight counts of war crimes (murder - Article 8(2)(c)(i ); intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population – Article 8(2)(e)(i); pillaging - Article 8(2)(e)(v); forced enlisting of children - 8(2)(e)(vii)).

The warrant of arrest for Dominic Ongwen lists seven counts on the basis of his individual criminal responsibility (Article 25(3)(b) of the Statute) including:

· Three counts of crimes against humanity (murder - Article 7(1)(a); enslavement - Article 7(1)(c); inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering - Article 7(1)(k)), and;

· Four counts of war crimes (murder - Article 8(2)(c)(i)); cruel treatment of civilians – Article 8(2)(c)(i); intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population – Article 8(2)(e)(i); pillaging - Article 8(2)(e)(v)).

The warrant of arrest for Raska Lukwiya lists four counts on the basis of his individual criminal responsibility (Article 25(3)(b) of the Statute) including:

· One count of crimes against humanity (enslavement - Article 7(1)(c)), and;

· Three counts of war crimes (cruel treatment of civilians – Article 8(2)(c)(i); intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population – Article 8(2)(e)(i); pillaging - Article 8(2)(e)(v)).

Darfur: Violence, Chaos Rising, UN Council Says

From Reuters

The U.N. Security Council condemned on Thursday the escalation of violence in Sudan's Darfur region that resulted in rebels killing African peacekeepers and pro-government gangs murdering civilians.

The council, in a statement read at a public meeting, said those rebels accused of killing Nigerian peacekeepers and two civilian contractors on Oct. 8 could be liable for travel, assets freeze and other U.N. sanctions.

The African Union says six of its soldiers were killed, although the council's statement only referred to five.

"The council strongly condemns the Oct 8 attacks reportedly by the (rebel) Sudan Liberation Movement on the African Union Mission in Sudan personnel in Darfur," said the the statement, approved by all 15 council members.

In addition to the attack against the peacekeepers, part of an African Union monitoring force, the Security Council condemned several attacks against civilians by pro-Sudanese militia, known as Janjaweed.

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Juan Mendez, the U.N. special adviser on the prevention of genocide, said on Monday that in addition to escalating rebel action against food convoys, attacks on civilians in camps by Janjaweed militia were increasing because there were few villages left for them to wipe out.

Darfur: U.N. Orders Nonessential Staff Out

From the AP

The United Nations has ordered all nonessential staff out of Sudan's troubled West Darfur following a spike in attacks and kidnappings, U.N. spokesman Robert Sullivan said Thursday.

The order came after U.N. officials in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, warned of a grave deterioration in security throughout Darfur. That includes frequent reports of armed looting, banditry, robbery and clashes between government forces and rebels throughout Darfur.

In March, the U.N. ordered staff from outlying areas back into the West Darfur capital of Geneina because of threats against foreigners and other staff.

It wasn't immediately clear when the issue was ordered or how many staff were affected.

Sudan: Khartoum Cooperating With ICC In Pursuit Of Kony

From the AP (no link available)

The Sudanese government is cooperating with the International Criminal Court in its pursuit of the first suspect it indicted, Joseph Kony, the leader of the feared Lord's Resistance Army, Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Thursday.

In an interview, Moreno-Ocampo also said the court was studying Sudan's efforts to prosecute Sudanese accused of war crimes in the troubled Darfur region. Sudan has rejected efforts by the international court to investigate war crimes in Darfur, saying it was trying cases in the violence-wracked region itself.

While Sudan and the court differ over Darfur, Khartoum is cooperating in the case of Kony, one of five top Lord's Resistance Army members named in a sealed indictment compiled by prosecutors of the permanent war crimes court. Warrants for their arrests have been distributed to Uganda, Congo and Sudan. The LRA has waged war against the Ugandan government for 19 years and had in the past been backed by Sudan.

"We believe Sudan is ready to cooperate with Uganda in the arrest of Kony," Moreno-Ocampo told The Associated Press in an interview. "They cooperate with our work. Today they are doing what we are requesting."

"The arrest warrant will help to reduce political support and financial support ... this way they will be isolated," he said.

Darfur's Despair

From the Economist

THE capital of West Darfur, el-Geneina, is hardly a beauty spot. There are canyons where the roads should be and plenty of rubble instead of houses. The only signs of prosperity are the offices and guest houses of myriad aid agencies. But the real scars of war and devastation lie on the edge of town: here are some of the scores of refugee camps that now disfigure the entire region of Darfur, legacy of the bitter war between rebels and the Sudanese government that broke out in 2003. In the past five weeks, violence has increased sharply again, and the African Union (AU), which has 6,000 troops in the country with a mandate, endorsed by the UN, to monitor a ceasefire and hold the ring, is still struggling to impose its authority.

There are now about 1.8m people in the camps of Darfur and a further 200,000 refugees just across the border in Chad. The camps were created to provide safe havens for those attacked and driven from their land in the conflict, but fear is now the prevailing emotion in many of them. In Riyad camp, just outside el-Geneina, where 15,000 live in precarious structures of palms, dried reeds and plastic bags, refugees talk of the risk of venturing out after dark and of the constant attacks by armed gunmen, who sometimes ride brazenly into the camp itself. An AU force, camped just about a kilometre (little more than half a mile) away, is meant to give some protection, but, says one 27-year-old man, “rapes still go on and they do nothing, just write reports”. He has good reason to be afraid: two weeks ago 35 refugees were killed in an attack on a similar camp.

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The result is that in West Darfur, for instance, which has 657,000 refugees, the UN and aid agencies are in a state of virtual paralysis in places like el-Geneina. According to Amy Horton, head of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) in West Darfur, “travel south of el-Geneina is at a freeze due to the insecurity”. The WFP has now built up three months' worth of food supplies there, because it has become impossible to shift it to many of the outlying camps.

At the moment, thanks to the improvements in food supply and sanitation achieved in Darfur over the past year, few refugees are in immediate danger from this violent interruption. But NGO workers give warning that that could change very quickly if the present situation persists or gets worse.

Oxfam, for example, has three water and sanitation projects serving 90,000 people in camps south of el-Geneina, and had been unable for a month to send fuel to re-supply the generators that run them. It managed to get a convoy through this week, just before the existing stock of fuel ran out and the water system in several camps packed up. If it had not, the lack of clean water would almost inevitably have brought back disease and malnutrition. Of 16 camps in Darfur that Oxfam works with, six are inaccessible by road from the region's three main towns and supply centres. In West Darfur, not a single helicopter is available to ferry aid workers around.

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There is now little to prevent those who want to rape, loot and kill in Darfur from doing so. In reality, the AU force in Darfur, charged with monitoring the ceasefire, can do little with the resources at its disposal unless the Khartoum government actively helps it—which rarely happens. The Darfur region is divided into eight military sectors; in sector three, around el-Geneina, just 760 ill-equipped AU troops, mainly Nigerian, try to patrol an area of 12,000 square km (4,600 square miles). With almost no aviation fuel for its two helicopters, the AU force can do very little to protect civilians. The janjaweed still seem able to act with virtual impunity.

With the region so unsafe, many refugee camps are starting to take on an air of permanency, with schools, health clinics and small plots of family land. Despite ritual appeals by UN officials for funds to safeguard the refugees' return to their old lands and help them rebuild their old lives, most aid workers now concede that many of the refugees in the big camps around Darfur's three main towns—el-Geneina, el-Fasher and Nyala—may never go back.

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In any event, the AU force's mandate needs to be beefed up so that it can be allowed to go after the militias that kill civilians rather than just monitor a failing ceasefire. But the real problem is that the AU troops have yet to enforce their existing mandate. It has still to impose a disengagement plan on the two warring sides, let alone keep them apart. Yet, with a more robust interpretation of its mandate and with more cash and troops, it should be able to do more to help the millions on the verge of famine, death and despair. It is, indeed, the AU's biggest current test. So far, it is failing.

Darfur: U.N. to Evacuate Some Staff Due to Insecurity

From Reuters

The United Nations is to evacuate some staff from Sudan's West Darfur state because of an increase in violence, a spokeswoman said on Thursday.

"It's a precautionary measure because of the violence. Just in case one would need an evacuation, you'd have fewer people to evacuate," said U.N. spokeswoman Radhia Achouri said.

It was not clear how many staff would be evacuated.

Aid workers were already confined to the main town as all roads have been closed to travel because of banditry and clashes throughout the state, she said.

U.N. officials said on Wednesday the violence had hindered aid access to around 650,000 refugees in South and West Darfur states.

British aid agency Oxfam said it could not access any of its West Darfur camps by road and were concerned fuel for water pumps could run out, leaving tens of thousands of refugees without access to water.

Africa: Critical window Closing for 12 Million

From the WFP

A top WFP official has warned that a critical window is closing fast for 12 million people across southern Africa to receive urgent help from the international community - including five million people in Malawi facing the toughest 'hunger season' in more than a decade.

WFP Deputy Executive Director Sheila Sisulu, a prominent South African, said in the Malawian capital of Lilongwe that WFP was racing against time to ensure sufficient food aid is delivered to six worst-affected southern African countries, including Malawi, to prevent mass suffering before next April.

"It is deplorable that enough donations only come in when images of emaciated African children starving in large numbers start appearing on television screens around the world,” said Sisulu.

"Hunger doesn't have to be inevitable in Africa but once food needs start to peak, it will be too late for many of the weakest, especially children, and the cost of saving lives will escalate significantly.”

Darfur: Two Missing AU Monitors Found Dead

From Reuters

Two African Union soldiers missing after an ambush in Sudan's Darfur region have been found dead, bringing the total killed in the attack to seven, AU sources said on Thursday.

The AU blamed the main rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), for the ambush on Saturday in South Darfur, the force's first casualties in more than a year monitoring the region's shaky cease-fire.

"The bodies of the two missing have been found a few hundred meters from the area in which the incident took place," one source said. The attack was in SLA-controlled territory.

Two Nigerian AU soldiers and two civilian contractors were killed in the ambush. A third soldier later died from his injuries. The missing two soldiers were also Nigerian.

Darfur: JEM Ready for Talks with Janjaweed Militia

From the Sudan Tribune

In a striking development in the Darfur crisis, the armed factions negotiating at the Abuja talks have announced their readiness to negotiate with the Janjaweed militias in order to unify the people of Darfur and to stop the bloodshed in the region.

This follows the resumption of the Abuja talks last night and invitation by mediators to the negotiating sides to discuss the criteria for power sharing.

The announcement was made to the Khartoum based Al-Ayam by the official spokesman of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), Ahmed Hussein.

"We are prepared to sit with them if they agree with what we are calling for in terms of rectifying the situation in our area and removing the causes of marginalization which have hounded it over the past years," he said.

Darfur: US Warns of 'Costs' if Violence Continues

This headline seems to miss the startling development in this VOA article

The United States warned the Sudanese government Wednesday there will be costs in terms of lost benefits and opportunities if violence in the western Darfur region continues. The Bush administration is stepping up diplomatic contacts on Darfur including the dispatch of a new top U.S. diplomat to Khartoum.

The United States has not been represented at the ambassadorial level in Khartoum since 1997, when the Clinton administration virtually severed relations with Sudan over its alleged links to terrorism.

But the Bush administration is naming one of the State Department's most seasoned diplomats, Cameron Hume, to be the new U.S. charge d'affairs in Khartoum in a move underlining American concerns about the Darfur situation.

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Spokesman Ereli said U.S. officials have watched the latest upsurge of violence with concern, and said the Khartoum government should know there is a cost to be paid in terms of both opportunities and benefits lost if the conflict continues.

"There are obviously things the government of Sudan wants that they're not going to get, if they continue to do this," he said. "Number two, there are additional measures that could be taken depending on the circumstances, depending on events on the ground. Number three, you have an ongoing situation of conflict in Darfur between rebels and militias that are supported by the government, and this is a conflict that has gone on for too long."

Spokesman Ereli called Mr. Hume, an Arabic speaker with a long record of African conflict-resolution work, one of the most senior and distinguished members of the U.S. diplomatic corps.

He said his presence in Khartoum is not technically an upgrade in relations, but that the posting reflects the high priority the United States places on implementing the Comprehensive Peace Accord and resolving the Darfur crisis.

Darfur: UN Sees Continued Tension and Insecurity

From the UN News Center

The United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) today said the situation in the country’s Darfur region remains tense, marked by unconfirmed reports of clashes between government forces and the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and attacks on villages.

Coming just days after the killing and abduction of African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) personnel in Darfur, UNMIS also reported that almost two-thirds of the humanitarian operations in South Darfur have been suspended for security reasons.

Civilians continue to be displaced amid recent violence in Zam Zam Camp in North Darfur, where there have been 6,000 new arrivals. There are also constraints on humanitarian agencies attempting to make deliveries in Geneina, West Darfur, where all roads in and out of town have now been completely restricted due to armed clashes and roving bandits.

UNMIS also noted concern over recent African Union (AU) reports that white, non-governmental organization (NGO) type Land Cruisers were being used by the government army and the SLA. “If true, this might constitute another serious threat to humanitarian actors operating in the area,” mission spokeswoman Radhia Achouri said in Khartoum.

Also today, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported that the Sudan Petroleum Corporation has indicated it will no longer allocate jet fuel for humanitarian operations. If confirmed, the refusal to allocate fuel could hurt the agency’s accessibility to Darfur.

Darfur: Call to Action

A petition from AJWS

Join American Jewish leaders in an urgent appeal to President Bush to use all of his powers to end the Darfur genocide.

As we approach the holiest period in the Jewish calendar, we must each renew our commitment to universal justice.

The unfolding tragedy in Darfur commands our attention. We of all people cannot look away when the horror of genocide is again upon humankind.

Please join hundreds of American Jewish leaders from all sectors of the Jewish community in urging President Bush to exercise leadership in stopping the atrocities.

Sudan Reportedly Censures AU's Special Representative

From the Daily Nation

The Sudan government yesterday criticised the manner in which the African Union's special representative to the country was allegedly conducting himself with regard to Darfur.

The Sudanese government censured Ambassador Baba Gana Kingibe and described his statement on the situation, especially his blaming on the government, as typical of "microphone diplomacy" and which violated the rules of procedure.

The Sudan government, through its embassy and permanent mission to the African Union in Addis Ababa, was reacting to the ambassador's announcement of his findings following investigations into attacks on AU peace-keepers.

The announcement, the Sudan said was a flagrant diversion of the methodology established by the Ceasefire Commission and the Joint Commission in Darfur.

"Ambassador Kingibe deliberately opted to address the media directly without first resorting to and abiding by the established norms and rules of procedure," said Sudan which also took issue with the language use on "matters of high sensitivity".

The government said Mr Kingibe was not in position to give moral lessons to a founding member of the African Union or to judge, without verification, whether the Government of the Sudan was acting in good faith or respecting its commitments.

"The Government of the Sudan wishes also to point out that this is not the first time in which the Special Representative of African Union emphatically opts to take that course. The way Ambassador Kingibe acted regarding the unverified reports of Shangile Tobaie incident is still a vivid example of the violation by the Special Representative of the established norms and procedures," said the statement.

The Sudan said that the allegations made against its army, especially on the use of aircraft on the alleged Darfur attacks had no proof.

"The abusive language he used against the Sudanese Armed Forces will be dealt with through other channels. The outcome of the media statement Ambassador Kingibe has made is quite damaging to the on-going peace process and in particular to the negotiations in Abuja," the statement issued on behalf of President Omar el-Bashir, added.

The government claimed the special representative had deliberately avoided talking about attacks by the Sudan Liberation Army rebels on civilians.

Sudan said it was ironical that the special Representative had avoided the "microphone diplomacy" regarding the rebel attacks on Shairiya and Khazan Jadid, where the rebels killed 41 persons.

"The collapse of the security situation in Darfur is mainly attributable to this kind of behaviour by the Special Representative, simply because his attitude suggests encouragement of further attacks by the rebels against the nomads in Darfur whose herds and properties remain a constant target to the attacks of SLA and other armed groups," the government charged.

The statement said Sudan was a partner with the African Union in the endeavours to pacify the region and address the underlying reasons for the violence and war.

Côte d'Ivoire: Halfway Measures Will Not Suffice

A new report from the International Crisis Group

The Ivorian people will not elect a new president, as they should have done, on 30 October 2005. The government of national reconciliation has neither reconciled anyone nor prepared credible elections for the end of President Laurent Gbagbo's constitutional mandate. Gbagbo had stated his intention to stay in office until election of a successor. Opposition parties and the Forces Nouvelles (FN) ex-rebels, still armed, demanded his departure, and the confrontation seemed headed toward bloody street battles. The African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council's 6 October adoption of a post-30 October transition plan (even when combined with the national team's morale-building qualification for football's World Cup) is not enough to break the impasse. Unless the UN Security Council on 13 October strengthens the AU measures and mandates an ambitious twelve-month rescue plan, disaster remains on the horizon.

Darfur: Can the Weak Protect the Weak?

From Embassy Magazine

Due to insecurity and logistical problems there are parts of Darfur that NGOs and the UNHCR cannot reach. The situation around Jebel Al-Mara is particularly bad and the IDPs there cannot be reached by outside agencies. Ironically, even with the worsening situation, the IDPs in Abu-Shuko may be better off than those who are in Jebel Al-Mara.

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Due to insecurity and logistical problems there are parts of Darfur that NGOs and the UNHCR cannot reach. The situation around Jebel Al-Mara is particularly bad and the IDPs there cannot be reached by outside agencies. Ironically, even with the worsening situation, the IDPs in Abu-Shuko may be better off than those who are in Jebel Al-Mara.

The increasing violence is keeping IDPs from returning home and making them completely dependant on foreign aid. Those who do try to return to their villages to tend to crops are attacked and killed or driven back to the camps.

Despite the fact that Abu-Shuko is supposed to be under the control of African Union forces (whose mandate prevents them from carrying weapons) there were no AU troops on the ground when I visited this camp.

In a terrifying example of foxes guarding the chicken coop, the Sudanese soldiers who have, in many well-documented cases, openly supported the atrocities committed by the janjaweed control the camp's main entrance.[...]

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If this insecurity continues, the international community and NGOs will not be able to provide the assistance that is so desperately needed by hundreds of thousands of people in the Darfur region. This is a direct result of the extremely weak mandate of the AU, the continual refusal by African leaders to request international support from the international community, and the absence of intervention by the UN and NATO. [...]

Without a change in the AU mandate, the IDPs will not feel safe and the Janjaweed will continue to attack, rape and kill civilians as long as the AU soldiers remain unarmed. The mandate to fight back, arrest and detain must be applied as soon as possible in order to save lives of innocent men, women and children in the Darfur region.

Rwanda: School of Death

It appears as if Kevin Sites' Hot Zone dispatches are now coming from Rwanda

The school was a trap. When it was finally sprung, 50,000 people were murdered in one day. Killing like that is not out of anger or passion -- it's efficient, systematic. It is killing on a scale of 2,000 people every hour.

This is how it happened: On April 6, 1994, Rwandan President Juvnal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu, dies in a plane crash. The death of Habyarimana unleashes a killing spree that is as calculated as it is savage.

Hatred between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis in Rwanda has existed for generations. The killings are an attempt by Hutus to end their rivalry with the Tutsis once and for all. When it is over, more than 800,000 Tutsis and their sympathizers are dead.

Hutu Interahamwe militias begin their rampage within days of the plane crash. The Tutsi population is panicked. In Gikongoro Province, Hutu officials use bullhorns to encourage the Tutsis to gather at the Murambi School -- still under contruction -- telling them they will be protected there. They pack every building and the surrounding grounds.

They have no food and, eventually, even the water is shut off. Some of the sick and elderly as well as children die from dehydration.

Then, on the night of April 20, at 3 a.m., the Interahamwe descend on the school. They are armed with guns, machetes, grenades and lances. They attack the weakened Tutsis, beginning a slaughter that will last from the early morning throughout the next day.

Those who attempt to flee are hunted down and killed with the help of the local population. Later the district roads department uses its bulldozers to dig mass graves to bury the evidence.

Darfur: Insecurity and IDPs

From Sleepless in Sudan

Clashes, banditry and abduction continue to plague not just the African Union, but also the aid agencies. There are so many people fleeing from the new attacks on villages that all we can do is scramble to keep up with registrations and emergency distributions for the new arrivals: people are coming to the camps, particularly the bigger ones clustered around state capitals, in droves.

Families - mostly women and children - have just plopped themselves down underneath some shady trees with their meagre bundle of belongings, usually some sleeping mats and a few old cooking pots. They hang their clothes and blankets in the branches and wander around the camp looking for the rest of their family and their tribe. It's obvious they need services - food, water, medical attention - but when you speak to them all that they ask for is security. "It's good to be here. Now we are safe."

What's equally disturbing is the fact that the scenes I am describing are merely those playing out in the camps and the areas that we can reach - and many more camps remain completely cut off from humanitarian aid because they have become too dangerous to use. Every single road leading out of El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, has now been classified as unsafe.

Congo: Army Will Retake Ituri

A bold pledge from the Congolese army - from Reuters

The Congolese army will crush militia in the lawless eastern Ituri region before the end of the year, allowing thousands of displaced civilians to return home, the general in charge of operations said on Wednesday.

General Bob Ngoie said he received a third brigade of 3,000 troops in recent weeks and the army was fanning out from Ituri's major towns into the countryside of the war-racked Central African giant.

Aid workers say tens of thousands of displaced people are already trickling home. Some 100,000 civilians fled to cholera-stricken camps when fighting flared earlier this year.

"By the end of December, we will have put an end to the militia," Ngoie told Reuters. "We are carrying out operations sometimes with U.N. troops, other times by ourselves, in order to recuperate the whole of Ituri."

Darfur: Violence Hinders Aid to 650,000

From Reuters

Security has worsened in Sudan's Darfur region with new attacks on refugee camps and indiscriminate banditry hindering aid access to 650,000 people, U.N. officials said on Wednesday.

U.N. spokeswoman Radhia Achouri said two-thirds of South Darfur state was a no-go area for U.N. staff after clashes between rebels and government and recent attacks on African Union troops and aid workers there.

In West Darfur state, U.N. staff cannot leave the main town el-Geneina because of attacks on the roads there.

"Throughout the region, thousands of civilians are fleeing to IDP (internally displaced people) camps as a result of the recent violence," she told reporters.

"The issue of banditry, looting is taking quite serious proportions," Achouri said, adding the United Nations had lost count of the number of attacks by bandits in Darfur. "The situation is quite serious," she added.

Katrina and Darfur

When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast last month, the American public was privy to 'round-the-clock media coverage of the disaster, especially of stories relating to the extraordinarily difficult living conditions faced by those who had been unable to evacuate. Thousands of people were left without food or water for days; their homes and cities destroyed, they were left to fend for themselves, trapped in squalid conditions and at the mercy of roving gangs of well-armed criminals.

As it turned out, many of the more horrific stories were later found to be false. Yet for the people of Darfur, the horrors that befell the people of New Orleans have become a way of life.

For more than two years, nearly two million people have been relegated to displacement camps across Darfur, with limited access to food, water and medical attention. They live in makeshift tents that provide little shelter from the elements, and in constant fear of rape, looting and death at the hands of the Janjaweed militia.

An aid worker and blogger known only as Sleepless in Sudan, who has been working in Darfur for six months, has been kind enough to provide this assessment of the conditions in which the displaced are now living ("Sleepless" has chosen to remain anonymous in order to protect herself and the agency for which she works from the very real threat of retribution from the Sudanese government)

People are living inside temporary shelters, covering their branch or wooden huts (those who have been there longer have built mud brick ones) with plastic sheeting from the aid agencies, and even this has often already been torn apart by the rains. Everyone sleeps on the floor, sometimes in puddles - 10 people in a little shelter is not unusual, more is common.

Now that the aid agencies are operating in many camps there is regular water supply, there are latrines, there are medical clinics and most importantly, there is a monthly food distribution of staple grains and things like oil - but this does not mean people have it easy. This season has brought many floods and people have lost their belongings or even shelters, huts and latrines sometimes collapsed in the rains, and the food is never enough (and people have to scramble for things like fresh vegetables themselves anyway, as these are not included in the distribution). Malnutrition inside the camps is still high.

Overall, I would say conditions are adequate for survival - though some camps (especially the ones further away from big cities) are a lot worse off than others (Abu Shouk, for example, has dozens of aid agencies, while places just a few hours outside of it have 1 or 2). Whether they are adequate for what you would consider a normal life is debatable - I would say absolutely not, and I have no doubts any American would find them a lot more "unacceptable" than New Orleans.

I suppose the worst part of living in the camps is having absolutely no idea how much longer you will be there (many people have already been there for 2 years) and also constantly having to worry that you will be attacked - Aro Sarow showed us that even large scale attacks and killings inside IDP camps are still a threat. In many camps - Kalma, Tawila, etc. - it is part of everyday life to hear shooting at night, and in nearly all of them it is still very dangerous to wander outside and carry out chores like collecting firewood. Knowing that you are constantly at risk of looting and assault is be an easy thing to live with.

While the United States government was blamed for a poor response to the Katrina catastrophe, the government of Sudan is directly responsible for the catastrophe in Darfur. And whereas the state and federal government are now in the process of cleaning up, and will soon begin the process of rebuilding, the devastated Gulf Coast, the people of Darfur currently have no prospects of ever being able to leave the camps because insecurity is still rampant.

In the last few weeks, there have been a series of attacks on villages and camps that have created several thousand new IDPs. In addition, nearly 40 African Union troops and workers were kidnapped over the weekend and, in a separate incident, five members of the AU force were ambushed and killed. And even if a semblance of peace does ever come to the region, the people of Darfur have nothing to return to, as their villages and homes have been utterly destroyed while their land and possessions have been stolen.

The post-Hurricane nightmare faced by the victims of Katrina has been the reality in Darfur for more than two years - and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Sudan Unprepared for Internal Refugee Return

From Reuters

Sudan faces a new potential humanitarian disaster if millions of people displaced by war return home to the south before basic services have been set up, a U.N. special emergencies advisor said on Wednesday.

The south Sudanese government and aid agencies must accelerate efforts now that thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs), encouraged by a return of peace to the region, are spontaneously returning home, said U.N. advisor Dennis McNamara following a visit to the region. "You may get this very undesirable premature return, moving back to nothing in the south," he said at a media briefing. "There aren't even the basic services. There isn't shelter, there isn't water ... there isn't education."

McNamara said the government and aid agencies had done too little to prepare the ground for potential waves of returning IDPs. Southern Sudan has been torn by decades of civil war, leaving its infrastructure completely undeveloped.

Darfur: Aid Delivery Hampered by Insecurity

From IRIN

Rampant insecurity has led to the closure of roads out of El Geneina, the capital of the strife-torn Sudanese state of West Darfur, hindering the work of humanitarian agencies, aid workers said.

"With each passing day we are in a race against time to get assistance to over half a million people to whom we have lost regular access," Andy Pendleton, area coordinator for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in West Darfur, said in El Geneina on Sunday.

"The situation is desperate, more desperate than ever before," he warned.

With the roads closed since mid-September, a single helicopter was the only means left to humanitarian agencies to deliver assistance to internally displaced persons (IDPs) in camps.

"Over the past six weeks, security incidents have happened almost every day - sometimes twice a day - which has led to the shutting down of all roads out of El Geneina for ground travel," Pendleton said.

"The incidents have increased dramatically and changed in nature. It has changed the political climate," he added.

Darfur: More Analysis of Bolton's Move to Block the UN Briefing

From United Press International

Before Moto delivered his remarks but after U.S. Ambassador John Bolton left the closed-door consultations and another Washington envoy took his chair, a U.S. official described to reporters outside the council's chambers the Americans' frustrations.

"We sat in here more than 25 minutes talking about process, who is going to sit in what chair and who was going to brief us when it's a security situation in Sudan, deteriorating," said the official, pointing with his thumb back to the chambers. "Yet you hear all around the table the statements that were made. These statements could have been written four months ago.

"No one was reacting to anything new," he continued. "It was process, process, process. What does the council issue next? What kind of statement do we make, a press statement? Who is going to brief us? Why should we brief? Where should the person sit? When can we react to the briefing?"

The official recalled earlier frustrations in dealing with Sudan. That was when the word "sanctions" was barred and "measures" was found as a substitute.

China, which buys a great deal of Sudan's oil and has considerable interests in the East Africa nation was regarded as behind that objection. Algeria was against sanctions in general and maintained it was a problem for the AU to solve. Russia supported both positions.

"There's a growing frustration that the council has got to do more than just issue a press statement or a presidential statement on a security situation that is greatly deteriorating," said the U.S. official, who asked not to be named. "We have to decide if we are going to actually get involved and do something or if we are going to sit around and issue another press statement and then go back and wash our hands for another four or five months."

Darfur: United States Wants Action, Not Words

From the Washington File, which is a product U.S. State Department

In an effort to emphasize that the Security Council must be more active in trying to improve security in Sudan's Darfur region, the United States blocked a briefing by a U.N. human rights envoy October 10.

"The real issue we should be talking about is the deteriorating security situation," U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told journalists after a closed council meeting during which the council was briefed on Darfur by Under Secretary-General Hedi Annabi.

Annabi told the council that the situation in Darfur has been deteriorating over the past six weeks. Following his briefing, the United States, China, Algeria and Russia prevented Juan Mendez, U.N. special adviser for the prevention of genocide, from conducting a separate briefing on his recent visit to Darfur.

"Why isn't the council talking more about steps it could take to do something about the deteriorating security situation? That's what the council should be talking about and not who's sitting in what chair," Bolton said. "How many officials from the secretariat does it take to give a briefing?

"My concern with this briefing is that we don't simply react from incident to incident, but that the council try and look at the bigger picture and try to put a more effective, more comprehensive policy in place," Bolton said.

For example, the ambassador continued, “We have to consider whether the sanctions that are in place are working or whether there are other steps the council should take, steps other than talking.”

"We have got to decide if we're going to do something or sit around here hearing briefings and issue another press statement and wash our hands for another four to five months," another U.S. official said on the condition of anonymity.

Bolton also said that since he became the chief U.S. envoy to the United Nations, he has been trying to analyze how the Security Council deals with difficult situations such as Darfur and how the council "can most effectively contribute."

I encourage you to read the entire thing.

Darfur: AU Concerned That it is Now a Target

From Reuters

African Union troops released after a two-day hostage ordeal in Sudan's Darfur region said on Tuesday they were committed to preserving peace in the troubled desert area despite rebel threats against them.

Navigating barely visible dirt tracks through rocky desert along the Chadian-Sudanese border, an African Union patrol was suddenly descended upon by armed men who surrounded their cars feigning friendliness.

But the fighters from a breakaway faction of the Darfur rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) instead abducted some of the AU team, firing into the air as they left.

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The JEM breakaway group which held the hostages was demanding a seat at AU-sponsored peace talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

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None of the AU team was hurt in the kidnapping, but the force on Saturday suffered its first casualties after more than a year operating in the arid region.

Five AU troops and workers were killed in an ambush in South Darfur. Two soldiers are still missing.

The AU said it was extremely concerned at the "shoot to kill" policy being employed against its troops, a neutral force.

The apparent coordination between two rebel groups in Darfur both targeting the AU worried some of the force in Tine.

"I'm not going out any further than the camp to the airstrip and back now," said one soldier who was kidnapped.

Others were steadfast in their intention to perform their duties as normal, despite the rebel threats still hanging over them. "I cannot ensure that it doesn't happen but we will continue to fulfil our mission," area commander Abdoulay Dallio told Reuters. He said the rebels didn't understand why the AU was present.

"I hope very much they will change their minds and accept the AU mission as it is because we are seeking peace," Dallio said. "They know very well that we are protection forces and we are there for peace and this mission will ... go always forward."

But Mbara, one of the last hostages to be freed, said he was not too worried. "They didn't intend to kill us, they didn't torture us -- they just wanted recognition and we were negotiating with them," he said.

Congo: Sexual Violence is 'Worse Than the Guns'

From The Hot Zone

It began, also in 1997, when Rwandan soldiers supporting the Congolese revolt led by Laurent Kabila came to her home in the mountains of eastern Congo.

"They forced the door open," she says, in a sure and steady voice that has shared this story before. "They tied my husband on a tree. They had me to lay down. The first one came and he jumped on me. The second came, the third ... and all of them -- there were six -- and they had sex with me."

When they were finished, she says they shoved a piece of cloth far into her vagina.

"Then they took me outside," she continues. "They beat my husband. Then..." she pauses. "They killed my two children."

She says they looted everything from the house and then torched it. They left her standing naked in front of the flames. It was too much; mind and body shut down, and she says, she fainted.

For Serapina the horror was reprised seven years later. Rebel soldiers connected to Congolese dissident Laurent Nkunda came to the IDP (internally displaced persons) camp where the family was now living because of renewed violence.

"They killed my husband. After having killed him, one tied my arms on a tree. He also had sex with me as before," she says.

She was three months pregnant when she was raped the second time, she says, but two days later she had a miscarriage.

"They mutilated my husband's body. Cut off his arms." And then, she says in an unfathomably calm tone, "they forced me to eat my husband's flesh. They said they would kill me if I refused."

Sudan: Two Senior US Envoys to Visit

Via the Sudan Tribune

Two senior US envoys will visit Sudan in the next two weeks, the State Department officials said on Monday.

Jendayi Frazer, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, and Roger Winter, the special representative for Sudan, will seek to bolster a January peace accord and push for a settlement in Darfur, the officials said.

The State Department did not give a precise date for the visit to Sudan.

Spotlight On Darfur 2

Live From The FDNF is hosting the "Spotlight on Darfur 2"

Submissions can be a simple post, a detailed essay, a briefing, a constructive criticism of nation-states, groups and individuals involved (or not involved, as is usually the problem) or a proposal for a radical or innovative idea to help stem the violence, save lives, address Islamic fundamentalism, etc etc. There are an incredible number of intelligent individuals with blogs, I would be humbled to have a few of them participate in this noble effort.

Spotlight on Darfur 2 will be hosted here on Monday 17 October. Please send the following info to this e-mail addres ( eddie080183 ATT yahoo DOT com alternate e-mail: eddie DOT beaver ATT gmail DOT com )for your post by noon (1200) EST Sunday 16 October:

1. The name of your blog
2. The URL of your blog
3. The title of your post
4. The URL of your post
5. A description of your post

As children often read these posts, I only ask that any posts containing profanity carry a warning.

Thank you for helping to raise awareness about Darfur, promote dialogue between bloggers and help inform others about the tragedy.

Sudan/Uganda: Joint Operation to Hunt LRA

From IRIN

Sudan has given the Ugandan army the green light to hunt for the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels wherever they hide in Sudan, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

Sudan also assured Kampala that it would join the hunt along with the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the deputy Ugandan army spokesman, Maj Felix Kuraije, said.

An agreement to that effect was signed in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Friday, he added. Ugandan and Sudanese military officials along with former SPLA rebel fighters, would meet in Juba on Wednesday to discuss joint anti-LRA operations.

"The agreement means that the LRA will have nowhere to hide and that they will now face three forces," Kuraije said. "The agreement brings the SPLA on board for the first time. We are allowed to use our aircrafts but they have to coordinate with the ground forces and intelligence."

The agreement was valid for one month and it was not yet clear whether it was renewable, he added.

Darfur: Violence Forces More to Flee

From IRIN

Hawa Wadi Kogere arrived in Zam Zam camp for internally displaced persons' (IDPs), on the outskirts of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, on 20 September after her village was attacked.

Since then, the 75-year-old woman from the Zaghawa community has lived beneath a tree, without enough food or any other shelter.

"We were chased, some of us killed and we lost all our property," Kogere told IRIN at Zam Zam. "Those who survived had nothing left and came here."

She was in the fields when the attack on Dugumare village - about 50 km south west of El Fasher - took place. She managed to get away, but her son and grandson were killed. Her house was torched.

Darfur: Analysis say AU Force Seen as Target

From Reuters

African Union troops in Sudan's troubled Darfur region are in danger of being dragged into the conflict after rebels abducted and killed AU soldiers in a series of attacks targeting the neutral force.

Five AU soldiers and civilian personnel were killed when rebels ambushed a convoy on Saturday, the force's first losses in more than a year working in remote Darfur. The next day, another rebel group abducted and held hostage 38 AU troops in the Chadian-Sudanese border town of Tine.

The attacks highlight the personal threat faced by the more than 6,000 troops deployed to monitor a much-violated ceeasefire in the desert region. AU forces have been abducted and disarmed by rebels and have come under fire many times while patrolling bandit-infested roads and investigating ceasefire violations.

But while two main rebel groups are represented at a political level at AU-sponsored peace talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja, commanders on the ground say the AU should leave Darfur and have warned them not to enter their areas.

"The AU are part of the conflict", Mohamed Saleh, the leader of the rebel faction blamed for Sunday's kidnappings, told Reuters.

Darfur: AU to Refer Situation to UN Security Council

From IRIN

The African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council has decided that the issue of the "deteriorating security situation" in the western Sudanese region of Darfur be refered to the UN Security Council.

The decision, taken at the end of an emergency meeting on Monday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, came after the killing and kidnapping of AU peacekeepers in the region.

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The AU special representative to Darfur, Baba Gana Kingibe, told reporters in Addis Ababa the 53-nation bloc was "deeply concerned" about the violence, which he said had been increasing since August.

"The international community should be very alarmed by these events because the situation is getting out of hand and we are sliding backwards," he said ahead of the crunch meeting.

"The situation is spiralling. We have a highly aggravated, deteriorating security situation. We have had some very terrible tragedies, but this is one of the lowest points - if not the lowest - that we have had," he added.

[edit]

The Sudanese government denied on Tuesday that the security situation in Darfur had deteriorated. It described the AU statement as "erratic and hasty" and said Kingibe had violated diplomatic norms and rules of procedure.

"He is not in position to give moral lessons to a founding member of the African Union or to judge, without verification, whether the government of the Sudan is acting in good faith or respecting its commitments," a statement issued from the embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, said.

"All the allegations in the form of findings which Ambassador Kingibe has pronounced require proof, especially those relating to the use of aircrafts and what he described as the unethical practice of the Sudanese Army of using the same colours of the African Union Forces by way of camouflage in the recent attacks on Tawila," it added.

Darfur: Situation Worsening, UN Genocide Expert Warns

From the UN News Center

Just back from the troubled Darfur region of Sudan, the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide warned today that the situation there is worsening and called for action to protect civilians, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance and bring those responsible before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Juan Mendez noted that it was not for him to determine whether genocide had taken place, but said “we have not turned the corner” on preventing genocide from either happening or happening again – depending on the perspective – in Darfur.

Mr. Mendez said he had expected that the situation would have stabilized, if only in a status quo that was unacceptable but at least not worsening. “Unfortunately, I have to say that I found the situation much more dangerous and worrisome than I expected it to be,” he said, citing renewed fighting, especially in north and south Darfur, among all factions.

Congo: Rwandan Rebels Massacre 25

From AFP

Suspected rebels from Rwanda massacred 25 people and wounded several others during a night raid on their village in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), said local officials on Monday.

Sud-Kivu acting governor Didace Kaningini said: "We don't know exactly how many people died, but the people say they have already picked up 25 bodies" in Kaniola village after the attack late on Sunday.

He said witnesses believed the raid was "the doing of the Rasta militia", a name taken by a dissident wing of an armed ethnic Hutu movement active on the DRC side of the Rwandan border, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.

Darfur: US Blocks U.N. Briefing On Atrocities

From Reuters

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton blocked a U.N. envoy on Monday from briefing the Security Council on grave human rights violations in Sudan's Darfur region, saying the council had to act against atrocities and not just talk about them.

Bolton, joined by China, Algeria and Russia, prevented Juan Mendez, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special adviser for the prevention of genocide, from briefing the council on his recent visit to Darfur, despite pleas from Annan and 11 other council members that Mendez be heard.

"I strongly regret and deplore that Mr. Mendez ... was not authorized to brief the council today as Mr. Kofi Annan had asked," French Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere told reporters outside the council chambers.

But Bolton said he had objected to the briefing to make the point the council should be "talking more about the steps it can take to do something about the deteriorating security situation" in Darfur. He gave no new proposals.

"How many officials from the secretariat does it take to give a briefing?" he said, noting the council had just concluded a briefing on Darfur from Hedi Annabi, the assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations.

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Council diplomats who wanted to hear from Mendez said it was a council tradition to give the envoy a platform when Annan called for a briefing from his adviser on genocide.

They noted Bolton had lined up with the three council members -- Algeria, China and Russia -- which have watered down action against Khartoum.

"He's playing into the hands of people who don't want to do anything," said one council diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to irritate Washington.

Updates

Please check out Passion of the Present for updates today.

Eric Reeves: A Final Solution for Darfur

The latest analysis from Eric Reeves

The argument that a new “Government of National Unity” (GNU) in Sudan might change Khartoum’s diplomatic or military thinking about Darfur has now been fully exposed as an expedient fiction on the part of the US, the European Union, and the African Union. Despite completed formation of the GNU, only the National Islamic Front (which has sought to rename itself the National Congress Party) dictates military policy on the ground in Darfur and diplomatic strategy in Abuja, Nigeria. There is no government by consensus; there is no representation of the views of the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement on Darfur; there is only continued NIF tyranny and the preservation of a genocidal status quo that is gradually eliminating Darfur as a threat to the NIF’s ruthless arrogation of national power and wealth. This is the final solution to what the NIF perceives as its “African problem” in Darfur, and it is taking place before our very eyes.

Darfur: UN May Halt Aid After Hostage-Taking

From Reuters

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday warned that U.N. aid to Darfur could be partly suspended after the "completely unacceptable" hostage-taking of African Union monitors by rebels in Sudan's western region.

Annan also urged the international community to keep up pressure on both the Sudan government and rebel groups to respect their April 2004 ceasefire and work for a political solution to the conflict.

Aid agencies in recent weeks have denounced bandits for growing attacks on aid convoys attempting to deliver supplies in Darfur, where a revolt has killed tens of thousands and forced 2 million people to flee their homes.

Darfur rebels on Monday released all 38 African Union monitors kidnapped a day before, the last two after a gunbattle with a rival group, an AU spokesman and one of the freed hostages said in Sudan.

Darfur: Rebels Free Abducted African Union Workers

From Reuters

Rebels took hostage 18 members of an African Union team in Darfur on Sunday, but released most of them after negotiations with the 53-nation organisation, officials said.

They were abducted by a splinter group a day after the first AU peacekeepers were killed in an ambush blamed on another guerrilla force in the western Sudanese region, where non-Arab rebels took up arms against the central government in 2003.

"Most have been released but it is not clear how many," said AU spokesman Noureddine Mezni.

The freed hostages, who had been held near the border with Chad, were on their way back on foot to the area's main town.

Mezni, who did not give details on the talks with the kidnappers, said earlier reports had indicated that 16 of the 18 were being freed but that was not yet confirmed.

About 6,000 AU troops are deployed to monitor a shaky cease-fire in Darfur but violence has escalated in recent weeks, prompting the organisation last week to voice its harshest public criticism of Darfur rebels and the Sudanese government.

The acting head of the AU mission in Sudan, Jean Baptiste Natama, earlier said those kidnapped included a rebel representative and a U.S. observer.

"Eighteen (AU) personnel including military observers, civilian police, a U.S. representative and a Justice and Equality Movement (rebel) representative are held hostage today," Natama told Reuters.

Darfur: Gunmen Kidnap 18 African Union Workers

From Reuters

Armed men have taken 18 African Union personnel hostage in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, a day after the first AU soldiers were killed in the remote area, an AU official said on Sunday.

"18 (AU) personnel including military observers, civilian police, a U.S. representative and a Justice and Equality Movement (rebel) representative are held hostage today," the acting head of the AU in Sudan, Jean Baptiste Natama, told Reuters.

He said they were being held in the Chadian-Sudanese border town of Tine in North Darfur state.

A spokesman in the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa said the kidnappers were a dissident faction from the JEM rebel group.

"We are worried by the two incidents -- the killing of the two soldiers and the taking of hostages. We are worried because this is targeting the AU as a fighting force, although the AU is there as a peace force," AU Commission spokesman Adam Thiam said.

"They were taken by a dissident group of JEM," he said.

[edit]

An AU statement on Sunday said the AU soldiers involved in Saturday's ambush clearly identified SLA uniforms and vehicles, and the attack happened in an area controlled by the rebel group.

Four soldiers were also injured in the attack in South Darfur state, and two more soldiers were missing, it said.