Darfur: Peace Talks Extended 48 Hours

From the AP

African Union mediators brokering peace talks among warring parties in Sudan's Darfur region said Sunday they were extending by 48 hours a deadline for the peace parley's end.

Salim Ahmed Salim said the talks would continue until midnight on Tuesday, pushing back a scheduled Sunday end to talks that have gone on for two years but so far failed to halt violence behind the deaths of 180,000 people.

Salim, a lead mediator for the 53-nation AU, said the bloc had bowed to requests from the United States and others to continue work on a proposed deal to end fighting.

"The African Union has extended the deadline of the peace talks by 48 hours as requested by the United States and other international partners to allow extensive consultations to go ahead," he told reporters at the talks' site in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

Darfur: Rebels Reject Draft Peace Deal

From the AP

Sudanese rebels rejected a proposal to end the bloodshed in the Darfur region on Sunday, throwing into question the outcome of yet another series of negotiations to put a stop to fighting that has left tens of thousands of people dead.

The rebels called for changes to the deal hours before an African Union deadline - and after the Sudanese government indicated it would accept the proposal.

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Sudan has indicated it might accept a U.N. force in Darfur to aid African Union troops if a peace treaty is signed, and the head of Sudan's delegation, Magzoub El-Khalif, said Sunday the government is willing to accept a draft resolution circulated last week.

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The Sudanese government had said it was ready to sign the agreement. But a spokesman for one of Sudan's rebel factions said the proposal does not adequately address implementation nor their key demands for a vice president from Darfur and more autonomy. Hahmed Hussein, a spokesman for the Justice and Equality Movement, said he was speaking for both rebel factions.

Sudan announced its readiness to sign earlier Sunday - after it became clear the rebels were not ready to reciprocate.

Among other provisions, a draft of the agreement circulated last week called for a cease-fire. But both sides have agreed to a truce before, only to keep fighting, even in the last week. The draft also calls for an infusion of funds into a region the draft document described as "historically deprived."

Hussein, the rebel spokesman, said the agreement was "imbalanced."

"We are not going to sign it as it is," he said.

The other main rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement, had asked for more time.

AU spokesman Noureddine Mezni said the talks' mandate requires negotiations to end by Sunday night, but a partial agreement could open up options.

"Mediation is not going to change the document or reopen the negotiation at this late hour," Mezni said. "However, if the parties agreed among themselves on any part of the document, we shall accommodate them." He did not elaborate.

An agreement between Sudan and the rebels likely would be seen as a triumph of African diplomacy. The talks have been organized by the 53-nation African Union, with key participation from leaders from South Africa and Nigeria.

The initial draft released Wednesday addressed complaints from Darfur rebel groups that they had been neglected by the national government. It called for the president to include a Darfur expert, initially nominated by the rebels, among his top advisers.

In the draft, mediators also proposed that the people of Darfur vote by 2010 on whether to create a single geographical entity out of the three Darfur states, which would presumably have more political weight.

Decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in Darfur erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003 when some ethnic groups took up arms, accusing the east African nation's Arab-dominated central government of neglect.

The central government is accused of responding by unleashing Arab tribal militias known as Janjaweed to murder and rape civilians and lay waste to villages. Sudan denies backing the Janjaweed.

The draft agreement calls for disarming the Janjaweed and integrating some rebels into the national army and security forces.

On the Darfur rally in D.C.

Here are the latest opinion pieces and articles on the D.C. rally re: Darfur:

“Activists Rally for Darfur in D.C.“ (CBS News)

“Rallying to stop Genocide in Darfur: Confronting the shame of indifference” (Village Voice)

“Ending the Darfur silence” (Boston Globe)

“Sudan accepts Darfur peace plan”

We’ll see if this plan amounts to anything.

I'd like to think it will, but the last few years have left me a little jaded to say the least.

WaPo on the Darfur crisis

WaPo has two articles in today’s paper on the genocide taking place in Darfur. The first is “A Loss of Hope Inside Darfur Refugee Camps: Over two years, a genocide comes into view,” and the other is “Crisis in Darfur is expected to draw thousands to mall.”

"Five Members of U.S. Congress Arrested Protesting Darfur Genocide"

The U.S. Department of State has this report.

"Sudan: UN Experts Propose Expanded Arms Embargo, Possible No-Fly Zone in Darfur"

UN News Service has this report. Here's a taste:

With both the Government and rebels in Sudan's Darfur conflict violating United Nations resolutions, the Security Council should move swiftly to impose further sanctions, expand an arms embargo, and consider setting up a no-fly zone for government planes, according to the latest report from a panel of experts.

The panel, set up to help the Committee monitoring an arms embargo imposed by the Council, reports that weapons and Government troops continue to flow into the region, where some 180,000 people have been killed and 2 million more uprooted in the past three years, and the Government continues its offensive military overflights.

As a possible option for the overflights, the panel says the Council should consider establishing an air exclusion zone over the entire Darfur region for all Government aircraft, the report says.

“Darfur arouses a new unity”

More of this in politics, please:

The National Association of Evangelicals and the American Humanist Association might not agree on much. When it comes to abortion or homosexuality, the Union for Reform Judaism and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops find themselves on opposite ends of the debate.

But when the subject is genocide in Darfur, all are on the same page.

In what may be the broadest coalition of faith-based groups ever assembled for a political cause, Jews, Christians and Muslims, liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and atheists are joining with humanitarian and human rights organizations to demand that the U.S. government end the killing in Sudan.

Reminder: Rally to Stop Genocide

On Sunday, the Rally to Stop Genocide is being held in Washington, DC, with similar rallies being held in San Francisco and elsewhere around the country.

If you can't attend any of the rallies, you can always sign this petition from Human Rights First.

Check out this video from GI-Net and others at politicsTV.com

Darfur: UN Aid Will be Suspended Unless Rebel Attacks Stop

An update of this earlier article - from the UN News Center

Unless rebel attacks against United Nations and other relief operations in a northern sector of Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region stop immediately, the world organization will be forced to suspend all assistance to 450,000 vulnerable people living in the area until safety can bee assured, a top UN official warned today.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, called on the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) stop attacks on humanitarian workers in Darfur, where some 180,000 people have been killed and 2 million more uprooted in three years of fighting between the Government, pro-government militias and rebels.

The UN will hold responsible the armed groups, including those related to the SLA, and their leaders for the failure to assist the extremely vulnerable populations under their control, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said in a statement.

Over the past few weeks, aid workers operating for UN agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have come under continuous attacks and harassment by armed groups in the Shangil Tobayi, Tawilla and Kutum areas of North Darfur, with several reports indicating that many of the attacks were waged by SLA factions.

“Armed robbery and hijacking have endangered humanitarian workers assisting over 450,000 vulnerable people living in the area,” the statement added. “Moreover, credible information points to the use of hijacked vehicles for military purposes by these armed groups. This is unacceptable and contrary to international humanitarian law.”

It noted that Mr. Pronk had appealed to the rebels to “take all necessary steps” to assure the safety of staff and property in the areas under their control.

“Unless these attacks and harassment stop immediately, the UN and its partners will be obliged to suspend all relief assistance to this particular area till effective safety for humanitarian personnel and assets is guaranteed,” the statement said.

Darfur: AU Peace Deal Almost "Impossible"

From IRIN

Sunday deadline for negotiators to sign off on a peace deal to end the three year war in the Darfur region of Sudan is unlikely to be met because a tabled deal includes too many compromises, a spokesman for one of the rebel groups said on Friday.

Negotiators in the Nigerian capital Abuja have been considering an 85-page final peace agreement which was tabled by the African Union (AU) on Wednesday, ahead of a 30 April deadline for the two-year long talks to be wrapped up.

Abdulwaheed Al-Nur, leader of the Sudanese Liberation Movement, said after a meeting with Nigerian president and AU mediator Olusegun Obasanjo on Friday that the key demands of his rebel group are not contained in the deal tabled by the AU, and that it is "almost impossible" that his group will sign it.

"Our belief is that the document is good but our key areas are not there - we need the document of the AU to be as close as possible to our negotiating position," he said.

Al-Nur said the failure to allocate the Vice President slot to a Darfurian is one of the biggest sticking points for his group. The deal proposed by the AU includes an extensive section on power sharing, but the highest position allocated to a Darfurian is "senior presidential adviser" the fourth highest position in government.

Other deal breakers for the rebel movement are compensation, security arrangements in Darfur, and disarmament of the militia groups in the region.

A representative of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the other rebel movement participating in the Abuja talks, said his group had not yet had a chance to study the AU peace proposal.

Sudanese Vice President Ali Ousman Taha said his team was still expecting to reach a settlement by the Sunday deadline.

Darfur: Congress Members Arrested at Protest

From the AP

Five Congress members were willingly arrested and led away from the Sudanese Embassy in plastic handcuffs Friday in protest of the Sudanese government's role in atrocities in the Darfur region.

"The slaughter of the people of Darfur must end," Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., a Holocaust survivor who founded the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, said from the embassy steps before his arrest.

Four other Democratic Congress members - James McGovern and John Olver of Massachusetts, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas and Jim Moran of Virginia - were among 11 protesters arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly, a misdemeanor subject to a fine.

Darfur: Progress Report

Today's Progress Report from the Center for American Progress has lots of good links regarding the situation in Darfur and the upcoming rally.

Check it out.

Darfur: UN Threatens to Suspend Aid

From SAPA-AFP

The United Nations threatened on Friday to suspend relief operations in parts of Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region because of continued attacks against aid workers by rebel fighters.

The UN blames the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), the armed wing of the Sudan Liberation Movement, the main rebel group in the region, for a spate of attacks in north Darfur.

"Several reports indicate that many of these attacks have been waged by SLA factions. Armed robbery and hijackings have endangered humanitarian workers assisting over 450 000 vulnerable people living in the area," it said in a statement.

It added that the UN has "credible information" that armed groups have also commandeered vehicles for military purposes, something it said is "unacceptable and contrary to international humanitarian law".

"Unless these attacks and harassment stop immediately, the UN and its partners will be obliged to suspend all relief assistance to this particular area till effective safety for humanitarian personnel and assets are guaranteed."

The organisation said it will hold armed groups and their leaders responsible "for the failure to assist the extremely vulnerable populations under their control".

Darfur: WFP Halves Rations Due to Funding Shortage

From Reuters

The United Nations said on Friday it would cut food rations for more than 6 million people in Sudan, half of them in Darfur, due to a severe lack of funds.

Many donor countries appear to have tired of the long-term conflict in Darfur, despite signs that malnutrition is again on the rise among people living in squalid camps, the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) said.

WFP said it was halving food aid from the minimum daily requirement of 2,100 calories to 1,050 calories as of May.

"This is one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. Haven't the people of Darfur suffered enough? Aren't we adding insult to injury?" WFP executive director James Morris said.

"This is a measure we should simply never have to take," said Morris, who heads the world's largest food aid agency, feeding 90 million people worldwide.

The Rome-based agency had only received $238 million or 32 percent of its annual appeal of $746 million for Sudan. Africa's largest country is emerging from civil war in the south as talks continue on a peace deal to end a conflict in Darfur.

Spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told a news briefing: "It is scandalous, but we have no choice."

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"There is probably some donor fatigue. The conflict has been going on a long time. And there is no solution in sight," Berthiaume said.

The United States was the largest donor at $188 million, it said, while Italy was the only major European country to contribute so far ($1.2 million).

"WFP is particularly concerned about the effect of reduced rations in Darfur, where rampant insecurity continues to cause enormous suffering," WFP said in a statement.

The U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) has already reported increased malnutrition rates in the region this year.

The WFP said the cuts would allow limited food stocks to last longer into the annual "hunger season," from July to September, when needs are greatest ahead of the harvest.

The WFP estimates that 2,100 calories a day is the minimum daily requirement needed to stay in good health.

Darfur : Rebels Downbeat as Push for Peace Intensifies

From Reuters

Rebels from the Darfur region of Sudan are disappointed with a proposed peace settlement, a senior rebel negotiator said on Friday, as pressure built for the warring parties to strike a deal by Sunday.

Mediators from the African Union (AU) have presented a draft settlement that covers security, power-sharing and wealth-sharing, the three areas considered key to ending a three-year conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people.

"Most of the things that are proposed will not be part of a just peace. We feel there is no movement from the other side," Abduljabbar Dosa, chief negotiator of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) rebel group, told Reuters on the sidelines of the talks.

The SLA and the smaller Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) have yet to submit their official reaction to the draft agreement, and Dosa said he was expressing a personal view rather than his group's position.

"Of course we will give alternatives and new proposals. We will try and react in the most positive way," he said, adding that the SLA and JEM were meeting to agree a joint response.

International efforts to push the government of Sudan and the two rebel groups toward agreement intensified on Friday. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo met separately with the sides and top diplomats converged on the Nigerian capital, venue of the talks, ahead of the Sunday deadline set by the AU.

The government, which has already submitted five pages of its comments on the draft to the AU, has been trying to meet directly with the rebels but it has made little headway.

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The head of the AU mediation team, Sam Ibok, said many in the rebel ranks were fearful of coming to a deal because the conflict had become a way of life and they were uncertain of maintaining their relevance.

"There's a sense of panic. The easiest thing for them to do is to say no. They need guarantees, which is completely understandable, and that's where the international community and President Obasanjo can really help," he told Reuters.

"They should also know that if they don't accept this, what else are they going to have? Are they going to negotiate for many more years? How many more people have to die?" he said.

Darfur: NATO Ready for Small-Scale Presence

From Reuters

NATO is ready to increase assistance in Sudan's Darfur region but alliance ministers agreed on Friday that any presence should be limited and only in support of African or U.N. efforts.

In its first operation on the African continent, NATO has already provided training and transport to African Union troops struggling to quell the violence there and some nations such as the United States want the alliance to engage more strongly.

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said NATO should take on a larger role in Darfur.

"Everyone recognises that the AU mission, while it has been successful thus far, is not robust enough to deal with the continued violence in Darfur, and particularly the problems that are emerging in western Darfur," she told a news conference at a NATO ministers' meeting in Bulgaria.

But other NATO members are cautious, with the Sudanese government resisting international involvement and al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden appealing to anti-West sentiment by accusing it of launching a crusade in the region.

"We are in the early planning stages for what we can offer next but the consensus is that the NATO footprint should be as limited as possible," said one observer of the foreign ministers' talks in the Bulgarian capital Sofia.

A senior U.S. State Department official acknowledged that a NATO presence was politically complicated. "We are assessing what more we can do. There's a lot of stars that have to align beyond the transatlantic community."

No direct combat is envisaged for the alliance but it is ready to help in areas such as training, intelligence, military communications and transport. One proposal being discussed by NATO planners would involve up to 400 trainers on the ground, a number which many European allies consider too high.

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Any NATO deployment would support the existing AU mission and subsequently a larger proposed U.N. force.

But the plans are effectively on ice for the moment, with the AU yet to formally request further NATO help and the Sudanese government objecting to a U.N. force, particularly one that has U.S. or European military personnel.

U.S. officials said without Sudan's government approval an expanded NATO rule would be impossible.

Darfur : Refugees Forced to Join the Fight

From the Christian Science Monitor

Although the exact number is unknown, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that around 4,700 refugees in Chadian camps were abducted last month. Most were taken in the span of three days in mid-March from the camps of Treguine and Bredjing, when unidentified rebels went from tent to tent looking for potential fighters, according to refugees and the UNHCR. Women who tried to cling to their men were beaten back mercilessly, say witnesses. Some men who resisted were tied up at knifepoint and carried off in vehicles. Many of those taken say they saw people tied up and left in the sun for days, or witnessed beatings. Some were killed.

Among the dusty tents and straw shacks of the refugee camps, the clumps of frightened people do not even know who attacked them, although most of the refugees who escaped agree their kidnappers spoke with Sudanese accents. At least four rebel groups - some Sudanese, some Chadian - are now active along the chaotic border between the two countries.

Chadian rebel groups aiming to oust President Idriss Deby before next week's elections have grown rapidly and mobilized in recent months. Two weeks ago, hundreds of Chadian rebels made it to Chad's capital, N'Djamena in an unsuccessful coup.

Meanwhile, Sudanese rebel factions in Darfur continue to battle the government-backed Arabic-speaking janjaweed militias, as they have for more than three years. Both the Chadian and Sudanese rebels have abducted refugees to fight. But now humanitarian agencies are concerned that forced recruitment of refugees by the Sudanese rebels could be used as a pretext for the janjaweed to attack the camps in Chad.

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Although the Darfur conflict has been marked by gross human rights violations and ethnic cleansing, Olivier Bercault of Human Rights Watch says the forced recruitment of fighters, including children, is a new development.

Mr. Bercault says the majority of rebels captured by the Chadian government that HRW spoke to say they were kidnapped. Although children currently only account for a small number of fighters in Chad and Sudan, rebel groups had previously been strict about recruiting only adult fighters.But a push by the various rebel groups to gain territory - and therefore bargaining power - ahead of the end of the Abuja peace process, together with upcoming elections in Chad, have sparked a drive to add manpower to the rebel forces, he says.

"The war is shifting gear and [the various rebel groups] need more people to fight," said Bercault. "I'm very concerned about child recruitment. When you start with this, it's like an addiction. It's difficult to stop."

Darfur: Violence Hits Aid Effort

From The Scotsman

THE Sudanese government has launched a fresh military offensive in southern Darfur this week, just as peace talks in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, are scheduled to reach a conclusion.

Helicopter gunships and Antonov aircraft attacked the village of Joghana, displacing thousands of people seeking shelter from the conflict, according to reports confirmed by African Union (AU) monitors in the region.

Two other villages have been attacked in the past ten days.

Charities and United Nations agencies warn that violence has reached a scale not seen since 2004, when the conflict first pricked the world's conscience.

"This latest violence seems part of a strategy to clear the main road south from Nyala, the state capital, to Buram," said a UN source in Khartoum.

Aid workers in the neighbouring rebel-held town of Gereida report a daily influx of people fleeing government attacks and tribal leaders say that 320 villages have been attacked this year.

Paul Smith-Lomas, Oxfam regional director, said the situation all across Darfur had deteriorated.

"In the last four months approximately forty thousand people have fled their villages seeking refuge in Gereida," he said.

"Thousands more continue to arrive, scared and in desperate need of help."

Looting and attacks along the Nyala-Gereida road have limited the delivery of essential equipment and materials for assisting the estimated 90,000 people in the town, which had a population of 10,000 people when the conflict began.

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Last week the International Committee of the Red Cross warned that much of the region had become inaccessible to aid workers. The result has been a 20 per cent increase in malnutrition rates among children, according to UNICEF officials, as 200,000 people were forced to flee their homes in the past three months. This week the UN Security Council also voted to impose sanctions on four individuals - a Janjaweed militia leader, a Sudanese military commander and two rebel leaders - accused of orchestrating the conflict.

Peter Takirambudde, Africa director for Human Rights Watch, said: "Khartoum's new attacks on civilians show the Security Council needs to move quickly on a UN protection force for Darfur.

"They also show that the sanctions, while welcome, may not hit hard enough or high enough - and civilians will continue to pay the price."

This latest violence has come at the same time as fresh moves to find peace. Rebel leaders and government officials are studying the text of an agreement drafted by the AU in Abuja, days ahead of the scheduled end of the seventh round of peace talks.

Seasoned Darfur watchers say it is no surprise that the talks have coincided with fresh violence. "This happens every time a peace deal is on the table," said a Sudan expert based in Nairobi.

"Both sides step up their offensives in an attempt to grab a bit more land before they have to put down the guns."

Darfur: Committee on Conscience Podcast

The latest podcast from the Committee on Conscience features Joey Cheek and Brian Steidle, both of whom will be speaking at the upcoming Rally to Stop Genocide

JERRY FOWLER: Brian, one thing that I think is sometimes not appreciated completely is the affect on a person of being exposed first-hand to what was happening on the ground in Darfur, and kind of the cost that that imposes. I was just looking back at a lot of your pictures—which are on our web site—and I was just struck by the horror of what you witnessed. I know that in between speaking engagements, you are going to New Hampshire and you are working on building boats with your brother-in-law. Can you just talk for a minute about what it is like to have witnessed these incredible crimes, and continuing, is some way, to have to relive that witness by having to retell the story to other people?

BRIAN STEIDLE: It is not an easy thing, but those things were never meant to be seen; they were never meant to happen, and they are the most horrific things that I have ever heard of, let alone seen, in my life. You have to step away from it a little bit, but as I was saying before, if I can be the vessel to bring that word to people; and it is a long road. I dream about it all the time; I look at the pictures everyday when I go to these presentations, and I remember. Every time I look at them I remember not only what it looks like, but I remember the smell. I remember what the weather was. I remember the sniper marks on the government of Sudan’s official’s faces, the Janjaweed that did the killing, the smoke in the air. You remember all of that, but if I can try to relay that to somebody else, and try to get them to understand, to stand in my shoes on the ground, and see what horrific things are happening, then I think that they are going to be motivated to do everything in their power to stop what is happening there, and that is what I do. I am just the vessel that takes it out to them.

JERRY FOWLER: I think a lot of people know—and I mentioned it at the beginning—that you were there as a member of this African Union force that is on the ground, and you were basically a contract employee, arranged for by the United States government to be there. I know that some of your former colleagues have criticized you for coming and speaking out. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

BRIAN STEIDLE: As part of the African Union, the African Union considered everything I did to be classified or confidential and did not want me to share it. They have since made all of their employees sign agreements not to share any of the information. They did not make me do that, which is why I felt that it was necessary to share it and was able to share it. Some of the people that I worked with through the State Department or other African Union monitors on the ground felt that I should have kept my mouth shut. The State Department has asked me to not show my photos on three separate occasions because it is making their dealings with Sudan more difficult because Sudan feels that I was an official of the United States government even though I was a contractor. I am acting on my own, and not on behalf of the government of the United States, and the Sudan government does not really understand that. It has been a tough going. My former employee, who I am not able to mention, threatened legal action against me to put a gag order on me that I was not able to talk or share these things, and it has not happened. I think it has not happened because there has been a lot of support from lawmakers, from Congressmen and Senators, and other institutions that I think, I hope, would stand behind me and support what I am doing.

Darfur: Statement by Embassy of Sudan

A press release from the Embassy of Sudan in response to the upcoming Rally to Stop Genocide

Today, the organizers of the April 30th rally include veterans of the Sudan Coalition. As part of their protest they are targeting the peace negotiations in Abuja, Nigeria, which, by all accounts, will reach a successful conclusion in the very near future. By implication, the message that will be sent by the demonstrators to the Darfur rebels is: Don't Make Peace. The US supports you. These are the same misdirected, naive tactics that delayed a peace deal in Sudan for more than eight years. Yet we are certain that delaying peace is not the reason why so many of you are motivated to participate in this rally.

Emily Wax of The Washington Post recently reported on Sunday, April 23, that: "in September 2004, then-Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell referred to the conflict as 'genocide'. Rather than spurring greater international action, that label only seems to have strengthened Sudan's rebels; they believe they don't need to negotiate with the government and think they will have U.S. support when they commit attacks." She also noted "although the conflict has also been framed as a battle between Arabs and Black Africans, every one in Darfur appears dark-skinned, at least by the usual American standards."

The situation in Sudan is not comparable to apartheid in South Africa. The Darfur conflict, which is tragic and must be resolved as quickly as possible, is not the world's worst. The Washington Post reported last year that 3.5 million people were killed in the last four years in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The recent Council on Foreign Relations 56th report on these issues noted that the figure in the DRC was closer to 4 million. More than 1.4 million Somalis are suffering today in one of the worst famines to hit that region. One concludes that the hostility toward Sudan is propelled by ethnic, religious and ideological hatred, not humanitarian concerns.

The manipulation of good hearted people who care deeply about Sudan, through the use of disinformation about Slave Redemption, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, genocide and other false allegations, is wrong and counterproductive. It was wrongheaded years ago and remains the same today.

There is a human tragedy today in Darfur that will be most effectively and quickly addressed through peace negotiations, not rhetoric. Peace will not be achieved by sending the wrong message at just the wrong time to the perpetrators of that tragedy, the Darfur rebels, who demonstrated their goals and methods through violent attacks in Southern Darfur earlier this week.

Darfur: Holocaust Legacy Demands Opposing Evil

From the Washington File - the full text of his remarks is here

The world must learn from the past and ensure that the racist hate preached by Hamas and Iran’s new president cannot evolve into actual acts of genocide and massive violence, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said at a Holocaust commemoration April 27.

Zoellick said the United States can help defeat the ideologies of militant Islamists by promoting policies that encourage tolerant, democratic governments in the Muslim world. He also called for greater international involvement in the ethnic conflict in Darfur. (See Darfur Humanitarian Emergency.)

“Bearing witness means learning from history … but knowledge is not enough,” Zoellick told members of Congress, concentration camp survivors and their liberators.

“Bearing witness also means acting against evil,” Zoellick said at the U.S. Capitol during the National Commemoration of the Days of Remembrance. The Days of Remembrance mark the anniversary of the liberation of concentration camps at the end of World War II, when Allied armies halted Nazi Germany’s program of genocide, which included the organized murder of 6 million Jews and millions of other minorities.

[edit]

Zoellick also spoke of his several visits to Rwanda, where more than 800,000 people were murdered in a genocidal rampage in 1994. “Twelve years later, Rwandan peacekeepers in Sudan show us what it means to bear witness to genocide,” Zoellick said. “The Rwandans are among the best of the [African Union] peacekeepers. They are serious men and women. They know what genocide is, and they are determined to do everything they can to stop it.”

The deputy secretary called on global leaders to press for a peace settlement to the Darfur conflict in Sudan and to transition the African Union peacekeeping force “to a larger, more robust” peacekeeping mission with a U.N. mandate and strong NATO support.

“There is resistance to overcome, but it must be done,” Zoellick said. “There is no time to waste.”

DRC: Some Miss the Looting, Fighting

From the AP

A former child militia fighter spends his days tilling a field in war-battered eastern Congo. But he dreams of beating plowshares back into swords. Serge Palmi, 18, is one of 17,000 who laid down weapons last year as part a government effort to disarm Congo after its 1998-2001 civil war.

Officials promised the fighters some cash and skills training, but Palmi says his new life can't compare with looting and fighting.

"We are suffering without money, and if life continues like this, we will return to the bush," says Palmi, taking a break from the fields.

"Life was better during the war," he says to nods of assent from a nearby group of adolescent ex-militia fighters. "I should have stayed with my militia."

The United Nations' 17,500 peacekeepers are trying to calm this vast central African nation enough for upcoming elections, Congo's first in four decades of strife that have left a resource-rich country the size of Western Europe in tatters.

The vote is meant to bring lasting peace to a country ravaged by a 32-year dictatorship, rebellions and two wars that drew in armies from six countries and were blamed for nearly 4 million deaths, most from hunger or disease.

But the U.N. says recruitment by armed groups is on the upswing in eastern Congo, where warlords, rebel leaders and militia factions offer former fighters guns and ammunition - the onramp to a brutal easy street.

The words of Palmi and others underline what aid workers have long averred: Disarmament is relatively easy, lasting peace is hard.

Palmi says he trudged back home because of the hardships of life on the run in Congo's forests. But he found village life even harder.

"I did not enjoy attacking people and looting. We did it to survive," says Palmi. "But compared to my village, the bush is paradise."

While much of Congo has been pacified, the east near Bunia remains restive.

In the east, they keep dying. The United Nations calls it one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.

The United Nations and Congolese troops have battled fighters and many scared civilians have returned to their homes. But many have not and the U.N. says increased recruitment of fighters is threatening to scupper elections.

While no date has been set to choose a president and parliament to replace President Joseph Kabila's transitional government, candidate inscription is under way and the vote should take place within months. Or not.

"At least 500 demobilized soldiers have been recruited again in the past month or so, threatening security and elections," says a U.N. military spokesman, Djibril Samassa

"The situation cannot remain like this, we cannot have elections like this. Something must be done."

In December, a new militia was launched, uniting nearly a dozen loose factions that did not surrender arms before a July deadline set by the government, Samassa says.

The Congolese Revolutionary Movement is now estimated at at least 1,500 fighters. They roam the hills and forest of eastern Congo along with rebels from next-door Rwanda as well as ethnic Hema and Lendu fighters.

Darfur: Rice Urges Expanded NATO Role

From Reuters

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday the African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in Sudan's Darfur region was not strong enough and NATO should take on a larger role there.

"Everyone recognises that the AU mission, while it has been successful thus far, is not robust enough to deal with the continued violence in Darfur, and particularly the problems that are emerging in western Darfur," she told a news conference at a NATO ministers' meeting in Bulgaria.

[edit]

NATO already has some officials in Darfur. A larger NATO force would assist in logistics, communications, intelligence and other areas but would not intervene on the ground in Darfur, U.S. officials said.

"NATO is going to discuss what it can do. NATO can provide logistical support, perhaps mobility support," Rice said.

The proposed deployment would be an interim measure until a larger U.N. force, with a broader mandate than the African Union force, can be sent.

There has not been approval from NATO yet and the Sudanese government has objected to a U.N. force, particularly one that has U.S. or European military personnel.

U.S. officials said that without Sudan's government approval an expanded NATO rule would be impossible.

Darfur: Clooney Calls on Bush to Act

From the Times Online

George Clooney today embarked on his latest role as The Star who Went to Darfur by modestly saying he felt uncomfortable about giving speeches on the political stage - or telling "people what they should or should not do".

The Oscar winner then proceeded to outshine the two leading senators flanking him at a packed Washington press conference as he told the US Government, the American people and the United Nations exactly what they should do about the genocide in Sudan.

Speaking on his return from making a short documentary film in Sudan and Chad with his father, Nick, a former TV news reporter, he warned that time was running out to help some of the two million refugees displaced in the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.

"Everyone has a good reason not to act," he said, "but we cannot turn away and look away and hope this will disappear, because if we do these people will do just that - disappear - and only history will be left to judge us."

He said the film was intended to keep the issue on the "front-burner" as long as possible. "It’s not easy to do...but that all I can do. I’m not a legislator or a politician, I just try to use the credit card you get from being famous in the right way."

[edit]

Mr Clooney said that if Nato or the United Nations did not act then "I’m not quite sure what they are there for."

He suggested the US was "dancing around the issue" because it did not want to commit American troops on the ground. "So we’re going to have to build our alliances and find someone who is willing to do it."

Although he has been a vocal Hollywood critic of the Bush Administration in recent years, Mr Clooney cited the support of the two senators from opposite ends of the spectrum, as he said: "It’s not a political issue, it’s not left about left and right, conservative or liberal points of view. It’s only about right or wrong."

He described how tenuous the hold on life was for some of the refugees he had just met. "If you are lucky enough - and I mean lucky enough - to survive the Janjaweed militia and the killings and walk 50 miles to a refugee camp...then circling the camps are Janjaweed.

"Women go out to get wood for cooking that night get raped. Men don’t go because they would be killed. Older women are sent because they have less chance of being raped. It’s really that crass, you don’t understand - until you are standing there - that they have nothing."

CNN has a related article

Clooney was recently in Sudan with his father and showed a brief film of their trip.

He related a story about meeting a "little elf of a young woman" who asked him in Arabic, "When will you come back," and "When will you stop this?"

He said he told the translator to tell her that "we'll be there soon."

Clooney said she laughed, held onto his finger and said, "That's what you always say."

Darfur: UN Experts Propose Expanded Arms Embargo, Possible No-Fly Zone

From the UN News Center

With both the Government and rebels in Sudan’s Darfur conflict violating United Nations resolutions, the Security Council should move swiftly to impose further sanctions, expand an arms embargo, and consider setting up a no-fly zone for government planes, according to the latest report from a panel of experts.

The panel, set up to help the Committee monitoring an arms embargo imposed by the Council, reports that weapons and Government troops continue to flow into the region, where some 180,000 people have been killed and 2 million more uprooted in the past three years, and the Government continues its offensive military overflights.

As a possible option for the overflights, the panel says the Council should consider establishing an air exclusion zone over the entire Darfur region for all Government aircraft, the report says.

The rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) has violated ceasefire accords by expanding territory under its control, while the Government has failed to identify and neutralize armed groups in the region, it adds.

Arms, especially small arms and ammunition, flowed into Darfur from other countries and other regions of Sudan during the January-March period despite the embargo, and the Government continued to move in armed troops and supplies without seeking Committee approval as required by last year’s Council resolution 1591.

Moreover pro-government Arab militias appear to be maintaining their stock of weapons and ammunition through support from Government entities, banditry and clandestine sources, the experts write.

They recommend expanding the embargo to all of Sudan, with certain exemptions for non-lethal supplies; establishing a verification mechanism; and imposing additional measures on the Government and SLA as entities rather than on individuals for actions that impede the peace process.

Since the report was prepared, the Council on Tuesday imposed restrictions on the assets and international travel of the commander of the Western Military Region for the Sudanese Air Force, a SLA commander, a field commander of another rebel group, the National Movement for Reform, and the paramount chief of the Jalul Tribe.

During the reporting period, the Panel continued to supply the Committee with information on individuals who have committed acts that may constitute violations of international humanitarian or human rights law, and it recommends that any UN mission in Darfur should include a strong civilian protection dimension.

Darfur: Bush Issues Executive Order

The order applies only to the 4 men sanctioned by the UN Security Council earlier this week - from Reuters

President George W. Bush issued an executive order on Thursday freezing the assets of anyone deemed to have posed a threat to the peace process or stability in Sudan's Darfur region.

Bush said he was taking the action because "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States is posed by the persistence of violence in Sudan's Darfur region, particularly against civilians."

The order implements international sanctions imposed by U.S. Security Council resolutions that were adopted on March 29, 2005, and earlier this week, on April 25, 2006.

"These sanctions are aimed at those responsible for heinous actions being committed in Darfur. The United States will continue to work with its international partners to provide humanitarian assistance, support human rights, and bring peace to Darfur," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said in a statement.

The order also prohibits Americans and U.S. companies from engaging in any transaction or dealing with the targeted individuals.

Here is the press statement

Under the authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the President has issued an Executive Order blocking the property of certain persons in connection with the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region and further authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to designate and block the property of additional persons that are contributing to the conflict in Darfur.

The order immediately blocks all property and interests in property of the targeted persons. It also prohibits U.S. individuals and companies from engaging in any transaction or dealing with the targeted persons. As a result, these persons will not be able to access any assets that they might have in the United States and U.S. financial institutions will not be able to provide any financial services to them.

The Executive Order implements in the United States the international sanctions imposed on these individuals pursuant to U.N. Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR) 1591 and 1672, which were adopted on March 29, 2005 and April 25, 2006, respectively. UNSCR 1672 imposes the measures called for in UNSCR 1591 to sanction four specific individuals responsible for committing heinous crimes on the people of Darfur.

The Executive Order and the President's accompanying Message to Congress make clear that those who commit violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Darfur, or are responsible for the continuation of violence against civilians and sexual violence against women and girls, will be dealt with aggressively.

The U.S. Government carefully reviews information relating to potential targets for designation to ensure that sufficient information is available to establish a reasonable basis for determining that those persons meet the criteria set forth in the Executive Order and to ensure the effective implementation of the sanctions imposed on them. The U.S. Government will continue to gather and review information regarding possible targets for designation under the Executive Order, including members of the Government of National Unity (GNU) and the Darfur rebel groups.

These sanctions are aimed at those responsible for heinous actions being committed in Darfur. The United States will continue to work with its international partners to provide humanitarian assistance, support human rights, and bring peace to Darfur.

Here is the message to Congress

Pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), I hereby report that I have issued an Executive Order (the "order") blocking the property of persons in connection with the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region. In that order, I have expanded the scope of the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13067 of November 3, 1997, with respect to the policies and actions of the Government of Sudan, to address the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the actions and circumstances involving Darfur, as described below.

The United Nations Security Council, in Resolution 1591 of March 29, 2005, condemned the continued violations of the N'djamena Ceasefire Agreement of April 8, 2004, and the Abuja Humanitarian and Security Protocols of November 9, 2004, by all sides in Darfur, as well as the deterioration of the security situation and the negative impact this has had on humanitarian assistance efforts. I also note that the United Nations Security Council has strongly condemned the continued violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Sudan's Darfur region and, in particular, the continuation of violence against civilians and sexual violence against women and girls.

United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1591 determined that the situation in Darfur constitutes a threat to international peace and security in the region and called on Member States to take certain measures against persons responsible for the continuing conflict. The United Nations Security Council has encouraged all parties to negotiate in good faith at the Abuja talks and to take immediate steps to support a peaceful settlement to the conflict in Darfur, but has continued to express serious concern at the persistence of the crisis in Darfur in UNSCR 1651 of December 21, 2005.
Pursuant to IEEPA, the National Emergencies Act, and the United Nations Participation Act (UNPA), I have determined that these actions and circumstances constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and have issued an Executive Order expanding the scope of the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13067 to deal with this threat.

The order blocks the property and interests in property in the United States, or in the possession or control of United States persons, of the persons listed in the Annex to the order, as well as of any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, after consultation with the Secretary of State,

-- to have constituted a threat to the peace process in Darfur;

-- to have constituted a threat to stability in Darfur and the region;

-- to be responsible for conduct related to the conflict in Darfur that violates international law;

-- to be responsible for heinous conduct with respect to human life or limb related to the conflict in Darfur;

-- to have directly or indirectly supplied, sold, or transferred arms or any related materiel, or any assistance, advice, or training related to military activities to the Government of Sudan, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, the Justice and Equality Movement, the Janjaweed, or any person operating in the states of North Darfur, South Darfur, and West Darfur, that is a belligerent, a nongovernmental entity, or an individual; or

-- to be responsible for offensive military overflights in and over the Darfur region.

The designation criteria will be applied in accordance with applicable domestic law, including where appropriate, the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

The order also authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury, after consultation with the Secretary of State, to designate for blocking any person determined to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of, the activities listed above or any person listed in or designated pursuant to the order. I further authorized the Secretary of the Treasury, after consultation with the Secretary of State, to designate for blocking any person determined to be owned or controlled by, or acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person listed in or designated pursuant to the order. The Secretary of the Treasury, after consultation with the Secretary of State, is also authorized to remove any persons from the Annex to the order as circumstances warrant.

I delegated to the Secretary of the Treasury, after consultation with the Secretary of State, the authority to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA and UNPA, as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of the order. All Federal agencies are directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of the order.

The order, a copy of which is enclosed, was effective at 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on April 27, 2006.

The executive order itself is here

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)(NEA), section 5 of the United Nations Participation Act, as amended (22 U.S.C. 287c)(UNPA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States is posed by the persistence of violence in Sudan's Darfur region, particularly against civilians and including sexual violence against women and girls, and by the deterioration of the security situation and its negative impact on humanitarian assistance efforts, as noted by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 1591 of March 29, 2005, and, to deal with that threat, hereby expand the scope of the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13067 of November 3, 1997, with respect to the policies and actions of the Government of Sudan, and hereby order:

Section 1. (a) Except to the extent that sections 203(b) (1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)) may apply, or to the extent provided in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the effective date of this order, all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States person, including any overseas branch, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in:

(i) the persons listed in the Annex to this order; and

(ii) any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, after consultation with the Secretary of State:

(A) to have constituted a threat to the peace process in Darfur;

(B) to have constituted a threat to stability in Darfur and the region;

(C) to be responsible for conduct related to the conflict in Darfur that violates international law;

(D) to be responsible for heinous conduct with respect to human life or limb related to the conflict in Darfur;

(E) to have directly or indirectly supplied, sold, or transferred arms or any related materiel, or any assistance, advice, or training related to military activities to:

(1) the Government of Sudan;

(2) the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army;

(3) the Justice and Equality Movement;

(4) the Janjaweed; or

(5) any person (other than a person listed in subparagraph (E)(1) through (E)(4) above) operating in the states of North Darfur, South Darfur, or West Darfur that is a belligerent, a nongovernmental entity, or an individual;

(F) to be responsible for offensive military overflights in and over the Darfur region;

(G) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, materiel, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of, the activities described in paragraph (a)(ii)(A) through (F) of this section or any person listed in or designated pursuant to this order; or

(H) to be owned or controlled by, or acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person listed in or designated pursuant to this order.

(b) I hereby determine that, to the extent section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) may apply, the making of donations of the type of articles specified in such section by, to, or for the benefit of any person listed in or designated pursuant to this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13067 and expanded in this order, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by paragraph (a) of this section.

(c) The prohibitions of paragraph (a) of this section include, but are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person listed in or designated pursuant to this order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

Sec. 2. (a) Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

(b) Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

Sec. 3. For the purposes of this order:

(a) the term "person" means an individual or entity;

(b) the term "entity" means a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization;

(c) the term "United States person" means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States; and

(d) the term "arms or any related materiel" means arms or related materiel of all types, military aircraft, and equipment, but excludes:

(i) supplies and technical assistance, including training, intended solely for use in authorized monitoring, verification, or peace support operations, including such operations led by regional organizations;

(ii) supplies of non-lethal military equipment intended solely for humanitarian use, human rights monitoring use, or protective use, and related technical assistance, including training;

(iii) supplies of protective clothing, including flak jackets and military helmets, for use by United Nations personnel, representatives of the media, and humanitarian and development workers and associated personnel, for their personal use only;

(iv) assistance and supplies provided in support of implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed January 9, 2005, by the Government of Sudan and the People's Liberation Movement/Army; and

(v) other movements of military equipment and supplies into the Darfur region by the United States or that are permitted by a rule or decision of the Secretary of State, after consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury.

Sec. 4. For those persons listed in or designated pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that, for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13067 and expanded by this order, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1 of this order.

Sec. 5. The Secretary of the Treasury, after consultation with the Secretary of State, is hereby authorized to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA and UNPA as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government, consistent with applicable law. All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of this order and, where appropriate, to advise the Secretary of the Treasury in a timely manner of the measures taken. The Secretary of the Treasury shall ensure compliance with those provisions of section 401 of the NEA (50 U.S.C. 1641) applicable to the Department of the Treasury in relation to this order.

Sec. 6. The Secretary of the Treasury, after consultation with the Secretary of State, is hereby authorized to submit the recurring and final reports to the Congress on the national emergency expanded by this order, consistent with section 401(c) of the NEA (50 U.S.C. 1641(c)) and section 204(c) of the IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1703(c)).

Sec. 7. The Secretary of the Treasury, after consultation with the Secretary of State, is hereby authorized to determine, subsequent to the issuance of this order, that circumstances no longer warrant the inclusion of a person in the Annex to this order and that the property and interests in property of that person are therefore no longer blocked pursuant to section 1 of this order.

Sec. 8. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.

Sec. 9. This order is effective at 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on April 27, 2006.

GEORGE W. BUSH

THE WHITE HOUSE,

April 26, 2006.

ANNEX

Individuals

1. Gabril Abdul Kareem Badri [Colonel for the National Movement for Reform and Development (NMRD), born circa 1961]

2. Gaffar Mohmed El Hassan [Major General for the Sudan Armed Forces, born June 24, 1952]

3. Musa Hilal [Sheikh and Paramount Chief of the Jalul Tribe in North Darfur, born circa 1960]

4. Adam Yacub Shant [Commander for the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), born circa 1976]

Darfur: Bashir Rebuffs U.N. on Peacekeepers

From the Washington Post

Sudan's president has rejected a U.N. appeal to allow its peacekeepers into the Darfur region to help stem a tide of violence that has left more than 100,000 dead and more than 2 million displaced over the past three years, a senior U.N. official told the Security Council on Wednesday.

The remarks represented a setback for a U.S.-backed proposal to send more than 15,000 U.N. and NATO peacekeepers to Darfur to replace an underequipped African Union force of more than 6,000 troops. The Bush administration has accused Sudan and a government-backed militia of committing genocide in Darfur.

Hedi Annabi, the United Nations' second-ranking peacekeeping official, told the 15-nation council in a closed session that Khartoum formally rejected a request to send an assessment mission there. "Such an assessment remains an indispensable step in the planning process," said Annabi, who briefed the council on a recent meeting with Sudan's president, Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Bashir, in Khartoum.

Annabi warned that Sudan's opposition could doom U.N. peacekeeping plans. He suggested the council look outside the United Nations for troops if it decides to intervene in Darfur without an invitation from the government.

"The government of Sudan remains opposed to a transition to a United Nations operation in Darfur and has so far been unwilling to cooperate with our planning efforts," Annabi told the council.

The Bush administration accused Khartoum of stalling. "This is just delaying and delaying and delaying, and it's consistent with the pattern that the Sudanese government has followed for years in this," said John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Annabi said the Sudanese leader left open the possibility of some U.N. role in assisting peace efforts if Khartoum makes peace with two Darfurian rebel groups. Peace talks underway in Abuja, Nigeria, are to conclude Sunday.

If those talks fail, and the Security Council were to decide to intervene without Khartoum's approval, Annabi said that "such a mission is better undertaken by means other than a U.N. operation." The Bush administration has secured NATO approval for a plan to send several hundred NATO advisers to bolster the African Union peacekeeping mission, as a first step in the transition to a U.N. mission, officials said. The Bush administration also sponsored a resolution Tuesday imposing a travel ban and freezing the assets of a senior Sudanese air force officer and three other Sudanese nationals for committing war crimes or impeding the peace process in Darfur.

Darfur: Fears of New Govt Offensive

From IRIN

A recent spate of attacks in South Darfur State seems to constitute a new military offensive by the Sudanese government and puts the lives of tens of thousands of people at risk, regional analysts have warned.

"A lot of attacks have been taking place in a very short time," a source in the region - who requested anonymity - said. "What seems to be happening is a coordinated offensive of the Sudanese armed forces, the Janjawid militia and PDF [Popular Defence Force, local militia] to retake Gereida [a town 110 km southeast of South Darfur's capital, Nyala]."

On Monday, the government used an Antonov plane and two helicopter gunships during a major attack on the rebel-controlled village of Joghana, southeast of Gereida, the international watchdog, Human Rights Watch (HRW), reported on Thursday.

People who fled the town said the Antonov dropped bombs that killed civilians, but the numbers of the dead and injured could not be verified. According to a United Nations source, the estimated 10,000 village residents and 20,000 internally displaced persons who had found refuge in Joghana seemed to have fled the violence, but their whereabouts remained unclear for the moment.

The previous day, PDF forces had attacked Dito, a rebel-controlled town north of Gereida. A regional analyst had also received reports of skirmishes around the rebel-held villages of Ladab and Rijella to the northeast of Gereida. On Tuesday, local rebel commanders requested aid workers to leave the villages to avoid being caught in the crossfire.

"If the Sudanese government continues this offensive then Gereida is likely to be the next target," said Peter Takirambudde, HRW's Africa director. "Civilians there, particularly those who share the ethnicity of the rebel groups, could be in grave danger."

DRC/Uganda: UN Probes Reports of Troops Clash

From Reuters

U.N. peacekeepers in Congo are investigating reports that Ugandan soldiers crossed into Congo in pursuit of rebels on Wednesday and clashed with Congolese troops, a U.N. spokesman said on Thursday.

Security sources in Kinshasa said Ugandan soldiers had clashed with the Congolese army near the frontier town of Aba, in the remote northeast, after crossing the border to hunt down Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels hiding there.

"We have received reports from the Congolese army that there was a contact between them and the Ugandan army south of Aba yesterday," Hans-Jakob Reichen, military spokesman for U.N. forces in eastern Congo, told Reuters by telephone.

"We are unable to confirm or infirm this but we have the firm intention of verifying this information. Because of the potential problems we will look into it," he said.

[edit]

The fighting was reported to have taken place near Aba, an isolated town close to Congo's northeastern frontier with Uganda and Sudan where some 300 LRA rebels briefly entered last October, causing thousands of residents to flee.

"The Ugandans crossed the border apparently to hunt the LRA and they started fighting with our men. This fighting definitely happened," said one security source in Kinshasa.

October's incursion triggered a diplomatic crisis between Kinshasa and Kampala after Uganda threatened to send in its army to disarm the rebels and Congo vowed to protect its sovereignty if this happened.

A diplomat in Kinshasa said there were reports that one Ugandan soldier had been killed and another captured during Wednesday's fighting, but it was not possible to get immediate confirmation of any casualties or prisoners.

"If Ugandan forces came in and went out again it will be almost impossible to verify, but if it was a search and destroy operation, that will be more difficult to brush under the carpet," the diplomat said.

Chad: Deal Reached on Oil and Loans

From Reuters

Chad has withdrawn its threat to halt oil production at the end of this month after reaching an interim agreement with World Bank over petroleum revenues, Oil Minister Mahamat Nasser Hassan said on Thursday.

The World Bank agreed on Thursday to resume $124 million in suspended loans to the central African country and to release oil revenues held in an escrow account in return for guarantees that a share of petroleum profits would go to Chad's poor.

"Now that an agreement has been reached, there is no more sense in maintaining the threat," Hassan told Reuters.

Finance Minister Abbas Mahamat Tolli, who clinched the deal during a trip to Washington, was expected to provide more details on his return to N'Djamena later on Thursday.

Darfur: China Denies Human Rights Abuses in Search For Oil

From Reuters

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman angrily denied on Thursday that the country turns a blind eye to human rights abuses in places like Sudan in its search for oil to help power a booming economy.

Chinese trade helps improve people's living standards and economies and does not have a negative impact, Qin Gang told a regular news conference.

"We will not repeat the mistakes of the bloody pillaging and human rights abuses of the Western colonists in the past," Qin said. "China is a responsible country. In the global arena we stress peace, cooperation and development."

[edit]

I don't care whose opinion it is, or what the source is, I hope they can produce conclusive evidence," said Qin, banging on his podium, referring to allegations that China is complicit in human rights abuses overseas. "China is innocent."

China has always supported peace in Sudan, he added, pointing to Chinese peacekeepers sent there under a U.N. mandate.

"Why does nobody mention this when they criticize us?" Qin asked.

But he declined to comment further on a Chinese decision last week to join with Russia and Qatar in blocking U.N. sanctions against four Sudanese accused of war crimes in Darfur.

"We have all along supported peace and stability in Sudan," Qin said. "I hope all countries of the world can be responsible, and that the media can be too."

Chad/Darfur: Sudanese Men, Boys Abducted From Camps

From the Washington Times

Haroun Abdullah, 14, was in the middle of an Arabic lesson when the rebels came. "I could not run; they caught me inside the school," he said quietly, eyes downcast. "They had knives and sticks. Fifteen students were taken from my class."

The children were just a few of the thousands of Sudanese abducted from refugee camps in Chad and forced to undergo military training and indoctrination. Although their number is unknown, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees puts it at about 4,700. Most were taken early this year from the camps at Treguine and Bredjing, when unidentified men spent three days going from tent to tent looking for potential fighters. Women who tried to cling to their men were beaten back.

Hawa Moussa's husband is among the hundreds whose fate is unknown. After Arabic militias killed her parents and sisters, Mrs. Moussa, her husband and six children fled across the desert by donkey to join more than 200,000 refugees seeking sanctuary in Chad.

Last month, a group of men came to their house to persuade her husband to fight. When he refused, they tied him up and carried him off. "Until now, he has not come back," said Mrs. Moussa, their youngest child wailing on her back. "When I went to the police to complain, they refused to listen. When I insisted, they chased me away. The police said it is not their responsibility."

Mrs. Moussa does not know who is holding her husband. Four large rebel groups, two armies and an unknown number of militias are operating along the border between Chad and Sudan.

Among the dusty tents and straw shacks of the refugee camps in Chad, the people do not even know who is attacking them.

"We do find it very suspicious that thousands of refugees could be forcibly marched off in the span of one weekend and local authorities would be unaware of what was happening," said Matthew Conway, a spokesman for the UNHCR. "To what degree there was complicity is not yet clear." Some refugees are so frightened of being seized again that they spend several nights in the bush after escaping.

Darfur: Video of George Clooney in Sudan

A press release from The News Market

Journalists looking for broadcast-standard video of George Clooney's recent trip to southern Sudan and eastern Chad, can find this content online and on-demand, at www.thenewsmarket.com. Clooney and his father, journalist Nick Clooney, recently spent a week in the region, visiting refugee camps and meeting dozens of victims. Their video footage is available at: www.thenewsmarket.com/clooneyinsudan.

The conflict in the Sudanese province of Darfur has displaced more than two million people and cost an estimated 200,000 lives. George Clooney hopes that his trip will raise awareness about Darfur.

Both Nick and George Clooney plan to attend the "Rally to Stop Genocide" organized by the Save Darfur Coalition on Sunday, April 30 in Washington, D.C. The assembly plans to call on the international community to help end the turmoil plaguing the African region.

Darfur: ER

From TV Guide

Tonight at 10 pm/ET, NBC's ER airs the first of two episodes featuring scenes filmed on location in Cape Town, South Africa, and the Kalahari Desert. The story line: Mekhi Phifer's Dr. Gregory Pratt, making the trek to Darfur to give Carter (Noah Wyle) an assist, finds his eyes opened to the harsh realities, genocide included, that plague the region. The fictional doc, though, was not the only one enlightened by the sobering experience.

"Before I read the script, I had no idea of the atrocities that are going on over there and the masses of people that are displaced," Phifer admits. "It does raise issues. Do we involve the U.S. or do we use independent resources? How do we change this perpetual cycle of genocide that is sort of being overlooked?"

If ER viewers find the faraway situation brought closer to home, it's a mission-accomplished for executive producer David Zabel. "I think the American public is pretty underinformed [about] the slow genocide that's going on, one that very recently started bleeding into [the nation of] Chad," says Zabel. "From a social point of view, we'd like to use our show to educate and inform people about something they need to know about, and hopefully that will activate some people [to get involved]."

Darfur: Sudan Open to Discussing U.N. Help

From the AP

The Sudanese government opposes a U.N. takeover of peacekeeping operations in Darfur but is willing to discuss how the world body can help if a peace deal is reached to end the three-year conflict, a senior U.N. official said.

African Union mediators presented a draft peace agreement to Darfur's warring parties Tuesday at talks in Abuja, Nigeria, and urged them to sign it by Sunday and implement it quickly.

Sudan's government is not in favor of a U.N. takeover from the 7,000-strong African Union force on the ground now, but it would discuss how the United Nations could help implement the peace deal, Hedi Annabi, the U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, said Wednesday.

Annabi, speaking to reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council on his recent trip to Sudan, said Khartoum's refusal to allow a U.N. mission to assess the situation in Darfur will delay planning for a possible U.N. takeover from the African Union troops.

He said recommendations from the assessment mission would provide the basis for the U.N. force's mandate, which countries will want to know before committing police or troops.

The African Union's Peace and Security Council has agreed in principle to hand over peacekeeping in Darfur to the United Nations after its current mandate ends on Sept. 30, but the full African Union must give final approval.

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Annabi noted that Sudanese officials sat down with the United Nations last year to see how it could help implement a January 2005 peace agreement that ended a 21-year civil war between Sudan's mostly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south.

That led to Security Council approval for a 10,700-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission to monitor the implementation of the agreement.

Annabi was supposed to present the council with options for a U.N. force in Darfur, but he said this was impossible without an assessment mission and specific information on security arrangements in any agreement reached at Abuja.

In general terms, he said, "there are two possible options ... one being heavier on ground forces and another one being heavier on air assets."

While a peace deal hasn't been reached, Annabi said it appeared from the Abuja negotiations on security "that we will need a force that is highly mobile so that it can ... move quickly to potential troublespots." He noted that Darfur is the same size as France with no roads.

Darfur: Sudan Seeks Talks With Rebels

From Reuters

Sudanese government negotiators are seeking face-to-face talks with rebel leaders from the Darfur region about a draft peace agreement proposed by African Union (AU) mediators as Sunday's deadline for a deal approaches.

Peace talks between the government and two Darfur rebel groups have dragged on for close to two years in the Nigerian capital Abuja and the parties are facing intense pressure to make new concessions to end the three-year-old conflict.

The AU, hurrying to meet an April 30 deadline, presented to the parties late on Tuesday an 85-page draft agreement that covers the three areas of security, power-sharing and wealth-sharing that are key to solving the conflict.

"The document constitutes a good base for discussion between us and the (rebel) movements," Amin Hassan Omar, government delegation spokesman, said on Thursday in a first reaction to the draft.

"We are trying to continue talking to the movements to make it easier for both them and us to overcome the difficulties," he said, declining to give details of contacts between the sides.

Leaders from the two sides have started having private, face-to-face meetings in recent weeks. For most of the two-year process they had been speaking through AU mediators.

One government delegate, who did not wish to be named, said Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha was planning a face-to-face meeting with Minni Arcua Minnawi, head of the most powerful faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) rebel group.

The delegate said he did not know when the meeting was due to take place and Minnawi could not be reached for comment.

Darfur: Groups Plan Rally on Mall To Protest Violence

From the Washington Post

An unusually broad coalition of 164 humanitarian and religious groups, including Amnesty International and the National Association of Evangelicals, is planning a huge rally Sunday on the Mall to call for intervention to end the violence in Sudan's Darfur region.

With the added draw of celebrity speakers such as actor George Clooney and Olympic speedskating gold medalist Joey Cheek, organizers expect tens of thousands of people to converge on the District.

Stop Genocide rallies also are planned in Chicago, San Francisco and 15 other cities. An allied campaign, A Million Voices for Darfur, aims to deluge the White House with 1 million postcards. The goal is to push the Bush administration to support a multinational peacekeeping force for Darfur, where militias backed by Sudan's government have killed tens of thousands of civilians and driven 2.5 million from their homes since 2003.

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Organizers rushed this week to invite two Darfurians to address the rally after Sudanese immigrants objected that the original list of speakers included eight Western Christians, seven Jews, four politicians and assorted celebrities -- but no Muslims and no one from Darfur.

Some Darfur activists also have complained about the involvement in the rally of a Kansas-based evangelical group, Sudan Sunrise.

Last week, after an inquiry from The Washington Post, Sudan Sunrise changed its Web site to eliminate references to efforts to convert the people of Darfur. Previously, it said it was engaged in "one on one, lifestyle evangelism to Darfurian Muslims living in refugee camps in eastern Chad" and appealed for money to "bring the kingdom of God to an area of Sudan where the light of Jesus rarely shines."

Although it is not formally part of the Save Darfur Coalition, Sudan Sunrise helped arrange buses and speakers, and it is co-hosting a dinner for 600 people on the rally's eve. The group's executive director, the Rev. Tom Prichard, said the material on the Web site was written in error "by an employee who was not fully informed." He added: "We've been very, very careful not to do anything that's going to alienate the Muslims."

Sudan Sunrise and an allied group, the Sudan Council of Churches-USA, also have angered Darfurians by saying that the "victims in western Darfur are the people who persecuted the Christian southern Sudanese" during the civil war. Prichard, an Episcopal priest, said his group encourages Christians from southern Sudan to come to the aid of their "former persecutors."

Mohamed Ibrahim, co-chairman of the Darfur Alert Coalition, an umbrella for 22 Sudanese and American organizations, is highly critical of that approach. Sudan Sunrise "says it is looking for reconciliation, and they are actually creating a conflict by spreading the false claim that the perpetrators of the violence in southern Sudan were from Darfur," he said.

Independent experts also said that although there were many conscripts from Darfur in the Sudanese army, the Sudanese government, which was not controlled by Darfurians, prosecuted the war.

Rally organizers said they cannot control the agendas of all the rally's participants.

"I have no idea who these Sunrise people are. They certainly aren't part of our coalition," said David Rubenstein, head of the Save Darfur Coalition. "With 164 groups, I barely have time to think about the horrible things they're all doing."

Darfur: Straw's Plea for Peace Efforts

From the Press Association

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has issued a plea for the international community to redouble its efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Darfur.

Mr Straw called for "full use of sanctions and the arms embargo" to put pressure on the Sudanese government, which has been accused of repeatedly breaking a ceasefire agreed in 2004.

And he urged governments around the world to sign up to an International Arms Trade Treaty to stem the flow of weaponry fuelling conflict in areas of tension such as Darfur.

Speaking to an international audience of diplomats and businessmen at the Lord Mayor of London's Easter banquet at Mansion House, in the City, Mr Straw said that the next couple of months would be crucial for the war-torn province of western Sudan.

"We can get a breakthrough in the peace talks in (Nigerian capital) Abuja," he said.

"But it will only happen if the international community redoubles its efforts - and that includes all the members of the Security Council.

"We should make full use of sanctions and the arms embargo. We should be clear that those who have committed war crimes will face justice in the International Criminal Court. And at the same time we should hold out a positive future for Sudan if a settlement can be reached: international respectability; an end to isolation; debt relief; World Trade Organisation membership; a reconstruction package.

"Meanwhile we have to back up those working on the ground. That means supporting the African Union in its mission and helping it to manage the hand-over to a United Nations force. Indeed, as a matter of urgency, we need to get a UN planning mission into Sudan."

Darfur: Sudan's Refusal to Issue Visas Worries UN

From Reuters

U.N. Security Council members expressed concern on Wednesday that Sudan's government was still blocking a U.N. team from visiting Darfur to help plan for a U.N. peacekeeping mission there later this year.

But council members, meeting behind closed doors, decided against publicly criticizing the Khartoum government on the point for fear of jeopardizing Darfur peace talks, which have entered a critical phase in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

[edit]

Khartoum, however, has not yet agreed to U.N. troops in Darfur and refused a week ago even to issue visas to members of a U.N. military assessment team that must visit the region to complete the planning for a U.N. force to go in.

Khartoum has also been noncommittal on visas for a planned visit by Security Council ambassadors, to be led by Britain and planned for early June, council diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Khartoum government has said it would discuss planning for a possible transition from the AU to a U.N. force only after a long-delayed Darfur peace deal is reached in Abuja.

African Union mediators on Wednesday gave the warring parties an 85-page draft accord in hopes of meeting an April 30 deadline for a peace agreement ending the three-year conflict.

Council members said they were worried that a statement pressing the government on the U.N. visas so close to the deadline in Abuja could jeopardize a peace deal, diplomats attending Wednesday's closed-door meeting said.

[edit]

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, attending the closed-door council meeting in New York, warned that the lack of visas could delay the new U.N. mission's deployment, tentatively planned for later this year, the diplomats said.

They quoted Annan as saying he would need four to six months to assemble the new force once the council adopted a resolution setting out its size and mandate. The mission should not be launched in any case without Khartoum's approval, warned senior U.N. peacekeeping official Hedi Annabi.

Darfur: Hopes Fade for Ending the Carnage

Published by the International Herald Tribune but purportedly from the New York Times

As the violence in the Darfur region of Sudan grows ever- more deadly, Bush administration officials say they have few viable policy options left for containing the carnage.

Long-running peace talks to resolve the crisis face a deadline of Sunday for an agreement, or the talks are to be disbanded. But hopes for an agreement are low.

The alternative proposal, to send 20,000 United Nations peacekeeping troops to Sudan, has been stymied by Khartoum's adamant opposition. Without Sudan's agreement, the Bush administration acknowledges that dispatching UN troops to Darfur would rightly be viewed as an invasion.

"Sudan policy has run off the road into a ditch," said John Prendergast, a former senior U.S. government Africa specialist.

American public outrage, sporadic before now, has grown over the carnage in Darfur, which the United States characterizes as genocide. Cities, states and private groups across the United States, including Maine, New Jersey and Illinois, are cutting financial ties to companies that do business with Khartoum. And a coalition of advocacy organizations called the Save Darfur Coalition has organized a large rally on the Mall in Washington for this weekend featuring speakers from Congress, the Bush administration, Hollywood and religious organizations.

More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur since the violence began more than three years ago, and more than two million have been driven from their homes.

For the Bush administration, most hopes for resolving the crisis center on the peace talks that have limped along for almost two years. The United Nations and the African Union, sponsor of the talks, had given the government of Sudan and the Darfur rebels the April 30 deadline to reach agreement on a draft treaty that the mediators wrote and handed to both parties on Tuesday.

Both sides agreed to look it at it noncommitally. While the two sides have agreed on some issues during previous sessions, the most recent of them two weeks ago, the remaining disagreements are thick with complexity and emotion.

"We will respect the deadline, and if there are no indications that a deal is possible, we will wind up" the talks, Sam Ibok, head of the African Union mediating team, said Sunday.

"Whether it gets done by April 30, I can't say," Robert Zoellick, the deputy secretary of state, said in an interview Wednesday. He is the administration's point man on Sudan policy. "If there is no peace accord," Zoellick added, "then it becomes a different mission."

Darfur: New Government Offensive Threatens Civilians

From Human Rights Watch via AllAfrica

The Sudanese government has launched a new military offensive in South Darfur that is placing civilians at grave risk, Human Rights Watch said today.

An April 24 attack on a village in rebel-controlled territory used Antonov aircraft and helicopter gunships indiscriminately in violation of the laws of war, and displaced thousands of civilians who had sought safety there. The attack occurred just a week before an April 30 deadline for peace talks to end in Abuja, Nigeria. Two other villages in the area have also been attacked in the past 10 days. On April 25, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution placing four Sudanese individuals involved in the armed conflict on a sanctions list for international travel bans and asset freezes.

"Khartoum's new attacks on civilians show the Security Council needs to move quickly on a U.N. protection force for Darfur," said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director for Human Rights Watch. "They also show that the sanctions, while welcome, may not hit hard enough - or high enough - and civilians will continue to pay the price."

The April 24 attack on Joghana village appears to be part of a broader government offensive in South Darfur with the apparent aim of consolidating territory prior to an African Union deadline of April 30 for concluding peace negotiations. The area, 110 kilometers southeast of the South Darfur capital, Nyala, has long been a flashpoint, pitting the government and Janjaweed militia against two rebel forces. The rebel groups have also sometimes fought each other there. All parties have contributed to ethnic polarization and massive civilian displacement in the area.

According to eyewitness reports, government forces and militias began attacking Joghana at 7 a.m. on April 24. Civilians who fled the town said that an Antonov plane and two helicopter gunships were used and that the Antonov dropped bombs that killed civilians, although the numbers of dead and injured could not be verified.

Thousands of displaced persons were living in Joghana, controlled by the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), after fleeing earlier attacks on their villages. Joghana is approximately 10 kilometers from Greida, another town under SLA control, where at least 80,000 displaced persons have sought shelter.

"If the Sudanese government continues this offensive then Greida is likely to be the next target," said Takirambudde. "Civilians there, particularly those who share the ethnicity of the rebel groups, could be in grave danger."

[edit]

The current operation was clearly planned and coordinated in advance.

Human Rights Watch learned from credible sources that Sudanese government officials recently informed the A.U. mission in Darfur that they intended to "clear the road" from Nyala to Buram.

"This is no random attack," said Takirambudde. "This is the result of months of preparation by Sudanese officials and coordination with militias."

As in other parts of Darfur, Sudanese officials have exacerbated local ethnic tensions by continuing to recruit, support and use ethnic militias in the Greida area. Sudanese authorities, including Al Haj Atta Al Mannar, the /wali/ or governor of South Darfur, have set in place so-called reconciliation mechanisms, purportedly to ease ethnic tensions in Greida. But these efforts, which include putting known militia leaders responsible for war crimes on reconciliation committees, represent a continuing Sudanese government policy of building military alliances on an ethnic basis without regard to the harmful impact on inter-ethnic relations.

The South Darfur governor is a key figure in the network of Sudanese government-militia alliances in South Darfur, as documented in the Human Rights Watch report of December 2005 , "Entrenching Impunity: Government Responsibility for International Crimes in Darfur."

"Local officials, such as the governor of South Darfur, have played a key role in Sudan's strategy to tear Darfur apart," said Takirambudde.

"They must be added to the U.N. sanctions list and investigated for their role in supporting and coordinating attacks on civilians."

Darfur: The Options

Mark Leon Goldberg of The American Prospect responds to this op-ed by Lawrence Kaplan - I am just going to excerpt this section, but I encourage you to read both pieces

It is conceivable that should the United States pursue these policies in tandem, the regime in Khartoum will quickly find itself under a strain of international pressure that it has not experienced since it was sanctioned for orchestrating a plot to assassinate Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in 1995. But should Khartoum continue to support the their proxy janjaweed militia, disrupt humanitarian access to Darfur, or launch aggressive military campaigns in Darfur, the United States should reserve the right to launch cruise missile or airstrikes against Sudanese military instillations. The regime in Khartoum values its fleet of converted Antonov transport jets above human lives. So why not threaten the government where it will hurt? The leaders in Khartoum are not bloodthirsty thugs for the hell of it. Rather, they devised a counterinsurgency strategy of genocide precisely because it was the most practical way to suppress a rebellion. It would not take much to make that strategy prohibitively expense for Khartoum by taking out a few dozen aircraft.

I do not propose airstrikes with great enthusiasm. They could be problematic for a number of reasons, not least of which is the potential that Khartoum follows Slobodan Milosevic’s lead and responds to an aerial assault by accelerating their ground war. But airstrikes would be a last resort, and unlike Milosevic, the regime in Khartoum is more likely to fold under the simple threat of such attacks.

The question, of course, is whether the United States seeks Security Council support to legitimize such airstrikes. The Chinese will most certainly object. To this, the Kosovo clause should apply: All available diplomatic options would have been exhausted and the urgency of the situation justifies the circumvention of a Security Council vote. This may put me in common cause with the hawks, but any airstrikes should come with the tacit understanding that no American troops will set foot in Darfur.

The government of Sudan successfully pulled off the first genocide of the 21st century. But if Kaplan’s essay presages a new effort by liberal hawks to wield Darfur as a tool toward building support for the Iraq War, then the Khartoum regime can take comfort in the fact that linking the two will do more to decrease support for intervention in Darfur than it will to increase support for the Iraq War. And if liberal hawks look to Darfur to prop their worldview while their experiment in Iraq falls to pieces, they will discount the intermediate remedial steps that would do much to relieve the suffering of the people of Darfur. This isn’t just wrong, but is being positively counterproductive.

Darfur: Sudan Condemns UN Sanctions

Considering that only one mid-level Sudanese official was even targeted for sanctions, it is hard to understand what Khartoum is complaining about, especially since the U.N. experts recommended that several other high-ranking officials be targeted as well - from AFP

Sudan has denounced the UN Security Council decision to impose sanctions on four Sudanese officials accused of human rights abuses in war-torn Darfur as "unfortunate and ill-timed".

Jamal Ibrahim, the foreign ministry spokesman, on Wednesday was quoted as saying that it was a "negative message" that could undermine African Union-sponsored efforts to bring an end to the conflict that has killed up to 300,000 people and displaced more than two million.

He was quoted by the official SUNA news agency.

"The efforts currently being exerted in Abuja have neared their end, and what is needed now is support and not the use of the stick and negative statements," Ibrahim said after Tuesday's vote in the Security Council.

Darfur: War Crime Suspect Profiles

The BBC has short proflies of the four men targeted for sanctions:

Gaffar Mohamed Elhassan, ex-air force commander
Adam Yacub Shant, rebel commander
Gabril Abdul Kareem Badri, rebel field commander
Sheikh Musa Hilal, Janjaweed leader

The BBC also has a lengthier profile of Hilal here.

Darfur: Peace Deal Tabled

From IRIN

A draft deal to end the three-year conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region has been tabled by African Union mediators five days ahead of a 30 April deadline for negotiations to be wrapped up.

The 85-page peace agreement has been hammered out in the Nigerian capital Abuja after almost two-years of talks between the Sudanese government and two Darfur rebel groups failed to secure peace.

[edit]

The AU deal proposes a Darfurian take the fourth highest-ranking position in the Presidency with the rank of “senior presidential assistant”, a move meant to defuse a deadlock over rebel demands for a Darfurian to be made Vice President.

It also includes compromises to break long-running deadlocks over power sharing, security, and wealth sharing.

Darfur: US Expected to Push for Bigger NATO Role

From the AP

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to push NATO allies this week to accept a more robust role for the alliance helping African peacekeepers end political and ethnic strife in Sudan’s Darfur region.

[edit]

On Darfur, Washington has been urging NATO to step up its support for African Union peacekeepers, which so far has been limited to airlifts and a small training mission for African Union commanders.

The 6,000 strong African Union force has failed to halt political and ethnic violence, which has killed more than 180,000 people and driven more than three million from their homes.

The U.S. wants NATO to provide the Africans with logistics, communications, transport, planning, intelligence and expanded training - including an unspecified number of instructors and other experts on the ground in Sudan.

NATO has offered to do more, but several allies fear sending significant numbers of Europeans and North Americans could inflame regional sensitivities - particularly if the mainly Muslim Sudanese government opposes a NATO deployment.

Osama bin Laden accused the U.S., in a tape aired Sunday, of igniting strife in Darfur "to pave the way for sending Crusader forces to occupy the region and steal its oil under the pretext of peacekeeping. It is a continuing Crusader-Zionist war against Muslims."

Any final decision on NATO’s role is expected to come only after complex negotiations involving the Sudanese government, the U.N., the African Union and the 26 NATO members.

Darfur: Operation Oprah

George Clooney will be on Oprah talking about Darfur today.

See this link and this link as well.

Uganda: Congressional Hearing

From The Washington Times - see also this press release announcing a pre-hearing press conference with Senator Sam Brownback and others

A 26-year-old Ugandan woman kidnapped as a teenager and forced into sexual slavery by a terrorist religious sect will be the star witness today at a congressional hearing on Uganda's 18-year civil war.

Grace Akallo, now a communications major at a Christian college near Boston, has become the poster child for Congress' efforts to pressure Uganda to end what's been called one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

Miss Akallo, one of about 30,000 children kidnapped by a band of rebels known as the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), will represent the Christian relief organization World Vision at a 2 p.m. International Relations subcommittee hearing presided over by Rep. Christopher H. Smith, New Jersey Republican.

More than 80 percent of the LRA's ranks are made up of kidnapped children, meaning its troops are simultaneously hostages and terrorists.

"It's kidnapping, mutilation and rape against children," Richard Stearns, president of World Vision, told The Washington Times during a recent visit to Washington. "We all have blood on our hands in letting this go on."

Some members of Congress want to nix a proposed $4 million cut in the U.S. Agency for International Development's foreign disaster assistance budget that was earmarked for Uganda. Fifty-eight children under the age of 5 are dying each day in Uganda's massive refugee camps, said Gregory Simpkins, African-affairs adviser for Mr. Smith.

Chad: The Looming Chaos

An op-ed from Eric Reeves in The Boston Globe

IDRISS DEBY, the president of the central African country of Chad, may soon lose power to a group of variously motivated rebel movements. The deposing of Deby might not seem occasion for much regret: he is a cruel, tyrannical, and corrupt man who has squandered a great deal of Chad's new-found oil wealth. But the rebels who would replace him have the deeply troubling support of the genocidal regime in Khartoum, Sudan. In recent months, as Human Rights Watch has authoritatively reported, the National Islamic Front in Khartoum has supported the Chadian rebels, even as it has loosed its own murderous Arab militia allies on the non-Arab tribal populations of eastern Chad. Indeed, Human Rights Watch reports that ''the Janjaweed militias have carried out attacks inside Chad accompanied by Sudanese army troops with helicopter gunship support."

Chad's capital, N'Djamena, is far to the west of the Chad/Sudan border; but as Deby has begun to feel more threatened, he has redeployed his military forces westward and into major garrisons in a desperate bid to retain power. In fact, N'Djamena itself was attacked by the rebels on April 13, and though the assault was repelled, military assets will be increasingly concentrated in the capital and larger towns. This is bad news not only for the Chadian civilians in the east, who now have almost no protection, but for the quarter-million Darfuri refugees who are increasingly threatened in camps up and down the very long Chad/Sudan border. Aid organizations have already begun to withdraw from some refugee camps, and after the April 13 attack, the UN's World Food Program (the lead UN logistical organization in Chad) ordered the evacuation of all non-essential personnel from N'Djamena. Humanitarian access and security in eastern Chad continue to deteriorate badly as Khartoum turns the region into an extension of the Darfur killing fields.

And things will soon get worse. Heavy seasonal rains begin in late May or June, and these will sever the key east-west road arteries in Chad (as they do in Darfur). It will become impossible for humanitarian supplies to move overland. Moreover, a new government -- beholden to Khartoum -- may decide to obstruct humanitarian aid in the same way that Khartoum has in Darfur. Even air drops of food and medical supplies could be hindered.

[edit]

At this point in the crisis, however, it is fruitless for the international community to apportion blame. Humanitarian needs must be addressed, and anticipated, in the most urgent fashion. Plans must be made for the continuation of humanitarian assistance to the many hundreds of thousands of desperate civilians in eastern Chad who are faced with the total loss of protection and humanitarian access. Under international pressure, Deby has backed down from his threat to expel from Chad the large Darfuri refugee population; he must be told forcefully any further such threats will diminish his support within the international community. The UN, which has dithered unconscionably in providing security for humanitarians in Darfur, must begin emergency planning for a UN peacekeeping deployment to eastern Chad. Part of its mandate must be to staunch the flow of genocidal destruction from Darfur into Chad.

All this will be only a short-term solution; the crises in Chad and Darfur are inextricably linked. If the world wishes to end genocide in Darfur, and prevent massive human destruction in eastern Chad, it must exert immediate, concerted, and substantial pressure on Khartoum.

Darfur: U.N. Warns Malnutrition Again on Rise

From Reuters

Violence and lack of money is hampering humanitarian help for Sudan's Darfur region and malnutrition is rising again, the United Nations' Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Wednesday.

"We want to sound the alarm. We must do everything to stop this deterioration," UNICEF's representative for Sudan Ted Chaiban told journalists.

The number of people fleeing their homes to escape fighting between rebels, the army and government-backed militias had risen by a further 200,000 to more than two million in the past three months, he said.

And largely because of the security situation, international humanitarian agencies were unable to provide regular assistance to around one third of the internal refugees, Chaiban added.

UNICEF had so far received only $15 million of the $89 million sought for this year and was being forced to cut back on some of programmes.

Malnutrition, particularly among women and children, was not yet reaching levels seen during the depths of the crisis in 2003 and 2004 when daily deaths were two per 10,000 people, twice the rate used for declaring a humanitarian emergency.

"But we are seeing the beginning of what could be a reverse of the positive trend of 2005," Chaiban said.

Humanitarian officials say the security situation in Darfur, an area the size of France in the west of Sudan, has been steadily worsening again since last autumn.

Sudan: Student-Driven Divestment Campaign Grows

From the New York Times

Universities across the country have divested themselves of endowment assets in companies doing business in Sudan, reacting to pressure from students to take a financial stand against the violence in the Darfur region.

At least seven universities have gotten rid of some of their assets, including the 10-campus University of California system, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Brown. Divestment campaigns are under way at several other universities, including the University of Maryland, Indiana University and the University of Virginia.

The campaign is organized by a national student-led group, Sudan Divestment Task Force, and is reminiscent of a campaign in the 1980's when student-led groups lobbied 55 universities to remove money from companies affiliated with the South African apartheid regime.

The Sudan campaign also aims at states and municipalities. Illinois, New Jersey and Oregon have approved divestment, and legislation is pending in several other states.

Earlier this month, Providence, R.I., became the first American city to authorize divestment. Last week, New Haven announced that it would strip municipal employees' pension funds of investments in companies doing business with the Sudanese government.

"It can't just be the sort of piecemeal one-or-two companies symbolic approach," said Daniel Millenson, 19, a Brandeis University freshman and executive director of the task force. "It needs to be several universities, states, whatever, all passing the same kind of divestment solutions."

Students pressing for divestment are holding rallies, collecting signatures, meeting with administrators to present research against the Sudanese government and writing opinion articles in campus newspapers.

The task force is planning a bus trip to Washington on Thursday for about 500 students to participate in a day of lobbying on Friday and a protest on Sunday. They want troops sent to Darfur.

Darfur: Up Close

This is the first in what is apparently going to be a series of columns by Nick Clooney

My son George and I read with growing concern - as did many of you - the disturbing reports by New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, as well as those of journalists Samantha Powers and Elizabeth Rubin, all of whom spent risky time in the region trying to get a handle on what was really going on. What they described was a horror Stephen King could not invent.

But the world had been so awash in other imperatives that it seemed the story could not get the kind of "traction" that would result in donor nations, such as the United States, confronting the problem head on.

"Why don't we go over there, Pop?" George asked me six weeks ago. I couldn't think of a single reason not to back then.

I might be able to come up with a few today, but that is another story.

[edit]

George and I began from scratch. Our intention was to go to Darfur, talk to as many people as we could, learn first-hand what had happened and what those involved thought the solutions might be, distill what we found into television pieces and columns and, frankly, see if George's hard-won celebrity might give this humanitarian disaster a higher profile than it has now. My experience as a reporter would help organize the stories.

It was worth a try. At worst, we could add a few tiles to the mosaic of Darfur, the first genocide of the 21st century. Let future generations see how it was for a few days in 2006.

Our calls were met with no encouragement at all. Neither of us is without sources, but the response was, to one degree or another, negative. Of course, that is how it is with any major story, even an investigation of local corruption or racketeering. Reporters keep calling and knocking on doors until they catch a break, usually from a completely unexpected direction.

In this case, it was a call from a cousin in San Diego. We were speaking on family matters when she told me about her nephew, of whom she was very proud. He is a young lawyer, she said, who works on humanitarian causes. In fact, she added, he had just returned from Darfur three days earlier.

That's how George and I made contact with David Pressman, without whom this venture would not have been possible, at least not in the time frame we proposed. We wanted to return with stories before a scheduled rally in support of the Darfur victims on April 30th in Washington.

Did we want to do it?

Two million helpless people in camps. No protection except a handful of under-equipped African Union troops with no clear mandate, and a few courageous humanitarian workers, your sons and daughters - there to give food and shelter. All could be swept away in a day by the murderous "janjaweed" ("devil riders"), ignored and even supported by their own government in Khartoum, unless irresistible international pressure dictates otherwise.

Yes, we wanted to do it. In my lifetime, we came too late to the Holocaust, to Cambodia, to Rwanda. Might this not be the first genocide the world stopped in its tracks, and might not our little group be a small part of it?

That's what I said to David.

"I think we can get in through Chad," he responded. David is not much for rhetoric.

Darfur: Mediators Push for Deal as Deadline Looms

From Reuters

The warring parties from Sudan's Darfur region faced intense pressure on Wednesday to make new concessions after African Union (AU) mediators, hurrying to meet an April 30 deadline, proposed a draft peace agreement.

The 85-page document, which the AU delivered to delegates from the Sudanese government and two Darfur rebel groups late on Tuesday, covers the three areas of security, power-sharing and wealth-sharing that are key to solving the three-year conflict.

"As far as this mediation is concerned, this is as far as we can go. The AU has exhausted listening to the arguments on both sides," Sam Ibok, head of the AU mediation team, told Reuters.

He said it was now up to the Sudanese parties to negotiate face-to-face and make any changes they felt were needed in the next few days in order to meet Sunday's deadline for a deal. Several previous deadlines passed without any agreement.

This time, if the parties reject the proposal, the AU would not simply carry on with the talks. Instead, the body's Peace and Security Council would have to decide on a new strategy for the Darfur peace process, Ibok said.

If Iraq Was Wrong, Is Darfur Right?

From Lawrence Kaplan in the Los Angeles Times

SPRINGTIME HAS ARRIVED on the nation's college campuses, but this year the students out marching in the streets are demanding a foreign intervention rather than protesting one. For months now they've been in full cry, and rightly so, over the international community's disinclination to halt the genocide in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Next Sunday, they and like-minded people around the U.S. will convene for a massive rally in the nation's capital.

But the marchers will have to contend with an unwelcome guest: the specter of Iraq.

Just as the shadow of Somalia loomed over policymakers a decade ago, generating excuses for inaction in Bosnia and Rwanda, the trauma of Iraq may now doom the rescue of Darfur. Even the most committed progressive activists seem confused about what exactly should be done next. "A Call to Your Conscience: Save Darfur!," "Take Action Now" — these are a few of the slogans that the Save Darfur Coalition suggests marchers affix to their placards at the April 30 rally. But it's purposefully unclear what the march organizers mean by "action" and on whose "conscience" they intend to call.

As their criticism of the particulars of the Iraq war has hardened into a broader indictment of U.S. foreign policy, the mostly progressive voices calling for action in Darfur have become caught in a bind of their own devising. Even as they demand intervention in Sudan, they excoriate Washington for employing U.S. military power without due respect to the opinion of the international community and against nations that pose no imminent threat to our own — which is to say, precisely the terms under which U.S. power would have to be employed in the name of saving Darfur.

Then again, the use of unilateral U.S. military power isn't the solution most Darfur activists have in mind. Even as western Sudan burns, Darfur advocates such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) argue that the U.S. must employ its military power only on behalf of — and, more important, in concert with — international organizations such as the United Nations. The Save Darfur Coalition, a leading umbrella group for organizations bent on action, intends to save Darfur not by urging the Bush administration to launch air strikes against Sudan's murderous militias but by petitioning the White House to bolster funding for African Union peacekeepers and to lobby the United Nations.

But will the African Union put a halt to the killings in Darfur? Absolutely not. Its Arab members have stymied the force at every turn. Will the U.N. solve the crisis? That seems extremely unlikely as well. The organization amounts first and foremost to a collection of sovereign states, many of them adamantly opposed to violating Sudan's own sovereignty. Can NATO save the day? Not really, given the fears of entanglement expressed by its European members. As in Bosnia before it, the victims of Darfur can be saved by one thing and one thing alone: American power.

Chad: Diplomat Discussed Delaying Election

From theAP

A U.S. diplomat said Tuesday he spoke with Chad's president about postponing next week's presidential elections, which are being boycotted by the opposition amid fears of fraud.

Chad's main opposition alliance says it believes President Idriss Deby will steal May 3 poll, which would be Chad's third multiparty presidential election since independence from France in 1960.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Donald Yamamoto met with Deby on Monday and said they discussed the poll and a rebellion in eastern Chad, including a failed attack April 13 on the capital, N'djamena.

"We held a very direct and private discussion on the issue" of whether to postpone the election, Yamamoto told journalists.

Chad: CAR Refugees Neglected

From Refugees International

While international attention is focused on the crisis of Darfur refugees in eastern Chad, the plight of tens of thousands of refugees from the Central African Republic (CAR) fleeing ethnic violence into southern Chad has gone largely unnoticed. From June to December 2005, more than 12,000 refugees arrived in Chad, adding to a pre-existing refugee population of 30,000. In the last few months alone, close to 5,000 have continued to come to Chad, escaping fighting between rebel groups and the governmental Republican guard. The majority of these people share the same ethnicity as ex-president Patassé, and have therefore been specifically targeted by the present Bozizé government for attacks.

According to one of the few agencies present in northern CAR, there are also more than 30,000 internally displaced persons hiding in the forests in northern CAR, living off grasses and roots. There is little to no UN presence in northern CAR, as the area is considered too dangerous for international staff. Very few other humanitarian agencies are operating in the area, leaving the population extremely vulnerable.

Darfur: In US, a Push for Action

From the The Boston Globe

Raking Williams recalls that when he heard a friend mention Darfur a couple of weeks ago, he thought she was talking about D-4, the Boston police district that encompasses the South End and Back Bay.

By last week Williams, who sells Afrocentric and Rastafarian paraphernalia from a storefront on Washington Street in Dorchester, was spending his lunch hours working the sidewalk, asking passersby to sign postcards urging President Bush to stop the genocide occurring in that troubled region of western Sudan.

Next weekend, Williams plans to be among tens of thousands of Americans demonstrating in Washington to show their concern for Darfur and pressure the president to keep his promises to help. Mass rallies also are planned in Chicago and San Francisco, in what organizers describe as a first-ever grass-roots movement to stop an ongoing genocide.

''I knew about Rwanda," Williams, 40, said, referring to the genocidal slaughter in that central African country in 1994, ''but it happened fast, and it seemed like you needed to be a superpower to do something about it. This time it is happening almost slow motion, and people offered me a chance to step forward, to sign up, and to get others to sign up."

For blacks determined to speak up more forcefully than they did during the Rwandan genocide, and for Jews, who commemorated the Nazi Holocaust on their Yom Hashoah holiday yesterday, the movement to save Darfur has become a means of keeping their most fervent promise: never again.

[edit]

The Save Darfur Coalition was created in July 2004 at the initiative of the American Jewish World Service and the Committee of Conscience of the US Holocaust Museum -- a panel set up on the premise that the museum should serve as a watchdog against future genocides. But it took extensive local organizing, much of it originating in the Boston area, to create the national grass-roots campaign.

Killing and massive human rights abuses began in early 2003 after rebels in Darfur rose up against the central government. In the subsequent campaign to defeat the insurgents, Sudanese government-backed militias are accused of killing more than 400,000 people, raping countless women, and displacing an estimated 2 million members of the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massalit tribes. The victims and the persecutors all are Muslim, but the government forces identify ethnically as Arabs and practice a comparatively fundamentalist Islam, while their victims primarily identify as Africans. It is because of the ethnic divide that the conflict is considered a genocide.

Shortly after the Save Darfur Coalition was formed, Congress declared the fighting genocide, and Bush did so in September 2004.

''It was the first time the United States has ever identified a genocide while it was going on," said Ruth Messinger, president of American Jewish World Service. ''But then the government put it on a to-do list and didn't do anything about it."

Scattered local activities and the usual lobbying by human-rights groups in Washington had little effect.

[edit]

Organizers planned next weekend's mass rallies and launched a drive to send Bush 1 million postcards urging him to do more to stop the genocide. A spokesman for the national coalition said that more than 500,000 postcards have been filled out, and that a stream of religious and secular organizations are joining the national organization. There are 164 organizations in the coalition, including 55 Jewish, 30 Christian, and 7 Muslim groups.

Hundreds of Christian congregations participated in a week of prayer and action for Darfur organized in early April. During Passover, Jews were asked to reflect on four questions about Darfur in addition to the classic four questions about the liberation of the Hebrews from Egypt. ''The issue has begun to catch on, dramatically in the Jewish community and more broadly in the interfaith community," Messinger said.

Darfur: Resolution 1672 (Sanctions)

From the Security Council

By the provisions of resolution 1672 (2006), adopted by 12 votes in favour to none against, with 3 abstentions (China, Qatar, Russian Federation), the Council identified the individuals as Major General Gaffar Mohamed Elhassan, Commander of the Western Military Region for the Sudanese Air Force; Sheikh Musa Hilal, Paramount Chief of the Jalul Tribe in North Darfur; Adam Yacub Shant, Sudanese Liberation Army Commander; and Gabril Abdul Kareem Badri, National Movement for Reform and Development Field Commander.

In resolution 1591 (2005), the Council decided, among other things, that all States would take the necessary measures to prevent entry into or transit through their territories of all persons designated by a Committee established under the same text; that they would freeze all funds, financial assets and economic resources on their territories that were owned or controlled by those individuals, by persons acting on their behalf or at their direction, or that were held by entities owned or controlled by the designated persons; and that all States would ensure that no funds, financial assets or economic resources were made available by their nationals or by any persons within their territories to or for the benefit of such persons or entities.

However, the measures contained in the resolution would not apply where the Committee determined that such travel was justified on the ground of humanitarian need, including religious obligation, or where the Committee concluded that an exemption would otherwise further the objectives of the Council’s resolutions for the creation of peace and stability in the Sudan and the region.

In addition, the freeze did not apply to funds, assets and financial resources that had been determined by relevant States to be necessary for basic expenses, including payment for food, rent or mortgage, medicines and medical treatment, taxes, insurance premiums and public utility charges, or for payment of reasonable professional fees and reimbursement of incurred expenses associated with the provision of legal services.

Additionally, the freeze would also not apply where assets had been determined to be necessary for extraordinary expenses, provided that such determination had been notified by the relevant States to the Committee and approved by it, or had been determined to be the subject of a judicial, administrative or arbitral lien or judgment, in which case they may be used, provided that the lien or judgment had been entered prior to the date of resolution 1591 (2005), was not for the benefit of a person or entity designated by the Committee, and had been notified by the relevant State to that body.

Resolution

The full text of resolution 1672 (2006) reads as follows:

“The Security Council,

“Recalling its previous resolutions concerning the situation in Sudan, in particular resolutions 1665 (2006) of 29 March 2006, 1651 (2005) of 21 December 2005, 1591 (2005) of 29 March 2005 and 1556 (2004) of 30 July 2004 and statements of its President concerning Sudan,

“Stressing again its firm commitment to the cause of peace throughout Sudan, including through the African Union-led inter-Sudanese peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria (“Abuja Talks”), full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 9 January 2005 and an end to the violence and atrocities in Darfur,

“Determining that the situation in Sudan continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security in the region,

“Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations,

“1. Decides that all States shall implement the measures specified in paragraph 3 of resolution 1591 (2005) with respect to the following individuals:

– Major General Gaffar Mohamed Elhassan (Commander of the Western Military Region for the Sudanese Air Force)

– Sheikh Musa Hilal (Paramount Chief of the Jalul Tribe in North Darfur)

– Adam Yacub Shant (Sudanese Liberation Army Commander)

– Gabril Abdul Kareem Badri (National Movement for Reform and Development Field Commander)

“2. Decides to remain actively seized of the matter.”

Darfur: AU to Present Parties With Draft Peace Agreement

From AFP

The African Union was Tuesday to present the warring parties from western Sudan's devastated Darfur region with a draft peace agreement designed to bring an end to three years of bloodshed.

The document will be given to delegates at AU-sponsored talks in Abuja just as the UN Security Council in New York is expected to hear a US proposal for targeted sanctions against four individuals driving the conflict.

Pressure is mounting on both the government and the two rebel movements operating in Darfur to reach a deal to end a war that has left up to 300,000 people dead from violence or disease and more than 2.4 million homeless.

By late Tuesday the meeting had yet to take place. An AU spokesman Noureddine Mezni said that it was delayed "for technical reasons".

Although he did not give further details, delegates said that the delay might be due to the fact that the two rebel movements were yet to be formally informed of the meeting.

Earlier Mezni had said "the chief mediator, Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim, will convene a plenary to officially table a comprehensive peace agreement comprising protocols on power-sharing, wealth-sharing and security arrangements."

After months of inconclusive negotiations to end the civil war in the region, the AU and the international community have set an April 30 deadline for wrapping up a deal at the talks in the Nigerian capital.

On Sunday, the AU's chief mediator unveiled a "final status security agreement for Darfur" and warned that a peace deal "has to be concluded on the April 30 deadline set by the AU Peace and Security Council."

He said the "document reflects a careful balance of the concerns and positions expressed by the parties," and urged them to seriously consider it and submit written and oral reactions to the mediation by Monday.

The Khartoum delegation told AFP it had submitted its position on a proposed security agreement.

"We have submitted our position to the AU today... and that will constitute a basis for agreement, with some amendments," Khartoum government chief negotiator Majzoub al-Khalifa told AFP late Monday.

Darfur: UN Imposes Sanctions

From MSNBC

The U.N. Security Council voted Tuesday to impose sanctions on four Sudanese accused of abuses in the Darfur conflict that has cost tens of thousands of lives and uprooted at least 2 million people.

The vote on a U.S.-drafted resolution was 12 to 0 with three abstentions — Russia, China and Qatar.

The sanctions, a travel ban and a freeze on assets abroad, were the first adopted against individuals involved in the Darfur war. Such measures were first authorized by the Security Council in March 2005 against those who thwart peace efforts, violate human rights or conduct military flights over Darfur.

To gain the approval of the three African members, the council also approved at the same time a Tanzanian-drafted statement supporting the Darfur peace talks, conducted by the African Union in Abuja, Nigeria. Mediators have set an April 30 deadline for a new peace deal to be reached.

According to the statement, the council “urges the parties to make speedy progress in concluding a Darfur peace accord.”

Sudan: Iran Offers to Share Nuclear Technology

From the AP

Iran threatened Tuesday to begin hiding its nuclear program if the West takes any "harsh measures" against it - Tehran's sharpest rebuttal yet to a U.N. Security Council deadline to suspend uranium enrichment or face possible sanctions.

Iran's supreme leader, meanwhile, said in a meeting with the president of wartorn Sudan that Tehran was ready to transfer its nuclear technology to other countries.

[edit]

The remarks on sharing nuclear technology by Iran's top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, came as he met with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

"Iran's nuclear capability is one example of various scientific capabilities in the country. ... The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to transfer the experience, knowledge and technology of its scientists," Khamenei told al-Bashir.

Al-Bashir said last month that his impoverished country was considering trying to create a nuclear program to generate electrical power.

Such a transfer of technology would be legal as long as it is between signatory-states to the nonproliferation treaty, and as long as the IAEA was informed.

Darfur: UN Human Rights Chief Expects to Visit

From the UN News Center

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, at present on a visit to East Africa, is expected to visit Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region later this week, less than a month after UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland was banned from touring the area.

Asked at a news briefing in Geneva today if Ms. Arbour had guarantees that she would be allowed to visit Darfur, spokesman José Luis Díaz said it was fully expected that she would be able to go and all indications confirmed this.

When Mr. Egeland was banned from visiting Darfur at the beginning of this month the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said it regretted the Government's decision and Secretary-General Kofi Annan sought to speak to Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir.

The one-week visit beginning on Saturday is Ms. Arbour's second trip to Sudan. In addition to Khartoum, the capital, and Darfur she is scheduled to go to Juba in South Sudan where a peace agreement in January 2005 ended two decades of war between Government and rebel forces.

Since her first visit in 2004, she has issued two major reports on the situation in Sudan, one focusing on sexual violence and the other on the general human rights situation.

She now intends to see how the situation has progressed since the 2004 visit and the reports, in which she expressed concern about the disconnect between the commitments undertaken by the country in the area of human rights and the actual situation on the ground, Mr. Diaz said.

Darfur: Sanctions and Continuing Attacks

Via Sudan Watch - This article from the BBC about a vote on sanctions also reports

In Darfur itself, a BBC correspondent has found evidence of continuing attacks on civilians by militias.

More than 2m people have fled three years of violence in Darfur.

Last week, the top UN aid official said the humanitarian situation in Darfur was as bad as when the conflict came to the world's attention in 2004.

The BBC's Orla Guerin in Darfur met streams of civilians, who said they were fleeing their remote village of Jogana.

They said they had been attacked by government aircraft and militiamen, who were fighting rebel forces in the area.

Our correspondent said she could the sound of bombing from 40km away.

African Union peacekeepers met the civilians and gave them water but did not intervene in the fighting.

Osama's Crusade in Darfur

The latest from Nick Kristof

Those of us who want a more forceful response to genocide in Darfur should be sobered by Osama bin Laden's latest tape.

In that tape, released on Sunday, Osama rails against the agreement that ended Sudan's civil war with its Christian and animist south and accuses the U.S. of plotting to dispatch "Crusader troops" to occupy Darfur "and steal its oil wealth under the pretext of peacekeeping." Osama calls on good Muslims to go to Sudan and stockpile land mines and rocket-propelled grenades in preparation for "a long-term war" against U.N. peacekeepers and other infidels.

Osama's tape underscores the fact that a tougher approach carries real risks. It's easy for us in the peanut gallery to call for a U.N. force, but what happens when jihadis start shooting down the U.N. helicopters?

So with a major rally planned for Sunday to call for action to stop the slaughter in Darfur, let's look at what specific actions the U.S. should take. One reader, William in Scottsdale, Ariz., wrote to me to say that he had called Senator John McCain's office to demand more action on Darfur. "The lady on the phone asked me for suggestions," he said — and William was short on suggestions.

The first step to stop the killing is to dispatch a robust U.N. peacekeeping force of at least 20,000 well-equipped and mobile troops. But because of precisely the nationalistic sensitivities that Osama is trying to stir, it shouldn't have U.S. ground troops. Instead, it should be made up mostly of Turks, Jordanians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and other Muslims, and smaller numbers of European and Asian troops. The U.S. can supply airlifts, and NATO can provide a short-term bridging force if necessary.

Second, the U.S. and France should enforce a no-fly zone from the French air base in Abéché, Chad. American military planners say this is practicable, particularly if it simply involves destroying Sudanese aircraft on the ground after they have attacked civilians.

Granted, these approaches carry real risks. After we shoot up a Sudanese military plane, Sudan may orchestrate a "spontaneous" popular riot that will involve lynching a few U.S. aid workers — or journalists.

But remember that the Sudanese government is hanging on by its fingernails. It is deeply unpopular, and when it tried to organize demonstrations against the Danish cartoons, they were a flop.

The coming issue of Foreign Policy magazine publishes a Failed States Index in which Sudan is ranked the single most unstable country in the entire world. If we apply enough pressure, Sudan's leaders will back down in Darfur — just as they did when they signed a peace deal to end the war with southern Sudan.

A no-fly zone and a U.N. force are among the ways we can apply pressure, but another essential element is public diplomacy. We should respond to Osama by shining a spotlight on the Muslim victims of Darfur (many Arabs have instinctively sided with Sudan's rulers and have no idea that nearly all of the victims of the genocide are Muslim).

The White House can invite survivors for a photo-op so they themselves can recount, in Arabic, how their children were beheaded and their mosques destroyed. We can release atrocity photos, like one I have from an African Union archive of the body of a 2-year-old boy whose face was beaten into mush. President Bush can make a major speech about Darfur, while sending Condi Rice and a planeload of television journalists to a refugee camp in Chad to meet orphans.

Madeleine Albright helped end the horrors of Sierra Leone simply by going there and being photographed with maimed children. Those searing photos put Sierra Leone on the global agenda, and policy makers hammered out solutions. Granted, it's the fault of the "CBS Evening News" that it gave Darfur's genocide only 2 minutes of coverage in all of last year (compared with the 36 minutes that it gave the Michael Jackson trial), but the administration can help when we in the media world drop the ball.

The U.S. could organize a summit meeting in Europe or the Arab world to call attention to Darfur, we could appoint a presidential envoy like Colin Powell, and we could make the issue much more prominent in our relations with countries like Egypt, Qatar, Jordan and China.

Americans often ask what they can do about Darfur. These are the kinds of ideas they can urge on the White House and their members of Congress — or on embassies like Egypt's. Many other ideas are at savedarfur.org and at genocideintervention.net.

When Darfur first came to public attention, there were 70,000 dead. Now there are perhaps 300,000, maybe 400,000. Soon there may be 1 million. If we don't act now, when will we?

Darfur: U.S. Likely to Call for UN Vote on Sanctions

From the AP

The United States said it was likely to call for a vote Tuesday on a resolution to impose the first-ever sanctions on participants in the Darfur conflict in western Sudan, despite opposition from Russia and China.

The two opposing nations reiterated Monday that sanctions on the four men could complicate peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria, to end the three-year conflict in Darfur. The African Union, which is mediating the talks, has set an April 30 deadline for a peace deal.

If approved, the sanctions would be the first imposed by the U.N. Security Council since it adopted a resolution in March 2005 authorizing an asset freeze and travel ban on individuals who defy peace efforts, violate international human rights law, or are responsible for military overflights in Darfur.

"We very well could vote tomorrow," Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said Monday evening.

Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador Konstantin Dolgov and China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya said they had not yet received instructions on how to vote.

"We think that we should not take any steps which could have a negative bearing on the Abuja peace talks," Dolgov said. "But at the same time, decisions that have been previously taken by the council, they are to be implemented. It's a matter of how and when."

Wang said China wants "nothing until Abuja talks" are completed.

Darfur: AU to Stick to UN Deadline

From SAPA/AFP

The African Union will end talks among warring parties in Sudan's Darfur region by April 30 if the Khartoum government and rebel factions fail to agree to a peace deal, a senior mediator said.

Sam Ibok, head of the African Union (AU) team mediating peace negotiations between the Sudan government and rebels fighting in Darfur, said on Sunday his team was still working toward a United Nations-backed deadline to achieve a final peace agreement by the end of the month.

"We will respect the deadline and if there are no indications that a deal is possible, we will wind up" talks by April 30, Ibok told reporters at the talks in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

Representatives of the Sudanese government and the two Darfur rebel movements will be presented with the final draft agreement this week, Ibok said.

The document will represent a "just and acceptable compromise" to end the Darfur conflict if indeed the warring sides are interested in peace, the chief mediator said.

Darfur: NATO to Keep Training Peacekeepers

From the AP

NATO allies have extended a training program for African peacekeepers in Darfur until September but are not planning any major deployment of their own troops to the Sudanese region, the alliance's operational commander said Monday.

The NATO training mission for officers of the African Union peacekeeping force had been due to end this month, but the 25 allies agreed late last week to extend the program, said U.S. Gen. James L. Jones, NATO's supreme commander for operations.

Jones said that alliance military experts are working on plans to increase training and "capacity building" to back up the 7,000-strong African peacekeeping force. NATO is also providing planes to fly in African peacekeepers.

[edit]

NATO officials have said additional aid could include increased help with logistics, communications, command and intelligence, but they have shied away from any large-scale deployment of European and North American troops. They fear it could inflame regional sensitivities -- particularly if the mainly Muslim Sudanese government opposes a NATO deployment.

"For the moment, the mission reflects that limitation," Jones said at NATO's military headquarters in southern Belgium. The Darfur issue is expected to feature when NATO foreign ministers meet Thursday and Friday in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia.

Darfur: Clooneys Travel to Sudan

From The Cincinnati Post

Post columnist Nick Clooney, just back from an eight-day trip that he and his son, actor George Clooney, made to Sudan and Chad, says he hopes the stories they relate will prompt more protection and humanitarian aid for 2 million refugees from the Sudan province of war-torn Darfur.

"This is an ongoing and terrible story that we were able to see up close," said Clooney. "These folks are helpless out there. There's nobody between them and very bad people.

"They have only minimal protection provided by the African Union. What's holding these people together is help from humanitarian agencies, 80 of them from around the world, many of them from the United States."

Nick Clooney will be writing about the trip in at least three columns, beginning Wednesday, and George Clooney, who filmed much of the trip, will be appearing on several television programs.

Both Clooneys plan to attend a "Rally to Stop Genocide" organized by the Save Darfur Coalition next Sunday in Washington, D.C.

"The reason we wanted to make the trip at this time was because of the demonstration on behalf of Darfur," said Clooney. "We're hoping to be able to make this as timely as possible and raise awareness."

[edit]

Clooney said he and his son, accompanied by two acquaintances - David Pressman, who previously worked for the United Nations in Darfur, and camera operator Mike Herron, formerly of Cincinnati and now of New York - made the trip on their own.

"Nobody sponsored us, no group organized it," he said, adding with a laugh, "George and I split expenses. He paid for transportation and equipment. I paid for cigarettes and coffee."

Clooney said they wanted to see the situation first hand in Sudan and neighboring Chad, where there was a coup attempt a week before they arrived.

"We were trying to find out what was going on over there," he said. "Obviously, we're very disturbed and concerned about 250,000 deaths and 2 million displaced people and nobody seems to be doing much about it.

"We found that in more than 25 refugee camps there are 2 million displaced people out of 6 million in Darfur. That's one-third of the population displaced. Meanwhile, the killing continues, and more are being displaced."

Clooney said he and his son tried to get into Darfur, but were stopped at two borders by armed troops.

"I stood across a dry river bed from Darfur, but could not get in," he said. "We also couldn't get in Khartoum (the capital of Sudan)."

However, Clooney said "with the help of some very remarkable and courageous people, we were able to get into a village with displaced people and a refugee camp of 29,000 people in Chad.

"We spent a couple of days talking to refugees and what happened to them and how we might be able to help. The were sitting under trees, waiting for someone to help them.

"They had left Darfur two weeks before their villages were destroyed and their cattle killed and their brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers killed.

"The stories I heard clearly indicated the United Nations' definition of genocide. Call it ethnic cleansing or what you will, it needs to be addressed."

Chad: Displacement Crisis Looming

From IRIN

Hunger and militia attacks in the remote border areas of eastern Chad have driven more than 11,000 Chadians to seek international assistance and stretched resources meant for Sudanese refugees, according to aid agencies.

According to the UN an estimated 50,000 Chadians are displaced in eastern Chad, but until a recent wave of attacks on the government of President Idriss Deby by rebel forces nearly all the internally displaced people (IDP) had managed on assistance from friends and family.

Since fighting surged two weeks ago the Chadian population has tripled at an informal settlement close to a camp at Goz Beida, 150 km from the Sudan border, according to Matthew Conway, spokesman for the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

"Conditions are not ideal. Water capacity is especially difficult as demand has exceeded supply so we're having trouble pumping enough to meet everyone's needs. There's an urgent need to get these people located elsewhere," said Conway.

Facilities at Goz Beida camp are meant for refugees who crossed the border from Sudan to escape violence in Sudan's troubled Darfur region.

The displaced are sharing water and sanitation with the 14,000 Sudanese refugees. They are camped on land earmarked for cultivation by the refugees when the mid-year rainy season arrives, perhaps as early as next month.

Chad's eastern provinces have seen some of the worst violence since militia groups started criss-crossing the border to attack the Chadian army and plunder villages in late 2005.

"Since late 2005 there has been a surge of attacks across the border and this has caused some of the displacement," said Karim Khalil of the NGO Care International by telephone from Abeche, a major town in eastern Chad.

[edit]

According to the humanitarian agency International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) the lack of aid deliveries to remote towns in insecure areas along the border, and a growing awareness of aid agencies activities around the four main refugee camps in Chad, are also motivating people to move.

"People have been moving more or less steadily from the border area over to more central areas for several weeks now, and they are moving because they believe they will get assistance there," said the head of the ICRC delegation Thomas Merkelbach.

According to Merkelbach a recent ICRC mission to the border found that people are leaving because they have heard aid is available elsewhere and not because they are fleeing violence. "They have never moved because of the attacks. People say they are leaving to get assistance," added Merkelbach.

The World Food Programme (WFP) leads feeding programmes throughout eastern Chad for some quarter of a million refugees from Sudan and Central African Republic. But WFP spokesman Marcus Prior warned that that number could rise as local resources dwindle and Chadians turn to food aid, too.

"Despite serious fighting in the region between the Chadian army and militias since late 2005, most people are still able to live with their families, and there is still food around from the harvest, but that situation will deteriorate as we move into the hunger season when food supplies normally run out. We are very concerned about these people," Prior said.

Darfur: Bin Laden Call for Jihad Clouds UN Mission

An analysis from Reuters - the AP has a similar piece

For now, there may be more symbol than substance in Osama bin Laden's call for jihad in Darfur, but that could change if U.N. peacekeepers go to Sudan's troubled western region, al Qaeda experts said on Monday.

Most doubted the Saudi-born militant had any direct links with Arab militias involved in the Darfur conflict, but said his appeal, in an audiotape broadcast on Sunday, could inspire violent resistance to any U.N. military mission there.

"I don't believe it will have an impact until there are U.N. troops in Darfur," said Kamil al-Tawil, an expert on Islamist groups who writes for London's al-Hayat newspaper.

"If Darfur becomes a U.N. mandate in spite of the Sudanese government's opposition, people will flock there. I fear it could be another Iraq," he said.

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Mustafa Alani, security analyst at Dubai-based Gulf Research Centre, said bin Laden was trying to project Darfur as an issue for the whole Islamic world, not just a local conflict.

"This undermines Khartoum's authority when they are already under pressure and on the international community's radar. They feel bin Laden is trying to hijack the Darfur issue," he said.

Alani said Arab militias, needing legitimacy after being publicly disowned by Khartoum, might respond to bin Laden. Any guerrilla attacks could sow doubts in Western capitals about the wisdom of committing troops to a U.N. operation in Darfur.

Darfur: UN Dismisses bin Laden Threat

From Reuters

UN diplomats have brushed aside a call by Osama bin Laden for Muslims to rise up against the West in Sudan, and vowed to go ahead with plans to send peacekeepers to the embattled Darfur region.

"The comments made by this guy (are) always, always negative. We should not be influenced by whatever comments he made," Chinese ambassador Wang Guangya, the US Security Council president for April, said.

US ambassador John Bolton said: "That's a mark of bin Laden's desperation and certainly won't affect our planning."

The al-Qaeda leader, in an audio tape broadcast on Al Jazeera television, said the US and Britain, by pushing for a UN force in Darfur, were plotting to dismember Sudan. He urged his followers to rise up against them.

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UN chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the world body felt no need to respond to bin Laden's comments but would do whatever was required to ensure its staff's safety in Sudan.

"The people in Darfur are clearly in need of protection and of humanitarian assistance, and the international community's efforts are aimed at that," he told reporters.

Darfur: Sudan Rejects bin Laden's Call for Jihad

From ABC News Online

A call attributed to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden for a holy war in Sudan has been dismissed by the Sudanese Government.

Sudan's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Jamal Mohammed Ibrahim, says the country is not interested in a conflict with the international community.

He says Sudan does not want an international war in the form of a jihad, rather it remains focused on achieving peace in the western region of Darfur.

In a tape aired on satellite TV channel Al Jazeera on the weekend, a man identified as Osama bin Laden urges Islamist militants to "prepare for a long war against the crusader plunderers in Western Sudan".

He accuses Western countries of involvement in Sudan to take its oil.

Sudan's Government says it has nothing to do with such statements.

Darfur: Diaries

A new film project

Synopsis

In October, 2004 a team of three independent filmmakers – Aisha Bain, Jen Marlowe and Adam Shapiro – left for Darfur, Sudan and eastern Chad. After monitoring the worsening political and humanitarian crisis for months and recognizing that the mainstream media offered marginal and inadequate coverage, the team set out with the goal of providing a platform for the people of Darfur (both those displaced inside Darfur and those living in refugee camps in Chad) to speak for themselves about their experiences, their fears, and their hopes for the future. The conflict serves as the ongoing narrative in the film, but the focus is on the people who are living through what has been termed a “genocide.” Through the voices of refugees, displaced persons, and in particular women and children, who are always among the most vulnerable in any conflict situation, this film seeks to provide space for the marginalized victims of atrocities to speak and to engage with the world. Additionally, the film probes the history, culture and heritage of Darfur as a means of deepening understanding of the crisis and complicating easily assumed perceptions by which the conflict is often portrayed (such as a matter of race, ethnicity or religion).

The film presents the Darfurians the filmmakers met (refugees and displaced peoples, civilians and fighters resisting the Sudanese government, child soldiers, teachers, students, parents, children and community leaders) as a people with full lives, culture, and heritage--people with homes that they desperately want to return back to, people undergoing traumatic loss but who demonstrate inspiring strength and resilience, and people whose lives, homes, safety and rights deserve to be protected as vigilantly as a fundamental human right.

Screenings

Darfur Diaries: Message from Home is screening widely to film festivals, university campuses, human rights groups, churches, synagogues. Over 3,000 people have seen the film or the work-in-progress at nearly 40 screenings, at many of which the filmmakers spoke to audiences. In the summer of 2005, a two-minute segment of the film was screened for the United Nations Security Council and the work-in-progress was screened for the Human Rights Caucuss of the United States Congress. We hope the message of the Darfurians in the film will reach policy makers, students, activists and concerned citizens alike.

If you are interested in organizing a film/lecture event, with the filmmakers speaking before and after the film, please contact Creativewell, Inc at 1-800-743-9182 or info@creativewell.com.

If you are interested in organizing a screening of the film only (without filmmaker), please contact the filmmakers at info@darfurdiaries.org

Away

I am going to be unable to post for most of today - please check out Passion of the Present, Sudan Watch, Save Darfur, or Google News for the lastest news.

China and Sudan, Blood and Oil

The latest from Nick Kristof

Americans make a habit of bashing China for all the wrong reasons.

It's hypocritical of us to scream at President Hu Jintao, as we did during his visit last week, about China's undervalued currency. Sure, that's a problem for the world economy — but not nearly as much as our own budget deficits, caused by tax cuts we couldn't afford.

We're now addicted to capital from China and other foreign countries, and that should be a concern. But our deficits aren't China's fault, and junkies like us don't have any basis to complain about the moral turpitude of those who supply cheap capital or other narcotics.

But there are two good reasons to complain to President Hu. First, he has presided over a broad clampdown on freedom of expression in China, including the imprisonment for 19 months of my colleague Zhao Yan, an employee of The New York Times.

Second, China is now underwriting its second genocide in three decades. The first was in Pol Pot's Cambodia, and the second is in Darfur, Sudan. Chinese oil purchases have financed Sudan's pillage of Darfur, Chinese-made AK-47's have been the main weapons used to slaughter several hundred thousand people in Darfur so far, and China has protected Sudan in the U.N. Security Council.

Indeed, it's because of China's support that Sudan felt it could get away this month with sending a proxy army to invade neighboring Chad.

For more than two years now, I've been holding President Bush's feet to the fire over his refusal to make the Darfur genocide a priority for his administration. But Mr. Bush has taken half-steps in the right direction — including pushing President Hu to cooperate on Darfur — and that's more than can be said of the leaders of most other countries. Europe has snored through this genocide. Then there's the Arab League, which met last month in Sudan, in effect legitimizing the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Muslims (almost all the victims in Darfur are Muslim).

As Fatema Abdul Rasul wrote in The Daily Star of Lebanon this month: "For the entire Muslim and Arab world to remain silent when thousands of people in Darfur continue to be killed is shameful and hypocritical." Do you hear that, Hosni?

And where's the Arab press? Isn't the murder of 300,000 or more Muslims almost as offensive as a Danish cartoon?

The biggest obstacle to forceful action is China. The latest outrage came a few days ago when the U.S. and Britain tried to impose the most feeble possible sanctions — targeting just four people, including a midlevel Sudanese official. China and Russia blocked even that pathetic action.

Why is China soft on genocide?

The essential reason is oil. China traditionally was self-sufficient in oil, but since 1993 it has been a net oil importer and it is increasingly worried about this vulnerability.

So China has been bustling around the globe trying to ensure oil supplies from as many sources as possible. And partly because most of the major oil fields are already taken, China has ended up with the world's thugs: Sudan, Iran and Myanmar. China has been particularly active in Africa.

About 60 percent of Sudan's oil flows to China, and Beijing has a close economic and even military relationship with Khartoum. A recent Council on Foreign Relations report on Africa notes that China has supplied Sudan with small arms, anti-personnel mines, howitzers, tanks, helicopters and ammunition. China has even established three arms factories in Sudan, and you see Chinese-made AK-47's, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns all over Darfur.

Last month in a village on the Chad-Sudan border, I interviewed a man who told how a Sudanese militia had grabbed his baby boy, Ahmed Haroun, thrown Ahmed to the ground and shot him in the chest. The odds are overwhelming that that gun and those bullets came from China.

Likewise, the women and children I've seen torn apart by bullets in Darfur and Chad — that lead and steel was molded in Chinese factories. When women are raped and mutilated in Darfur, the gun barrels pointed at their heads are Made in China.

Let's hope China's 13 million bloggers take up this issue, for this has received very little attention in China but it is not so sensitive that discussion of it will get anyone arrested.

One of the central questions for the 21st century will be whether China's rise will be accompanied by increasingly responsible behavior in its international relations. Darfur is a test, and for now China is failing.

Darfur: Bin Laden Calls for Jihad

From Reuters

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged his followers to prepare for a long war against Western would-be occupiers in Sudan's Darfur region, according to an audiotape attributed to him which aired on Sunday.

The speaker, who sounded like the Saudi-born militant, also said on the tape broadcast on Al Jazeera television that the West's shunning of the Hamas Palestinian government showed it was waging a "Crusader-Zionist war" on Muslims.

"I call on the mujahideen and their supporters in Sudan ... and the Arabian peninsula to prepare all that is necessary to wage a long-term war against the Crusaders in western Sudan," bin Laden said, accusing the West of seeking to divide Sudan.

Sudan hosted bin Laden in the 1990s, but on the tape he criticised Khartoum for not enforcing Islamic sharia law throughout the country and made clear his call to arms in Darfur was in spite of his differences with the Sudanese government.

Criticising a U.S.-backed peace deal between Khartoum and southern rebels, bin Laden accused the United States of planning to send "Crusader troops to occupy the region and steal its oil under the cover of preserving security there".

Some U.N. troops have arrived in southern Sudan, the first of an expected 10,000 peacekeepers to be sent there. Sudan is resisting pressure for U.N. peacekeepers to deploy in Darfur.

"This means that we are coming up to a new Qaeda in Darfur similar to that in Afghanistan," Faris bin Houzam, a journalist who specialises in al Qaeda, told Reuters.

Bin Laden accused Washington of fuelling strife in the country.

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Bin Laden said the Darfur crisis and Western efforts to isolate the Palestinian government since Hamas won January elections were part of an anti-Muslim campaign.

"Their rejection of Hamas affirms that it is a Crusader-Zionist war against Muslims," he said, although he also criticised the Islamist group for breaking what he said was a taboo against "joining infidel assemblies".

He said people in the West shared responsibility for their countries' "war against Islam".

Chad: Rebel Prisoners Say Sudan Recruited Them

From Reuters

Sudan's security forces helped recruit rebels, including child soldiers, from refugee camps in Darfur for a revolt in neighbouring Chad, rebel prisoners told African Union investigators.

Some of the fighters being trained in the conflict-torn western Sudanese Darfur region were as young as 12, one rebel commander captured in N'Djamena told an AU team at the weekend.

A delegation from the 53-nation African grouping is visiting Chad to investigate President Idriss Deby's accusations that Sudan organised, financed and armed an April 13 assault on N'Djamena by rebels seeking to end his nearly 16-year rule.

Khartoum has denied helping the insurgents' bid to seize power in the landlocked central African oil producer before a May 3 election in which Deby is seeking a third term.

Meeting some of 200 captured rebel prisoners at N'Djamena's central police station, the AU investigators heard how rebel leaders met Sudanese intelligence officers in Khartoum.

"The Sudanese intelligence people were our contacts ... they were always dressed in civilian clothing," Colonel Adoum Maratis, a captured rebel commander who said he came from Central African Republic, told reporters.

"We were given transport, communications. We were well equipped," Maratis said, adding that around 1,200 fighters in 75 pick-up trucks were involved in the attack on N'Djamena.

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Maratis said the majority of rebel fighters were from Chad, although a few prisoners said they were Sudanese.

"I was recruited by Sudan. I was visiting my family in a refugee camp (in Darfur), when I was approached by Sudanese military authorities and recruited by force," said Said Ibrahim Isaac, dressed in military fatigues.

"We were told to get on the trucks. We were not told we were going to Chad," said another prisoner.

The FUC rebels raced 800 km (500 miles) in three days to attack the capital at dawn. Several hundred people were killed before the Chadian army repelled the assault.

Hassane Mostar Hassane, a Chadian FUC captain, said he was recruited three years ago in Sudan.

"Our arms were provided by Sudan, lots of different kinds of arms," he said in Arabic via a translator.

Darfur: Peace Corp

From The Boston Globe

THREE YEARS OF FIGHTING in the Darfur region of Sudan have left an estimated 180,000 dead and nearly 2 million refugees. In recent weeks, both the UN and the US have turned up the volume of their demands to end the violence (which the Bush administration has publicly called genocide), but they've been hard pressed to turn their exhortations into action. The government in Khartoum has scuttled the UN's plans to take control of the troubled peacekeeping operations currently being led by the African Union, and NATO recently stated publicly that a force of its own in Darfur is ''out of the question." Meanwhile, refugee camps and humanitarian aid workers continue to be attacked, and the 7,000 African Union troops remain overstretched and ineffective.

But according to J. Cofer Black, vice chairman of the private security firm Blackwater, there is another option that ought to be on the table: an organization that could commit significant resources and expertise to bolster the African Union peacekeepers and provide emergency support to their flagging mission.

A few weeks ago, at an international special forces conference in Jordan, Black announced that his company could deploy a small rapid-response force to conflicts like the one in Sudan. ''We're low cost and fast," Black said, ''the question is, who's going to let us play on their team?"

Private security companies like Blackwater have thrived in Iraq, where the US military has relied on them for everything from guarding convoys to securing the Green Zone. But these companies recognize that the demand for their services in Iraq will eventually diminish, and Blackwater, for one, is looking for new markets. It's not alone in seeing peacekeeping as a growth area. Competitors such as Aegis and Dyncorp have also realized that while conflicts like the one in Darfur may not bring them profits on the order of Iraq, there's no shortage of them. And if such companies are able to help the international community succeed in peacekeeping, it could improve the image of an industry that hasn't enjoyed much support from the press or the public.

Private military companies have had a hard time convincing the international community that privatizing peacekeeping would be as good for Darfur, and for the rest of the world, as for their industry. In part that's because of the mixed reputation their work in Iraq has earned them and because the explosive growth of the industry has raised fears that security contractors working for the US government in Baghdad (and post-Katrina New Orleans) could become bona fide armies for hire. But the discomfort also has deeper roots, in the complicated history of private intervention in these kinds of conflicts. When Kofi Annan was UN undersecretary general for peacekeeping, he explored the option of hiring the South African private military company Executive Outcomes to aid in the Rwandan refugee crisis. He ultimately decided against the option, declaring that ''the world is not yet ready to privatize peace."

Five Truths About Darfur

From the Washington Post

Heard all you need to know about Darfur? Think again. Three years after a government-backed militia began fighting rebels and residents in this region of western Sudan, much of the conventional wisdom surrounding the conflict -- including the religious, ethnic and economic factors that drive it -- fails to match the realities on the ground. Tens of thousands have died and some 2.5 million have been displaced, with no end to the conflict in sight. Here are five truths to challenge the most common misconceptions about Darfur:

1. Nearly everyone is Muslim

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2. Everyone is black

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3. It's about politics, not religion

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4. This conflict is international

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5. The "genocide" label made it worse

Many of the world's governments have drawn the line at labeling Darfur as genocide. Some call the conflict a case of ethnic cleansing, and others have described it as a government going too far in trying to put down a rebellion.

But in September 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell referred to the conflict as a "genocide." Rather than spurring greater international action, that label only seems to have strengthened Sudan's rebels; they believe they don't need to negotiate with the government and think they will have U.S. support when they commit attacks. Peace talks have broken down seven times, partly because the rebel groups have walked out of negotiations. And Sudan's government has used the genocide label to market itself in the Middle East as another victim of America's anti-Arab and anti-Islamic policies.

Perhaps most counterproductive, the United States has failed to follow up with meaningful action. "The word 'genocide' was not an action word; it was a responsibility word," Charles R. Snyder, the State Department's senior representative on Sudan, told me in late 2004. "There was an ethical and moral obligation, and saying it underscored how seriously we took this." The Bush administration's recent idea of sending several hundred NATO advisers to support African Union peacekeepers falls short of what many advocates had hoped for.

"We called it a genocide and then we wine and dine the architects of the conflict by working with them on counterterrorism and on peace in the south," said Ted Dagne, an Africa expert for the Congressional Research Service. "I wish I knew a way to improve the situation there. But it's only getting worse."

Darfur: US Will Seek Sanctions Vote Next Week

From the AP

The United States will seek a Security Council vote early next week on a resolution to slap the first-ever sanctions on participants in the Darfur conflict in western Sudan, US officials said Friday.

The United States will push ahead with the bid to sanction four men despite opposition from Russia and China, said Richard Grenell, spokesman for the US mission to the United Nations.

Those two nations say that the sanctions might complicate Darfur peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria, where negotiators are working to beat an April 30 deadline for a deal.

US officials said they hope to ease the Russian and Chinese concerns - and counter the possibility that they could cast vetoes and sink the resolution - by having the council approve a statement expressing support for the Abuja talks.

Great Lakes Region: Ministers Want Armed Groups Sanctioned

From IRIN

Foreign ministers from four of Africa's Great Lakes countries adopted on Friday a "working document" that could result in sanctions being imposed on leaders of illegal armed groups that continue to destabilise peace and security in the region.

The ministers from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda issued a communiqué at the end of their two-day meeting in the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, saying they would lobby the African Union and the United Nations to impose sanctions on such groups.

The sanctions would include travel restrictions on the leaders of these groups and their supporters, and denial of access to the media, fundraising, political discussion and negotiation. Each country would also "freeze assets of armed groups, their leaders and supporters" and pursue their possible listing internationally as terrorist groups.

They said their governments were committed to the disarmament of the groups, including Burundi's Forces nationales de liberation (FNL), Rwanda's Forces democratiques de liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and several Congolese militias.

Chad: Rebel Attacks Proving Divisive

From IRIN

As Chad prepares for presidential elections on 3 May IRIN finds the capital N'djamena's residents desperate for a peaceful poll, fast losing patience with the incumbent President Idriss Deby, but divided in their support for the rebels.

Life has returned to normal in N'djamena, Chad's dusty low-rise capital, after attacks by anti-government rebels forced most residents to cower at home last week.

But few think the fighting is over, and the slightest disturbance will see the shops hastily shuttered, touts vanish from street corners, and people again dashing for cover.

"It's true that calm has come back now, but everyone knows the discontent is just as strong as before", said Louise Denenodji, 35, a street cleaner busy sweeping close to the presidential palace and scene of some of the heaviest fighting last week.

"If anything it's getting worse," she added. "Soldiers are roaming around in the suburbs saying they are looking for arms abandoned by the rebels, but instead they are harassing the people who live there."

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Yet not everyone is sick of fighting.

"We have been waiting and hoping for war," said Daniel Mbaikounda, who is lucky to have a job in Chad's new oil sector. "It's not that I want people to die, but so that the Chadian people can be relieved of this dictatorship."

Many of the Chadians that want to see the back of Deby accuse him of corruption and misusing precious state funds.

Government coffers filled up after oil began flowing from Chadian soil in 2003, but citizens say they are not reaping any of the benefits in a country where 75 percent of adults are illiterate, according to the UN.

"People are asking why money is being used to buy arms and pay bureaucrats, and not being used to benefit the people," said Denenodji as she toiled to clean up the plastic bags from the scorched roadside.

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Chadians are divided on whether the rebels, should they manage to dislodge Deby, would have anything better to offer.

Mahamat Mbodou, 22, a shopkeeper in the city centre, said he thought last week's fighting was "terrible", but he still applauded when the rebels arrived because "I'm angry with the President. Everyone is against him but he still says the people are behind him".

But others, like fruit-vendor Abakar Zenaba, 25, say that violence is not the answer even though she has friends and relations who have signed up with anti-Deby groups.

"We see our friends and families joining the rebellion and they tell us they are going to save the people, but all they are doing is making things worse. What we need is harmony among all Chadians, not more divisions," she said.

The identities of the fractious groups fighting Deby are murky at best. The largest and best known is the United Front for Democratic Change (FUCD), which claims to be a coalition of eight rebel groups dedicated to overthrowing the government ahead of 3 May elections.

Deby's government has repeatedly accused neighbouring Sudan of sponsoring militias seeking to install a pro-Khartoum government in N'djamena and last week severed diplomatic ties with Sudan.

Jonas Mbaiougam, 40, a civil servant in N'djamena is doubtful that election day will come and go without more fighting and blood-loss.

"Deby won't leave and he won't change. He told us elections would bring us peace but all we've got is more chaos. He said they would bring unity but the opposition is going to boycott", he said.

Uganda: No Amnesty for LRA Leaders

From IRIN

Leaders of the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) are no longer entitled to amnesty from prosecution following an amendment of a law that offers clemency to surrendering insurgents, the minister in charge of internal affairs said on Friday.

"The top leadership of the LRA, mainly those who have been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), have been excluded from the new version of the amnesty law that has been passed by parliament," the minister, Ruhakana Rugunda, told IRIN.

Other rebel fighters who gave up their arms would continue to enjoy amnesty, the minister said, adding that the government was still keen on resuming peace talks with the LRA. "Government policy is that a negotiated settlement is still possible, and the government is ready to talk to those other rebels that want to talk. However, the UPDF [Uganda People’s Defence Forces] has fought very well, and the war looks to be ending," said Rugunda.

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Some politicians in the north said chances of a negotiated settlement of the conflict were slim with the amendment of the law to deny amnesty to senior members of the insurgency. "This now will throw the whole peace process off the rails," said Reagan Okumu, a member of parliament from Gulu, the epicentre of the rebellion. "I don't understand what the government wanted to gain out of that amendment when these [leaders] had been already indicted by the ICC. What we needed more was to pursue the local process to find a local solution, but now I wonder what the intention of the government is."

Human rights activist James Otto said that changing the amnesty law had taken northern Uganda "back to square one". He said the amendment had not taken into consideration the concerns of communities in northern Uganda. "The people here have always advocated for an all-inclusive amnesty law and not a selective one. This has been done to the detriment of the children still in [rebel] captivity," he said.

Darfur: Relief Operation Could Collapse

More on Egeland's warning - from IRIN

Rampant insecurity, government obstruction and reduced international support have hampered lifesaving relief operations for millions of people in the troubled western Sudanese Darfur region, the top United Nations humanitarian official told the Security Council on Thursday.

"I think it’s a matter of weeks or months that we will have a collapse in many of our operations," Jan Egeland, UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters after briefing the Council on the crises in Darfur, northern Uganda and Chad. "As I told the Security Council today, I don’t think the world has understood how bad it has become of late."

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Government obstruction has hampered an effective humanitarian response, observed Egeland, who was barred by the Sudanese government from travelling to Darfur during a recent visit to Sudan. The expulsion of a major aid group that was caring for 90,000 people, and delays in travel permits, visas and clearance for imported relief items and equipment, were other examples of disproportionate government restrictions, Egeland said.

A new law governing the work of NGOs and civil society, the Organisation of Voluntary and Humanitarian Work Act, allows increased levels of government control over NGO activities, including limitations on organising meetings, the regulation of funding through a governmental-approval system and the ability to close organisations and seize their assets.

Fuel restrictions in mid-March jeopardised the delivery of clean drinking water to more than 90,000 displaced people in a camp in South Darfur and other areas when the government refused to allow fuel to be used for the water pumps.

Chad: Growing Insecurity Risks Leaving Hundreds of Thousands Hungry

From the UN News Center

Any continuation or escalation of the current conflict in Chad could leave up to 700,000 thousands of people short of food in both eastern Chad and across the border in the strife-torn Sudanese region of Darfur, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today.

“Our operation in eastern Chad is on a knife-edge even at the best of times,” WFP Chad Country Director Stefano Porretti said. “We have warned for some time that any deterioration in the situation could have dire consequences for those we are assisting and now some of our worst fears might be realized.”

Despite the recent clashes around Chad between government and rebel forces and the consequent relocation of non-essential UN and non-governmental organization (NGO) staff, WFP remains operational and is completing April food distributions in camps in the east of the country, home to about 210,000 refugees from Darfur.

But the months of April and May are absolutely critical to the success of the operation as WFP battles to pre-position enough food for six months in each of the 12 refugee camps before the annual rains make road transport impossible.

If truck convoys through Libya and Cameroon remain free to move, WFP is on target to get the food in place, but if insecurity forces delays, there will be serious consequences for deliveries, the agency warned. Shortages during the rainy season can only be made up by expensive air-drops, something WFP is keen to avoid.

The closure of the border between Chad and Sudan after the recent rebel assault on the Chadian capital of N'Djamena could also seriously affect WFP operations in West Darfur, where it is currently feeding 500,000 Sudanese displaced by the fighting between the Government, pro-government militia and rebels in a conflict that has uprooted more than 2 million people.

WFP is also concerned that further violence in the east will lead to the displacement of many more Chadians within their country. An estimated 50,000 people have been forced from their homes since the first attacks in December last year. Most have sought refuge with family and friendly neighbours in nearby settlements where their prime concern is security.

Darfur: Strong Protection Force Needed

From Human Rights Watch

The U.N. Security Council must authorize the proposed United Nations mission in Darfur to use force as necessary to protect civilians, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper released today. On April 26, the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) is scheduled to brief the Security Council on options for a U.N. mission in Darfur.

In the face of Sudanese government hostility to a U.N. operation and continuing attacks against the civilian population in Darfur, political support from the Security Council will be critical for an effective mission to protect civilians. The Sudanese government continues to resist a U.N. mission and recently denied visas to a U.N. planning team due to travel to Darfur. Human Rights Watch called on Security Council members to act to secure Khartoum’s consent to a robust U.N. force under a Chapter VII mandate.

“A U.N. mission could help to stop the atrocious attacks on civilians in Darfur, but only if it’s given the means to act aggressively,” said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director for Human Rights Watch. “It needs a tough mandate, real resources and political support. The Security Council must authorize it to use ‘all necessary means’ to protect civilians.”

A mission under Chapter VII, with the authorization to use “all necessary means,” would enable the U.N. force to use a range of measures, including aggressive preventative actions, to react to or deter attacks on civilians, including humanitarian aid workers and convoys as well as the local population.

Darfur: UN Official Warns Relief Efforts Could Collapse

From VOA - see also this post and this one

In a dire message to the U.N. Security Council Thursday, Jan Egeland, the United Nations Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs, said more than 200,000 people who need food to survive are not getting it, and some 650,000 people are beyond the reach of aid workers.

Egeland said relief efforts in many areas of Sudan will collapse within a matter of weeks because of violence, intimidation and a lack of money.

"The way it is now it can not continue," he said. "We need security, which we do not have. We need a government that enables us to work and does not create obstacles to our work. We need a guerrilla (force) that does not specialize in hijacking relief trucks and fighting each other and displacing new people, which has happened in the past few weeks. And we need funding."

Egeland said that just 20 percent of relief work in Darfur has been funded this year. He said Britain is the only nation that has increased its share of funding over last year. When asked why international support had fallen, the U.N. humanitarian chief said some donors may lack the willingness to sustain long-term commitment to such efforts.

"Maybe this world in 2006 is only able to run sprints and no marathon. Because this is a marathon," he stressed. " In 2005 we had more diplomatic support than we've had so far in 2006, and more funding. We've had more pressure on the parties than we've had this year."

Chad: Rebels Say France Wrong to Back Deby

From Reuters

Chadian rebels fighting to topple President Idriss Deby criticised France on Friday for backing him and said its support would not prevent his overthrow in the former French colony.

"France has up to now been backing the wrong horse. ... France will not be able to stop us from overthrowing the Deby regime," Albissaty Saleh Allazam, spokesman for the rebel United Front for Democratic Change (FUC), told Reuters.

FUC fighters attacked the capital N'Djamena last week after a lightning advance across the desert in pick-up trucks from the east of the landlocked central African oil producer. Deby's government said it fought off the raid.

French warplanes serving with a French military contingent stationed in Chad fired a warning shot at a rebel column and have been flying over the rebels' positions, passing on this intelligence to the Chadian government, officials say.

France's ambassador to Chad, Jean Pierre Bercot, this week described Deby's government as democratically elected and said the French forces were defending "legitimacy and legality".

"If France thinks that by propping up Deby against the will of an entire people, it will be able to safeguard its interests (in Chad), it's making a mistake," FUC spokesman Allazam said in an e-mail response to Reuters' questions.

He repeated charges by FUC leaders that the French planes had attacked rebel forces, an accusation denied by Paris. "I hope they won't intervene any more in future combat," he said.

Allazam said skirmishes were still taking place between Chad government forces and the FUC in the centre and south of the country, but he gave no details.

"There will be fighting as long as Mr. Deby persists in his intransigence," he said.

Chad: Oil Wealth and Corruption at Play in Rebellion

From the Christian Science Monitor

Amid reports of advancing then vanishing rebels, of bloody streets that have now apparently returned to normal, and of support for antigovernment rebels from neighboring Sudan, the future of this fragile oil-producing nation in north-central Africa remains uncertain.

"It's something that's with us every day" - whether rebels "are going to come or not," says Maat Parannee, a young woman washing vegetables in the river running through this dusty capital. "We just don't know."

Yet what is clear are the basic factors behind the instability - elements that are central to many conflicts across Africa: growing oil wealth, complex ethnic ties that transcend borders (in this case, with Sudan), and ambitious presidents aiming to stay in power longer than their constitutions originally allowed. Indeed, experts say, Chad is a kind of microcosm of the reasons for conflict on the continent.

"Chad signifies the worst of Africa," says Peter Kagwanja of the International Crisis Group in Pretoria, South Africa. Despite some significant economic and peace-making progress in Africa in recent years, Chad is "the best example," he says, "of how long the road is to peace" for Africa.

The country has had many bouts of instability since independence in 1960. The latest conflict came when the government repelled an April 13 rebel attack on the capital. Now the government claims to have crushed the rebellion.

But diplomats figure the insurgents are probably refueling. And no one admits to knowing exactly where the rebels are - not even the 1,200-strong French military contingent that has six Mirage jets flying surveillance missions over the arid, landlocked nation of 10 million people.

"The latest information we have is from the Chadian Army - small groups of rebels in the region, but nothing of any significance," says Col. Vincent Dollard, head of French forces in the eastern town of Abeche, admitting he had no visual information of his own. French military officials announced Thursday that the 150 reinforcements sent to Chad last week will be sent back to their permanent bases in Gabon. The situation in Chad, a Defense Ministry official said, has returned to normal.

Yet the uncertainty remains, and many experts believe neighboring Sudan is backing some of the rebels. "I have no doubt that Sudan has a finger in the pie," says Richard Cornwell of the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. A major reason: Chad's President Idriss Deby is from the same ethnic group as some Darfur rebels, who have been battling Sudan's government since 2003 - and who are the reason for Sudan's crackdown on Darfur villagers, which the US calls genocide.

Chad: AU to Probe Sudan's Role

From Reuters

An African Union delegation flew in to Chad on Friday to probe President Idriss Deby's accusations that neighbour Sudan is backing rebels bent on ending his nearly 16-year rule.

The insurgents launched their boldest assault yet in the central African oil producer last week, racing across the desert in pick-up trucks from the eastern border with Sudan to raid N'Djamena in fighting the government said killed several hundred.

Deby has accused Sudan of attacking his country and his government says it has abundant proof Khartoum equipped and armed the rebels, some of whom were captured and who residents say had to ask their way round N'Djamena when they arrived.

Khartoum denies the charges.

"It is an information mission to ascertain where the responsibilities lie in the current crisis," Chad's Foreign Minister Ahmat Allam-Mi told Reuters.

"We're ready to show them the prisoners we took and show them the equipment we seized during the fighting," he said.

African Union Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare, one of the continent's top diplomats, said this week the mission would have to establish the facts before the 53-member continental body could make any condemnation of "the aggressor".

Former colonial power France, which has more than 1,000 soldiers in Chad, has been flying reconnaissance missions across the vast country in what officials say are efforts to get to the bottom of Chad's accusations of Sudanese involvement.

Foreign diplomats said many of those captured during the fighting appeared not to speak Chadian dialects, while the arms seized and shown to journalists after the raid included Chinese munitions, which analysts said were likely to be from Sudan.

Darfur: As the Genocide Goes On, Chaos and Killing Spread

From the Independent

It has been called a genocide in slow motion, its gruesome details unfolding while the world looks the other way. And it is spreading.

There are pictures, there are witness accounts, there are the Western visitors who go home with harrowing tales of rape, scorched earth and horseback attacks on helpless villagers.

Yet, three years after the beginning of the Sudanese government crackdown against black African rebels, killing more than 70,000 people and displacing two million others through its allied Arab militias, the world is still wringing its hands while Sudan's western region burns.

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According to Mr Guterres, the Chad fighting, which also involved the Central African Republic, means that "Darfur is the epicentre of what could be potentially a very damaging earthquake in the whole region." A total 200,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to camps in Chad.

Rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, based in northern Uganda, send fighters into Central African Republic, and into Democratic Republic of Congo and are complicating efforts to return refugees into southern Sudan, according to Mr Guterres. The regional crisis could further worsen if Ethiopia and Eritrea rekindle their border war.

"I do believe this has the potential to become the most dramatic humanitarian catastrophe in the world," Mr Guterres told The Independent.

Chad: Family Feud Complicates Revolt

From the New York Times

After beating back a rebel assault on this dusty capital last week, President Idriss Déby pointed steely eyed across the desert and loudly accused Sudan, his neighbor and longtime rival, of trying to do him in.

The truth is hardly so simple, as Mr. Déby well knows: his enemies also come from much closer to home, including his own family.

To the president's fury, many of his kinsmen have left the national army in recent months to form rebel forces of their own, and they are openly calling for an end to his 16-year presidency.

"They're traitors," Mr. Déby, 53, said dismissively of his fellow Zaghawa tribe members who have turned on him. "Talking about them is a waste of time."

Few here seem to agree. In fact, the family drama engulfing Mr. Déby, a onetime rebel leader now fending off a rebellion, is the talk of this sun-baked city.

"It's a family feud, and we're not used to having a family air its disagreements like this," said Ibrahim Koulamallah, one of the long-shot candidates challenging Mr. Déby in the presidential election on May 3.

Two of Mr. Déby's uncles, for example, defected from their positions as top military commanders in February to become rebels, and two of his nephews, once top presidential aides, broke ranks a few months earlier to organize and support the president's enemies. The disdain for Mr. Déby's rule extends far beyond his relatives. Desperation has become a way of life here, despite the recent discovery of oil and Mr. Déby's longstanding talk of delivering prosperity and democracy. Some speak against Mr. Déby from opposition parties while others pick up arms against him. The government of Sudan has taken advantage of this popular disaffection, analysts say, by aiding some of the roughly 12 Chadian groups trying to unseat Mr. Déby.

Western diplomats fear that if Mr. Déby's government falls, chaos will ensue. They also worry that a new government, if aided by Sudan in ousting Mr. Déby, would be much more sympathetic to Khartoum, which has worked with militias to wreak havoc in Sudan's western Darfur region. A different Chadian government may also sell oil to China, as Sudan does, which would give the Chinese access to oil pipelines straight across the African continent, diplomats say. The infighting around Mr. Déby says much about Chad's woes. Although Chad is supposedly an emerging democracy, it is a country where clan identity trumps nationalism, and the long history of grabbing power through coups has tempted those in the upper echelons, even presidential relatives, to do the same.

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Mr. Déby has walked a careful line in not overtly backing the Sudanese rebels, despite their ethnic ties. But that has infuriated some of his clan members, who want Mr. Déby to fully support the insurgency of the Sudanese Zaghawa.

Sudan, by contrast, is furious that Mr. Déby has not done more to snuff out the rebellion in Darfur, and it is providing a haven to some of the rebels seeking to oust him. Like the country he leads, Mr. Déby's family is vast and varied. He has had many wives over the years (5 to 13, depending on who is asked), even more children (a couple of dozen or so) and an extended family that has long held a firm grasp both on the military and the most important government ministries.

Darfur: Relief Efforts Could Collapse Soon

From the AP - the UN News Center has a related article

The relief effort in Sudan's Darfur region could collapse within weeks unless foreign donors contribute more money and the government eases restrictions that have slowed aid workers, the top U.N. humanitarian official said Thursday.

Jan Egeland told the U.N. Security Council that just 20 percent of relief work in Darfur has been funded this year. The international community has stopped pressuring Sudan's government or Darfur's rebels to cooperate with aid groups.

"We simply cannot sustain this massive relief effort much longer," Egeland told the Security Council. "The government has again been imposing restrictions that make our work a daily struggle and administrative nightmare. And funding is dwindling rapidly, as we had feared."

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Only one country, Britain, has contributed more money for the Darfur crisis in 2006 than it did in 2005, Egeland said. Asked to estimate how much longer the relief effort could last, he said it was "a matter of weeks if not months," and that the situation would be far worse by mid-June.

"I don't think anyone wants, 10 years after Rwanda, to see a collapse in Darfur and it can still be averted," Egeland said.

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Security Council ambassadors said they would keep discussing the Darfur crisis, but no diplomats emerged from the meeting with new promises of concrete action.

China's ambassador insisted that Beijing was doing its part, while Greece's ambassador laughed when a reporter asked if his nation would contribute more money.

"It's a collective decision, you have to be aware of that," Ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis said.

Deputy U.S. Ambassador Jackie Sanders said the United States would push forward "on a number of fronts" and that contributing more money is always under discussion.

Darfur: Sudan Must Halt Threats Against Aid Worker

From Reuters

A senior U.N. official on Thursday told the international community to pressure Sudan to stop intimidating aid workers trying to deliver food to millions in Darfur.

Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, told the U.N. Security Council he feared Darfur was falling further into an abyss while the U.N. World Food Program had limited or no access to 650,000 people in need.

"This trend started last August when security conditions began to deteriorate again, and has accelerated more recently in ways that are truly alarming," Egeland told the 15-nation council in a closed meeting, according to his speaking notes.

He predicted to reporters later that many U.N. relief operations could collapse in "weeks or at the most months" because of violence and intimidation, as well as a lack of funds.

But unlike in 2004, aid workers feel "there has been a significant weakening in the support of the diplomatic community in Khartoum," Egeland said. "The concerted pressure that was brought to bear in 2004 was critical to the ultimate success of the humanitarian operation."

"If we are to reverse the trend, our colleagues in the field need the forceful and sustained support of all member states represented in Khartoum, including all those around the table," he told the council.

More than 14,000 private and governmental relief workers are in Darfur trying to help 3.5 million people, including some 2 million forced into squalid camps by marauding pro-government militia and rebels opposing them.

"We are putting plaster on an open wound," Egeland said.

Egeland said the escalation in fighting and atrocities had driven about 200,000 additional people from their homes in the last four months.

Rebels are hijacking relief trucks, he said.

"Most of this new displacement is the result of militia and government attacks on villages, often in retaliation for rebel attacks," he said, adding that women and girls were being raped "on a regular basis."

Darfur: Committee on Conscience Blog

The Holocaust Museum's Committee on Conscience podcast feature has now expanded to include a blog.

Also, their latest podcast is available

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum historian, Edna Friedberg, and Case Western Reserve University law professor Michael Scharf discuss the meaning of justice in the context of Nuremberg, the international tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the International Criminal Court with regard to Darfur. Edna created the Museum's exhibition, "The Nuremberg Trials: What is Justice," and she speaks about the limits of justice and the limits of the law. Michael discusses the deterrant affect of the existence of a permanent International Criminal Court.

Chad/Sudan: AU Seeks to Alleviate Tension

From AFP

The African Union will send a delegation to Chad this week in a bid to defuse escalating tensions between Chad and Sudan, which accuses Khartoum of backing a coup attempt and has broken off diplomatic relations, says an official.

Patrick Mazimhaka, vice-president of the pan-African body's executive commission, said: "It is a fact-finding mission to look at the political situation in Chad and see what evidence the Chadian government can produce of a Sudanese invasion."

He said that the high-level team would leave AU headquarters in Addis Ababa on Friday for a four-day mission in a bid to determine the facts on the ground.

The six-member delegation would meet Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno as well as representatives from the country's "different political forces" and report back next week to the AU's peace and security council.

Darfur: UN Anxious Over Sanctions, Deadline

From AFP

Two pending UN decisions could shake up peace talks being held in Nigeria on the conflict in the strife torn Sudanese region of Darfur.

The United States has proposed UN sanctions against four Sudanese government officials while the United Nations wants to take over the African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Darfur.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the Sudanese government has used the peace talks in Abuja to justify delaying a UN mission to assess peacekeeping needs in Darfur, where hundreds of thousands are said to have died in recent years.

Sudanese officials told UN deputy secretary general for peacekeeping operations Hedi Annabi "that this was not the time for a UN assessment mission to go into Darfur and that they would rather wait till the Abuja process is completed," he said.

The UN Security Council ordered a mission before the end of the month to determine the size, scope and equipment needs for a UN force in Darfur.

After months of inconclusive negotiations, the international community has given the African Union-brokered Darfur peace talks until April 30 to reach agreement.

AU mediator Salim Ahmed Salim of Tanzania on Tuesday told the UN that "The conflict in Darfur ... seems at last to be ripe for resolution."

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Diplomats said the UN Security Council was unlikely to decide before Friday on a US draft resolution calling for sanctions against four Sudanese officials accused over the bloodshed in Darfur.

Monday, China's UN envoy Wang Guangya, the president of the council for April, argued that "this is not the right moment" to impose sanctions because of the Abuja talks.

The AU, meanwhile, is hesistating about the timing of sanctions, Tanzanian Ambassador Augustine Mahiga said. He added that such measures "could have negative or positive consequences on the Abuja peace process."

"There are three possibilities: do we adopt the sanctions now, do we adopt them shortly before (April 30th), or later?"

To avoid discouraging the peace talks in case sanctions are approved, Tanzania suggested that the Security Council also adopt a presidential statement "to recognize and encourage the efforts which are going on in Abuja."

The suggestion was accepted and Tanzania was tasked with drafting the statement, Mahiga said.

Darfur: Angelina Jolie Calls for Action

From People - via GI-Net

While preparing for the birth of her baby with Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie has stepped up a campaign to save the lives of mothers, fathers and children in Darfur, Sudan.

Jolie, 30, a United Nations goodwill ambassador, plans to take out a large advertisement in USA Today on her own accord next week, explaining in her words the past killings of 400,000 civilians by the Sudanese government-supported militia Janjaweed and the need to stop the violence.

"I chose to take out this ad because when Congress returns from recess (on April 24) they have the chance to fully fund peacekeepers in Darfur," Jolie tells PEOPLE. "The situation in Darfur has been going on far too long. It’s only getting worse. Reports are pouring in about mass atrocities including children getting raped and killed. If people are aware of the facts, I believe many will be driven to action."

Jolie, who notes in the ad "I'm an actress, and certainly no foreign policy expert," has visited the region twice – once in October 2004 and again in June 2004.

She asks those interested in the campaign to visit the Web site www.genocideintervention.net or call 202-224-3121.

Chad: Situation Worsens

From AFP

The situation in eastern Chad, a region plagued by rebel incursions and refugee crises, has taken a dramatic turn for the worse as a rebellion against President Idriss Déby Itno gathers force, aid workers say.

Rebels from the United Front for Change (FUC) left their base in the east last week and three days later launched their biggest offensive yet on N'djamena, before retreating after losing hundreds of men in battles with soldiers.

Claire Bourgeois, a representative for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said those living here along the border with Sudan feared more trouble ahead and had fled in droves.

"It is not over. Since November we have had flare-ups followed by periods of calm, but we can feel that it is building up," Bourgeois said. "The security situation is such that we can no longer send staff to the border zone and Chadian companies are refusing to go to certain areas."

The UNHCR believes that up to 50 000 people living in villages near the border have left their homes in recent weeks to seek safety westwards, and that number is growing rapidly.

"Every day displaced people arrive and tell us there are more coming in their wake," said Tahde Nzotunga, a nurse who works for the Italian aid organisation, Coopi, at Goz Beida.

Some 9 000 people have recently arrived in the town, which lies about 75km from the border that separates Chad from Sudan's conflict-ridden Darfur region.

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Those who have settled in Goz Beida say the border area has seen a sharp increase in raids by Sudan's Janjaweed militia, a government-backed group fighting rebels in Darfur, who come to loot villages and steal cattle.

Abdoulaye Osmane, who was shot in the stomach during a raid, said the attackers were "Arabs from the Sudan".

Adding to the confusion in the border area is the fact that there is no clear link between the growing number of militia raids and the mounting FUC rebellion to oust Déby. The Chadian president has, however, accused Sudan of arming the FUC rebels and has severed diplomatic ties with Khartoum in retaliation.

If the civilians have not suffered at the hands of the rebels, the humanitarian workers in the region say they have had equipment stolen as the rebels made their way west to N'djamena. UNHRC representatives in Koukou, south of Goz Beida, said FUC fighters, on April 12 and 13, took both their car radios and walkie-talkies.

"I know their commander. He told me that they did not want to hurt us, they just wanted to stop us communicating," a driver for the refugee agency told Agence France-Press.

Because humanitarian agencies have pulled out of the border region, reliable information has become scarce and rumours plentiful.

"We try to piece together the various bits of information that reach us. It is like a puzzle," said Lindell Findlay, the head of the UNHCR office in Goz Beida. "But it is clear that there is a lot of military movement in the region right now."

Another aid worker recalled that as rebels attacked N'djamena last Thursday, his team came across men in military gear flashing the victory sign.

"We did not even know whether they were rebels or soldiers," he said.

Chad: Why One Rebel Fights

From the Christian Science Monitor - via POTP

For someone in a position of great responsibility, Chadian rebel officer Beshir Outman can be disarmingly self-deprecating.

"I know that in America 'Chad' is mostly a person's name," he says, before delving into the problems that drove him to leave a decent job managing logistics for Coca-Cola and join the rebellion that reached Chad's capital last week.

Mr. Outman, a tall, lean 24-year-old who studied English at a Houston community college, offers a rare behind-the-frontlines glimpse into Chad's rebel movement. His brothers and cousins still live comfortably in the suburbs of Houston, where they hold video game marathons and watch "Survivor." But Outman has left that life behind.

"Most Chadian leaders take care of themselves, their family and their clan," in that order, says Outman, who was interviewed last month near the Sudan-Chad border, before the latest offensive began. As he spoke, preparations for the rebel attacks were under way; a boy of 12 or 13 was packing rounds into a machine gun clip nearby.

Outman is the First Commandant for Internal Security for the United Front for Democratic Change (FUCD), the main faction of well-armed Chadian rebels who last week fought their way more than 450 miles from their bases on the edge of the war-ravaged Darfur region of western Sudan through their native country towards N'djamena, Chad's capital city.

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Sudan has been the silent backer of Chad's rebels, until recentlyallowing them to train and launch their attacks from areas of Darfur, in western Sudan. Darfur is infamous for the 3-year-old conflict involving the Sudanese government's brutal response to a tribal uprising, which US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has repeatedly called genocide. Tens of thousands have been killed and around 1.8 million are now displaced, with at least 200,000 living as refugees in Chad.

Outman says it's all a tribal conflict, dismissing its political import and downplaying the humanitarian crisis. But looking at the FUCD rebels, it is hard to dismiss their own tribalism; their rank and file largely draws upon one tribe, the Tama, in opposition to another, the Zaghawa. The FUCD rebels cite the corruption and nepotism of Deby, a Zaghawa, as a source of their ire.

Outman has never seen any of the Sudanese refugee camps in Chad or the displaced persons camps in Sudan. But, to him, the protests on US campuses and letter-writing campaigns to Congress are distracting the world from the more pressing issue in central Africa: the need for revolution in Chad.

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But if Sudan is now supporting the Chadian rebels against Deby's regime, many consider it payback for the Chadian leader's years of support for Sudan's own anti- government rebels, such as the Sudan Liberation Army (both Deby and leaders from the SLA hail from the same Zaghawa tribe). It's all a of bit tit-for-tat on each side of the border, and it seems that these days Sudan and their alleged proxy army - the Chadian rebels - have the upper hand.

"Darfur is like a forest full of cowboys. It's just the justice of the gun out here," Outman says. But it is not just any forest. "Power comes from the East" is a common saying in Chad. It is also a fact. In modern Chad's history every president has either been installed by or forced out of office by rebellions based in Darfur, on Chad's eastern edge. Deby himself launched his 1990 rebellion from Darfur.

Darfur: 'Too Deadly for Aid Work'

From the BBC

Fighting has made it impossible to reach large areas of the Sudanese region of Darfur, the Red Cross says.

International Committee of the Red Cross Sudan spokesman Paul Conneally told the BBC that its vehicles are being systematically looted.

He said tens of thousands of people had been forced from their homes around the rebel bases in the Marra mountains.

Aid workers are trying to help more than two million people, in what the US says is a genocide.

Mr Conneally says civilians have fled from towns in the area, which are now patrolled only by the Sudanese army.

He said the fighting was heavy and confused, with pro-government Arab militia attacking civilians, while factions of the main rebel movement, the Sudan Liberation Army, are also clashing with each other.

"The town of Golo is deserted," he said, adding that it used to have 20,000 inhabitants.

Darfur: Militia Must be Controlled to Ensure Peace

From IRIN

Peace will remain elusive in the troubled western Sudanese region of Darfur unless militia can be stopped from attacking civilians, the African Union (AU) chief mediator at the inter-Sudanese peace talks told the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday.

An immediate ceasefire and long-term final status arrangements would be a complex task, Salim Ahmed Salim warned, as Darfur was home to myriad armed and dangerous militia, including the Janjawid, fragmented armed movements, bandits, foreign combatants and ethnic forces. The neutralisation of the Janjawid and "undisciplined militia" - stipulated under the "Enhanced Ceasefire Agreement" as put forward by the AU mediation team at negotiations in the Nigerian capital, Abuja - was a prerequisite for any peace agreement, Salim said. Security arrangements would make or break the negotiations.

The proposals included the disengagement and redeployment of the forces, disarmament of the Janjawid, the control and neutralisation of militias, protection of displaced persons, security of nomadic migration corridors and the demilitarisation of humanitarian supply routes, he said.

Despite these difficulties, Salim was optimistic about the recent progress the Sudanese government and the two main Darfurian rebel groups had made. He expressed hope that a deal could be reached by the 30 April deadline set by the AU. "We are working full-steam to meet this deadline," he said.

In the meantime, the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS) was designing a detailed implementation plan on how to redeploy its forces to undertake the additional responsibilities under the new ceasefire arrangements. The added tasks of the approximately 7,000 AMIS troops would include verifying force positions on the ground, monitoring the disengagement and redeployment of armed groups, and patrolling demilitarised zones and humanitarian supply routes.

Salim said the Security Council should extend maximum support to AMIS, so that the ceasefire agreement, once signed, could be followed up by upgrading and empowerment of the mission. There was no point in calling for the speedy conclusion of the agreement if nothing would be done to prepare AMIS for its expanded mandate, he observed.

"My plea to you in this esteemed Council is that you do not wait for the transition to take place from AMIS to a UN force before strengthening the implementation mechanism of any agreement to be reached in Abuja," he said.

Chad/Darfur: Fleeing as Crisis Spills Over Border

From Reuters

Sheltering from the sun under a thorn tree, Fatime Tabil bows her head as she recalls how Sudanese Arab militia killed her husband -- a victim of the Darfur conflict now spilling into eastern Chad.

Tabil and some 350 other Chadian villagers fled deeper into the arid central African country when their settlement at Koumou, near the Sudanese border, was attacked by fighters they identified as "Janjaweed".

"The Arabs attacked us to steal our cattle. They killed many villagers so we fled," said 25-year-old Tabil, her head covered with a mauve scarf, surrounded by a dozen women.

"My husband was killed when he pursued them ... now I am left alone with our five children," she said. "They came to our homes and took everything we had. Of course I am angry."

The feared Arab Janjaweed militia, whose name is loosely derived from the Arabic for "devils on horseback", are blamed for a three-year campaign of rape, looting and murder in Sudan's Darfur region that has killed 250,000 people and forced more than 2 million from their homes.

Chadian President Idriss Deby accuses Sudan's government of exporting Darfur's ethnic strife across the border in a drive to spread Arab control and Islam into sub-Saharan Africa.

Militia attacks deeper and deeper into Chad in the last six months have forced more than 55,000 terrified locals from their homes and threatened camps housing more than 200,000 Darfur refugees, United Nations officials say.

"There has been cattle rustling along the border for a long time," said Claire Bourgeois, head of the United Nation's refugee agency (UNHCR) in eastern Chad.

"But the Janjaweed continue to advance further into Chad, causing a second wave of displacement, making it difficult to distribute aid and guarantee the security at the camps. ... We need more help."

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The sprawling, dusty refugee camp of Goz Amir, just outside Koukou, was briefly occupied by the rebels last week. They killed at least one police guard and injured two more.

Many locals say the rebel raiders spoke Arabic with Sudanese accents and even sang Khartoum's war songs.

"We fled Sudan because of this violence, but now it is coming here," said Yaquoub Mohamed Mohamed Abu, head of refugees in the camp. "We need the United Nations to send forces as soon as possible to Darfur."

Darfur: A Grandstand View of 'Hell on Earth'

From The Dominion Post

Unicef employs two New Zealand aid workers in Sudan: Douglas Higgins, a water specialist from Nelson, and James Gray, from Wellington, a child protection officer. Both men have a grandstand view of "hell on Earth".

Speaking from Sudan, Mr Higgins says: "Imagine, these children came from horrific circumstances and then ended up in a big dust bowl. At first it was just a couple of thousand people, but I saw one camp mushroom to more than 60,000. The population figures and density have now got much worse. "How do you ensure safe drinking water and reasonable sanitary conditions for this many people, who have been used to living in sparsely populated areas? We had fibreglass slabs to place over the drop loos, but the soil was sandy and stability not always guaranteed. There were a few that collapsed."

In situations of conflict, it's not hard to see why children are always the most vulnerable.

Mr Higgins says: "It's difficult to imagine the life children have, how they had only known hardship in their place of origin, then the horrors of military attacks and killings, and then the inhumanity of displacement camps. What kind of environment is this for a child?" And it seems that things are going to get worse before they get better. So, for now, Sudan must continue to suffer while slipping fast from headlines and consciences.

Insecurity and lack of giving means aid budgets have been cut to the marrow. Many agencies have withdrawn altogether. The UN Commission for Refugees' budget has been reduced by almost half this year, and Unicef, which received $53 million for Darfur last year, has had $1.89 million for 2006, just 2.1 per cent of last year's budget.

UN Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland has expressed his frustration: "We're hanging in by our fingernails, and slipping in many areas."

Mr Gray, who is based in west Darfur, feels the sharp edge of these cuts: "Darfur is a challenging place to live and work. Unfortunately, the past few months have seen a general decline in security. Late 2005, villages were being attacked once again after months of relative calm. Aid agency vehicles were being ambushed, and tensions along the border with Chad started to rise.

"As a result, a large number of UN staff were withdrawn. Many aid agencies followed suit. This has really affected our operations," he says. "The work is still here, the needs are as great as ever, but we are simply unable to access many locations in west Darfur."

Mr Gray works with traumatised children, whom, he says, the international community is letting down. "Children have suffered greatly because of the conflict. During attacks on villages, children have witnessed the killing or rape of family members. They have been separated from their parents and seen their homes destroyed. Normal family and community support mechanisms have been destroyed, causing untold distress and leaving them particularly vulnerable to abuse."

Darfur: Experts Debate Use of Mercenaries

An article on a debate organized by Andrew Sniderman, co-founder of the Genocide Intervention Network, at Swathmore - from its paper, The Phoenix Online [also, last time I posted something on mercenaries, I received an email alerting me to these two documents that might be of interest: Private Military Companies - Independent or Regulated? and Should the Activities of Private Military Companies be Transparent?]

On Monday night, two of the most prominent experts on the proliferation of privatized military service providers gave a joint presentation entitled “America’s Mercenaries: Private Military Contractors, Iraq, and Genocide.” Dr. Peter Singer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Doug Brooks, president of the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), presented their differing opinions on the transformation of modern warfare due to the entry of private corporations into the globalized military “market.”

Singer, who wrote the first major book on the subject, “Private Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry,” discussed the potentially detrimental consequences of deploying large numbers of private contractors to conflict zones such as Iraq. Brooks responded with the argument that private military companies have repeatedly proven their ability to perform vital humanitarian functions in places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, where major military powers have often abstained from peace-keeping efforts.

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Singer’s remarks on Monday night echoed many of the concerns that prompted GI-Net to pursue alternatives to contracting a private military company (PMC), defined by Singer as “a business provider of professional services intricately linked to warfare.”

Singer argued that the privatization of military services is transforming the face of modern warfare, and with potentially devastating consequences. “Any actor on the global political stage can access military capabilities that used to be limited to the state and they can do it by writing a check,” Singer said.

Singer added that the personnel employed by PMC’s operate under conditions of minimal regulation. He cited the abuses at Abu Ghraib as an instance in which contractors were implicated in violations of U.S. military code, but owing to their unique corporate status, were not subject to the legal ramifications that soldiers would face for comparable infractions.

Jesse Gottschalk ’09 said that Dr. Singer’s comments made him “very nervous about the potential for these private contractors to behave inappropriately or dangerously. If a military soldier behaves inappropriately or dangerously, he or she can be court-martialed and punished; if a private contractor’s soldiers act in the same way, often the worst that can happen is that they lose their jobs, and that scares me,” he said.

Brooks, as founder and president of IPOA— a nongovernmental association of PMCs that lobbies policy-makers and enforces regulatory standards among its constituent members — offered an industry perspective, countering Singer’s argument with the assertion that PMCs provide critical peace-keeping services in high-risk areas where Western nations are not willing to intervene. “If you’re not going to use private sector, who are you going to use?” Brooks asked rhetorically, adding that PMCs can provide vital services more efficiently and cheaply than many governments. “The only countries that do provide peace-keeping services are among the poorest countries in the world, so it’s no small wonder that UN peacekeeping fails,” Brooks said.

In response to Singer’s criticism that the corporate military model contains no mechanism of accountability, Brooks cited “contracts, bonuses, incentives” as motivating tools that promote control of PMCs. “This is the only industry that craves regulation,” Brooks said, explaining that the credibility conferred by routine audits codes of conduct within corporations results in more lucrative contracts.

Darfur: Sudan Says Time Not Right for U.N. Mission

From the AP

Sudanese officials have told the United Nations that they would not welcome a U.N. mission to assess conditions in Darfur as the world body prepares to take over peacekeeping operations, a U.N. spokesman said Wednesday.

The Khartoum government said it first wants warring factions to finish peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria. The African Union set an April 30 deadline for a peace deal which the Security Council has endorsed.

Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Hedi Annabi "was told in various meetings with Sudanese officials that they felt this was not the time for a U.N. assessment mission to go into Darfur and that they would rather wait until the Abuja process is completed," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. He said planning for a U.N. force would continue nonetheless.

DRC: Humanitarian Intervention Urgently Needed in Katanga Province

A press release from International Medical Corps - via POTP

When an International Medical Corps nutrition and health assessment team recently went into camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) in the Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, they found the humanitarian situation to be extremely alarming. Camp residents are displaying severe malnutrition – adults as well as children. Health care services here do not meet the enormity of the needs, and water-sanitation facilities are far too few for the thousands they serve. The trauma suffered by those fleeing the violence in the Katanga region is intensified by a significant degree of sexual-gender based violence perpetrated by militia.

[edit]

The IMC team was shocked to find a malnutrition rate of almost 40 percent in the camps, with severe malnutrition at 28% (international standards aim for rates of less than 5%). Many women are unable to breastfeed while malnourished adults and children display oedema (body swelling) and hair discoloration. “These are things the textbooks tell you that you only see in children,” says IMC nutritionist Roghas Wakenge. Typically, IDPs can find enough food for only one meal a day – consisting of ground maize flavored with salt. There is so little food for sale that Mitwaba’s market opens for only one hour a day. With outlying areas too dangerous to cultivate, only poor quality food grown in town is available. One woman traveling to the market with her two children, told the team she had only 10 Congolese francs to spend – enough to buy 20 peanuts.

Malnutrition, malaria, upper respiratory infections and diarrheal diseases are the major causes of death in the camps. With the local hospital destroyed by the Mayi Mayi rebels, both locals and displaced alike are reliant on services such as those proposed by IMC for the most basic of care. Infection and persistent illness will continue until water and sanitation facilities are improved. The few latrines available in the camps were built by the IDPs themselves and each shared with 200 other people. No potable water sources are available in the camps.

Women and children are frequently victims in the continued conflict between the militias and government groups. Both sides are known to kidnap children and train them to fight. With nearly 1,700 gender-based violence cases reported in the last five months, 11 women and children of all ages suffer gender based violence every day.

Uganda: Ministers Request Strong UN Support for Anti-LRA Efforts

From the UN News Center

To finally put an end to the 20-year, campaign of terror by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), notorious for conscripting and sexually abusing children and displacing millions across three African countries, the Ugandan Ministers of both Defence and Foreign Affairs today asked the United Nations Security Council to support strong measures to hunt down, disarm and prosecute the group.

Among those measures, Defence Minister Amama Mbabazi called for a mandate for the UN Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) and the UN Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS), to forcefully disarm the LRA in the countries of their responsibility, where the group has been operating as well as in Uganda, where it originated.

In a joint briefing with Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa, he also emphasized the importance of regional efforts, proposing an arrangement with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, similar to the one Uganda had with Sudan in which the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) would be allowed to enter Congolese territory and hunt down LRA terrorists under the close supervision of international bodies like MONUC.

Mr. Mbabazi said Uganda hoped to arrest indicted LRA terrorist leaders and hand them over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

[edit]

While he the group was “severely degraded and on the verge of defeat,” he expressed extreme concern that it was slowly rebuilding its capacity in the Garambe National Park and other areas.

The insecurity due to the LRA is threatening humanitarian assistance in the region and the repatriation process of Sudanese refugees from DRC and the Central African Republic (CAR) to their homes in southern Sudan, where last month unknown intruders attacked a UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) compound in Yei, killing a local guard and seriously wounding an Iraqi staffer and a second local guard.

The LRA is also considered responsible for the January attack on UN peacekeeping troops in Garamba National Park in north eastern DRC, in which eight Guatemalan peacekeepers were killed.

Darfur: How the Times Sells Genocide

An interesting article on the advertising insert published by the New York Times last month - from the New York Press

According to Allan Siegal, the standards editor at the Times, there was some debate over the publication of the insert, though he didn’t take part in it. Beyond the meeting, Siegal said that there were very specific policies regulating “advertorials” such as the Sudan insert. Regulations include and “Advertising Supplement” disclaimer on every page and a different typeface for the articles, Siegal wrote in an e-mail.

Siegal was also quick to explain that “news and ads occupy opposite sides of a church-state wall. Newsroom editors don’t approve or disapprove advertising, just as ad sales people don’t pass upon the news content.”

Steph Jesperson, who attended the meeting over the Sudan insert as the director of advertising acceptability for the Times, declined to comment, referring questions to a Times spokeswoman. The spokeswoman, Catherine J. Mathis, wrote in an e-mail, “The Times has vigorously reported on the Sudan and our editorials have condemned the actions the Sudanese government has taken against its citizens. We accepted this special advertising section, however, in our strong belief that all pages of the paper—news, editorial and advertising—must remain open to the free flow of ideas. In accepting it, we do not endorse the politics, trade practices or actions of the country or the character of its leaders.”

John Prendergast, a Sudan activist for the International Crisis Group (ICG), responded angrily, “It’s one thing to allow for different views to be aired. But to take money for an ad for three pages lined up against an occasional article or op-ed seems like a capitulation to commercial needs.”

What price genocide? About $1 million

[edit]

So why would Sudan spend over a million dollars to publish such pabulum? The average reader, knowing the situation in Darfur, would probably be put off by puff pieces that started with “Estimates of how much oil lies beneath Sudan’s desert sands vary from 3 billion barrels to 10 billion,” and then complain that “Chevron might well be interested in returning to Sudan, but there is a major obstacle: the U.S. government ban on investment in the country, introduced in 1997, still remains in force.”

Eric Reeves, the anti-genocide activist, said that the Sudanese government believes in “incremental victories,” and was probably not hoping for a huge shift in public opinion with the advertisement. “They know the vast majority of people will immediately see it’s propaganda. If they persuade even a few people that the Sudan is being misrepresented, that it’s a good investment opportunity, maybe that will result in the White House or Congress being lobbied.”

So far, such lobbying is almost unheard of, said Ted Dagne, a Sudan expert at the Congressional Research Service. “The recent house version of the Darfur Accountability Act adds more sanctions,” said Dagne. “I have not heard from anybody other than the government of the Sudan that they would like the sanctions to be dropped.”

Sudan has also mounted a considerable smear campaign against prominent activists on the Darfur issue, said both Reeves and John Prendergast. Reeves said that one Sudan front-group published a personal attack that was sent to every faculty member at his university, as well as many students and alumni.

“They’re attempting to smear anyone who is opposed to them,” said Prendergast.

Darfur: Sudan Denies Visas to UN Military Assessment Mission

From Reuters

Sudan's president refused to grant visas to Darfur for a U.N. military assessment mission that wanted to plan for a U.N. peacekeeping mission, a U.N. spokesman said on Wednesday.

The Khartoum government has not consented to U.N. troops to augment the African Union soldiers currently trying to stop atrocities in the violent Darfur region but officials said they would discuss it after a peace agreement under negotiation in Abuja, Nigeria.

Hedi Annabi, a U.N. assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping, went to Khartoum this week and spoke to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and other officials about sending he U.N. team to Darfur.

"They felt this was not the time for a U.N. assessment mission to go into Darfur until the Abuja process was completed," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. "We have a clear political line from the Sudanese at this point."

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said "That's clearly a mistake that undercuts our ability to do contingency planning."

But Dujarric said contingency planning continued and options for an eventual force in Darfur would be presented to the Security Council.

"It's much more a bump in the road than the end of the road for us in terms of contingency planning," Dujarric said.

Security Council diplomats agreed but said an on-site visit would have made the planning more accurate. Annabi, a Tunisian, was supposed to have a second meeting with Bashir but the United Nations said this did not take place.

Earlier this month Sudan denied permission for Jan Egeland, the outspoken U.N. emergency relief coordinator, to go to Darfur.

Chad: Role of Outsiders Scrutinized

From the AP

Both the rebels and Deby say intelligence from France was crucial in helping government troops repulse the rebels on April 13. The government said at least 350 people died, while the rebel group says far fewer were killed, including only 20 of its own men.

"If not for the intervention of French troops, we would today be in a position to control the country," Raoul Laona Gong, external affairs director for the rebel group known by the French acronym FUCD, said in an interview in Paris Wednesday.

Deby, in an interview published Wednesday in the French daily Le Figaro, praised France for providing critical intelligence, and said his government was rearming.

France's Defense Ministry has said its forces had fired a warning shot toward rebels who carried out the siege on N'djamena on April 12. France then raised its 1,200-strong deployment in Chad by 150.

Chad no longer receives military hardware from France, but French troops are stationed in the country and Chadian officers continue to be trained by France. France has supported Deby but also supported the president he toppled. France has a cooperation agreement with Chad but a special decision would be needed for French forces to enter combat.

[edit]

At a briefing on Tuesday, U.N. diplomats said Security Council ambassadors were told that 125 new vehicles transported well-armed rebel fighters in new uniforms 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the Sudan-Chad border to N'Djamena for the April 13 attack. Council members want to know who supplied the vehicles, weapons and uniforms, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed.

Darfur: Beijing's Silence Bolsters Tyrants

An op-ed by Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch in the International Herald Tribune

When Western governments try to use economic pressure to secure human rights improvements, China's no-strings rule gives dictators the means to resist. Chinese investment and aid can still sometimes help fight poverty, and it is not as if Western governments always have human rights foremost in mind. But as China's quest for new markets and natural resources spreads around the world, its de facto support for repression has become increasingly common.

The people of Darfur have paid perhaps the steepest price for this policy of indifference. China's massive investment in Sudanese oil fields has helped Khartoum finance militia in Darfur that have murdered tens of thousands of people and displaced more than two million. Some of these funds were used to purchase Chinese arms for Darfur. Western oil companies, like Canada's Talisman, have withdrawn from Sudan, but China, the largest investor, remains.

To make matters worse, Beijing has prevented the United Nations Security Council from imposing sanctions of any strength on Khartoum. Emboldened, the Sudanese government is resisting pressure to accept a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur.

[edit]

Troublesome as this record is, China is sometimes willing to accommodate Western concerns if they are firmly expressed. China did not prevent the UN Security Council from granting the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over the crimes against humanity committed in Darfur. Beijing also dropped its objections to a tribunal in Cambodia for its one-time ally, the Khmer Rouge.

But convincing China to move beyond these rare exceptions requires making it pay a price for its policy of indifference to repression. China's ruling Communist Party claims an ideology of looking after the little guy. But Beijing's uncritical support for tyrants has been a disaster for the ordinary people of those countries. If China, in effect, is going to quench its thirst for oil with the blood of Darfuris, if it is going to invest in governments like Angola's that squander its people's funds for education and health care, its disgraceful conduct should be highlighted.

So when Bush brings up human rights with Hu, the conversation should not stop at China's borders. Bush should speak not only for the people of China but also for the citizens of China's business partners. He should encourage Hu to stand with the victims of official violence and corruption, not with the governments that repress them.

Chad: Asked to Prove Sudan Role in Rebel Attacks

From Reuters

The international community is seeking solid proof from Chad to back its accusations that neighbouring Sudan is behind rebel attempts to overthrow President Idriss Deby, diplomats said on Wednesday.

Insurgents fighting to end Deby's rule over the landlocked central African oil producer launched a lightning assault on the capital last week, racing across the desert in pick-up trucks from the eastern border region with Sudan.

Deby has accused Sudan of attacking his country in a drive to export what he called Khartoum's fundamentalist system to sub-Saharan Africa. His government says it has abundant proof of Sudan's involvement. Khartoum denies the charges.

"While Chad is making accusations, the Sudanese are defending themselves," said African Union Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare, one of the continent's top diplomats.

"So there is a need for a mission to establish the facts and, using them, make a condemnation," he told a news conference in Congo's capital Kinshasa. An AU mission is expected in Chad in the coming days.

[edit]

Chad says it has ample proof -- ranging from circumstantial to "irrefutable" -- that Sudan's government equipped and armed the insurgents who launched the dawn assault on the capital last week following a series of attacks further east.

"There were Sudanese officials among the prisoners we took who had been directing the fighting," Information Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said.

"The rebels arrived with 60 vehicles, with heavy weapons, fuel, logistics, all of it from Sudan. Do you think they could have done that without Sudanese support?" he said.

Foreign diplomats said many of those captured during the fighting appeared not to speak Chadian dialects, while residents said the insurgents had to ask the way to the presidential palace when they arrived and ended up attacking parliament.

"They spent ages attacking the biggest and emptiest building in N'Djamena," said one diplomat. "No one was in parliament but they were shooting at it as if Deby was inside."

Among the weapons seized and shown to journalists in N'Djamena after the fighting were Chinese-made equipment and munitions in Sudanese sugar sacks.

China, which has abstained from voting on every U.N. Security Council resolution critical of the Sudanese government over Darfur, is Sudan's biggest foreign investor -- mostly in oil -- and has provided considerable military loans.

"There is no doubt that the rebels are backed by Khartoum, you only have to look at the weapons which are all Chinese-made. There are several big Chinese weapons factories in Khartoum," said one independent analyst, who asked not to be named.

Darfur: The UN Takes Its Turn at Posturing

The latest from Eric Reeves

The international community seems to have an inexhaustible capacity for disingenuousness, expediency, and bad faith in responding to resurgent genocide in Darfur and eastern Chad. Even as all humanitarian indicators strongly suggest that human mortality and displacement are rapidly accelerating, there is no action in prospect---diplomatic or military---that might address the acute insecurity that threatens civilians and continues to attenuate humanitarian capacity and operations. This growing insecurity ensures that the deaths of huge numbers of innocent children, women, and men will continue through the coming rainy season and hunger gap (May through September)---and well beyond.

The UN took its turn this week with a telling display of small-minded irrelevance. In response to UN Security Council Resolution 1591 (March 2005), authorizing targeted sanctions, and in light of a report made months ago by a UN panel of experts, the US and Britain finally proposed sanctioning four individual Sudanese: a Janjaweed militia member, two rebel officials, and a mid-level member of the National Islamic Front. The stature of the “middle-ranking member of the Sudanese government” designated for sanctioning was reported by Associated Press last week (April 13, 2006 [dateline: UN, New York]). The dispatch cited “Security Council diplomats” as the source of information.

Such a very small list of actors---and none of them senior members of the National Islamic Front regime---was sufficiently embarrassing to prompt both the US and UK ambassadors to the UN to insist that this was only a “down-payment” on some larger sanctions effort. But even the “down-payment” proffered yesterday (April 17, 2006) was rejected by veto-wielding Security Council members China and Russia, along with the only Arab League member of the Security Council, Qatar.

The US, the UK, and other supporters of the sanctions measure were certainly well aware that their effort was directed at none of those most responsible for genocide in Darfur.

Darfur: A Question of Intervention

NPR's "On Point" discussed "A Question of Intervention" in Darfur yesterday.

The program featured

· Ray Thibodeaux, freelance Africa correspondent for the Boston Globe
· Bradley Graham, Military Affairs Reporter for the Washington Post
· Samantha Power, Professor of Practice in Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
· Major Brent Beardsley, research officer at the Canadian Forces Leadership Institute who previously served in the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) during the Rwandan Genocide.

Chad: Deby Wants Oil Money Used for Defense

From Reuters

Chad wants to use money from oil sales to buy weapons and is expecting a new arms delivery in the next few days, President Idriss Deby said in a newspaper interview published on Wednesday.

Rebels fighting to end Deby's rule over the landlocked central African oil producer attacked the capital last week and have vowed to disrupt a presidential poll on May 3 in which Deby is standing for a third term after nearly 16 years in power.

Deby, who accuses neighboring Sudan of funding and arming the rebels, said Chad needed the weapons to defend itself.

"Which country in the world wouldn't want to buy arms to defend itself if it had the money? Why shouldn't Chad be allowed? We are going to buy weapons. We're going to do it openly. In the next two days these arms will arrive," Deby told France's Le Figaro daily newspaper.

The World Bank froze the royalties from oil production because Chad breached an agreement that required some of the revenues to be used for programs to help the poor.

Asked if Chad wanted to use the blocked money to buy weapons, Deby said: "That's right."

Darfur: Clashes Displace Tens of Thousands in Jebel Marra

From IRIN

At least 30,000 people have been displaced by recent fighting in the mountain ranges of Jebel Marra in central Darfur, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has recently regained access to parts of the region following a spate of violence that led to its evacuation.

"During a recent needs assessment, we found 64,000 people - about half of them recently displaced and living with the resident population - putting a strain on local resources," Paul Conneally, ICRC communication coordinator in Sudan, said on Tuesday. "These represent only some of the victims of the armed clashes that have been occurring in the Jebel Marra since the start of the year."

The latest clashes started when Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) rebels attacked the government-controlled town of Rokoro on 24 December 2005, then Golo on 23 January. The attacks violated a ceasefire agreement and led to counterattacks by the Sudanese military and allied militias.

As the clashes continued, humanitarian agencies were forced to pull out of the area in January. Although some assessments have been carried out since then, no aid organisation has been able to resume activities inside the Jebel Marra area. Many other areas, particularly in the north-central region, remain inaccessible to aid workers.

Throughout March, Conneally told IRIN, there had been "regular and heavy fighting, particularly involving Arab militias". Recently, fighting again flared up around the villages of Pidon and Diya. The ICRC assessment found that people living in villages in southwestern Jebel Marra, including Kelling, Sorong and Dursa, had been cut off from any assistance for months.

Darfur: 60,000 Troops Needed

From Xinhua

Commander of the African Union (AU) Force in Darfur Maj. Gen. Collins Ihikere said here Tuesday that the 7,000 troops in the troubled area were not sufficient and up to 60,000 troops more were needed.

"If you compare the strength of troops in a place like Liberia which is smaller than Darfur and we go by that kind of ratio, we might be looking at maybe 50,000 to 60,000 troops in Darfur," he said.

At a news briefing in the Nigerian capital Abuja, Ihikere said Sudan deserved such attention because it was a big territory and had the largest land mass in Africa.

He, however, rejected suggestions that the current figure was just like a drop in the ocean. "It (figure) is more than a drop. Really more than a drop," he said.

He said the AU Mission in Darfur was an observer mission whose primary motive was to maintain ceasefire agreements.

The mission, he added, was charged with protecting internally displaced persons and also to protect Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and international agencies that might be in danger.

"So you see, we are not keeping the peace as in the concept of peacekeeping between warring parties," he said.

Darfur: AU Warns Aid Needed for Peace Pact to Hold

From Reuters - The UN Security Council also released an article, as did the UN News Center and the AP, each with a slightly different focus

The chief African Union mediator on Darfur peace talks pleaded with U.N. members on Tuesday to give its peacekeepers the means to enforce an anticipated cease-fire pact in the turbulent Sudan region.

"The agreement is clearly within our reach, even if a lot of hard work still remains," Salim Ahmed Salim told the U.N. Security Council of the two-year talks he leads in the Nigerian capital of Abuja.

The main bulwark against abuses in Darfur is the cash-strapped and under-equipped African Union, which is patrolling the vast desert region with a force of 7,000.

While Western nations have helped the AU, their aid is considered insufficient. Salim said the international community should not wait until a U.N. force could go to Darfur to increase their assistance.

"There is no point in calling for the speedy conclusion of an agreement if nothing will be done to appropriately prepare the African Union Mission in the Sudan (AMIS) for its expanded mandate," Salim said.

The current round, the seventh, of peace talks between the Sudan government and two rebel groups, has dragged on in a small hotel on the outskirts of Abuja since Nov. 29. The AU is hoping for a cease-fire agreement by the end of April.

Salim warned, however, to expect "further frustrating hesitation" as the parties contemplate their future.

He plans to present "final status issues" to negotiators in the "sensitive home run in the next weeks," that will include details on power and wealth sharing and a formal dialogue among Darfurians.

[edit]

"I am here to plead with you that this council extends maximum support to AMIS ensure that the cease-fire agreement, once signed, could be followed up by the upgrading...of AMIS, to enable it to cope with additional responsibilities," said Salim.

Darfur: US To Push Sanctions Vote

From Reuters

The United States on Tuesday circulated a U.N. resolution that would impose sanctions on four Sudanese accused of rights abuses in Darfur, seeking to force a vote over Russian and Chinese objections.

Beijing and Moscow on Monday had blocked the imposition of a travel ban and assets freeze on the four men, a proposal distributed to all 15 U.N. Security Council members by a council sanctions committee.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton then decided the full council should vote on a resolution, which would force Russia and China to veto, consent or abstain.

"What I'd like is unanimity, obviously, not a veto, so I'm prepared to have consultations and discussions and that's appropriate," Bolton told reporters.

"But I'm also prepared to proceed. We think the moment is right to implement these sanctions," Bolton said.

No vote has been scheduled and the Security Council intends to discuss the U.S. draft on Wednesday.

[edit]

The four men, whittled down from a longer British list, include one Sudanese Air Force general in Darfur, one well-known pro-government militia leader and two rebel commanders.

The men's names were not included in Bolton's draft resolution but diplomats identified them as:

-- Maj.-Gen. Gaafar Mohammed El-Hassan of the Sudan Air Force who until this year commanded Darfur's western military region;

-- Sheikh Musa Hilal, paramount chief of the Jalul tribe in North Darfur and a known leader of the "Janjaweed" pro-government militia responsible for widespread abuses;

-- Gabril Abdel Karim Badi, commander of the rebel National Movement for Reform and Development (NMRD);

-- Adam Yacub Shant, a commander of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army

Darfur: After Two Years, Are We Going Backwards?

From UNICEF

Eman Musa Eltighani is a young Sudanese women who has been working with UNICEF in Darfur since 2004. In this Frontline Diary entry she documents her thoughts on recent developments – and fears for the future.

In a few days, I will have completed two years of work in Darfur, travelling between camps for internally displaced people in rebel-controlled parts of the region and in urban areas. Every day, I used to sense a slight improvement in the general situation compared to how it felt in August 2004 when I first came to the field, but now I worry we are heading back to where we were two years ago.

Indelible images of suffering are now deeply rooted in my mind: Endless queues of women wait for food rations under a sizzling sun. They carry crying children on their backs. Other kids wander around them, closely watched so they don’t disappear. A child dying of malnutrition sits on his mother’s lap. Children scream, watching strangers come and go in the camps. All they dream of at night are the horsemen who destroyed their villages.

Meanwhile, the same camps have become the focus of numerous efforts by humanitarian workers, United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations to help provide as much of a normal a life as possible for those who’ve fled their homes.

My concern is that those efforts will vanish with the wind if no serious action is taken to stop the deterioration of the security situation.

Chad: Darfur's JEM Rebels Briefly Occupy Sudan Embassy

From Reuters

A group of Sudanese rebels opposed to the Khartoum government briefly occupied Sudan's embassy in Chad on Tuesday but were ejected by Chadian security forces, the foreign ministry said.

The rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), one of the insurgent groups fighting in Sudan's Darfur region, entered the building after Chad broke its diplomatic relations with Sudan and ordered its diplomats out.

[edit]

"A group of Sudanese rebels from the JEM occupied the embassy this morning and the security forces evicted them," Chad's Foreign Minister Ahmat Allam-Mi told Reuters.

"Now there is a procedure for expelling them from the country either to Darfur or to Abuja (where Darfur peace talks are being held)," Allam-Mi said. "They have abused our hospitality. It was an unacceptable act."

JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim earlier said he had taken control of the embassy.

"We are speaking from within the embassy of Sudan," he told Reuters in Cairo by telephone. "It's under my full control."

Abdoul Rahman Zuma, a member of Sudanese government delegation in Abuja, said the rebels had attacked the embassy and that they had stolen equipment including mobile phones.

"They assaulted the building and attacked the charge d'affaires ... Then the Libyan authorities came to the embassy and took control. They've raised the Libyan flag on the embassy because they are representing Sudanese interests," he said.

Chad/Darfur: Concerns About Security Remain

From UNHCR

Recent security concerns have prompted UNHCR and its partners, as well as other UN organisations, to relocate non-essential staff from Chad. So far, some 35 UNHCR staff, out of a total of 280 national and international staff in the country, have been flown to Yaoundé, Cameroon, on two UN flights – one from the capital and the other from Abéché in the east.

"We are now trying to strike the right balance between continuing essential services to refugees in the camps, who feel reassured by our presence, as well as security precautions for our staff. This is an ongoing exercise, but there are no immediate plans for any further evacuation flights," spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis told journalists in Geneva.

Meanwhile, the situation in the 12 refugee camps in eastern Chad is reported to be calm, with activities proceeding close to normal, albeit with about one third less staff than a week ago due to their relocation. The refugees themselves are largely responsible for many daily activities in the camps – schooling in particular. There have been no major problems with food or water. UNHCR staff are doing everything possible to keep refugees aware of developments affecting them and have invited them to share their concerns.

Reports that janjaweed militia from Sudan's Darfur region are close to Goz Amer refugee camp are a source of concern. Goz Amer camp, 95 km from the Sudan border, is home to over 17,000 refugees from Darfur. The camp was briefly occupied by a large armed rebel group from Chad on 10 April. A Chadian gendarme guarding the camp was killed and two other gendarmes injured. Around 117 humanitarian workers, including UNHCR, had to stay overnight at the camp. They were unharmed and managed to leave the next day.

"There is shooting in Darfur and there is also shooting in Chad," an oumda, or traditional leader, declared in Goz Amer refugee camp on Saturday, "and we find ourselves caught between the two sides. We are exposed to all kinds of dangers and the gendarmes charged with camp security will not be able to protect us from the attacks of the janjaweed. At any moment the janjaweed could come and kidnap any of the refugee representatives from the camp."

Another concern expressed by refugees and the local population is the rapid approach of the planting season; if insecurity prevents the planting of subsistence crops by the rainy season that begins in June, the effects could be catastrophic.

There are some 220,000 refugees from Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region in eastern Chad. UNHCR and its partners are assisting them and local host populations by improving living conditions – providing water, shelter, health care and education. There are also some 40,000 internally displaced persons in eastern Chad.

Darfur: Trapped by Bitter Sudan-Chad Row

From AFP

After three years of conflict and famine, Sudan’s Darfur region is exposed to more violence by a breakdown in relations between the government and neighbouring Chad, which has now abandoned its role as peace mediator.

The Chadian delegation at African Union-sponsored peace talks in Nigeria announced it was walking out on Sunday following President Idriss Deby Itno’s decision to sever ties with the Sudanese government.

"There is no point in being mediators when we are the victims of Sudanese aggression right up to N’Djamena," Foreign Minister Ahmat Allami said. "We cannot be part of a conflict and guarantee its mediation."

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f Deby stays in power, Darfur risks becoming a proxy battlefield for two regimes at war. If he tumbles, Khartoum will have a free hand to press on with its brutal repression of the Darfur uprising, Hussein warned.

"We don’t want Darfur to become a battlefield for regional conflicts because our people suffer a lot... and if Khartoum gets what it wants and a new regime in Chad, it will be free to crush the rebellion in Darfur."

Hussein — who represents the Justice and Equality Movement — and his counterparts from the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), urged the international community to shore up peace efforts to prevent the area from tumbling into further chaos.

Darfur: US Struggles to Muster Support

From AFP

Nineteen months after branding the carnage in Sudan’s Darfur region as genocide, the United States is struggling to muster support to end one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Facing Sudanese resistance to foreign peacekeepers, delays from the African Union (AU) and United Nations, and a wariness from NATO to commit too much more of its own resources, US officials are showing signs of impatience.

Washington has been pushing to end the three-year-old conflict between Darfur rebels and government backed-militia that has left up to 300,000 people dead from violence and disease and two million homeless.

Still haunted by the world’s failure to stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, officials insist plans to boost an African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur and nail down a peace agreement are moving ahead.

"Would we have liked to have seen things move more quickly? Yes," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday. "It might not move as quickly as we would like, but it is moving forward."

Some Africa watchers say the United States needs to work harder to mobilize international action against the Sudanese regime to curb the bloodshed in its western region which has spilled over into neighboring Chad.

But significant obstacles remain, they say. For one, no major power has followed the US declaration of genocide in Darfur made by then-secretary of state Colin Powell in September 2004.

Tough UN measures have run into opposition from China, which has considerable oil interests in Sudan. Khartoum has also been playing the pan-African card to block the deployment of foreign troops in Darfur.

Within the United States, there is concern about rupturing relations with Sudan’s government, which is now considered a partner in the war on terror even if it is still listed here as a state sponsor of terrorism.

"With Rwanda 10 years ago, nobody had any interest so nobody did anything," said Leslie Lefkow, a Darfur expert with Human Rights Watch. "With Sudan everybody’s got interests and they’re all different so nobody does anything."

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The United States is backing efforts to transfer the 7,000-strong AU contingent in Darfur into a more-robust UN force. But Zoellick suggested there was little way to ram foreign peacekeepers down Khartoum’s throat.

"You either get the approval of the government, as the government did for the African Union force and the NATO support, or you invade, and that’s a very big, serious challenge," he said.

Zoellick said the United States was counting on Khartoum’s cooperation, not only in Darfur but in efforts to implement a January 2005 peace agreement that ended a 21-year war with rebels in the country’s south.

"And so that is the challenge of working with regimes that we don’t like, how do you get that combination moving forward and how do you try to put pressure on them to take the right steps?"

The United States spent its month-long presidency of the UN Security Council in February in an unsuccessful effort to win approval for a resolution on a new peacekeeping force for Darfur.

The world body was to have sent a team to Darfur to assess the needs of such a force but has been bogged down in a wrangle with the Sudanese over visas.

Chad/Darfur: Military Action May Be Needed

From the AP

President Idriss Deby said Tuesday that the world may have to use force to stabilize Sudan's Darfur, whose conflict is seen as a threat to neighboring Chad and the rest of the region.

Deby accused Sudan wanting to destabilize the region in order to control it. Sudan has repeatedly rejected Deby's accusations about its alleged role in Darfur and Chad. The Darfur peace process, meanwhile, has stalled, with both the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels accused by international mediators of doing too little to resolve their three-year-old conflict.

The Sudanese government is accused of responding to an uprising by Darfur rebels by unleashing Arab tribal militias known as Janjaweed to murder and rape civilians and lay waste to villages -- a charge it denies.

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"I have repeatedly and strongly suggested to the international community that the Darfur region be stabilized even if by use of force and to be put under U.N. mandate. This in turn will help to stabilize Chad," Deby told journalists.

Sudan denies Chadian officials' claims that it backs Chadian rebel groups. It has instead accused Chad of backing Darfur rebels.

The president also said that a call from the U.S. State Department persuaded Chad to withdraw its threat to expel Sudanese refugees in the country by June.

Chad: Sudan Supports Rebels

From SAPA-AFP

Chadian rebels who advanced on the capital in a fleet of brand-new Toyotas had clear support from Sudan, which wants to replace President Idriss Déby Itno with a pro-Sudanese leader, diplomats and human rights groups here said on Tuesday.

International observers alleged logistical and political support by Sudan for the rebels of the Chadian United Front for Change (FUC), a day after the United States branded such support "unacceptable".

"The FUC rebels are Chadians, but they are clearly supported by Sudan," said Olivier Bercault, regional specialist for the global rights group Human Rights Watch.

"An armed movement from the east of Chad cannot arrive in N'djamena in a few days without logistical support from Khartoum," he said, referring to the FUC forces that travelled some 800km to fight forces loyal to Déby around the capital last week.

The rebels were equipped with "dozens of new Toyotas", he added.

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A French diplomatic source said Khartoum supports FUC leader Mahamat Nour Abdelkerim with a view to toppling Déby, who is accused of supporting a rebellion in Sudan's Darfur region against the Khartoum government.

After repelling last week's coup attempt, Chadian authorities displayed what they said were captured Sudanese mercenary fighters as well as arms and other materials it said were evidence of Sudanese involvement. International observers say Nour's forces receive support from Darfur, which borders eastern Chad. One such source said Chadian rebels had bases in El-Geneina, the capital of the Sudanese state of West Darfur.

"They benefit from the open support of auxiliary militias from Khartoum. Logistical support, [support] in arms and provisions," the observer said.

Shortly after the founding of the FUC, one of the group's chiefs, Abdelwahit About, told Radio France Internationale that the FUC had "close and friendly" ties with Khartoum.

Talks on founding the FUC were held in El-Geneina in December, according to sources close to the rebels.

But the allegations of Sudan's involvement were supported on Tuesday, even by the opposition to the government in Chad.

"Sudan aids the FUC materially. It's plain to see," said Ngarleji Yorongar, a fierce opponent of Déby. The leadership of "Mahamat Nour is a creation of the Sudanese, and today he is sufficiently armed and supported to take power in N'djamena".

Sources formerly close to Nour also say he fought alongside the Sudanese army against rebels in Darfur.

Chad/Sudan: Annan Warns of Escalation of Fighting

From Reuters

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned on Monday that fighting in Chad, where rebels are trying to unseat the government, could have a domino effect in the region.

"If you have another escalation in Chad you risk destabilizing the whole region, not just Chad but also the Central African Republic, a sort of domino effect that we have seen in the Great Lakes region," Annan said of the conflicts in central Africa.

"We really should do everything to prevent it here," he told reporters after his monthly lunch with the 15 Security Council ambassadors.

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Deby has assured the United Nations he would not expel more than 200,000 refugees in Chad who had fled violence in Darfur. This softened a threat he made on Friday when he cut diplomatic ties with Sudan.

However, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that U.N. food deliveries had been disrupted in five Chadian camps but completed in five others.

Annan said he raised at the Security Council lunch reports of Sudan's involvement. "If indeed the evidence is there that troops came from across the border of another country to attack one, the council cannot remain silent."

He said he had spoken by telephone over the weekend to Deby, Congo Republic President and African Union Chairman Denis Sassou Nguesso, as well as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others "to see what can be done."

"I think it is important that the African Union, and all the countries in the region, and the international community, maintain the pressure on the two countries not to escalate," Annan said.

He said he still hoped for a peace agreement this month at talks in Abuja, Nigeria, between the Sudan government and Darfur rebels opposing it. But he acknowledged, "I have no certainty that there will be an agreement by the end of April."

Uganda: Army Starts Some Resettlement in North

From Reuters

Uganda's army on Tuesday said it was starting to send people home from camps in the north where they have sheltered from 20 years of war between troops and the cult-like Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.

The move affects some settlements of more than a quarter of a million people in the Lango and Teso regions, which have been relatively peaceful for months.

But it will not involve those camps in the more violent Acholi region, which the U.N. has called the world's worst forgotten humanitarian disaster.

Clashes with the LRA have uprooted some 1.6 million people, most of them in the last three years. But with the group's leaders now hiding in neighbouring Congo and southern Sudan, the government says some of the camps can be emptied.

"There are no problems any more in Lango and Teso, so from today people there are being assisted ... with iron sheets, seeds and food supplies for six months," Ugandan army spokesman Captain Paddy Ankunda said.

He could not immediately say how many would benefit in those two regions, or within what timeframe.

President Yoweri Museveni had ordered last year that Lango and Teso camp residents be resettled in their old villages by December 2005. He has long said the LRA is on the verge of defeat.

But disbanding more than 200 camps in the north will be fraught with difficulties.

Residents are wary of the government's security promises, and rights groups have said in the past that Ugandan soldiers often abuse camp residents they are meant to protect.

Returning villagers also face the prospect of going back to homes with almost no infrastructure, just bitter land disputes.

Aid workers say the north, particularly Acholi, remains dangerous, but the LRA has shifted most of its operations its long-term refuge in lawless southern Sudan.

Sudan: Garang Crash Report Blames Pilot Error

From Reuters

Pilot error was to blame for the helicopter crash that killed Sudanese First Vice President John Garang last year as he flew home from Uganda, the final report into the accident by Uganda and Sudan said on Tuesday.

"We think the pilot was trying to keep below the clouds because of bad weather, yet he was coming into high terrain," Ugandan Works Minister John Nasasira told reporters in Kampala while releasing the report.

Garang was travelling in Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's helicopter last July when it crashed into a hill in southern Sudan, killing all 14 passengers.

Nasasira said Uganda would spend another month or two looking into why the pilot had flown at low altitude, and why he had not relied on his instruments in low visibility.

"We need to know what was going on in the crew's minds to fly so low," he said, adding that the helicopter had been flying at about 5,500 feet amid 6,000-feet peaks.

There was no mention of foul play in the report, which also ruled out mechanical failure in the crash.

Sudan: Southern Reconstruction to Take Time

From IRIN

The reconstruction of southern Sudan will be a long-term process, and expectations of rapid progress in this region, which has been ravaged by decades of civil war, are unrealistic, a senior United Nations official has warned.

"After peace everybody thinks manna [biblical reference to miraculous food that sustained the Israelites in the wilderness] is going to come from heaven and everything is going to be fine. That doesn't happen," Erik de Mul, head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in southern Sudan, said recently.

The January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended one of Africa's longest and bloodiest civil wars provides for a six-year interim period, with democratic elections by 2009, followed by a self-determination referendum for the south.

"This whole period between the signing and the referendum looks long, but in effect is very short. In six years there is not much you can do," De Mul said.

He added that in post conflict situations, people were expecting to get a better life, more money and a job, all in a relatively short time. He stressed, however, that the real peace dividend in south was the lack of violence, while socio-economic development would be a drawn-out process.

The most important priority was to rehabilitate the infrastructure to allow people to move around, he said, followed by improving the educational system and the provision of basic services such as a banking system and communication facilities.

"There has been more than 30 years of war, no investment, and no education," De Mul said. "You cannot do anything with money if you are not organised and you don't have systems to work with the money; so that has to be put in place, which is time-consuming and costly."

Sudan: Eritrea Says It Will Host Talks on Eastern Rebels

From Reuters

Eritrea said the Sudanese government had asked it to host talks to end a simmering insurgency in eastern Sudan, where its support for rebels led Khartoum to cut diplomatic ties in 2002.

The announcement, posted late on Monday on the Eritrean Information Ministry's Web site, is another sign of a thaw in relations between the east African neighbours.

The article said an Eritrean delegation went to Khartoum last week for meetings with Sudan's First Vice President Salva Kiir and a committee working on Sudanese-Eritrean relations.

"The high-level committee requested ... that Eritrea host a dialogue on resolving the east Sudan issue," the article on shabait.com said.

Eastern rebels, who have long demanded their key ally Eritrea mediate, said they had not been officially informed of any talks.

"I heard this news from Eritrean television. We have not had any official contacts on this issue," said Abdullah Moussa Abdullah, the secretary-general of the Beja Congress, one of the main rebel groups in eastern Sudan.

Jamal Ibrahim, spokesman for the Sudanese Foreign Ministry, said he had no information about talks with the eastern rebels because the situation in the east was regarded as an Interior Ministry issue.

The article said Eritrea would organise a meeting between Khartoum and eastern rebels at the earliest possible opportunity, but it gave no date.

Chad: Gov't Expects Deal on Oil Payments Dispute

From Reuters - CNN also has a related video report

Chad said on Tuesday it was confident it could solve a dispute with the World Bank and a U.S.-led consortium over oil revenues by the end of the month after the U.S. government offered to help broker a deal.

The central African country has threatened to stop oil output by the end of April unless the World Bank unblocks frozen production royalties or the Exxon Mobil-led consortium in the country pays at least $100 million.

Chad is on military alert after rebels it says are backed by neighboring Sudan attacked the capital N'Djamena last week, their boldest assault yet in their battle to end President Idriss Deby's nearly 16-year rule.

"I am very optimistic that there will be an agreement by April 30," Chad's Oil Minister Mahamat Nasser Hassan said.

"It is in the interests of everybody -- of the consortium, of Chad -- that we don't stop production and in order not to stop production we have to have an agreement by the end of April," he said.

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On Monday, Deby pushed back the deadline for shutting off oil output from midday on Tuesday to the end of this month after what Chad said was a U.S. offer to mediate in the dispute with the World Bank.

"The U.S. government is going to get involved to find a compromise as quickly as possible," Hassan said.

Diplomats say U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Donald Yamamoto, is expected in Chad early next week for talks.

U.S. officials have shied away from talking about mediation, instead saying Washington would act as an "honest broker" to try to foster better understanding between Chad and the World Bank.

Chad: US Fingers Sudan For Coup

From AFP

The United States suggested on Monday that Sudan may have been involved in last week's failed offensive by rebels in neighbouring Chad, and said it warned Khartoum such action was "unacceptable."

Washington stopped short of officially endorsing Chad's allegations that the Sudanese had armed the rebels who stormed N'Djamena on Thursday seeking to overthrow President Idriss Deby Itno.

But a senior State Department official, who asked not to be named, told reporters, "I'm not going to wave you off that there was some involvement" by the regime of President Omar al-Beshir in Khartoum.

State Department spokesperson McCormack, speaking at his daily press briefing, said there was no "definitive public conclusion" of a Sudanese role in the Chadian rebel assault. But he also pointed to the possibility.

"We have made very clear to the government of Sudan that that kind of future behaviour is just unacceptable," McCormack said.

He added that US, European Union and African Union officials had contacted many African governments to drive home the warning against arming or aiding groups seeking to invade another country.

Darfur: Kristof Hopes Pulitzer Will Generate Attention

From Editor and Publisher

Nicholas Kristof, who won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary partly because of his columns about Darfur, hopes the award puts a brighter spotlight on the genocide in that Sudanese region.

"I don't think the Pulitzer board was necessarily sending a message, but the prize may have