Darfur: UN Mission Reports Continuing Clashes

From the UN News Center

Violent clashes between Sudanese Government forces, allied militias and rebel groups continue to plague the strife-torn Darfur region, the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) reported today, while a UN humanitarian convoy has also been ambushed.

UNMIS reported that the security situation in Darfur’s north and west is particularly volatile, with ongoing clashes over the past three days, a UN spokesperson told journalists at UN Headquarters in New York.

In the area around Kulkul in North Darfur, Sudanese Government forces fought members of the rebel group known as the National Redemption Front, prompting internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the area to flee towards the provincial capital, El Fasher.

In West Darfur, a convoy of 29 trucks belonging to the UN World Food Programme (WFP) was ambushed by six armed men on Saturday as it was returning to its base in the provincial capital, Geneina, after distributing food in the district around Habila. The spokesperson said no injuries were reported.

Uganda: Rights Activists Oppose Kony, Otti Arrest

From The Monitor

THE International Criminal Court's pressure on Uganda to apprehend the LRA five top commanders is a "problematic option", human rights activists have said.

Mr Zachary Lomo, the executive director of the Refugee Law Project at Makerere University and his counterpart from Human Rights Focus, Mr James Otto, argued that the threat to prosecute Joseph Kony and his top commanders could derail the peace talks between the government and the rebels.

"Insistence on prosecution would demand that Uganda jeopardises this chance to pursue peace," they said in a July 24 press statement.

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"The presence of the LRA delegation in Juba [Southern Sudan capital] and the government's openness in engaging in the talks suggest that the parties are taking this [mediation] process seriously," the statement said.

"Given the International community's overriding commitment to contributing to peace, the logic of prosecution is untenable."

Darfur: Show President Bush You Want to Stop the Genocide

An email from Save Darfur

Thanks to you and other Darfur activists like you, since Wednesday, over 74,000 messages have been sent to Members of Congress urging adequate funding to protect the people of Darfur.

That's impressive! But we must keep the pressure on all our elected leaders – including President Bush. That's why we’re about to do something we’ve never done before.

President Bush is soon headed to his Texas ranch. To keep the Darfur genocide on his mind even while he’s on vacation, we’re going to run a full-page advertisement in the Waco, Texas, newspaper (the closest big newspaper to President Bush’s Crawford ranch).

Now we are asking for your help to pay for the ad. For a contribution of at least $50, you can sign on and have your name printed in the advertisement in the Waco Tribune-Herald.

But we can only fit the names of 1,000 citizens calling on President Bush to take stronger action in Darfur, so please make your contribution soon.

Click here to make a $50 donation and see what the ad will look like.

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P.S. Don’t forget! September 17 is the Global Day for Darfur with activities around the country and around the world. In New York City, the Save Darfur Coalition is hosting "Save Darfur Now: Voices to Stop Genocide," a rally/concert calling on the United Nations to deploy international peacekeepers to Darfur. Visit http://www.savedarfur.org/now for information and updates.

Uganda: Officials Meet Kony

From Sapa-AFP

Ugandan government officials met overnight with the elusive Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony ahead of the resumption of peace talks aimed at ending a 19-year-old insurgency, officials said on Monday.

The spokesperson for the Ugandan delegation to the peace talks said Walter Ochora, a district commissioner for northern Uganda's Gulu District, met the rebel supremo in Nabanga, a small trading post along the southern Sudan-Democratic Republic of Congo border.

"We know that Kony met with Ochola last night. We shall get details of their discussion later," spokesperson Paddy Ankunda told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Kampala.

In 1994, Kony held face-to-face talks with Betty Bigombe, who was the minister in charge of northern Uganda. Since then, Bogombe, who later became a peace mediator, made several failed attempts to launch peace talks.

The Nabanga meeting came as both sides prepared to resume talks mediated by Riak Machar, the vice-president of the semi-autonomous region of southern Sudan, to end the bloody conflict, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced about two million people.

LRA spokesperson Obonyo Olweny told AFP the delegates were scheduled to meet traditional and religious elders who will "actively participate in the reconciliation and confidence-building phase of the talks".

Have You Thought of Darfur Lately?

From Nat Hentoff

Years after that, writing of the world's silence before and during the genocide in Rwanda -- with the considerable research help of the "Frontline" documentary "Ghosts of Rwanda" (April 1, 2004, on PBS) -- I found that Kofi Annan, then head of peacekeeping at the United Nations, had ordered Gen. Romeo Dallaire, U.N. Force commander in Rwanda, not to intervene, although Gen. Dallaire had advance word of what was to happen and could have stopped it.

And from President Clinton, at the time, came orders to the State Department not to use the word "genocide" in answer to reporters' questions about our refusal to intervene. Four years after the corpses had filled the rivers of Rwanda, Mr. Clinton, speaking in Rwanda, said: "All over the world there were people like me sitting in offices, day after day, who did not fully appreciate the depth and speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror."

Then why was the State Department ordered by the White House to avoid the dread word "genocide," which might well have impelled many Americans, in 1994, to ask why we did not get involved.

Now, thinking of this doomsday chronicle of world leaders who have been silent during massive crimes against humanity on their watch, I am depressed and puzzled at why -- when knowledge of the genocide in Darfur cannot be escaped -- so many Americans are indifferent.

Yes, there have been rallies and a persistent network of American human-rights activists. But, aside from them, among the millions fiercely opposing our involvement in Iraq, I see and hear no public, organized horror at the killings in Darfur. And from those Americans who never miss an opportunity to attack the government of Israel, that fury does not encompass the Khartoum government of Sudan.

Among my own family, friends and acquaintances, the reaction when I speak of Darfur is mostly only polite attempts at showing concern. Often there is no reaction at all, as if I were an utterly boring ancient mariner with a tale of the suffering that befell his crew when he shot an albatross. (Today's ancient mariner is the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, who keeps bringing us the naked truth of these endless Kristallnachts in Darfur.)

For all I know, there are occasional sermons in our places of worship about Darfur; but there are no rising, insistent, horrified winds and gales of protest around this country to shake the timbers of Congress and the White House.

Is there nothing meaningful the world's most powerful nation can do? Well, with what's going on in the Mideast and the coming midterm elections here, that question isn't being asked at all. Meanwhile, Jan Egeland, head of the U.N.'s humanitarian operations, says of Darfur: "I think we're headed toward total chaos. Our people in the field are increasingly desperate."

This fall, will any candidates of either party even mention Darfur in their campaign?

Darfur: Tearfund Confirms Death of Worker

From Tearfund

It is with shock and deep sadness that Tearfund confirms the death on Thursday, (July 27), of a Sudanese member of its relief team working in West Darfur, Sudan.

Rashid Mohamed Mohamed Adam, a hired driver, was one of five Tearfund team members in two vehicles caught up in civil unrest while collecting seedlings, as part of a tree planting programme, from a camp for displaced people in Deleig, north of Garsilla. The team was attacked during the unrest.

Three of Tearfund's team managed to escape the attack, but Rashid and another team member, Taha Adurahhman, who suffered serious but not life threatening injuries, were set upon by a crowd.

Ian Wallace, Tearfund's International Regions Director, said: 'We are very shocked and we are doing all we can to support Rashid's family and the rest of the Tearfund team, who are extremely shaken. We take the safety and security of our staff on overseas operations very seriously. Currently our relief teams are staying close to their base in Garsilla, while we review security and investigate why this violent incident occurred in one of the previously safest places in Darfur to work.'

Violence is persisting in Darfur, western Sudan, despite the recent signing of a peace deal. Thousands of civilians are being forced from their homes as fighting continues between different rebel factions and government militia.

Recent attacks on aid workers in Zalinge and Geneina, west Darfur, have led some aid agencies to suspend work in the area.

Uganda: LRA Abductees Cry for Home

From IRIN

With tears in her eyes, the 18-year-old girl (name withheld) stood before a small group of rebels and aid workers, pleading: "We want to go back home, to be reunited with our families and go to school."

She was part of a group of more than 100 children paraded by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to officials of the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) in a camp near the border between Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Sunday.

The rebels, led by Capt Sunday Ochaya, inhibited the children from talking openly. "I am from Gulu [northern Uganda] and have been here for two years. I want to go back home," the girl added, as more tears rolled down her scarred face.

Among the children were 18 boys aged from eight years, 20 mothers carrying babies aged from two months to two-and-a-half years and more than 60 girls aged 12 and over. Most were dressed in rags and begged for medical help.

"More than 500 boys and girls from various places in northern Uganda and southern Sudan are still in our camps," said Ochaya, who is also the coordinator between the LRA and the southern Sudan government. "They will be brought later, [because] they will have to walk for four hours."

A few metres away, a 16-year-old boy (name withheld) stood quietly in army trousers and a dirty white shirt. "I was abducted six years ago from Kitgum [northern Uganda]. But I got tired after the grass cut my feet and I could not walk so other boys carried me through the bush. I saw six men who failed to walk. They were chopped to death."

He was hesitant to discuss the details under the watchful eye of the rebels. "One of the commanders was my uncle. We walked until we came to a river where we stayed for seven days, eating only boiled sorghum. Then we were led to a place surrounded by mountains. Eventually a group came from Sudan and led us to a town.

"Here we were taken by car across a bridge to a place where we walked to where we are now. I have since been [a soldier]," he added, just before the interview was cut short by one LRA officer, who ordered him to stop talking to strangers.

As the meeting ended and the cars carrying the Unicef team, reporters and mediators in the peace talks revved up their engines, some of the children wept uncontrollably. "We wish our leaders could sign a peace agreement, so the suffering ends," one of them sobbed.

Una McCauley, Unicef's child protection officer in south Sudan told the children: "We are ready to support you to go back to school when you rejoin your families in southern Sudan or northern Uganda."

The meeting between the children and Unicef officials was part of an ongoing peace process that started on 14 July in Juba, southern Sudan. It followed a decision by the Ugandan government to begin peace negotiations with the rebels.

Several meetings are being held in jungle locations between the rebels, Sudanese officials, led by the Vice-President of the south, Riek Machar, and various Ugandan groups, including religious leaders, chiefs and government officials.

"I have many children [in camps] who were abducted from both northern Uganda and southern Sudan," Joseph Kony, the LRA leader, told leaders from his Acholi region in a separate meeting on Sunday. "We are ready to release them so they can continue with their studies, with their families. We are sorry for what happened [to them]."

DRC: Food Shortages For 80,600 IDPs

From IRIN

Food aid is running short for about 80,600 people displaced by insecurity in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a local official of the UN World Food Programme in Ituri District said on Friday.

"We have only 40 to 60 tonnes in stock for the displaced in camps, and with 40 tonnes we can only serve pregnant women, nursing mothers and children," said François Djissou, the WFP official in charge of the agency's Ituri office in Bunia.

The agency does not yet know when food aid might resume, Djissou added. It is seeking donor assistance for its programme in Ituri.

WFP, he said, had planned to deliver food to internally displaced people in Bunia and Gety on Saturday but that was not possible. However, in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, Stephanie Savariaud, the WFP Public Information Officer, East and Central Africa Office, said on Monday there would be food distribution in Gety "very soon".

Between 40,000 and 50,000 of Ituri's 150,000 to 200,000 IDPs are in Gety, according to humanitarian agencies.

The area some 30 km south of Gety is teeming with fighters of the Front résistance patriotique en Ituri (FRPI) and their Mouvement revolutionnaire congolais (MRC) allies. Their presence has made it impossible for many displaced persons to reach humanitarian organisations in Gety.

As a result, Djissou said, humanitarian NGOs were overwhelmed. The mobile hospital in Gety run by Médecins Sans Frontières Switzerland was overcrowded with malnourished and sick children. In addition, the 120-bed therapeutic nutritional centre run by the Italian NGO COOPI is now caring for 169 severely malnourished children.

"Infections will get worse since diseases are always related to food," Djissou said.

DRC: First Multiparty Election in 46 Years

From the New York Times

Jules Mabuisi had waited a long time for this.

At the age of 80, he has been ruled by Belgians, dictators and a cadre of warlords who carved up his country and then watched it rot. On Sunday, for the first time in decades, he was allowed to cast a meaningful vote.

“Where do I mark?” Mr. Mabuisi asked, staring at a ballot with hundreds of names and little faces on it.

He was among the millions of Congolese who streamed to polling places on Sunday — on foot, by bike, even by log canoe — for the first multiparty vote since shortly after independence in an election meant to bring peace to Congo and elsewhere in Central Africa, one of the poorest, most violent regions on earth. Nearly four million people have died as a result of fighting and chaos in Congo since 1998, according to the International Rescue Committee.

In Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, people waited in long, mostly orderly lines, including men in double-breasted suits and women in African finery balancing buckets of baguettes on their heads.

Sporadic violence occurred before the vote, including an episode a few days ago at a political rally where a policeman was doused with gasoline and burned to death. But election day went off without widespread complications, said officials of the United Nations, which organized and supervised the voting.

That was no small feat. Congo is a country the size of Western Europe with impressive mineral riches and 60 million people but only 300 miles of paved roads. Much of it is nearly impenetrable jungle that can be reached only by helicopter or boat.

Because of the number of candidates — about 9,700 for 500 national assembly seats and 33 for president — the ballots were huge, weighing a total of 3.6 million pounds. There were 50,000 polling places. The election cost $458 million and was the biggest and most complicated the United Nations has ever run.

Because of all the logistical challenges, the official election results are not expected for weeks. If no presidential candidate gets a majority, a runoff is scheduled for fall.

Darfur: Cracks Emerge in Peace Deal

From the BBC - via Sudan Watch

As the sun beats down on Darfur's dry flat desert, the order goes out from a leader to his men: "Solve lora infernis, unleash hell! We will not tolerate this any more."

These men are not the Janjaweed - the feared militia backed by the Khartoum government and responsible for the worst atrocities of this war. A hundred thousand people have died and two million have been displaced.

They are not the Darfur rebels either - a sprawling mess of armed groups who have targeted aid workers and food convoys.

No, this is the African Union (AU) - the organisation sent to bring peace to Sudan's far west.

Barking out the orders is a man who would not be out of place in a Hollywood film - South African sector commander Richard Lourens.

A veteran of wars in Angola and Namibia, he is not a man who takes failure well.

Sporting a closely trimmed black beard and a macho swagger, he has been in Darfur just a few months but he has had enough of being pushed around in this messy conflict.

Large parts of the surrounding desert are off limits to his patrols and twice in the past two weeks Colonel Lourens' men have suffered the ultimate military humiliation.

Stopped by rebels on a road, the South African soldiers handed over their weapons and vehicles without a shot being fired. Some 45 machine guns and four vehicles were taken.

s Colonel Lourens reads the riot act, the man at the centre of Darfur's confusion is being acclaimed in Washington as a peacemaker.

For Minni Minnawi, a photo opportunity with President Bush is his reward for bowing to international pressure and signing an African Union-sponsored peace agreement with the Sudanese government.

The problem is that Mr Minnawi's signature has made the situation in Darfur worse, not better.

A former primary school teacher, Mr Minnawi leads his own faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) - the only rebel group in Darfur to have agreed terms with the Khartoum government.

But the deal has done little for the region's traumatised population and new rebel alliances spring up every few days.

The one positive note is that fighting has now stopped between Mr Minnawi's rebel faction and the Sudanese government.

But with both hands now free he has been able to devote his full attention to what had previously only been a side issue - attacking rival rebel leaders and their supporters.

In one of the African Union camps I spoke to a West African commander. He loaded a detailed map on to his laptop.

"This town is Korma," he said.

Korma and the surrounding villages are dominated by a tribe loyal to SLM Wahid, a rebel group which is opposed to Mr Minnawi and outside the peace agreement.

Taking me through events in meticulous detail, the commander explained how Mr Minnawi's rebels spent the first few days of July clearing villages of people en route to capturing Korma.

At least 80 people had been killed, he said, 18,000 fled for their lives.

"This was ethnic cleansing," he told me. Remaining villagers were being shot on sight, and he said he had seen pictures of two mass graves.

Mr Minnawi's violence has left the African Union humiliated and deeply compromised. When the deal was signed the AU had welcomed him with open arms.

The rebel leader stays inside AU headquarters, eats AU food and his men drive, and on some occasions crash, AU cars. Atrocities have been brushed under the carpet and when Mr Minnawi wants to go into the field, an African Union helicopter is made available to fly him there.

The men of the African Union went to Darfur to help protect its displaced people.

Now they are seen as part of the problem: on the side of the Sudanese government and of Minni Minnawi. They are not welcome in many of the camps they are supposed to be protecting and despite the best efforts of people like Colonel Lourens, their men are demoralised.

Darfur: Gov't Attacks Rebel Bases, Say Sources

From Reuters

Sudanese government forces and allied militias attacked bases of a new rebel alliance in Darfur despite a ceasefire in the violent west, officials and rebels said on Saturday.

An unpopular African Union-mediated peace deal was signed in May by only one of three rebel negotiating factions. Many leaders who did not sign formed a new group called the National Redemption Front (NRF), which began military operations earlier this month in the Kordofan area neighboring Darfur.

"Yesterday (Friday) all day and until the evening the government of Sudan with the Janjaweed attacked Jabel Moun and Kulkul, north of el-Fasher," Abu Bakr Hamid al-Nur, a rebel NRF commander, told Reuters from Darfur on Saturday.

Jabel Moun is a mountainous area on the Sudan-Chad border. Kulkul is 35 km (22 miles) north of Darfur's main town el-Fasher.

Nur said the government used Antonov planes and three attack helicopters to bombard the areas, forcing hundreds of civilians to flee their homes and seek refuge in el-Fasher.

The Sudanese armed forces confirmed clashes in both areas, but denied using any planes or Janjaweed militias.

"We moved an administrative force from el-Fasher which was ambushed by the NRF near Kulkul," said an army spokesman, adding one soldier was killed and another injured.

"In Jabel Moun we have security forces at the entry and exit points to stop rebel forces who are looting from civilians and these clashes are happening daily," he added.

Sudan: Gov't Arming Militias in South

From Reuters

Sudanese armed forces are still arming and supporting militias in southern Sudan in violation of a peace deal which ended two decades of a bloody civil war, a southern official said on Saturday.

Under the north-south peace deal signed in January 2005 all southern militias were told to join the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) or the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army, or lay down their arms.

But hundreds of people have been killed in continued clashes between militias in the south east Upper Nile region and the areas around Sudan's main oil fields which are in the south.

Pagan Amum, secretary-general of the former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) which joined the coalition government in Khartoum with the northern National Congress Party under the 2005 peace deal, accused the NCP of violating the peace deal.

"The continuation of support to militias in the south from elements of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) is a violation of the peace agreement," Amum told reporters in Khartoum.

"It is known who is giving them arms, it is known who is giving them money ... elements from SAF are continuing to arm them," Amum said.

Uganda: Otti 'Attends Talks'

From the BBC

A key Ugandan rebel leader has attended peace talks, the Associated Press news agency has reported.

Vincent Otti, deputy leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), was said to have turned up for the meeting in a clearing on the DR Congo-Sudan border.

The talks are aimed at persuading rebel leaders to end 20 years of conflict.

Mr Otti is among LRA leaders indicted by the International Criminal Court over their 20-year campaign, which has cost thousands of civilian lives.

Darfur: News Brief

The latest Darfur news round-up is available from the Genocide Intervention Network

Darfur: UN and AU Condemn Fresh Round of Clashes

From the UN News Center

The senior United Nations envoy to Sudan and his African Union (AU) counterpart have issued a joint statement voicing deep concern at today’s violent clashes in the strife-torn Darfur region involving Sudanese Government forces, allied militias and rebel groups.

In their statement, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative Jan Pronk and the AU Commission Chairperson’s Special Representative Baba Gana Kingibe said they were especially worried about the fate of civilians in the Jebel Moon area of West Darfur, where the fighting is reported to be taking place.

Mr. Pronk and Mr. Kingibe warned that an attack on any party to the conflict in Darfur violates either the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), which was signed in May, or an earlier accord known as the N’Djamena Ceasefire Agreement.

The statement noted that, according to reports received by the African Union’s mission in Sudan (AMIS), Sudanese Government forces and Janjaweed militias were involved in a combined operation against in Jebel Moon against a rebel group which has not signed the DPA.

Congo: Betting on Democracy to Heal a Nation

From the Chicago Tribune

Putting on elections in Congo is a daunting task.

The vast Central African country, the size of the United States east of the Mississippi, has few passable roads and armed rebel movements in the east and south.

The man many Congolese would choose as their next president is not running in Sunday's elections, and the hugely respected Roman Catholic Church, one of the few functioning institutions in a deeply dysfunctional state, is threatening to demand a boycott of the country's first democratic vote in more than 40 years.

With 33 presidential candidates and 9,600 parliamentary hopefuls vying for office, Congo's road-map-size foldout ballot has six pages and is so bulky that flying 1,800 tons of them into the country took 75 aircraft. Getting the ballots transferred to 46,000 remote polling places, often by helicopter or boat through thick rain forest, and providing security and salaries for an army of election staff is costing international donors $3 million a day.

"It's a massive operation," said William Lacy Swing, a former U.S. diplomat and the United Nations' lead official in Congo. But if the long-awaited elections can help bring lasting peace to sub-Saharan Africa's second-largest country, where nearly 4 million people have perished from conflict-related causes since 1998, "that could change the face of Africa," he said. "It could have greater positive impact than ending any other conflict on the continent," including that in Sudan's Darfur region.

The question for many anxious Congolese and international officials, however, is whether Sunday's landmark elections will be the start of lasting peace--or the spark that reignites all-out war.

One of the most powerful presidential challengers, former warlord and Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba, has hinted he might reactivate his private militia if the results of the election are seen as something less than free and fair. Joseph Kabila, Congo's current leader and the favorite to win, is widely popular but also dismissed by detractors as a foreigner--he was raised in Tanzania--and as a puppet of foreign leaders eager to get their hands on Congo's vast mineral wealth.

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Voters have plenty of choice Sunday. Among the presidential candidates are a wealthy former central bank chief under Mobutu, a Boston-based oncologist now seeking power at home and either a son or daughter of every postindependence leader. So many parliamentary candidates are running that many campaign posters simply focus on helping voters find their choice on the massive ballot. "No. 534, Page 4," one notes.

The one name notably not on the presidential ballot is that of 74-year-old Etienne Tshisekedi, a widely admired opposition leader who long fought for multiparty democracy and against Mobutu's corrupt 32-year rule. Citing concerns that elections were being rushed and would not be fair, he declined to run, leaving his legions of supporters frustrated and wondering where to turn.

One major worry in Congo is that international backers may see Sunday's vote as the end of a transition to peace and democracy, rather than the start. The United States, the main contributor to the $1 billion annual budget for 17,500 UN peacekeepers in Congo, is eager to move troops on to other conflicts. But a premature pullout could sink chances for lasting peace as Congolese expectations rise after the election, Swing said.

The country still faces widespread illegal mining of its mineral resources, large-scale corruption, an abusive army, a powerful rebellion in the east and a heart-wrenching death toll of 1,200 a day--including many children--from conflict-related violence and diseases like malaria, human-rights groups say.

"Elections don't magically change a country," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a Human Rights Watch expert on Congo. "It's what happens after the elections that will decide whether this country turns a corner."

Uganda: No Amnesty for Atrocities

From Human Rights Watch

Genuine initiatives aimed at ending the devastating armed conflict in northern Uganda are welcome, but amnesties for war crimes and crimes against humanity must not be on offer, Human Rights Watch said today.

On July 14 peace talks began between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Juba, the capital of the regional government of Southern Sudan. As part of a peace package, the Ugandan government delegation is offering amnesty to all LRA combatants, including five top LRA leaders for whom the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Human Rights Watch has documented human rights violations committed by the LRA over the years, including torture, sexual abuse, mutilations, recruitment of child soldiers, and forcing children to kill even members of their own families.

"The LRA Five are accused of widespread sexual slavery, murder, and brutalization of children over two decades," said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program. "Amnesty or similar measures can not be on the table when it comes to these kinds of crimes."

International law rejects impunity for serious crimes, such as genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture. International treaties, including the U.N. Convention against Torture, the Geneva Conventions, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, require parties to ensure alleged perpetrators of serious crimes are prosecuted. Uganda has ratified each of these in addition to numerous other human rights treaties.

According to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, amnesties cannot be granted for serious crimes under international law, and peace agreements endorsed by the United Nations can never provide such amnesties.

The creation of the International Criminal Court and other international criminal tribunals to prosecute genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity or other serious violations of humanitarian law illustrates the strong international commitment to justice for serious crimes.

"We have seen time and again that turning a blind eye to justice only undercuts durable peace," said Dicker. "How long can a peace based on this kind of deal last?"

The United Nations and key governments, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, should continue to speak out strongly against amnesty for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

DRC: Militia Groups Agree to Disarm

From the AP

The last two main militia groups in Congo’s most troubled province agreed to disarm in exchange for amnesty and army positions, officials said Thursday as violence erupted in the capital reportedly killing seven people ahead of historic weekend elections.

Police fired tear gas at a campaign rally in Kinshasa that turned violent after a fire broke out at a camp for militiamen loyal to rebel-leader-turned presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba.

A mob attacked and killed one soldier who allegedly fired into the crowd near the rally that drew 20,000 Bemba supporters to a stadium in the capital. Crowds of angry youths ran through the streets, burning and looting a nearby church where they saw posters of President Joseph Kabila.

The U.N. said two police were killed in the mayhem, and Bemba’s officials said three civilians also died. A fire also broke out at the home of Bemba’s bodyguard in which two children died, witnesses told The Associated Press.

Sunday’s vote will be Congo’s first democratic presidential election since independence from Belgium in 1960. Many hope the poll will bring an end to years of corruption and conflict since back-to-back wars that began in 1996.

Though a peace deal ended most fighting in 2002, much of the east, including the northeastern Ituri province, remained lawless, wracked by sporadic fighting. Clashes between rival militias in Ituri alone has left more than 50,000 dead since 1999.

The militias’ agreement to lay down arms marks a momentous breakthrough that could end fighting in the northeast and ensure a peaceful presidential vote.

Sudan: A Year After Garang

From IRIN

Several people in the southern Sudanese capital of Juba still pay their respects every day at the grave of John Garang de Mabior, former leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), a year after his death.

Buried at the top of the hill, Garang lies symbolically between the new parliament of southern Sudan and the army barracks, in a grave guarded by SPLA soldiers.

"Many people expected the SPLM to disintegrate with the death of our late chairman; that did not happen," said Pagan Amum, Secretary-General of the movement. "Many people thought that even the interim period would not happen; what happened was the contrary."

Garang died in a helicopter crash on 30 July 2005 while flying back to his base in southern Sudan from a meeting with Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni. The MI-72 Ugandan presidential helicopter carrying him and 13 other people came down in bad weather on the Sudan-Uganda border.

Observers say the man who founded the SPLM/A, but died three weeks after taking office as the First Vice-President of Sudan and President of Southern Sudan, remains a colossus in the south. As the undisputed leader of the former southern rebel movement and architect of the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the SPLM/A and the northern National Congress Party that ended the 21-year southern civil war, the impact of his sudden death on Sudan was bound to be significant.

The peace accord provided for a six-year period of interim rule headed by a government of national unity (GNU). After this interim period, the south would hold a referendum to decide whether to remain part of a united Sudan or to break away o form a separate state.

When riots erupted around the country following the news of his death - leaving approximately 130 dead - many feared the disintegration of the SPLM/A, the collapse of the CPA and a return to civil war. A year later, however, Garang's legacy proves remarkably resilient.

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Former members of SPLM's Leadership Council, Pagan Amum and Nhial Deng Nhial, who helped negotiate the CPA, were appointed adviser for diplomatic affairs and minister of regional cooperation, respectively. According to Taban, however, these were "redundant positions", as the key responsibility lay with the ministry of foreign affairs in Khartoum. Nhial recently resigned and moved to Britain.

Garang's death also weakened the SPLM's position in the GNU. "The SPLM is a junior partner in this government," Taban said.

Amum told IRIN he was aware of the criticism that the SPLM had not played its expected role in national politics, in the resolution of the conflict in Darfur and in a number of other issues, but said it was inevitable after Garang's death. "If people are disappointed that the SPLM has not done the things expected from it, that could be true. But we are trying; we are trying to assume our responsibility," he said.

Darfur: Podcast With Ken Bacon

The lastest podcast from the Committee on Conscience, featuring Ken Bacon of Refugees International

JERRY FOWLER: How does the situation on this trip compare to your previous visits? You have been there twice.

KEN BACON: I would say there are a couple of fundamental changes. As you know, there was a peace agreement signed in May, on May 5th, and it was signed between the government of Sudan and one of three rebel groups; that is the Sudan Liberation Army faction, headed by a person named Minni Minawi. After that peace agreement was signed, there has been a fairly marked increase in violence and displacement. I will talk a little more about that later, but that is the first deleterious impact of the peace agreement. The second is that it has made some of the large refugee camps very edgy, and at times, violent. This is pretty new. The camps have generally been calm, but since the peace agreement was signed, there have been some killings; an African Union interpreter was killed in Kalma Camp in Nyala shortly after the agreement was signed, some African Union vehicles have been burned in the camps, and there have been other killings and massive demonstrations against the Darfur Peace Agreement. Basically, the peace agreement has not brought peace; it has brought increased violence.

[edit]

JERRY FOWLER: To explore a little bit the nature of their dissatisfaction, is it a matter of following the lead of Abdul Wahid, or was there much substantive familiarity with the details of the agreement and unhappiness with substantive details?

KEN BACON: In almost every camp we encountered a local leader or sheik who had either read the agreement, been briefed on it, or heard accounts on the BBC or Voice of America. In general, the people had not read the agreement and did not know much about it, but this is what they do know: They know that security has gotten worse rather than better. In the life of the internally displaced in Darfur, security is everything. Security is what they want more than anything else. When security gets worse, they turn against what they think caused it to get worse, and they think that there is a relationship between the growing insecurity on the one hand, and the Darfur Peace Agreement on the other. They tend to be against the agreement on those grounds.

[edit]

JERRY FOWLER: How would it be possible to move to greater security? Who is going to provide that security?

KEN BACON: There are two things. First, despite the greater fighting stirred by Minawi’s troops—and I should tell you that this is a different type of fighting than we have seen from the SLA and Minawi in the past. In the past, the fighting between the two factions of the Sudan Liberation Army has been force on force. It has been groups of soldiers versus other groups of rebel soldiers. The most recent fighting has been soldiers versus civilians, and this way it imitates what the Janjaweed has done, and it indicates what we have called, and what you have called, genocide. The Zaghawa are now coming into camps and they are concentrating on killing young men and boys. They are saying, “If you are not for the peace agreement, if you are not for us, you are against us, and we are going to punish you; we are going to kill you.” It has taken a very disturbing turn against civilians that did not exist in the past from the Minawi group. This is very, very bad news. Now, what is going to change this? I am hoping that during his visit to Washington, the Bush Administration and members of Congress who meet with Minawi will make it absolutely clear that we cannot deal with anybody, even one who signed the peace agreement, if he is killing civilians in Darfur, and therefore, he will put out the orders to his commanders. Second, the good thing that has happened is that the Janjaweed has basically been more under control—this is the Arab-backed militia groups that cooperates with the government—it has not been launching its signature attacks on civilians recently. It has continued banditry, but it has not been attacking and killing large groups of civilians in villages, at least not over the last two months. I hope that continues. One, Minawi will order his troops to stop this fighting, stop the killing. Two, as you know, we are all working very hard to get a United Nations peacekeeping force into Darfur to replace the very undermanned, overwhelmed African Union force that has been there for the last two years. A United Nations force will not be a miracle, it will not bring instant peace and stability, but it should have a better chance of stabilizing the situation than the African Union force has.

[edit]

JERRY FOWLER: You are in Khartoum now; you are hoping, I think, to meet with some government officials. Have you been in Khartoum long enough to get a sense of what the attitude is? What are we seeing on the international level is firm statements by Omar al Bashir, the Sudanese President, that under no circumstances will he allow United Nations to come in, even though there seems to be a growing consensus internationally that the United Nations does need to go in. Do you have any sense about whether that attitude is softening?

KEN BACON: There were—I think someone is trying to call me on this line unfortunately—there were demonstrations today against a United Nations force, but there were also stories in the paper saying that maybe they would accept a force made out of troops from Muslim countries; that could range from Turkey to Bangladesh to Indonesia, there is a wide range of Muslim countries. The idea that they will not allow United Nations or international troops in Sudan is just crazy. They have 10,000 international United Nations troops that are peacekeeping right now in South Sudan, so they have already done that. At one point, the President al Bashir said that he would not accept African Union forces. There are 7,000 African Union forces in Darfur, and they have been there for two years. He has changed his mind in the past; we have to hope he will change it in the future. Frankly, what I think is going on here is that he wants to make sure that a United Nations force does not come in with a mandate to arrest him or other people in this government if there is an indictment by the International Criminal Court. There have not been any indictments of Sudanese officials, but the International Criminal Court is investigating events in Darfur; they have found evidence of crimes according to the prosecutor, but they have not indicted anybody yet. I cannot predict whether they will or they will not, but I think that al Bashir, the President, is very keen to avoid any sort of force in Darfur that might arrest him or other people in his Administration.

JERRY FOWLER: I would like to, as we conclude, to step back a little bit. You were in the United States government for a good part of the nineties as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, so you saw first hand United States government response to, I believe, to Rwanda, to Bosnia, to Kosovo, East Timor, challenges like that. Where do you think we stand today in terms of United States government response and international response to these episodes of mass violence?

KEN BACON: The language of a response is better; at least we are admitting that genocide is taking place. We did not do that back in the nineties, during Rwanda or during the Balkans, but the substance of a response is no better. We are not taking a strong against genocide, so we have a curious situation where President Bush, I think, has been correct, and honest and forthright in calling what is happening in Darfur, genocide, but he is not carrying out the action that I believe anybody who is concerned about Darfur would carry out. We have depended on diplomacy, not military action to stop this. Diplomacy, obviously, is the first choice, but if it does not work, I think we should look at something else.

Darfur: Attack and Rape of 17 Women Outside Kalma

From SOAT via the Sudan Tribune

On 24 July 2006, approximately 25 armed militias, some in army uniform attacked twenty women outside Kalma internally displaced camp in Nyala, Southern Darfur. The women were attacked whilst they were collecting firewood. The women had gone outside the camp as a collective in the false belief that they would be safe from attack as a group.

During the attack, the militias beat the women with the butt of their guns and flogged them before raping seventeen of the women.

Darfur: Rebel Faction Fighting Spreads, Fuels Ethnic Violence

From Bloomberg

Spreading clashes between rebel factions in Sudan's western region of Darfur are threatening to unleash an ethnic conflict, United Nations officials, African Union officers and refugees said.

Forces loyal to rebel leader Minni Minnawi in the past month have overrun North Darfur villages inhabited by the Fur people, Darfur's largest ethnic group, which mainly supports a rival rebel faction headed by Abdel Wahid Mohamed el-Nur.

Minnawi, from the minority Zaghawa tribe, in a telephone interview yesterday, said he told President George W. Bush at a July 25 meeting in Washington that his troops weren't attacking civilians. Minnawi and the Sudanese government in May signed a peace agreement that was rejected by Nur's faction in the Sudan Liberation Army.

"People fear it's becoming more an inter-tribal conflict,'' Cate Steains, the head of the Protection Unit of the UN Mission in Sudan in Darfur, said in a July 26 interview in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur. ``The situation has deteriorated significantly. The level of fighting, the level of attacks and the level of displacement."

[edit]

Refugees from the recent fighting who live in grass huts outside the town of Tawilla described raids by Minnawi's Zaghawa kinsmen using tactics reminiscent of the Janjaweed.

"The Zaghawa came with cars and some riding camels and horses and attacked us," said Hawa Ibrahim Sala, a 57-year-old mother of six who arrived in Tawilla a week ago from a village about 10 miles (16 kilometers) to the north. "They looted our camels, our clothes, our food and beat us with sticks."

Those displaced by the fighting have reported beatings, rapes and abductions of men between the ages of 18 and 40 and killings of others, said Steains.

Minnawi, speaking in a telephone interview from Washington yesterday, denied his troops were guilty of such atrocities.

"Certain allegations have been made and are not true," Minnawi said. "I explained to President Bush that we are defending ourselves and he said you have the right to protect yourself but don't attack civilians."

Supply Lines

The latest fighting in North Darfur centred on the village of Korma, which has been controlled by both Minnawi's and Nur's forces since March.

After Nur's faction captured Korma in June, Minnawi's fighters responded by targeting Fur villages throughout the area in an attempt to cut off Nur's supply line, according to an African Union report.

For villagers living in the area, it was further evidence that the Darfur peace agreement, mediated by the African Union and the U.S., has failed to end the fighting.

"After the signing of the agreement our life has become worse than before," said Abakar Mohammed, a 44-year-old sheikh, or village leader who fled to Tawilla July 17. "Before, the two SLA groups were united, but because one side signed and other didn't, now they are coming to attack us and loot our goods."

Nur's decision not to sign the peace agreement has convinced most Fur civilians to reject it.

"They are following primordial instincts," Major General Ihekire, the commander of the African Union's contingent, said in an interview yesterday. "They don't even want hear about it or see it, to hear alternative views that can convince them that this document is good."

Nur wants changes to the peace accord to provide more political appointments for Darfurians, stronger guarantees about the disarmament of pro-government militias and greater compensation for war victims.

The refugees at Tawilla also said they need UN troops to be deployed in Darfur to protect them.

Sudanese President Umar Hassan Bashir has so far rejected calls by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the African Union and President Bush to permit the deployment of as many as 15,000 UN peacekeepers in Darfur.

"As long as it is two military factions fighting each other, it is one thing," said Steains of the UN. ``But once you get to the state that it is the people who have enormous animosity towards people of another group, this is where things can get very much out of control."

Sudan/Uganda: Kiir Works to End Regional Strife

From VOA

Kiir says there are practical and moral reasons for his Southern People's Liberation Movement to take on the job of mediating the Ugandan conflict. One is that it is clear that while the Ugandan army has hurt the Lord's Resistance Army militarily, it has not been able to defeat the rebels entirely.

Kiir says another is that the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court are not realistic. He says that is because there exists no mechanism to find Kony and his top associates, who are believed to be hiding in Congo, and bring them to court. He says no country - Sudan, Uganda or the Democratic Republic of Congo - can implement such an order.

The other reason to push for the peace option is based on the fact that Kony's fighters are operating from bases in southern Sudan - and, as such, inflicting terrible abuses on Kiir's own people.

"The women and girls that were being raped every day and abducted were southern Sudanese," he added. "And the same thing with looting, torturing and so forth - these were all southern Sudanese."

Kiir adds that when deciding to lead mediation efforts, he wanted first and foremost to send the message to Kony and his rebel fighters that they have options.

"The first option was for them [the Ugandan rebels] to take the initiative to negotiate with the government of Uganda so that they find a peaceful solution to the conflict," he said. "And we can assist them to reach that agreement. The second option in case they do not want to negotiate; then, they have to leave southern Sudan. The third option would be if they do not negotiate and they do not leave southern Sudan, SPLA will be left with no choice but will have to fight them."

But that option is the least desirable, Kiir says, because defeating a guerilla movement such as the Lord's Resistance Army will merely result in more suffering for ordinary people.

International Crisis Group Senior Analyst John Prendergast says the efforts of the regional government of southern Sudan to end Uganda's civil war are noble. But he adds that Kiir and his team cannot achieve this alone.

"International partners have to be involved in this very directly if it is going to work," he explained. "But it has to be countries that have leverage and that means, first and foremost, the United States, which is missing in action on this one. The U.S. needs an envoy. And the confusion about who is going to bring the kind of leverage the United States has, but is not exercising. It really demands action very quickly on the part of President Bush to name somebody."

Somalia: Experts See Proxy War Under Way

From the AP

A mysterious Russian-built cargo plane believed to be loaded with weapons landed in this capital Wednesday, setting off a fresh round of allegations that Somalia has become a proxy battleground for its neighbors Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Somalia‘s virtually powerless government charged on Wednesday that the Ilyushin-76, only the second flight to land at Mogadishu International Airport in a decade, was packed with land mines, bombs and guns. It said the shipment had come from Eritrea, which supports the Islamic militia that has seized the capital along with most of southern Somalia.

Somali government leaders and Ethiopia‘s Foreign Ministry previously have denied Ethiopian soldiers were in the county. However, many witnesses have confirmed their presence.

"Ethiopia and Eritrea are competing throughout the region, opening up new fronts in their Cold War whenever the opportunity arises," said John Prendergast, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group, which monitors conflict zones.

The United States has accused the Islamic militia of ties to al-Qaida, whose leader, Osama bin Laden , called for support of the militia in a recent recording. The Associated Press also recently obtained videotape of Arab Islamic fighters alongside Somali militiamen.

The new proxy fight between Ethiopia and Eritrea is officially denied by both countries, despite witness accounts and reports by the United Nations describing Somalia‘s plight.

DRC: U.N. Blames Gov't for Violence

From the AP

The U.N. said Wednesday that politically motivated human rights violations in Congo have risen ahead of historic elections and blamed government security forces for most of the violence, including killings and rapes.

The report covers January to June 2006, when the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo documented 905 human rights abuses and said more than 80 percent of the violence was committed by members of the nation's security services.

The exact number of violations considered political wasn't given, but the U.N. said it saw "a significant increase in the number of politically motivated human rights violations linked to the electoral campaigning," ahead of Sunday's vote.

"Members of the security forces have been involved in repressing the civil liberties of individuals suspected of holding certain political affiliations," it said.

Abuses blamed on the army, police and other government agencies included summary executions and rapes, particularly in the east where fighting with militia groups continues despite the official 2002 end to back-to-back wars in Congo.

Government representatives weren't immediately available for comment. President Joseph Kabila earlier acknowledged abuses by his security services, but blamed them on rogue elements and vowed any alleged crimes would be prosecuted.

Darfur: Availability of Weapons Sparks Surge in Militia Fighting

From the UN News Center

Fighting between tribal militia groups in Darfur is on the rise, driven by the prevalence of weapons in the region, the senior United Nations envoy to Sudan warned today.

The situation in Darfur’s north and west, where clashes have become more violent recently because of the greater availability of weaponry, is particularly tense, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative Jan Pronk told reporters during a press conference in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.

He added that both fighting between the parties to the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) and other groups, as well as fighting among rebel groups, has heavily affected the civilian population.

The recent deaths of three government workers at a West Darfur camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) have led Mr. Pronk to raise repeated concerns over weapons found inside the camps.

Noting that IDPs are increasingly polarized for or against the DPA, the envoy expressed disappointment at the withdrawal of African Union peacekeeping forces from many camps, stressing that an AU presence is essential in preventing violence from erupting in those centres.

In the press conference Mr. Pronk also stressed the need to convene peace talks immediately with the two other main rebel groups who have withheld signing the accord. This would expand support for the DPA and consolidate peace and reconciliation efforts, he said.

Chad/Sudan: More on the New Deal

From Reuters

Chad and Sudan revived a shaky deal on Wednesday to defuse tension on their common border, where the two governments have accused each other of backing rebels involved in Sudan's violent Darfur conflict.

The two countries agreed in February to ban rebels from establishing bases on their territory, but attacks on both sides of the border and mutual recriminations have continued.

"The two parties agree to overcome all their differences, to turn a page on the past and open a new page in their relations," said an agreement signed on Wednesday by Chad's Territorial Administration Minister Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour and Sudan's Foreign Minister Lam Akol in the Chadian capital N'Djamena.

The deal follows a visit by Chad's foreign minister to the Sudanese capital Khartoum this month to patch up relations.

Chadian President Idriss Deby, who faces armed uprising in the east of his country near the border with Sudan's Darfur, broke off diplomatic relations with Khartoum in April after rebels launched an attack on N'Djamena from the east.

Wednesday's deal, meant to be implemented within a month, left any decision on renewing diplomatic ties up to Deby and his Sudanese counterpart Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

The text repeated much of the February agreement, each country promising not to allow its territory to be used by rebel groups or for hostile actions against the other.

It also provided for a mixed military commission to monitor the border and a mixed military force to deploy in a dozen border zones including some towns like Adre, Ade and Tine in Chad which have been targeted by rebels trying to topple Deby.

From IRIN

Military representatives from Sudan travelled to N’djamena, the capital of neighbouring Chad, where on Wednesday both sides agreed to stop hosting each other’s rebel forces in their territory.

Chad cut diplomatic relations with Sudan on 14 April, one day after Chadian government forces repelled a rebel attack on N’djamena. Chad blamed Sudan for backing the rebels.

Meanwhile, Sudan accuses Chad of supporting rebels in Darfur. Fighting there has pushed some 200,000 Sudanese refugees into Chad.

Under Wednesday’s deal, the two sides agreed to set up a joint military commission to monitor their shared border that stretches some 1,000 km north-south through the Sahara desert.

At the close of the meeting, delegates said that the talks had been called to “surmount all the points of difference between us, to turn a page on the past and to turn a new page on our relations for better mutual understanding”.

This military reunion comes ahead of a scheduled meeting between the two heads of state, President Idriss Deby of Chad and Sudan's President Umar Hassan al-Bashir in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, in August. That meeting will be chaired by President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and could see the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

DRC: World Must Stay Engaged After Polls

From Reuters

The United Nations must sustain its peacekeeping and aid role in Congo after historic elections on Sunday, as Lebanon and other conflicts threaten to divert resources away, a U.N. official said on Wednesday.

Ross Mountain, No. 2 in the U.N. Democratic Republic of Congo mission, said the international community should not make the mistake of thinking that elections alone would provide a quick solution to the country's major reconstruction needs.

Sunday's elections will be the first democratic multi-party polls in the former Belgian central African colony after four decades of dictatorship, war and chaos. They are costing the international community more than $400 million.

The vote will be the biggest and most expensive ever organised by the United Nations, which has its largest peacekeeping force in the world -- 17,000 strong -- thinly stretched across the country the size of western Europe.

Mountain said a debate was already under way within the United Nations about whether the mission should be cut back to allow peacekeepers and resources to be redeployed in Lebanon or Sudan's Darfur region, where such forces were now also required.

"I think it's a real danger," he told Reuters in an interview at U.N. mission headquarters in Kinshasa.

"I'd like to hope that the international community will see the value of sustaining this investment (in Congo)," he added.

Chad and Sudan Unite Over Rebels

From the BBC

Chad and Sudan have signed a deal agreeing not to host each other's rebel groups on their territory.

The two countries have not resumed diplomatic relations, but have agreed to respect previous accords.

Chad cut off ties with its neighbour in April after repelling a rebel attack on the Chadian capital, N'Djamena.

The accord calls for a joint military commission to monitor the long border, but a BBC correspondent says it is not clear if rebels will be allowed home.

The BBC's Stephanie Hancock in Chad says at some 1,000km long, the border will be hard to monitor.

R2P: Unfinished Business

From Gareth Evans of the International Crisis Group from last week

The good news is that the international community, after years of wrangling, has more or less agreed on basic principles. We have seen over the last five years the emergence of a new international norm – the ‘responsibility to protect’ - of really quite fundamental ethical importance and novelty in the international system, and which one that may ultimately become a new rule of customary international law. Language embodying this norm was adopted by the world’s heads of state and government meeting at the UN’s 60th Anniversary Summit in 2005 and, perhaps even more importantly, has been since reaffirmed, in a resolution passed on 28 April 2006

[edit]

The not so good news is that we still cannot be at all confident that the world will respond quickly, effectively and appropriately to new human rights catastrophes as they arise. There are at least three pieces of unfinished business to attend to.

First, there is a need to persuade the Security Council to embrace specific guidelines for the legitimate use of military force, at least in the context of R2P, if not more generally. The Canadian Commission argued strongly that this was an integral part of the package: if we cannot get general agreement about which are the kinds of cases that clearly demand coercive military action, and which are those where the responsibility to protect should be exercised with less shattering effect, there is a risk that the R2P principle will be misused, and that such consensus around it as there is at the moment will evaporate. (In the minds of many, R2P was misused in Iraq by those arguing, in the absence of other plausible rationales, that Saddam’s tyranny against his own people – particularly his large-scale violence against the Kurds and Shiites many years earlier – fully justified his military overthrow.)

What is needed – and the High Level Panel and Secretary-General have agreed – is the adoption of five basic ‘criteria of legitimacy’ to test the validity of any case made for a coercive humanitarian intervention. These criteria are, in short, the seriousness of the harm being threatened (which would need to involve large scale loss of life or ethnic cleansing, happening here and now and not in the distant past, to prima facie justify military action); the primary purpose of the proposed military action (to halt or avert harm); whether there were reasonably available peaceful alternatives; the proportionality of the response; and the balance of consequences – whether, overall, more good than harm would be done.

There will always be argument about how these criteria should be applied in particular situations. Darfur is a tricky case in point: there is no doubt about the scale of the catastrophe and the international community’s responsibility to help resolve it, but coercive military force applied without Khartoum’s agreement – in effect, an invasion – would almost certainly be counterproductive. It is reasonable to assume, however, that if agreed criteria had to be systematically addressed every time force was proposed, there would be a much better chance of consensus being reached in these cases, and less risk of the Security Council being bypassed.

ICC: Confronting the Atrocities in Darfur

An op-ed by Nick Grono of the International Crisis Group - from All Africa

Darfur's ongoing misery is the world's continuing shame. The international community has conspicuously failed in its responsibility to protect the people of Darfur from large scale crimes against humanity: the result is over 200,000 dead and more than two million forced from their homes.

But one notable exception to this international abdication of responsibility has been on the legal front, with the UN Security Council's referral of Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March 2005. In the face of clear evidence of ethnic cleansing and other atrocity crimes, the ICC investigation has taken on enormous importance. It is also a critical test of the fledgling organisation.

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, faces three big challenges. The first is that Darfur is in the middle of a continuing conflict, making it extraordinarily difficult to conduct a successful investigation and prosecutions. The government and its proxy Janjaweed militias continue to launch attacks on the rebels and their civilian sympathisers in western Sudan and in neighbouring Chad, and the rebels are not only fighting them, but also each other. The Prosecutor does not even have a security force to protect his staff and witnesses on the ground let alone help him collect evidence.

The second challenge is that the Sudanese Government is doing everything in its power to obstruct and undermine the ICC investigation. When the Security Council referred Darfur to the ICC, in fact, President al-Bashir declared, "I shall never hand any Sudanese national to a foreign court", and Khartoum has acted accordingly ever since.

Very soon, the Prosecutor will have to begin to publicly confront this obstruction - if only for his own credibility. So far, the ICC has been testing the limits of Sudanese cooperation, and working to understand government structures and relationships with the janjaweed and various factions. But the Prosecutor should be under no misapprehension that there exist moderate leaders within the regime willing to genuinely assist his investigation. It is only external pressure that can help him.

The third challenge, and perhaps the biggest of all, will be confronting claims that the ICC prosecutions are actually an impediment to resolving the conflict. Already Khartoum has made it clear that one of its many objections to the UN taking over from the ineffective and under-resourced Africa Union force currently in Darfur is its fear that the UN peacekeepers will act as a police force for the ICC. As it becomes clear the Prosecutor is serious about pursuing those most responsible - including high-level Sudanese government officials and some rebel commanders - he will face more and more claims that his investigation is blocking peace in Sudan. Khartoum, and some in the international community, will assert that perpetrators should be given amnesties.

This challenge - whether to trade away justice to make peace easier to achieve - is not a new one. As justice and peace are both fundamentally important objectives, there are compelling arguments for the primacy of each. From the ICC's perspective, its underlying rationale is to demonstrate to those who plan and implement atrocity crimes they will be held accountable. In this sense, a successful ICC investigation in Darfur is critical not just for Sudan but for ending such crimes around the world.

There is a recognition in the ICC statute itself that that there are circumstances in which the Prosecutor may decide not to continue with an investigation because it is not in the interests of justice to do so or because new facts or information changes the equation - which presumably includes, in exceptional circumstances, a new peace process with robust accountability mechanisms. But this is a very tough call for the ICC itself to make. It's hard to task the Prosecutor with pursing justice against those responsible for horrific crimes, while at the same time burdening him with the political role of deciding whether the interests of an uncertain peace should trump justice.

This role should be left to the Security Council, which, after all, has responsibility for maintaining and restoring international peace and security. The ICC statute explicitly provides that the Security Council can put ICC investigations or prosecutions on hold. Getting Security Council agreement on such an issue will never be easy, but such a difficult decision merits attention at this level, leaving the Prosecutor free to focus on his primary job of pursuing perpetrators.

Leaders in Khartoum and rebel commanders are aware their actions could have real consequences for them personally - perhaps not now or in the next few months, but maybe two or three years down the track. They are acutely conscious of the precedents of Milosevic, Taylor and Pinochet. And if they are not to be held so accountable, it should only be because the Security Council determines that the interests of peace demand otherwise.

ICC: Sudan Backs Kony Amnesty

Considering that members of the Sudanese government are under investigation by the ICC right now regarding Darfur, this is not too surprising - from the New Vision

SUDAN has asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to stay its warrant of arrest for the indicted leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in order to give the peace process a chance to succeed.

The Sudanese ambassador, Hassan Gadkarim, yesterday said the ICC should be practical and "stay the warrant of arrest" against Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Dominic Ongwen, Odhiambo Okot and Raska Lukwiya.

President Yoweri Museveni granted limited amnesty ending September 12, to the indicted leaders to allow the peace process to go on. He said a full amnesty could be offered if a peace agreement is signed. But the indicted rebel commanders refused to travel to Juba for fear of their security.

Gadkarim said if a peace agreement is signed, Sudan and Uganda would work out how to resolve the legal issues involving the ICC.

"We should not allow these legal niceties of ICC to derail the peace process," said the envoy, whose country has not yet ratified the Rome Statute.

Darfur: 'Tiny' Window Open for UN Troops

From Reuters

Sudan has left a 'tiny' window open for negotiation on accepting U.N. troops in its violent Darfur region, the top U.N. envoy in Khartoum said on Wednesday.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has refused international demands for a U.N. force in Darfur, saying it would be used as a front for the colonial ambitions of the United States and attract attacks by Islamic militants.

Jan Pronk, the U.N.'s top envoy in Sudan, told reporters on Wednesday that Foreign Minister Lam Akol had told international donors in Brussels earlier this month that no decision had been made on the issue.

"The minister of foreign affairs declared in Brussels ... that the decision has not yet been taken," he told a news conference in Khartoum.

"The international community has seen this as an opening, a very tiny opening - I don't know how big it is."

Pronk said the Brussels conference had secured funding for African Union troops, currently monitoring a shaky ceasefire in Sudan's west, until the end of the year.

Pronk said he estimated the AU got pledges of more than 70 percent of the $270-335 million they had requested to continue their mission and implement a May 15 peace deal.

The under-funded and ill-equipped AU force has failed to stop the rape, pillage and murder in Darfur, and it has been attacked by refugees unhappy with an AU-brokered peace deal signed in May by only one of three negotiating rebel factions.

Pronk said the force had withdrawn from most of the camps in Darfur which house more than two million who fled their homes to seek refuge over the past three years.

In the past week violence has escalated, especially around the West Darfur town of Zalingei. Three government water and sanitation employees and a policeman were beaten to death in separate incidents by camp residents who distrust the central authority they blame for forcing them into the camps.

"A number of the camps are near to exploding," Pronk said.

Sudan: SPLA Warns of Resumption of War

From The Media Line

The Sudan Popular Liberation Army (SPLA) is threatening to resume the civil war, the London-based daily Al-Hayyat reports.

SPLA members are complaining that the government of southern Sudan has not paid them their salaries for the past seven months. Violent confrontations have already erupted in the oil-rich southern region of Al-Wahda, causing the deaths of 14, including five soldiers.

The civil war in the southern regions of Sudan was brought to an end in 2005 after 20 years. The SPLA, however, is still looking for proof that the central Sudanese government will give the south its fair share of the oil revenues.

Uganda: Peace Team Readies for Meeting With LRA

From Reuters

A team of more than 100 people hoping to persuade Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony to end his uprising prepared on Wednesday for the final leg of their journey to the Sudan-Congo border.

More than 20 relatives of senior LRA commanders, including several of Kony's former wives, have joined chiefs, elders and religious leaders from northern Uganda for the trip, which aims to meet Kony this week.

The delegation wants to convince Kony he will be safe to return to his native northern Uganda if he accepts a peace deal that rebel representatives and Uganda's government hope to agree at peace talks in southern Sudan's capital Juba.

"I will tell them the talks which have begun are truthful and will bring peace," said one of Kony's senior wives, who was abducted by the rebels in 1991 but escaped several years ago.

The vice president of the regional government of southern Sudan, Riek Machar, was due to arrive in the southern Sudanese town of Maridi on Wednesday, joining the bulk of the delegation who flew in from Juba on Tuesday.

The group is then due to travel in a convoy of vehicles to a remote outpost on Sudan's border with Democratic Republic of Congo for the meeting, due to take place in the next few days.

Darfur: Bush Presses Rebel Leader on Peace

From Reuters

U.S. President George W. Bush pressed Darfur rebel leader Minni Arcua Minnawi on Tuesday to help implement a deal aimed at ending the violence in western Sudan, the White House said.

Bush also told Minnawi, who was visiting Washington, that his force "must refrain from insigating violence," said Frederick Jones, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.

Minnawi's Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction was the only one of three negotiating factions to sign a May peace deal in the conflict that Washington has called genocide.

The U.S.-brokered May 15 Darfur deal is deeply unpopular among Darfuris and other rebel factions, and thousands of people in squatter camps have demonstrated against it.

Jones said Bush asked Minnawi to work with other factions to try to get broad support for the peace deal.

A related story from the Washington Post

Bush and Minnawi "had a frank exchange expressing concern for ending violence in Darfur," Jones said.

Jones had no comment on how Minnawi responded.

Minnawi was persuaded by then-Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick to support the U.S.-brokered peace agreement, but the deal is unraveling because of infighting among rebel groups and violence against civilians.

Minnawi faces rising opposition to his leadership among commanders in northern Darfur, including those from his Zaghawa tribe, according to the United Nations.

"He signed under incredible U.S. pressure and was probably given a lot of promises by the U.S. and the U.K.," said Jemera Rone, a Sudan specialist with the advocacy group Human Rights Watch. "I'm sure he feels that the U.S. government now owes him and the people of Darfur quite a lot."

A report issued earlier this month by the U.N. mission in Sudan cited allegations by displaced Sudanese that Minnawi's faction "was indiscriminately killing, raping women and abducting" civilians.

"That agreement is not working, and one of the many reasons is Minni Minnawi," Kenneth H. Bacon, president of the advocacy group Refugees International, wrote last week in a letter to Bush.

Refugees International said yesterday that Minnawi's forces have conducted a "reign of terror" in North Darfur by beating and raping women, killing young men and displacing thousands of people. Bacon asked Bush to "please stress" to Minnawi that the rebel leader "must honor the terms of the Darfur Peace Agreement and stop fighting."

Uganda: Side Talks Could Be Key to Peace Process

From the Christian Science Monitor

Despite getting off to a rocky start this month, peace talks to bring an end to the brutal 19-year war in northern Uganda were adjourned this week with mediator Riek Machar citing "substantial progress."

The talks between the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government are still regarded as the best chance in years to bring an end to the war. But the fractious first week has dampened hopes of an agreement before the Sept. 12 deadline set by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

The talks are set to restart in the hot, dusty southern Sudanese capital of Juba next week, but some observers are saying a breakthrough may be more likely this week, hundreds of miles to the west in the densely forested border region between Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This is where LRA leader Joseph Kony has been holed up in recent months. Mr. Machar, the vice president of the regional government of southern Sudan, is expected to lead a group of LRA family members - including Mr. Kony's mother - to meet with Kony directly this week. A large delegation of traditional and religious leaders from northern Uganda is also expected to visit.

Cathy Clement, central Africa director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, describes these planned meetings as a "very important and promising development." She points out that, "What the LRA wants is to go back to northern Uganda, and they need to meet with the traditional leaders to make peace [with them] for that to be possible."

In past peace talks, it has become clear to negotiators that Kony's primary concern is his personal safety. Any such guarantees will have to include ritual reconciliation ceremonies that can only be sanctioned by traditional leaders.

The LRA has been busy recasting itself as a politically motivated movement with legitimate grievances. The LRA's reinvention began this spring with video footage and interviews in which Kony appears well groomed in a smart army uniform, talking of peace and denying involvement in war crimes.

Every chance it gets, the rebel delegation emphasizes its struggle on behalf of marginalized people in northern and eastern Uganda. The LRA claims this constituency despite the suffering that has resulted from the conflict, with 1.7 million living in squalid displacement camps, and more than 20,000 northern children abducted.

In the first days of talks this month, the LRA delegation came out fighting and accused Mr. Museveni of leading a corrupt ethnic-based government. Its 6,000-word position statement called for an immediate cease-fire, the dismantling of the national army, and a political and economic power-sharing deal.

The government delegation led by Interior Minister Ruhakana Rugunda immediately rejected the cease-fire demand, saying that in the past cease-fires had been used by the LRA to regroup before launching more attacks and that no cease-fire could be agreed to until a comprehensive settlement was reached.

The gap between the delegations is wide and deep. The government is loath to discuss much more than the terms of an LRA surrender, something the rebels will not accept, warning that the Ugandan army would be in for a "rude surprise" if it thought the LRA was defeated.

Despite the LRA's combative approach, Capt. Paddy Ankunda, spokesman for the government delegation, said the talks will continue and that the government was prepared to compromise. "We were disappointed with the way the LRA presented their position," he says, "but we will not be diverted [from the peace talks]."

Darfur: Pronk on the Splintering DPA

Sudan Watch notes this informative post from Jan Pronk's blog

In particular Minnie Minawi's faction has been accused of attacking civilians as well, with gross violations of human rights. Minnie Minawi has denied this and as long as an investigation has not taken place he should be given the benefit of the doubt. It is possible that his troops acted against his instructions. It would not be the first time that this has happened on either side of the conflict .The AU has refrained from carrying out an investigation, which makes it difficult to ascertain the truth. However, thousands of people have fled their homes. They have told stories which resemble those of last year, when they were attacked by militia.

There is lots of info in this post and I encourage you to read the entire thing.

DRC: Child Alert

Here is the UNICEF press release on which this earlier article was based - the report itself is here [see also this recent NYT article]

The conflict and violence that has consumed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for nearly a decade has killed more people every six months than were killed by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Estimates place the total deaths at four million, although some experts say the figure is far higher. In a report released today in London, UNICEF said that as victims, children have defined this often forgotten, but world’s deadliest, humanitarian crisis in the heart of Africa.

Child Alert: DRC, written by UNICEF UK Ambassador for Humanitarian Emergencies Martin Bell, describes the effects of war on children and their families as armies and militia groups rampaged across mostly eastern Congo. As a direct or indirect result of conflict, 1,200 people die every day in DRC and more than half of those are children. Many tens of thousands are believed to have been the victims of direct violence, but the death toll was mostly exacted by disease and malnutrition as fighting repeatedly drives civilians from their homes and instability prevents their access to aid and health services.

UNICEF Representative Tony Bloomberg joined Bell in London today to release the report, just days before the first free elections in over forty years are scheduled to begin in DRC. The report, based in part on Martin Bell’s own observations in DRC and his past experience in war-torn countries, suggests there is hope for an end to conflict through successful elections.

“It is easy to be overwhelmed by what has happened in DRC because the sheer scale of it,” said Bell. “But we owe it to the children to give them the future they deserve and these elections may be the opportunity of their lifetime.”

UNICEF reports that these grim statistics make DRC one of the top three deadliest places to be born. In fact, more children under age five die each year in DRC than in China, a country with 23 times the population.

DRC: Election Protest Turns Violent

From Reuters

Congolese police fired warning shots on Tuesday to disperse rioting opposition protesters in Kinshasa who tore down election posters, threatened foreigners and demanded the postponement of historic polls set for Sunday.

The several thousand demonstrators, who want Democratic Republic of Congo's first multi-party polls in 40 years to be delayed because of political tensions and accusations of flaws, threw rocks and petrol bombs, blocking a highway into the city.

Chanting "Congo is for the Congolese," they accused the international community supporting the landmark elections of trying to engineer a victory for President Joseph Kabila. He is viewed as the frontrunner out of 32 presidential candidates.

Some threatened to kill foreigners, making a gesture to foreign reporters of drawing their fingers across their throats.

Plain clothes police officers fired warning shots into the air. Riot police also fired tear gas at the protesters, who shut off the main road from Kinshasa's international airport.

A Reuters reporter saw officers arrest and beat several protesters with batons, including one woman. One police officer was seen bleeding from the head after being struck by a stone.

Black-uniformed members of the elite presidential guard, armed with AK-47 automatic rifles and grenade launchers, were deployed. There was no immediate information about casualties.

Darfur: Slovenian Envoy Arrested

From Reuters - via POTP

Sudanese authorities have arrested a senior Slovenian envoy during a visit to Darfur, officials said on Tuesday.

Slovenia had held intensive talks with Darfur rebels during the race to sign up rebel groups to a peace deal with Sudan's government in May.

"(Tomo Kriznar) was arrested in Darfur on Wednesday (July 19)," said one AU official who declined to be named. Kriznar is the Slovenian president's special envoy.

The president's office said Kriznar had contacted it from Sudan to say he was dealing with the Sudanese authorities over a visa problem. The office said he was feeling well and officials were working to secure his release.

It was not immediately clear if he was in Sudan on official official business for Slovenia.

Sudanese government officials were not immediately available to comment.

Darfur: Pronk Condemns Killing of Gov't Officials

From the UN News Center

The United Nations’ top envoy to Sudan today condemned the killing of three Sudanese Government officials at a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the violence-plagued West Darfur region, and he urged community leaders to play a proactive role in preventing further violence.

In a formal statement today, Jan Pronk, Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative for Sudan, expressed concern about the lack of security and the resulting deterioration in conditions in IDP camps that last Thursday led to the three members of the State Water Corporation, who were testing water at the Hissa Hissa camp, being beaten to death by IDPs.

In many such camps, Mr. Pronk said, “the conditions for the conduct of humanitarian activities are no long available or significantly affected by insecurity, which has been worsened by a wide availability of weapons.”

Darfur: Nowhere is Safe

From Caritas

People living in camps in South Darfur continue to live in fear. "We came here to be protected but we are not safe," is the resounding echo from a group of sheikhs. "There are bandits and armed groups both inside and outside the camps."

Men dare not leave the camps for fear of being killed, and women are afraid that if they leave the camps to collect firewood they run the risk of being attacked by armed militias.

In June, in one camp alone, seven girls who went to fetch firewood were attacked by five armed men on camels, less than 3 kilometres from the camp. A few days later, one man who left the camp on his donkey was killed and his donkey taken by his attackers. But the people are most afraid at night, when armed groups from within roam the camps, firing their guns and stealing people's few possessions. Living in temporary shelters, often made from mud and straw that offer little protection from bullets, it is no wonder the people are afraid.

As one mother whose husband was killed in the conflict explains, "Inside the camps we are still living in a situation of war. When we lie down at night we are afraid, we hear gun shots inside the camp, we hold our children close to us, but we are not safe."

A sheikh echoes the mother's fears. "At night armed men go around the camp, they fire their guns into the night to create fear. If you go outside your house at night, they will rob and threaten you."

The Darfur Peace Agreement, signed by the government of Sudan and the Sudanese Liberation Movement/Army on the 5th May, includes provisions for disarmament, as well as power and wealth sharing. The conflict in Darfur has forced over two million people from their homes into temporary camps. Six weeks after the signing of the peace agreement, any change is yet to be seen.

Darfur: The Changing Nature of Conflict

From Refugees International - via POTP

The Darfur Peace Agreement has failed to bring peace to Darfur and the ongoing violence should serve as a wake-up call to the international community to redouble its efforts to build a consensus for real peace. Nowhere is this more evident than in a camp surrounding an African Union base near the once prosperous town of Tawilla, located 60 kilometers west of Al Fasher in North Darfur. In the camp a few hundred meters away from town, thousands have recently sought safety after fleeing brutal attacks by the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction led by Minni Arkoi Minawi, the only one of three rebel leaders to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) with the Government of Sudan.

Minawi’s forces have conducted a reign of terror throughout villages in North Darfur in an effort to fight the rival SLA faction led by Abdel Wahid and others who have rejected the DPA. The violence has been focused against civilians, including the beating and raping of women and the targeted killing of young men. 45,000 internally displaced people now occupy three camps around the town.

The United States and international community must make it clear to Minawi that the U.S. will not support those who violate the Agreement and continue to bring death and destruction to Darfur. Minawi, who has little popular support among the vast majority of the people of Darfur, must not be rewarded for his current actions. Instead, he must be urged to stop seeking retribution for those who do not support the Agreement and instead work with all parties towards peace.

The latest bloodshed encapsulates the changing nature of the conflict in Darfur, but international efforts to bring peace have been slow to realize the new complexity of the situation. The three-year conflict in Darfur has largely been characterized by attacks on African tribes by the Janjaweed – Arab militias supported by the Government of Sudan. However, the Janjaweed has not conducted widespread attacks in this region in nearly three months. Instead, the DPA has increased tensions between African tribes. Minawi and his supporters – largely from the Zaghawa tribe – are now fighting to increase power over a population that does not support them, and to gain territory controlled by Abdel Wahid and his followers from the Fur tribe. Leaders from within Minawi’s own tribe have separated from him, leading to intra-Zaghawa fighting as well. In addition, the situation is further muddied with reports that the Government has provided logistical support to some of Minawi’s attacks in North Darfur.

While Minawi and his soldiers deny responsibility for the violence in Tawilla and other towns in the region, a group of sheikhs said that they knew that Minawi’s troops were involved because they recognized the attackers as their neighbors. Another sheikh reported that when his town was being attacked, his people were told that the soldiers would kill half of those who were against Minni Minawi in order to urge the other half to follow. Other victims from the region have said that the attackers announced they had arrived to enforce the peace.

A spokesperson for the SLA-Minawi faction told Refugees International, “We want peace and to punish the people who don’t want peace.” One woman in the Tawilla camp described the nature of these punishments. She said that hundreds of Minawi’s soldiers entered her village and started shooting. They went inside the houses one by one shooting the men, including her husband, and beating or raping the women and girls. The soldiers took whatever they could find – clothing, shoes, money, livestock. Her story is remarkably consistent with thousands of others in the region that detail targeted executions of men and violent, forced displacement.

Darfur: The World Must Not Turn Away

An op-ed by Mia Farrow in the Chicago Tribune

Fatima was just minutes old and already the flies had found her. She and her young mother lay on a cot in a small bare room without a window or door. The floor was unpaved but swept clean. It is one of two rooms in this tiny clinic where there is no operating room, few instruments and no medicine. "They would be stolen," explained the doctor.

Fatima entered this world on June 12 in Zam Zam refugee camp in Sudan's North Darfur region, where there is one doctor for 40,000 people.

Since 2003, almost 90 percent of the villages of Darfur have been bombed and burned by the Sudanese government and its proxy Arab militia, the janjaweed. More than 200,000 people have been killed. Terrified survivors of unimaginable atrocities walk across the parched terrain in search of safety, food and water. Today, 2 million human beings live amid deplorable conditions in swollen refugee camps across Darfur. Overwhelmingly, they are women and children. A majority of men and boys have been killed. Those who survive have taken up arms with rebel groups.

The refugees shelter under plastic sheets supplied by aid workers. Food rations have been cut to less than what is required to sustain human life. Clean water is insufficient. Meanwhile, a cholera outbreak is spreading, with the potential to claim tens of thousands of lives. Worst of all, there is no safety: The janjaweed are always nearby, and the camps are attacked relentlessly.

Women and girls are raped and children abducted. The women's stories are shockingly similar. In quiet voices they speak of their losses--of beloved sons, husbands, brothers and fathers tortured, mutilated, murdered. They recount their rapes and show the brands carved into their skin. They reveal tendons sliced and how they hobble now.

Halima, whose baby was pulled from her back, told me how she fought, how she did her utmost to hold on to her child. But he was torn out of her arms and killed before her eyes with a bayonet. Three of her five children were slaughtered that day, and her husband too. "Janjaweed," she said, "they cut them and threw them into the well." Halima clasped my two hands, pleading: "Tellpeople what is happening here. Tell them we need help."

DRC: 600 Children Die Per Day

From the AP

More than 600 children die every day in war-ravaged Congo and even more are displaced, sexually abused or swept into the camps of combatant groups, a UNICEF report said Monday.

The report comes less than a week before the country's first democratic elections in more than 40 years, which UNICEF ambassador Martin Bell said could offer some hope to the country's child victims.

[edit]

Soldiers and rebels continue to terrorize eastern Congo, forcing some 360,000 people from their homes this year despite the presence of some 17,500 U.N. peacekeepers.

"Constant migration robs (children) of schooling, health care and the chance for a normal life," the report says. "And they are caught up in combat as soldiers and camp-followers."

UNICEF estimates there are hundreds of thousands of victims of combatants using sexual violence as a weapon of war.

Very young girls are singled out for sexual crimes, the report says, because of the mistaken belief that sex with them will cure HIV and AIDS.

An estimated 1.1 million people live with the disease in the Congo -- a number UNICEF says will climb as war, gang rape and community displacement continue to wrack the country.

The report also states that more children under the age of 5 die every year in Congo, population about 62 million, than in either China -- a country with 23 times the population -- or all of Latin America.

"Children bear the brunt of conflict, disease and death, but not only as casualties," said Tony Bloomberg, UNICEF representative for Congo. "They are also witnesses to, and sometimes forced participants in, atrocities and crimes that inflict physical and psychological harm."

DRC: Army Inspires Fear, Not Trust

From the AP

Elections on Sunday are supposed to herald the birth of a new Congo, but that future is threatened by old soldiers who won't give up their habits of looting, raping and killing.

Disgruntled men with guns have dragged countries back into war before, after peace treaties were reached and implemented. The problems of Congo's army are a textbook example of why that happens, with former militiamen and rebels integrated into a little-trained and poorly paid force led by former warlords.

The army has been accused of looting villages and raping and killing civilians, even during joint operations with U.N. peacekeepers.

Ministry of Defense spokesman Delion Kimbu sought to play down the problem, though he acknowledged soldiers have burned homes and attacked civilians. "Even U.N. soldiers have been accused of crimes and abuses," he said. "Our army also has its problems."

Some 17,600 U.N. troops are in Congo to help the army secure Sunday's vote, the first democratic presidential and parliamentary elections in four decades.

Congo's eastern provinces are particularly worrisome. Here, militias from Congo and Rwanda kill, loot and rape despite a 2002 peace agreement that ended fighting elsewhere.

A pastor in the eastern province of Ituri said a family of five was shot Saturday by militiamen or soldiers who then burned their bodies. Pastor Marrion Udongo said those killed were a woman, her son and daughter and two grandchildren under 10. He said the family had left a camp for displaced people to look for food.

Some 50,000 families have fled their homes in the east's North Kivu province due to fighting between the army and rebels, said Aya Shneerson, head of the U.N.'s World Food Program in the area.

But people say they fled the army, not militiamen.

Somalia: On the Edge of Full-Scale War

From the Christian Science Monitor

Peace talks aimed at avoiding civil war in Somalia were officially postponed Monday following a week of high-risk brinkmanship and heightened rhetoric from emboldened Islamic militias and the country's weak transitional government.

One side and then the other refused to attend talks that were due to restart Saturday in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, each accusing their adversary of hostile intentions.

The latest sticking point is the arrival of Ethiopian troops to bolster the government's shaky defenses at its headquarters in the provincial town of Baidoa.

Islamist leaders responded with a call to Somalia to wage jihad , or holy war, against foreign fighters and organized a rally of more than 3,000 people in the capital Mogadishu to protest their arrival.

John Prendergast, a senior adviser with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, says the flurry of moves leaves the country on a "precipice."

"I think both sides - particularly the Islamists - are throwing a few jabs, to use a boxing analogy, testing each other to see how far the other will go in advance of any talks, if they should happen," he says.

A complete breakdown in negotiations could spark a major regional conflict.

From Time

When Islamic clerics captured Somalia’s capital Mogadishu last month, it seemed to offer some hope for peace in the war-torn Horn of Africa country. Somalia has had no central government for 15 years, and the country was a patchwork of fiefdoms run by murderous warlords. The rise of the Islamic Courts Union worried the U.S., which says the group has ties to Al-Qaeda and harbors known terrorists, but others saw opportunity: perhaps the Islamists could finally end the bloodshed and bring a functioning government to Somalia.

Six weeks on and those hopes are disintegrating quickly. Hardliners within the Islamic Courts Union have pushed aside moderates and appointed as their head a man the U.S. suspects of collaborating with al-Qaeda. Mogadishu locals, who had cheered the demise of the warlords, began to fret when their new Islamic leaders cracked down much as the Taliban did in its early days in Afghanistan: young men watching World Cup football from Germany were beaten, and men wearing long hair were forced to have it cut. Talks between the Islamists and the fragile interim Somali government — elected in neighboring Kenya more than two years ago but powerless ever since and holed up in the southern Somali city of Baidoa — also stalled.

Then, in the past week Islamic forces surrounded Baidoa. The Islamic Courts Union says it will not attack the interim government, which is mostly secular in outlook, but the government’s closest ally, Ethiopia, is worried enough to be massing troops to take on the Islamic forces itself. The Islamists and Somali journalists say that Ethiopia has already sent troops over the border, a claim Ethiopia denies. But there is no doubting Ethiopia's intentions. “We will use all means at our disposal to crush the Islamist group if they attempt to attack Baidoa,” Ethiopian Information Minister Berhan Hailu told Reuters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital.

It wouldn’t be the first time the Ethiopians have taken on Somali Islamists. In late 1996, Ethiopian troops crossed the border into Somalia to take out a group called al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (AIAI), which had connections to Al-Qaeda and aimed to remake the lawless Horn of Africa country as a hardline Islamic state. At that stage, though, the group had only a few hundred fighters, and Ethiopia, which claimed AIAI operatives had tried to kill Ethiopia’s transport minister and had attacked hotels in Addis Ababa, crushed the Islamic group within months. But the Islamists regrouped and adopted a new strategy. Much as Hamas in Gaza or Hizballah in Lebanon, the Islamists spent years winning support among the Somali public by running medical clinics, schools and courts. Ten years on, many of the leaders of AIAI now help run the Islamic Courts Union.

Ethiopia fears that a powerful Islamic regime in Somalia (or any powerful regime in Somalia for that matter) will threaten its borders and may link up with anti-Addis Islamic groups in the Ethiopian area of Ogaden. With its superior troop numbers and military hardware (including a small number of planes), Ethiopia is likely to win any battle between the two forces. But war could leave Somalia even more broken than it already is. John Prendergast, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group and an Africa specialist in the Clinton administration, says a conflict would likely end the transitional government’s chances of taking over in Mogadishu, severely damage the Islamists capacity to lead, flatten the city of Baidoa and leave Ethiopia with heavy casualties. “The [Islamic] militias are highly motivated and disciplined and would rally around the slogan of protecting Somalia from foreign invaders,” says Prendergast. “But the reaction from Ethiopia would be hellish and the Islamists know that.”

Darfur: Insecurity Limiting UN Aid Workers’ Access

From the UN News Center

United Nations humanitarian staff in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region cannot reach at least one in five of those in need of assistance because of the ongoing violence and insecurity there, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) reported today.

Direct attacks against humanitarian workers, acts of banditry and fighting among rebel groups mean the UN has access to less than 80 per cent of beneficiaries, well below the rates achieved in 2004, according to UNMIS.

The mission said it is also worried that the security conditions inside some camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) are so poor that humanitarian operations there have been placed at risk. In Zamzam camp in North Darfur, the presence of arms belonging to elements of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), one of the region’s rebel groups, is raising concerns. Last Thursday IDPs killed three government workers and a police officer at Zalengi camp in West Darfur.

The reports come as the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, completed a two-day tour of South Darfur as part of his regular visits to the three states in the region.

Darfur: Conflict Can Be Resolved Within AU

From the Zambian Post - via African News Dimension

THE Darfur conflict can be solved within the African Union, Sudanese Ambassador to Zambia Salah Mohamed Ali has said.

In an interview with The Post, Ambassador Ali said there was no need for a United Nations intervention force to move into the war ravaged Darfur region.

"Our position is that the African Union Military Intervention Force (AMIS) should be helped to continue with its mandate by making available to it more resources and logistics," he said.

"The AU should continue other than switching to the UN because that will be a testimony to the failure of the AU and Africa as a whole to solve our own problems. Darfur conflict is an African problem and it should be solved within the African context."

Ambassador Ali said Sudan would soon come up with a road map for resolving the conflict.

"Our President made our position on changing mandate to UN very clear when he met Koffi Anan during the AU summit in Banjul. Within a month, we will draw up a road map and submit it to the UN which will consider our envisaged plan on resolving the conflict and give its position," he said.

Ambassador Ali said the AU had played a big role in the peace process and would succeed more if resources were made available.

"The AU helped us reach ceasefire between government and three rebel movements, unfortunately two other movements didn't sign in May but the government is doing its best to bring them to join the peace process," he said.

"The AU would succeed more with increased resources and logistics because the real problem is shortage of funds. At the donors' conference on July, 18 in Belgium the AU requested for about $400million and the conference managed to secure $250 million and we are hopeful that it will help them perform better."

Ambassador Ali said the pace of implementing provisions of the peace agreement was satisfactory and things were going well.

Darfur: Bush, Minnawi to Meet Tuesday

From the AP

President Bush will meet with a leader of the Sudan Liberation Army, the main rebel group in the African nation's troubled western region of Darfur, the White House announced Monday.

The focus of the discussion Tuesday between Bush and Minni Minnawi "will be on how to broaden support for the Darfur Peace Agreement, facilitate its implementation and ensure the expeditious deployment of U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur," the announcement said.

Earlier this month, the Sudanese Liberation Army, the only rebel group that signed the peace agreement on May 5, nominated Minnawi to the post of senior assistant to Sudan's president. This would make him the head of what will be the Darfur Authority, the administration that will run Darfur as an autonomous part of Sudan once the terms of the peace accord have been implmemented.

The agreement, which the U.S. helped negotiate, sought to put a stop to three years of fighting between several rebel grous and pro-government forces that have killed 200,000 people and displaced another 2 million.

The agreement is not popular in refugee camps in Darfur where many people have tribal links to the leader of a breakaway Sudan Liberation Army faction and argue that the peace terms are inadequate.

Darfur: Janjaweed 'Must be Disarmed'

From AFP

Almost three months after a partial peace deal was signed, hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians in Darfur remained unwilling to go home until the Sudanese government's Janjaweed proxy militia had been disarmed.

A committee of elders representing the 43,000 people crammed into Zam Zam camp in North Darfur state headed to a routine meeting with an official from the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS).

One of them, Sheikh Ali Mohammed Fadul, said: "We will stay in Zam Zam until security is restored, and to achieve that the Janjaweed need to be disarmed."

Sheikh Hassan, the most senior of the trio of local notables, was equally determined as he heads to the meeting.

He said: "We want guarantees, we want the presence of an international contingent for a real peacekeeping operation. African Union (AU) forces are not enough."

[edit]

Mohammed Beshir, who represented the rebel Justice and Equality Movement at AMIS's cease-fire commission, said: "The massacres have continued since Abuja."

Daniel Moenyana, head of the AMIS civil police force, acknowledged that violence had continued to plague western Sudan since the signing of the Abuja peace agreement.

He said: "There is still a lot of insecurity in Darfur, but we can't talk of massacres perpetrated by the Janjaweed or the Sudanese armed forces."

Khartoum's refusal so far to bow to international calls for the deployment of UN peacekeepers in place of the embattled AU force had only heightened the level of suspicion among holdout rebel factions, including JEM and a dissident branch of the SLM.

Beshir said: "The disarmament of the Janjaweed is a priority, but it has to be done under the supervision of international forces. Only they can protect the population, we have lost faith in the AU, which is no longer neutral and has been siding with the government since Abuja."

Darfur: NRF Claims to Control Entire Northern Region

From the Sudan Tribune

The Newly formed Darfur rebel group said they control entirely the region of northern Darfur. The group stated that there is no more presence of the forces of the Minawi group which signed a peace deal with Khartoum.

The National Redemption Front (NRF) declared that the State of North Darfur is now entirely clear of any forces belonging to Minni Minawi, the signatory to the Abuja Agreement, DPA in last May.

Three Darfur rebel groups that have refused to sign up to an African Union-mediated peace deal for the troubled western Sudanese region formed a new alliance to fight Khartoum on 30 June.

The front is made up of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), a holdout faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance (SFDA), according to a "founding declaration" released in Asmara.

But Minni Minawi the leader of one of the SPLM groups, denied the NRF statement. Minawi said Khalil has been, during the last four years, alleging that his troops were controlling regions in Darfur, but that was not true.

"I believe Dr Khalil’s statements would be like his previous ones" he added.

Khalil Ibrahim, a member of the NRF Leadership Authority and President of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said that the NRF had to repel continuous attacks by “Minawi’s forces and his Janjaweed and government allies”.

“The mission is now accomplished leaving the NRF in full control of the entire State of North Darfur. Minawi’s forces have been driven out of Forawya, Umbaru, Kornoi, Bir Mazza, Amo, Khazzan Abu Gimra, Muzbad, Amarai, Kutum, Seyah and Atroon areas. 200 fighters have deserted Minawi and joined the NRF while another 84 soldiers taken as war prisoners”.

A large number of vehicles and substantial amount of military hardware have been seized by NRF. Materials seized include documents relating to arms received by Minawi’s forces from Khartoum government, said the NRF press release

Ibrahim stated that “Minawi’s weight in the Darfur Military Equation now equals zero”. “He can no longer deceive the world as he once did”.

Darfur: SLM’s Minawi Heads to Washington

From the Sudan Tribune

The chairman of Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), Mani Arkoi Minawi, has made a stopover, in Khartoum Airport, for seven hours on his way to USA. Minawi held a meeting with leaders of the SLM advanced delegation, in Khartoum, where he briefed them on the situation in the field.

Accrding to Al-Khartoum newspaper, Minawi received a briefing from the advanced delegation about the being carried out by the delegation regarding the implementation of the agreement and preparation of his swearing in as president’s assistant, after he returns from USA, which will last in a week.

Minawi would be accompanied, in his visits to USA, by a number of advanced delegation members including Mariam Tex, Mustafa Abdallah Jamil and the supreme chief of Dar Zaghawa tribe. The SLM Secretary General Mustafa Tairab and the chief commanders of the SLA Juma Haggar will be part of his delegation.

The US President George W. Bush is expected to meet Minawi on 27 July. Minawi will discuss the Darfur Peace Agreement implementation and the role of the UN force in peace implementation.

Among rebel leaders in Darfur, only Minawi was persuaded by U.S. negotiator Robert Zoellick to support the power-sharing agreement in May. Now Minnawi is facing rising opposition to his leadership among commanders in northern Darfur, including those from his Zaghawa ethnic group, according to the United Nations.

Uganda: Talks Adjourn

From Reuters

Peace talks designed to end almost two decades of conflict between Uganda's government and Lord's Resistance Army rebels adjourned for a week on Monday, mediators said.

South Sudan's Vice-President Riek Machar, mediating the talks in the southern Sudanese capital Juba, told a news conference the talks would resume on July 31.

"We have made substantial progress in the talks. We have decided to adjourn for consultations. Each delegation will go and consult, and we will regroup and resume next Monday," Machar said.

He said the two parties had discussed a number of issues including cessation of hostilities, "comprehensive solutions" to the conflict, and reconciliation and accountability.

He declined to give details of any agreements that had been reached in these areas.

Rebels and government delegates did not offer immediate comment after the adjournment of the talks, which officially opened in Juba on July 14.

Machar said the parties would discuss a ceasefire and arrangements for disarmament and reintegration of fighters when talks resume.

Relatives of LRA commanders, including LRA leader Joseph Kony's mother Nora Oting, were due to arrive in Juba later on Monday.

The relatives, along with elders from northern Uganda, are expected to meet LRA commanders on Sudan's border with Democratic Republic of Congo in the next few days as part of efforts to promote the peace initiative.

Darfur/DRC: Rwanda's Shadow

From the New York Times

NGAVA NGOSI did not have much hope for her 3-month-old daughter, Neena. The looted hospital in eastern Congo where she brought her child had no doctors. She had already lost two sons to her country’s brutal civil war, and her daughter’s body was stick-thin, her breath shallow.

As I talked to Ms. Ngosi, I was reminded of an infant in similarly dire condition I had seen a month earlier in Zam Zam, a camp in Darfur, Sudan. Even though the 1-month-old Mukhtar Ahmed was near death from pneumonia, at least the camp had a health center, a doctor and antibiotics.

Last I heard, Mukhtar was recovering at a nearby city hospital. I don’t know if Neena survived. But it seemed unlikely she would.

In a way, both of their fates were sealed by genocide. One child, Mukhtar, escaped what many people, including President Bush, are calling the world’s newest genocide, in Darfur. Neena, in an indirect but inescapable way, is the victim of an older, deeper wound: the genocide in Rwanda that sparked the grim civil war in Congo that ultimately took more lives than any conflict since World War II. The difference between life and death for both these infants may well have been on which side of the great moral chasm of genocide they stood.

The crisis in Darfur, long neglected, finally burst into the world’s consciousness. Congo remains largely forgotten. It is hard to understand why. Four million people have died in Congo since 1998, half of them children under 5, according to the International Rescue Committee. Though the war in Congo officially ended in 2002, its deadly legacy of violence and decay will kill twice as many people this year as have died in the entire Darfur conflict, which began in 2003.

But such numerical comparisons belie a deeper truth. Darfur holds the world’s gaze because of that magic word, genocide. The word, implying that there are clear criminals and clear victims, has been perhaps the single greatest attention-getter for efforts, however feeble, to end the fighting and organize relief efforts, even though the fighting has lately turned in directions that indicate the situation was never so clear-cut.

The conflict in Congo, by contrast, long ago descended into a free-for-all with many sides. Instead of Darfur’s seeming moral clarity, it offers a mind-numbing collection of combatants known by a jumble of acronyms. And that has been a particularly cruel fate, since the long-lasting war there in fact had its roots in the greatest mass killing since the Holocaust — the unambiguous genocide of 800,000 mostly ethnic Tutsis in neighboring Rwanda in the spring of 1994.

After Rwanda’s civil war ended, Hutus who had carried out the genocide fled into Zaire, as Congo was then known, followed by their Rwandan enemies, bent on revenge. The rest of the world, wracked by guilt because it stood by as Rwanda bled, did not intervene in Rwanda’s Congolese conquests. This fighting touched off the next decade of killing. Rwandan military leaders, with help from Uganda, decided to enrich themselves at Congo’s expense, and rival home-grown militias soon joined the fray.

“A lot of the killings and horrors were in large part overlooked, either deliberately or not,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch for Congo. “The Rwandan genocide was initially why there was limited criticism of Rwanda and Uganda coming in.”

Nearly a decade later, the memory of how little the world did to stop the slaughter has been invoked in efforts to end the newest atrocities, in Darfur.

Uganda: Gov't "May Attack Rebels in Congo" if Talks Fail

From Reuters

Uganda said on Sunday it might still attack Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels camped in Congo if peace talks hosted by neighbouring southern Sudan fail to end fighting in one of Africa's longest wars.

Tentative discussions with representatives of the LRA began a week ago, but have advanced little beyond the government offering amnesty in return for total LRA surrender, and the rebels demanding compensation and power-sharing.

While the talks continued, Uganda's Deputy Defence Minister Ruth Nankabirwa said Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) still had legal obligations to disarm militia groups like the LRA that posed a threat to regional security.

"Because of peace talks you cannot paralyse all these other efforts," she told reporters. "If these talks fail, what next? Will Uganda jump into DRC? That is a possibility."

Kinshasa and the United Nations have refused repeated requests from Uganda to be allowed to send its troops into Congo to hunt down the rebels themselves.

Congolese leaders were watching the talks in Juba closely, Nankabirwa said, and would be called to account by their own people who might remain at risk from the LRA if they failed.

Darfur: Donors' Conference Fails to Take Action

The latest analysis from Eric Reeves

Yet again the international community seems determined in its refusal to take seriously the precipitous decline in human security throughout Darfur, both for civilians and humanitarian workers. The July 18, 2006 meeting of Western donors in Brussels was touted as a way to address the growing security crisis, but failed in all ways. Western donors failed to provide the AU force in Darfur with the resources it requires and can usefully absorb, even as the AU is the only force on the ground and will remain so for the foreseeable future. At the same time, these donors failed to acknowledge the radical shortcomings of even an augmented AU force, and the correspondingly urgent need for deployment of a robust international peacemaking force. And most abjectly, they failed to convince Khartoum’s National Islamic Front regime of any need to accept such a force, even under the aegis of the UN.

The consequences of these ongoing failures can be measured most fully in a survey of current conditions in Darfur: AU performance is declining rapidly while civilians are caught up in ever more violent conflict between factions of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), as well as ongoing Janjaweed predations; several aid workers have recently been shot and killed in Darfur and another badly wounded in eastern Chad; many thousands more civilians have very recently been displaced; no progress is being made by the AU in implementing the Darfur Peace Agreement, which has essentially collapsed; the political leadership within the AU is demoralized and badly divided, and is failing to speak out about the most consequential developments on the ground. This AU silence occurs even as all evidence strongly suggests that Khartoum’s regular military forces have taken the side of the SLA faction of Minni Minawi, instigating what many observers on the ground are calling a “new war”---between the Zaghawa-dominated SLA faction of Minawi and the relatively new SLA coalition called SLA/United or SLA/19 (after the 19 commanders who broke with former SLA chairman Abdel Wahid el-Nur).

As more of Darfur moves deeper into the heaviest part of the rainy season (which runs through September) humanitarian logistics are becoming increasingly difficult, even as insecurity has closed many humanitarian corridors to large and highly distressed populations. Almost two-thirds of a million people are beyond the reach of humanitarian assistance (Jan Egeland, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, statement to Security Council, April 20, 2006). Hundreds of thousands of civilians have only the most tenuous humanitarian access. The cholera outbreak shows no signs of abating. Funding for humanitarian operations remains critically low, both for Darfur and eastern Chad, as well as for other traditionally marginalized areas of Sudan. Food rations for extremely distressed civilian populations remain at only about two-thirds of what the UN estimates is required to sustain human life. The Gereida region of South Darfur has a huge population of displaced civilians poised to experience catastrophic mortality. The humanitarian crisis in eastern Chad deepens, with a total lack of security in many areas. And amidst this vast humanitarian crisis, Khartoum continues to obstruct and impede humanitarian relief---actions that are directly responsible for large numbers of human deaths and widespread suffering.

This is the context in which to assess the Brussels donors’ conference, and its various failures.

Sudan/Uganda: Elders Cite Atrocities Committed by LRA, Army

From IRIN

Elders from various counties in southern Sudan and northern Uganda on Thursday presented a statement at peace talks in Juba, alleging atrocities committed against civilians by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan army.

Urging the Ugandan government and the rebels to peacefully resolve their 20-year conflict, the elders said the two warring parties should leave southern Sudan if they cannot agree a ceasefire.

"The war continues to cause a lot of suffering in southern Sudan, including abduction of children, raping of women and looting of properties, as far as forcing people to eat human flesh," according to the statement presented to the Ugandan government and the LRA delegations in Juba. "We strongly urge both parties to reach a comprehensive, lasting peace agreement to end the suffering of the people of the grassroots [...] Wee emphatically urge you to direct your forces in the field to stop molesting our people."

The elders were from Acholi region in northern Uganda and various counties in Central, Eastern and Western Equatoria States of southern Sudan.

They said the LRA had killed more than 3,298 people in both Central and Eastern Equatoria States, including 394 people hacked to death in Lolubo, hundreds killed in East and West Lokoya and 34 slaughtered in Ikotos. They allege another 1,149 were killed in Magwi, and that the rebels forced two people to eat their brother. Later they killed the two in Magwi. Other atrocities alleged included human sacrifices in Torit county, rape, abduction of children and burning of villages.

Without commenting directly on the accusations, the LRA spokesman at the talks, Obonyo Olweny, said: "We welcome the letter of the elders and chiefs from Sudan and Northern Uganda. We appreciate their message of reconcilation and concern for the peace in the area." He told IRIN in Juba on Friday that a demand by the elders to meet the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, to discuss issues raised in their statement, would be "accepted and taken seriously".

On the Ugandan army, the elders said: "The UPDF [Uganda People’s Defence Force] did not fulfil their mission to south Sudan. For example, instead of following the LRA, they turned their guns to the civil population; shooting, raping and burning huts on the pretexts of chasing the LRA." The UPDF, they stated, killed 10 people in Lolubo area and two more in Madi. "At Katire in 2004, the UPDF killed three escorts assigned to lead them to the hideout of the LRA," the statement said.

Commenting on the allegations, the leader of the Ugandan delegation, who is also the internal affairs minister, Ruhakana Rugunda, said: "The UPDF are not angels on earth that we can deny what they might have committed in south Sudan or in Uganda. But we have taken note of this and it will be investigated. If proved right with evidence, those implicated will be brought to justice."

Darfur: Aid Work Suspended After Killings

From Reuters

International aid operations in refugee camps in the Zalinge area of Sudan's Darfur region have been suspended after three water workers were killed by a mob, the United Nations' refugee agency said on Friday.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the three were beaten to death on Thursday in the region near the border with Chad in circumstances that were still unclear. It is the latest in a long list of security incidents.

"UNHCR is extremely concerned about the deterioration of the security situation in Darfur," the agency said in a statement.

The incident follows an attack on two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the Djebel Mara area, north of Zalinge, two days ago and the fatal shooting of an NGO driver attacked by bandits in Darfur's El Geneina last week, the UNHCR said.

[edit]

Camp residents, some of whom have been in overcrowded shelters since the Darfur violence exploded in early 2003, have become increasingly frustrated since a peace deal struck in May failed to produce tangible results on the ground.

They said it does not represent their interests because it was signed by only one of three Darfur rebel factions and it provided no guarantee of security that would allow them to return home.

Refugees have directed their fury on AU troops in Darfur to support the peace process and some of the 14,000 aid workers spread throughout Sudan's vast west.

Darfur: UNHCR Extremely Concerned About Worsening Security Situation

From UNHCR

UNHCR is extremely concerned about the continuing deterioration of the security situation in Darfur. Yesterday, three Darfur water workers were beaten to death by a mob in a displaced persons camp in the Zalinge area in West Darfur. All activities by international organizations are now on hold in the IDP camps in the Zalinge area. We are still in the process of gathering more information on what exactly happened, but this tragic incident is just adding to an already long list of security incidents that have occurred over the past three weeks.

In the past two days, two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have also been attacked by armed men in the Djebel Mara area, north of Zalinge. Staff members of one NGO were abducted by militia for several hours on Wednesday before finally being released later in the day. Last week, a driver working for an international NGO was killed in El Geneina by bandits. Ten days ago, an aid worker from a relief agency was shot dead in North Darfur. UN missions to the field in West Darfur are now being accompanied by African Union escort.

There are some 14,000 aid workers operating in Darfur. The conflict, which started in 2003, has displaced 1.8 million people in Darfur. There are also 210,000 Sudanese refugees from the Darfuir region in 12 UNHCR-run camps in neighbouring Chad. UNHCR has more than 80 staff in Darfur, mainly in West Darfur. We have offices in El Geneina, Nyala, Mukjar, Habila, Zalinge. In addition to IDPs, there also an estimated 15,000 Chadian refugees who have crossed into Sudan in the past eight months.

Sudan: Clashes Claim 28 Lives in Southern Town

From IRIN

Twenty eight people, including 17 civilians, were killed in fighting this week between Sudanese government troops and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in Rubkona, Unity State, a German NGO reported.

"The clashes began as a local dispute on Monday. They then escalated and spread," Johan van der Kamp, the Sudan coordinator for Deutsche Welthungerhilfe (German Agro Action), said in a statement on Thursday. He said his organisation had been forced to evacuate staff members from Rubkona to Khartoum because their offices came under fire during the fighting. "As many as 28 deaths have since been recorded, 17 of them civilians," Van der Kamp added.

[edit]

This week's fighting was the first between central government troops and SPLA forces since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in Kenya on 9 January 2005. Sudan People's Liberation Movement, the political wing of the SPLA, runs southern Sudan.

DRC: Escaping the Conflict Trap

A new report from the International Crisis Group

Congo’s elections at the end of the month could set the stage for renewed violence unless Kinshasa and donors increase efforts to create a transparent and accountable government.

Escaping the Conflict Trap: Promoting Good Governance in the Congo, the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the run-up to the national elections scheduled for 30 July 2006. This is the country’s most promising moment since independence, but there are huge dangers as well. The poll will create a significant class of disenfranchised politicians and former warlords tempted to take advantage of state weakness and launch new insurgencies.

“As long as the principle access to resources is through public office, strongmen will use any means necessary – including insurrection – to gain public office”, says Crisis Group Senior Analyst Jason Stearns. “Given the weakness of state institutions, in particular the security forces, courts and parliament, those who lose the elections are likely to prompt another conflict in the next few years if action is not taken now”.

Darfur: Bush Urges Sudan to Allow UN Mission

From Reuters

President George W. Bush called on Sudan on Thursday to allow a United Nations peacekeeping presence to help stem the violence in Darfur.

Tens of thousands have been killed and 2.5 million people forced into camps during three years of rape, murder and pillage in Darfur in lawless western Sudan.

The United States, the European Union and the United Nations are pressing Sudan to allow a U.N. mission to replace an ill-equipped African Union force. Khartoum had repeatedly rejected that, likening it to a Western invasion.

"Our strategy is that we want A.U. forces to be complemented and blue-helmeted. In other words, the United Nations should be invited in," Bush told reporters after a meeting with Salva Kiir, vice president of Sudan.

Sudan: President Bush Welcomes Salva Kiir

A statement from the White House

President Bush: It's been my honor to welcome a man who wears two hats to the Oval Office: Vice President of all Sudan, as well as the President of Southern Sudan. We've had a fascinating discussion. Welcome, Mr. Vice President, I'm glad you're here. Thank you for coming.

I assured our friend that the United States is committed to helping the Sudanese people; we're committed to making sure that the peace agreement that we helped you negotiate is implemented. We're also committed to helping the people in Darfur.

I want to thank you for spending time with me to strategize about what we can do to save lives in Darfur. Our strategy that we want AU forces to be complemented and blue-helmeted -- in other words, the United Nations should be invited in. We talked about how best to get that done in order to save lives. Obviously, there is still a lot of work to be done.

But I want to thank you for coming to our country and sharing with me some of your thoughts and your vision for the people you represent. So welcome to the Oval Office.

FIRST VICE PRESIDENT KIIR: Thank you very much, Your Excellency, President. Well, we are delighted to be in this office at the invitation of His Excellency, the President of the United States of America. It is a very rare opportunity for the people of Southern Sudan, in particular, to come to this office and to voice our -- their concerns about whatever is happening in our country.

It is true we have been working together during the negotiations with the people of the United States and the government of the United States of America to bring peace to Sudan. And that peace has taken a toll of our people. This dream has been achieved, and we are now together in the implementation.

There are so many other crises in Sudan, that is the problem of Darfur that people have been talking about. And we are sure that we are going to solve the problem so that we don't hear about rapes and killings in Darfur. And all other parts of our country, like the Eastern Sudan, we are now also negotiating in that province so that peace is also achieved all over the Sudan.

So we thank the President for all the efforts that he has been exerting and the concerns that he has about the people of Sudan.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Thank you, sir; appreciate you.

Darfur: Driver for Local NGO Killed

A press release from ACT

A driver who was hired by a local NGO and partner of the faith-based humanitarian operation of ACT-Caritas in Darfur, to take staff home, was killed on Wednesday, July 19.

Abdul Bagi Ahmed was driving the vehicle on behalf of SUDO (Sudan Social Development Organisation), when he was stopped on the road from Mershing to Nyala. A man carrying a weapon shot and killed Mr. Ahmed.

Mr. Ahmed and the vehicle had been hired by SUDO to take its staff back to Mershing. SUDO is a partner of the ACT-Caritas operation in Darfur, operating a health clinic and psychosocial centre on behalf of ACT and Caritas, as well as implementing water and sanitation services in the camps for displaced people in Mershing.

The vehicle was stopped by a man dressed in civilian clothes, about 10-12 km from Manaweshi, while returning from Mershing between 18:00 and 19:00 in the early evening. A public health officer from the Ministry of Health who was visiting clinics in the area was the only passenger. After questioning Mr. Ahmed, the armed man jumped into the back of the vehicle and shot him three times in the back of the head. It is believed that Mr. Ahmed died instantly.

Two more men then joined the armed man and stole the bag from the public health officer, who escaped unharmed. The Ministry of Health officer then walked back to Manaweshi, where he reported the incident to the Government of Sudan military and World Vision, which also works in the area.

Darfur: NGO Statement Following Donors' Conference

A joint statement from various NGOs

n response to the $200 million pledged to the African Union force at yesterday's donor conference, a group of leading international aid agencies (CAFOD, CARE International, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, Islamic Relief, IRC, Oxfam and Tearfund) working in Darfur issued a joint statement.

A spokesperson for the group said:

"Yesterday donors were asked to respond generously to the desperate situation in Darfur, but instead the African Union force is still $150 million short of what it asked for.

The African Union force is the only protection civilians have in Darfur, yet due in part to the lack of funding, many of their patrols have stopped and come nightfall the troops retreat to barracks.

Even if the money pledged is delivered, according to the chairperson of the African Union it will only keep the mission afloat until September. What then?

If donors continue to opt for protection on the cheap, it will be the men, women and children of Darfur who will pay the price.

Darfur: Sudan to Provide UN With Plan for Change

From Suna

The Foreign Minister, Dr. Lam Akol, announced that the government will submit to the United Nations on the 1st of next August a plan to change the situation on the ground in Darfur region.

In a press statement at Khartoum airport upon his return from Brussels Wednesday evening, Dr. Akol said that he participated in the Donors Conference, which was intended to attract aid for the African Union forces Darfur. He said that the donors pledged to extend more than 200 million dollars for Darfur, adding that this sum is sufficient for the requirements of the African Union forces in Darfur till after the 30th of next September.

He said that Sudan delegation has met at the conference with the UN Secretary General and senior officials of the European union and explained Sudan vision concerning peace in Darfur and the arrival of international forces in the region. He said that the government delegation held in Brussels meetings with the American, Dutch delegation and the delegation of the European Union and discussed progress of the bilateral relations.

The minister described the meeting as a successful one as it came out with recommendations supporting to the African Union forces in Darfur. He said that the meeting has appreciated the efforts of Sudan government concerning implementation of Darfur peace agreement on the ground.

Uganda: Kony's Mother to Join Peace Efforts

From Reuters

Uganda will help the mother of Lord's Resistance Army rebel leader Joseph Kony and tribal elders visit the LRA's jungle hideout as part of the effort to end one of Africa's longest wars, officials said on Thursday.

Kony and his top guerrilla deputies are wanted for war crimes and have so far stayed away from tentative peace discussions that began on Sunday in neighbouring southern Sudan.

In a bid to coax them out of the bush in the Democratic Republic of Congo where they have taken refuge, the government is preparing to send in about 40 relatives, as well as northern religious leaders and elders from their northern Acholi tribe.

"We are arranging for about eight of Kony's close family members, and those of other top LRA commanders, to meet them on July 25," said Ugandan spokesman Captain Paddy Ankunda.

As in previous recent contacts with the LRA command the mission will be led by southern Sudan's Vice-President Riek Machar, he said.

[edit]

Elders and religious leaders from both sides of the remote border met an LRA delegation in the southern capital Juba on Thursday to express their support for the peace process.

The elders want to use traditional reconciliation rituals to help end the conflict, drawing on practises used to soothe tensions between warring groups in the past.

Darfur/Chad: 200,000 Refugees and Roving Bandits

From the Christian Science Monitor

Aid workers huddle over the breakfast table, visibly shellshocked by last night's shooting. A Spanish colleague is fighting for her life, after being shot by a man in military fatigues who made off with her Jeep.

It is the first time a United Nations aid worker has been injured in eastern Chad, where agencies are looking after thousands of refugees from neighboring Darfur, Sudan. To make matters worse, the shooting happened not on a remote road in the desert, but right in the middle of Abeche, the main town in the region and the hub for humanitarian operations.

Everyone is on edge. Some talk in hushed tones, others stare into space, running 'What if?' scenarios through their heads.

For Claire Bourgeois, the head of operations for the UN refugee agency out here, it is a reminder of the fortunate escape she had a few weeks earlier, dodging bullets when her car came under fire.

Not that she mentions the incident. It is her employees that offer up the anecdote, while Ms. Bourgeois deals with a barrage of calls - updates on the wounded woman's condition, inquiries from worried colleagues, questions from the head office, and feather-smoothing messages from local officials.

"This is the 24th vehicle that's been stolen. The first 23 times we were lucky and managed to avoid the worst," she says during a rare, brief interlude when her cellphone falls silent.

When the French doctor landed in Abeche back in August 2004, foreign visitors walked around Abeche untroubled, and aid workers slept in tents in the middle of the desert, and could take a jeep and drive out to the border to get the lay of the land.

Now the border area is off limits, many journeys have to be made in convoy, and aid workers live in compounds, walled off and topped with broken glass or barbed wire. And security issues are eating up more and more of Ms. Bourgeois's time.

"We arrived in an extremely calm environment and now it's an environment of total insecurity, partly because of Darfur and partly because of internal problems here in Chad," she says.

It is a confusing but lethal cocktail of assailants.

The janjaweed, an Arab militia widely considered to be backed by the Sudanese government, have been spilling across the border from Darfur into Chad to stage attacks, forcing some 50,000 Chadians to flee their homes in recent months according to the UN. Darfur rebels have been trying to swell their ranks by forcibly recruiting from the refugee camps, spiriting away at least 5,000 men and boys.

Meanwhile, Chadian rebels bent on ousting their own president, Idriss Deby, have clashed with government troops in the east. And then there are the run-of-the-mill bandits and thieves, taking advantage of the general insecurity and administrative chaos to steal a vehicle or a satellite phone.

Darfur: US Fails to Support AU Peacekeepers

A press release from the Genocide Intervention Network

The Genocide Intervention Network today expresses extreme disappointment in the United States’ decision to decline even the most minimal support for peacekeepers in Darfur, Sudan. US leaders have refused to fund the African Union peacekeeping force currently protecting Darfurian civilians beyond September, effectively condemning hundreds of thousands to death in a genocide that continues unabated.

At a recent donors’ conference in Brussels with the United Nations and Sudan, US officials pledged $116 million for the African Union force in Darfur. Yet this money has already been appropriated, on June 15. AU troops are stretched too thin because of a lack of funding and personnel, and will not be able to sustain a peacekeeping mission without additional support.

The AU force plans to continue patrolling Darfur until its mandate expires on September 30, when it will no longer have the funds to continue peacekeeping. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Darfurian civilians depend on these peacekeeping troops to protect them from rape, murder and other heinous attacks.

“The lack of action taken by the United States to sustain peacekeeping troops in Darfur is appalling,” says GI-Net Executive Director Mark Hanis. “The only way violence in Darfur will cease is through a robust peacekeeping force, and it is the responsibility of the United States and the international community to support this force.”

Sudan: Tension in Southern Town After Soldiers Rampage

From IRIN

Four soldiers and seven civilians were killed in the southern Sudanese town of Rubkona after soldiers of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) opened fire in the middle of town, according to residents.

Although people have returned to the streets of Rubkona - adjacent to Bentiu, the capital of Unit State - the presence of armoured vehicles is evidence of tensions.

"There was a dispute in the market on Sunday - between a soldier of the SAF and one of the SPLA - which ended in a fist-fight," said a bystander. "On Monday, the SAF soldier returned to the market with his gun and killed the SPLA soldier and wounded two of his colleagues."

Although the perpetrator went into hiding in a barracks of the Sudanese military, SPLA soldiers - who formerly belonged to the South Sudan Independence Movement (SSIM) militia - sought revenge. When they encountered two other SAF soldiers in the street, they shot them on the spot, sparking a spiral into greater violence.

"[Subsequently,] both heavily armed groups went into a nearby residential area but avoided a direct confrontation," the observer said. "Instead, the SSIM soldiers shot Arab civilians, while the SAF killed [alleged] SSIM supporters."

Darfur: Donors Pledge to Boost AU

From IRIN

Aid donors meeting in the Belgian capital have pledged about US $220 million in additional funding to the African Union (AU) force struggling to keep the peace in Sudan's western region of Darfur.

The funding will help the Africa Mission in Sudan protect civilians and monitor the implementation of a Peace Agreement signed in May between the Sudanese government and some of the rebel groups in Darfur.

During Tuesday's pledging conference in Brussels, representatives of the international donor community insisted that the AU peacekeeping mandate must be transferred to the United Nations by 1 January 2007.

"I can't foresee any realistic exit of the Darfur conflict without such a transition [from AU to UN peacekeeping], and I can't either imagine that the government of Sudan would continue to oppose it," the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said at the conference.

[edit]

The United States said it would give $116 million to be used to strengthen the Africa Mission in Sudan, while the EU will make available $31.2 million to the Mission on top of an additional $50 million for the humanitarian effort in Darfur. The Netherlands pledged $31.2 million, Britain $36.6 million, France $2.5 million and Belgium $1.25 million.

The pledges would only be enough to sustain the Mission until the end of September; it needs an extra $450 million to operate until year-end, to pay for extra soldiers to be deployed, communications equipment, air support capability and more vehicles.

"The situation is precarious. The strengthening of [the Africa Mission] should be our priority because the next six months are critical," said the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guéhenno. "If we have a strong [Africa Mission], we will have a strong UN mission," he added.

A senior European Commission official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the real problem was that the "the AU is snowed under with the complexities of financial management".

Darfur: Death and Displacement Despite Peace Agreement

From Refugees International

"What was written in the Darfur Peace Agreement is just paperwork," says a local leader of the Masalit tribe in Gereida in South Darfur. "After the signing, attacks have increased." Officials in Gereida, one of Darfur's largest concentrations of displaced people, report almost nightly attacks in the area by mounted forces known as the Janjaweed, a government-supported Arab militia.

The population of 128,000 displaced people dwarfs Gereida's normal population of 30,000 and is straining the limited humanitarian infrastructure in the area. Without increased security—which only the government of Sudan can assure now—and augmented humanitarian services, death rates could soar during the approaching rainy season. There is an urgent need for plastic sheeting, food deliveries and better coordination of the humanitarian response.

The Darfur Peace Agreement, which was signed on May 5, has actually made security worse in the area because virtually no one remains to protect the people from further attacks and looting. Only one of the three major rebel groups involved in Darfur's 40–month civil war signed the DPA with the government of Sudan. That group, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction headed by Minni Minawi (who is scheduled to meet with President Bush on July 25th as a reward for signing the peace agreement) controlled the Gereida area. The SLA faction announced that it would honor the ceasefire imposed by the DPA and moved its major fighting force north, where Minawi is fighting for control of his own tribe. By ending offensive operations that used to keep the Janjaweed at bay, the army has left security to a feckless local SLA force that lacks training, equipment, ammunition and leadership. Many of the fighters are children armed with clubs.

By contrast, the government of Sudan has done nothing to disarm the Janjaweed, the mounted Arab militia that has operated in league with the government to push largely African tribes (such as the Masalit) from its villages and farms. The last group of 1,100 people arrived in late May, following a Janjaweed attack on their village 26 kilometers away. Now the Janjaweed are launching nightly attacks along the periphery of the sprawling camp, stealing animals and killing people who get in the way. As a result the camp is beginning to fall in on itself , with people fleeing the edges of the camp closer to the center. This will increase crowding in the camp and place people farther from the areas they must go to feed the animals they still have and gather firewood.

African Union troops in Gereida rarely patrol in the late afternoon-early evening hours when most of the attacks take place. The local AU commander says the limited mandate of the force—it is supposed to report on cease fire violations—prevents the type of aggressive patrolling that could provide a deterrent.

"There is no safety," says a sheikh who led 600 people to the camp in February. "We heard that the UN was coming to save us from the war, but we haven't seen anything yet," the sheikh says. In fact, the UN does want to replace the beleaguered AU force, but the Khartoum government is resisting. Even if the UN does come in, there will be no security until the government reigns in and disarms the Janjaweed, as it is required to do under the DPA. So far, there is no sign that the government is serious about disarming the Janjaweed or carrying out the agreement. Some tribal leaders doubt that the Khartoum government has the will or the power to disarm the Janjaweed, who have seized large amounts of territory and thousands of cows, camels and other animals for their nomadic flocks. In April, government and Janjaweed forces attacked a number of villages around Gereida, including Dito and Joghana, driving as many as 50,000 people into the Gereida area. One relief agency that used to run a clinic in Dito believes that Arabs have moved in to replace the African tribespeople who fled. These attacks are what caused the displaced population to surge to 128,000, according to a recent count.

There are only about half a dozen humanitarian agencies working in Gereida, and at various times the insecurity between the town and Nyala, the capital of south Darfur 90 kilometers to the north, has made the delivery of humanitarian supplies difficult. Two months ago the Khartoum government limited fuel deliveries to Gereida, further complicating the humanitarian response.

Darfur: More IDPs Arrive at Kalma Camp

From the Norwegian Refugee Council

Several hundred internally displaced persons have sought refuge from the violence in Darfur in Kalma camp. Here they receive assistance coordinated by the Norwegian Refugee Council.

The newly arrived IDPs come from Joghwin, nearby the village of Joghana in southern Darfur. After attacks on the area in April and May, 30.000 people were displaced. Some hundreds of them have arrived to Kalma IDP camp, the biggest camp in the Darfur province in western Sudan.

Darfur: Peace Agreement Jeopardized Without More Resources for AU

An address by Kofi Annan

This is a very important meeting, which has been too long delayed. We are here to ensure that the African Union has the resources it needs to carry out its critical work in Darfur. The lives of many thousands of children, women and men may depend on the outcome of our efforts.

Over a year ago, we met in Addis Ababa to express our support for the efforts of the African Union Mission in Sudan, or AMIS, and to pledge contributions to it, both in cash and in kind.

Since then, we have found some reasons to hope that the conflict in Darfur can be resolved, and the terrible suffering brought to an end.

At least now we have the Darfur Peace Agreement, which gives us an indispensable framework for ending the violence. It is a road map for moving from the destruction of the last three years to stability and, in the long run, a better life for all Darfur’s inhabitants.

Also, in the last year, an unprecedented humanitarian operation -- the largest in the world -- has, against all odds, sustained millions of lives in Darfur, even providing education and health services at levels not available before the conflict.

These are major achievements -- the fruit of tireless work by the Sudanese people, the African Union and the international community.

Yes, we do have reason to hope. But, we will be cruelly disappointed if we do not also appraise honestly the challenges that still face us in Darfur, and commit ourselves to confront those challenges head on.

In particular, we have to face the fact that some parties have not accepted the Peace Agreement, and -- let me be very frank -- that many of Darfur’s people are very anxious about some of its key provisions.

These misgivings must be addressed, though they must not become an excuse to reopen the negotiations. The dialogue on peace in Darfur must continue, and must be broadened to bring in key stakeholders who are not yet taking part.

What must not happen, but, at present, is happening much too much, is a reversion to violence. Some of it is perpetrated by parties that refused to sign the Agreement, but some also by parties that did sign it.

This must stop, immediately. Those who plan and perpetrate attacks, and those who condone or connive at them, are undoing the hard-won achievements of Abuja. They are actively undermining Darfur’s best hope for peace.

No party must be allowed to make the Peace Agreement a pretext for more violence. That would gravely undermine its chances of becoming an effective vehicle for the peace and reconciliation, which millions of people in Darfur have been waiting for, for more than three years now.

We do now have a precious window of opportunity to end this cruel conflict. But, unless we leap through that window now, it will very soon close.

Darfur: Divestment Activists Get Act Together

From the Wall Street Journal

When Daniel Millenson sits down to persuade university investment officers or state-pension-fund trustees to divest themselves from Sudan, the 19-year-old arms himself with the tools of today's student activist: a PowerPoint presentation, charts, maps, reports, proposed legislation and lists of targeted companies.

He asks his audience to take notes. "I go over a lot of information quickly because I'm not always given a lot of time," explains Mr. Millenson, a sophomore at Brandeis University in Massachusetts and executive director of the Sudan Divestment Task Force, a U.S.-based group formed by college students last year.

Two decades ago, it took years for grass-roots activists to convince colleges and other institutions to sell holdings in companies that did business in apartheid-era South Africa. These days, a similar campaign targeting companies doing business in Sudan has gained momentum in a matter of months.

The difference is a tale of how activists have learned to harness both technology and information in ways that were unimaginable 20 years ago, while at the same time making a more sophisticated effort to sway investors. While divestiture movements of years past often had the feel of a scruffy campus protest -- complete with tense standoffs between board members and crusaders -- tie-dyed shirts and bullhorns have been replaced by tucked-in oxfords and white papers.

"They wanted to work with us. They were patient," says Craig Carnaroli, executive vice president at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "I remember in my day, students threw their buttons at the trustees. ... This group, they came to meet with me in ties." While Penn found it had no direct holdings in seven companies identified by an advisory committee, it agreed to refrain from future investments with connections to Sudan.

The students' information-driven approach uses the Internet to spread their message and get results. "We must have released a thousand pages of research before we even had a rally," says Adam Sterling, who graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, in May and helped to form the task force.

The divestment campaigns aim at putting pressure on Sudan's Khartoum regime, which the United Nations says has sponsored militias in the Darfur region, where more than 200,000 have died. The U.S. has referred to the violence as genocide. Students hope that as companies' share prices drop in response to sales of their stock, those firms will either push Sudan's government to end violence or decide to leave the country altogether.

At least five states in the U.S., including Illinois, New Jersey and Oregon, have passed legislation requiring state pension funds to divest themselves of Sudan-related holdings. New Jersey sold $2.6 billion worth -- or 3.4% of its $75.3 billion in total assets -- in 17 companies.

At least 15 other states are considering legislation fueled by the student campaign. The California State Teachers' Retirement System pension fund said in April that it would consider divesting more than $11 million in holdings in three foreign energy companies operating in Sudan. The Conflict Securities Advisory Group, a Washington research-and-consulting firm, says some 2% to 3% of state pension-fund holdings could be affected by legislation.

Uganda: Gov't Negotiators Walkout

From the BBC

Ugandan government negotiators have stormed out of peace talks in Sudan with representatives of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.

The LRA insist a ceasefire should be the first item discussed, but the government says the rest of the agenda must be dealt with first.

Despite the walkout on Tuesday night, talks are expected to resume shortly.

The discussions talking place in the southern Sudan are considered north Uganda's best chance of peace in years.

The rebel delegation at the talks in Juba are accusing the government side of putting obstacles in the way of an agreement.

The head of Uganda's delegation, Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, told reporters that the LRA have used past ceasefires to recruit, reorganise, treat their sick and loot food. "While we also want a cessation of hostilities, we think it should come after everything else has been concluded," he said. The talks got off to an easy start, with the top rebel leadership refusing to attend, despite assurances of an amnesty from the government.

Uganda: Gov't Rejects Cease-Fire With LRA

From Reuters

Ugandan negotiators have rejected a cease-fire call from Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels as a first step in talks to end one of Africa's longest conflicts, officials said on Wednesday.

"In the past when we have declared a cease-fire the LRA has used these moments to recruit, reorganise, treat their sick and loot food," the head of Uganda's delegation, Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, told a news conference.

"While we also want a cessation of hostilities, we think it should come after everything else has been concluded," he added, stressing that talks would continue.

A cease-fire was the first item on the agenda at tentative discussions between the two sides that began on Sunday in Juba, capital of neighbouring southern Sudan.

The south's regional government says it wants to broker an end to the LRA's two-decade insurgency, which has killed tens of thousands, uprooted nearly two million people in northern Uganda and destabilised southern Sudan.

But both sides appear completely at odds: the government offering amnesty in return for LRA surrender, and the rebels demanding compensation and the disbandment of Uganda's army.

DRC: Forgotten Killer is Back

From IRINk

It is the same brutal ritual every morning. As the nurses approach, the children in the tent outside Isangi hospital start to panic and scream. Three pairs of strong hands secure one after the other into a chair and slowly a syringe pumps poison through a catheter into their veins.

"The injection is a general attack on the body," said Katrien Timmermanns, a Dutch nurse working for Médecins Sans Frontières Belgium (MSF), who is supervising the treatment. "Melarsoprol [the drug] is burning their veins. The next day the veins are often so hard that they cannot be used for the next injection."

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is experiencing a deluge of forgotten diseases. The collapsing health system, wars and ensuing movements of people created fertile ground for their revival. The most feared disease is African trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness: it leads to the graveyard if left untreated.

DRC: Various Developments

From IRIN from last week

The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has responded positively to a request by a militia leader in the northeastern district of Ituri to be integrated into the national army.

Peter Karim Udaga is leader of the Front des nationalistes et intégrationnistes (FNI), which was responsible for the recent abduction of seven United Nations peacekeepers, who have since been released.

Karim's FNI group took the seven hostage on 28 May as they conducted an operation code-named 'Ituri Element III' to drive out the militias from the area.

"They [Karim's group] wrote a letter to the government and received a response from Kinshasa about their integration," Mbitso Ngedza, the assistant police chief in Ituri, said on local radio on Thursday.

Ngedza was part of a delegation that negotiated and obtained the release of the seven Nepalese troops of the UN Mission in the DRC, MONUC.

According to Ngedza, the director of the cabinet and special adviser on security to the head of state, Pierre Lumbi, responded to Karim's letter by saying the government gave its assent for the integration of Karim's troops into the army "without going through the transit camps".

Commenting on Karim's request, MONUC's spokesperson in Ituri, Carmine Camerini, said: "It is a big step towards pacification in Ituri. With Karim there will be others who will also surrender their guns.

See also this from Reuters

Gunmen have killed up to seven people at an election rally in eastern Congo in an attack that revived fears violence could disrupt the country's historic election this month, officials said Tuesday.

Unidentified gunmen opened fire on the rally Monday afternoon near Rutshuru in the Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province, where marauding bands of rebels and militias still terrorize civilians.

The former Belgian colony holds its first free multiparty polls in four decades on July 30, but violence still grips many parts of the vast central African country despite the presence of the world's biggest U.N. peacekeeping force.

The candidate who had staged the rally that was attacked fled to Uganda in fear of his life, and other local candidates said they were asking the United Nations for protection.

Tensions also were running high in the capital, Kinshasa, where police fired tear gas Tuesday at several hundred demonstrators who were protesting at what they called irregularities in the electoral process.

The protesters tore down election posters and billboards, and put burning tires across streets, witnesses said.

And this from the AP

Getting the vote to this eastern Congo town means conquering jungle and coping without phones or banks to pay poll workers. And then there are the militiamen running rampant across this lawless corner of a vast nation just emerging from civil war.

"In many countries you have logistic, security or communication problems," said Ali Diabacte, chief of the U.N.‘s electoral division in Congo. "But in Congo we have to deal with all of these problems at once."

More than 4 million died in fighting or from war-induced hunger and disease in the 1996-2002 turmoil.

Congo has only about 300 miles of paved roads, and many ballots will reach remote villages tied to the back of bicycles, rocking on shaky dugout canoes and atop villagers‘ heads.

Peace deals in 2002 set up a transitional government and a June 2005 deadline for elections, but political infighting and logistical problems delayed the vote. Further delays could provoke protest from a population impatient to cast ballots.

Darfur: Sudan Says It Will Not Submit to International Pressure

From VOA

The Sudanese government says it will not submit to international pressure to allow a United Nation's peacekeeping force into the war torn region of Darfur. The latest rejection of peacekeepers comes amid warnings by aid agencies and the European Union that the situation in the Darfur is on the brink of disaster.

A Darfur peace deal was signed two months ago. However, only one of three Darfur rebel factions has signed the deal. Since then, tens of thousands of people have staged violent demonstrations in Darfur against the pact, saying it does not meet their basic demands.

Aid agencies say the security situation in Darfur has become worse since the peace deal was signed, not better.

United Nations forces would replace the 7,000 African Union troops who have been deployed in the Darfur region since November 2005.

An expert on Sudan, Mariam Jooma at the Institute for Security Studies, says that African Union soldiers have done well in exceptionally harsh circumstances, but she says they have been severely hampered by lack of resources and funding.

"When one looks at the simple geographical enormity of the region, air capacity is fundamental to an effective peace keeping operation, but also boots [people] on the ground," she says "And if one looks at how understaffed they are at the moment, their ability to respond to situations is severely compromised because they don't have enough troops, and they need something like $300 million to sustain it until December."

Jooma says the civilian population in Darfur is also becoming increasingly convinced that the African Union is backing the Sudanese government. In early May, refugees lynched an African Union translator after word spread through the camp that he was a member of the Janjaweed.

The Janjaweed are groups of largely Arab militias, thought to be backed by Khartoum. They are blamed for much of the violence in Darfur, which Washington has labeled genocide.

The African Union has held informal meetings with rebel and civilian groups in recent months to emphasize the organization's impartiality.

The president of the autonomous South Sudan and Vice President of Sudan, Salva Kiir, says he believes it will be impossible to convince Khartoum to accept international peacekeepers.

"The president has rejected the coming in of the UN peace keepers because they have not dialogued with the government of Sudan, so that is the answer full stop. As for us in the SPLM [Sudan People's Liberation Movement], of course, our position was clear because we have accepted the U.N. peace-keeping forces to come to Southern Sudan and they are now in Juba, and if we accepted them to come the south, we will have them go to any part in Sudan," noted Kiir.

Darfur: Tentative Breakthrough on UN Force?

From Radio Netherlands

There's been a breakthrough in the deadlock between the international community and the Sudanese government over a peacekeeping mission in Darfur, according to the Dutch development minister.

Agnes van Ardenne says the EU, together with the United Nations and the United States, have succeeded in getting Khartoum to agree to the establishment of a UN force in the western province.

The Sudanese government had until now refused to comply with the demand, despite the inability of the African Union troops on the ground to stem the violence in the province. The 7000-strong AU force lacks both the capabilities and the mandate to enforce a peace deal signed in May between the government and rebel militias.

But speaking at an international conference on Darfur in Brussels, van Ardenne said Khartoum had now bowed to international pressure, but only on condition that AU forces would form part of the UN mission.

"[The Sudan government] will not accept a new force. They will only accept the same force under the umbrella of the UN. And now we've understood more clearly what was hampering them before.... AU troops will remain on the ground, they will be strengthened, more equipped and will operate under the UN umbrella."

Ms Van Ardenne said she was hopeful that the new mission would be ready by the end of the year and said the Netherlands would help train AU troops for deployment under the UN.

Darfur: AU Lacks Women, Rape Training

From Reuters

Darfur peacekeepers should include more women and should be trained in women's rights to help reduce widespread rape and sexual slavery, rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

Thousands of women have been raped during three years of violence in Darfur, a region the size of France in west Sudan, and an underfunded 7,000-strong African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission has struggled to protect civilians.

"Teams investigating human rights violations must include a woman wherever possible ... Those funding AMIS (the AU mission in Sudan) should provide training and expertise in women's rights and gender-based violence," Amnesty said in a report.

[edit]

In the report, Amnesty calls for more money and personnel for the AU mission, more independent reporting on rights abuses, the disarmament of militias and urges the AU to do more to protect civilians.

Here is the press release from Amnesty International - the briefing paper is here

As a critical pledging conference begins today in Brussels, Amnesty International urges that the current African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) is reinforced so that its troops can start effectively protecting civilians in Darfur.

Despite the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement in May 2006, and the deployment of AMIS since June 2004, the humanitarian crisis in this area remains catastrophic, with abuses against civilians continuing on a massive scale.

"Amnesty International supports the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force with a strong mandate, but in the meantime it is vital that AMIS is strengthened, so that it can begin to provide effective protection," said Dick Oosting, Director of Amnesty International’s EU Office.

The organization has presented ten recommendations aimed at ensuring that a peace keeping force in Sudan is prepared and capable of protecting civilians (the briefing paper Sudan: Protecting Civilians in Darfur, is available at www.amnesty-eu.org)

The efforts of the troops currently on the ground have been obstructed by a shortage of personnel as well as technical and logistic capacities. There has also been a failure on the part of the troops to act strongly to protect civilians.

"Again we see that people asking for help have been turned away because the troops were either not able or prepared to give them the protection they need," said Dick Oosting.

"Donors can make a great difference at this conference by giving a strong political signal that Sudan must give free access to peacekeeping troops in all areas of Darfur, as well as by providing more resources," added Oosting.

Among its recommendations, Amnesty International called on the donors to ensure that AMIS forces are expanded, including with an effective civil affairs component, as well as having increased material resources such as communication and transport capabilities so that they can anticipate and act on imminent attacks, and provide adequate protection especially to women and girls. The ability to patrol supply routes regularly, so that these remain open and safe, is another major concern in a region where at least two million people are totally dependent on humanitarian aid.

The organization said that the expansion of AMIS must also enable it to deploy troops along the border with Chad to prevent cross-border incursions by Janjawid militia.

Sudan: Peace Stalling Due to Lack of Support

From IRIN - via POTP

The leader of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has said the implementation of the comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) between the Khartoum government and the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLA) needed help from the international community if it is to succeed.

"It needs the international partners who helped create the CPA to push the parties forward," said Kiir on Monday in Nairobi. He was with a high-level delegation on their way to the United States. Kiir is both President of autonomous southern Sudan and first Vice-President of the Sudan.

Speaking about fundamental flaws in the implementation of the agreement signed by the SPLA with Khartoum in January 2005, he added: "The mechanism set up to monitor and push the process forward is not the right one."

There had been "no progress", he said, in setting up institutions needed for cooperation between the south and Khartoum, such as a national petroleum board.

Kiir called for a change of attitude from the international community. "They have distanced themselves from the process," he said. "It needs supervision by those who designed the CPA. They are the ones who should know how to implement it."

Darfur: Donors Must Give Aid to AU Now

From the UN News Center

Decrying a “reversion to violence” in Sudan’s conflict-hit Darfur region, despite a recent peace deal, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today in Brussels called for an end to hostilities and urged donors to support the African Union mission there, saying it was critical to act now to safeguard the agreement and stop further bloodshed.

Mr. Annan, speaking at a pledging conference for the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), described the May peace deal as a “road map” for stability after three years of destruction, but acknowledged the challenges that lie ahead in bringing peace to the region, particularly as some rebel factions had not signed the agreement.

“What must not happen, but at present is happening much too much, is a reversion to violence. Some of it is perpetrated by parties that refused to sign the Agreement, but some also by parties that did sign it. This must stop, immediately,” he declared.

“AMIS has performed valiantly, in very difficult conditions. But it must now be better resourced and empowered to perform its critical work. Unless it is, the Peace Agreement will be jeopardised, and no one in Darfur will be secure.”

While there exists “a precious window of opportunity to end this cruel conflict,” he warned that “unless we leap through that window now it will very soon close.”

Calling on those present to “make sure that does not happen,” he said: “The step we can take here is critical.”

Mr. Annan said that much was also expected of the Government of Sudan and he had discussed this with President Omar al Bashir at the recent African Union Summit, where he also repeated that the strengthening of AMIS in the short term, and a transition to a UN operation in Darfur in the medium term, are “two fundamental tools available to the Sudanese people.”

President al Bashir has agreed on the need to strengthen AMIS and to consolidate the peace accord in Darfur, which has seen scores of thousands of people killed and over 2 million displaced, but he has so far rejected the idea of a UN force as being colonial or having a hidden objective, something Mr. Annan again rejected today.

“No hidden agenda drives us; only the urgent need of Darfur’s people. United Nations peacekeeping forces – which will come primarily from Africa and Asia, with some additional, and much needed, support from developed countries – will come to Darfur not as occupiers, but as helpers,” he said.

“A strengthened AMIS and a transition to a United Nations operation are means by which the Government of Sudan can work to ensure that its people in Darfur are protected, and can give them hope of living a better life, in peace, freedom and prosperity.”

Uganda: Rebels Show Their Face

From Reuters

For decades known mainly to the outside world for their dreadlocks, gumboots and kidnapping of children, Uganda's brutal Lord's Resistance Army has been Africa's most mysterious rebel movement.

But in recent weeks, the group has ventured out of jungle hideouts in an unprecedented bid to paint itself as a liberation movement and deny accusations of mass torture, murder and sexual enslavement.

That has led to peace talks seen as the best chance of ending a devastating insurgency, and finally shone light on a mentality and outlook forged during many years in the bush.

Notorious for cutting off the lips or ears of supposed government collaborators, the LRA has since its emergence in 1987 seldom sought contact with outsiders and seemed incapable of articulating any coherent political vision for Uganda.

That is gradually changing.

The rebels' top commanders appeared on video from camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo and agreed to send a team to peace talks that began in neighbouring southern Sudan on Sunday.

They have come with ambitious demands including regional power-sharing and the scrapping of Uganda's military, which they say supports only President Yoweri Museveni, a southerner who seized power in 1986 overthrowing a string of northerners.

The LRA rebellion is the last of several triggered by his victory, and many in the north have never lost the sense of marginalisation. Analysts say most still feel trapped between the sadistic rebels and a suspicious government.

[edit]

On Sunday, his representatives handed mediators in Juba a 15-page document of LRA demands.

"(The LRA's) failure to express its political agenda loudly in intellectual form does not mean the lack of it. Until now we have been speaking through action," they said.

It blamed the start of the insurgency on abuses by Museveni's troops 20 years ago, particularly the theft of huge herds of cattle that once roamed up to the Sudanese border.

"Able-bodied men were left with the devil's choice and formed themselves into armed opposition," the LRA said, blaming the government for propaganda against them since then.

They did, however, admit to carrying out some killings.

In doing so they revealed a particularly sore point: that some in their Acholi tribe who initially urged them to fight Museveni had later betrayed them. "Some notorious allies and spies ... had to be eliminated," the document said.

The LRA also revealed the tribal divisions underpinning their outlook.

"How could people who had (long)... been employed as our herdsmen begin calling us names?" it asked, referring to Museveni's Bahima ethnic group. "How could we be insulted by people we know, by their communal sexual and other habits, to be most socially backward?"

It demanded a national power-sharing deal, and called on international donors to monitor any ceasefire, help empty the displaced people's camps, fund and run a compensation scheme and supervise the creation of a new Ugandan army.

But the top LRA leaders have not so far joined the talks.

Last week Kony underlined his unpredictability when he kept south Sudan's vice president and chief mediator Riek Machar waiting four days in a mud hut near the Congo border, before failing to emerge from the undergrowth to meet him.

Few observers think the LRA are moved by humanitarian concern to take part in talks.

"Armed groups don't normally ask for talks because of goodwill," Father Carlos Rodriguez, a Catholic priest involved in many LRA peace efforts, told Reuters. "Most rebel leaders I have come across could not care less about people's suffering."

Darfur: World Powers Press Sudan

From Reuters

World powers pressed Sudan on Tuesday to accept a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur to replace an ill-equipped African Union force that has been unable to stem the violence that Washington calls genocide.

Sudan said it would reject the move once more.

The United Nations and aid agencies will also press donors at talks in Brussels between U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the EU, the United States and Sudan to finance the 7,000-strong AU force for a few more months before a transition to the U.N.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and 2.5 million forced into exile in three years of fighting in lawless Sudan.

"It is very important that the government of Sudan accepts this transition as called for by the African Union, as called for by the UN, the EU, the world community," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer told Reuters ahead of the talks.

"To protect innocent lives in Darfur we need an international peacekeeping operation with the capability to address the complexity of the challenges," she said, stressing that only the United Nations had these capabilities.

"A U.N. operation is the only viable and realistic option in Darfur in the long term," the European Union said on the eve of the talks.

"This is exactly what we all want, what is necessary," EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said.

World powers are set to clash with Sudan's Foreign Minister Lam Akol, as Foreign Ministry spokesman Jamal Ibrahim reiterated on Monday Sudan's rejection of a U.N. mission.

[edit]

Frazer said the United States still hoped for a transition to the U.N. at the end of September and was not prepared yet to finance a prolongation of the AU mission.

"While an enormous amount of money is being spent debating what will happen in six months time, no one seems to have noticed that people are still being killed today," said Denis Caillaux, secretary general of CARE International.

Darfur: Fresh Warnings of Disaster

From the BBC

Aid agencies and the EU have warned Darfur is teetering on the brink of catastrophe and have called for urgent efforts to bolster the peace process.

The warnings came ahead of a major international conference on Darfur in Brussels on Tuesday.

The aid agencies said Western donors were failing African Union soldiers in Darfur who depend on their funds.

A Darfur peace deal was signed two months ago but correspondents say the security situation has got worse.

[edit]

In their statement, the eight agencies - which include Oxfam, Care International, Islamic Relief and Oxfam International - say the 7,000 AU soldiers in Darfur are being set up to fail.

The soldiers would like to expand their mission and increase their capabilities, says our correspondent, but Western donors refuse to release funds, and so instead they lurch from crisis to crisis.

The agencies accuse donors of treating Darfur's people like a bargaining chip, and say $300m (£165m) is urgently needed to fund the AU mission until the end of the year.

[edit]

International efforts to address the conflict have been hampered because the AU wants to pull out by the end of September but the Sudanese government is refusing to allow a replacement UN force to take over.

But aid agencies say the international community should focus on funding the existing AU mission now rather than concentrating on trying to secure agreement on the transfer of the AU mission to the UN.

"While an enormous amount of energy is being spent debating what will happen in six months' time, no-one seems to have noticed that people are still being killed today," said Denis Caillaux of Care International.

The EU representative to Sudan also spoke out ahead of the conference, warning of the potential for greater conflict - or even genocide - in Darfur.

"If the African Union says: 'Sorry, we have to finish now, we cannot run this operation,' we lose the last internationals who are following the situation - in the camps, around the camps, who are giving at least a minimum protection to these refugees," Pekka Haavisto told the BBC.

"I think internationally we cannot afford this... because then we are very close to the possible scenarios of genocide, or Rwanda scenarios, if you don't have any organised international force on the ground."

Darfur: Peace Must Address Water Crisis

From Reuters

There is no chance of peace in Darfur unless the region's dire water shortages are tackled as part of a settlement between rebels and the Sudanese government, a top international economist said on Monday.

The conflict in Sudan's arid west is often attributed to political and ethnic grievances, Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, told a climate change conference.

But he said its origins can be traced to severe drought and population growth in the 1980s that sparked a struggle between settled farmers and pastoralists.

"(In Darfur) we need to understand that, at the core, there is a massive ecological and demographic challenge exacerbated by climate change," Sachs said.

"I would say there's not a chance in the world for Darfur to be peaceful unless a solution is found to water stress."

Three years of fighting has killed tens of thousands of people and forced 2.5 million to flee their homes. A peace deal was signed between the government and one rebel faction in May, but violence continues.

International efforts to solve the conflict have been too focused on peacekeeping and not enough on development, Sachs told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference on the outskirts of Helsinki.

"In general, crises like these are viewed through the optic of geopolitics and the military. ... But when you are dealing with very hungry people and desperately poor people, unless you also put forward a realistic and viable development option, you can't make peace," he said.

Sachs called for greater international recognition of the role of climate in sparking violence and a deeper understanding of the affect of climate change on vulnerable communities.

Policymakers need to integrate knowledge about climate change into their planning, he said.

Sachs also criticised the time it took the international community to respond to disasters, saying delays in addressing food shortages increased the risk of violence.

"The world is overloaded with crises. ... We need to buffer agencies so that (when a disaster happens) they don't have to beg rich governments for money," he said.

Droughts that cause food shortages and hunger can often be predicted using climate modelling and seasonal forecasting, but the current international system for raising funds only kicks in once a crisis is under way -- meaning that relief may not start arriving until months after its onset.

"By then, there may be violence, and then people say they can't respond because the situation is too violent," Sachs said. "Where rains fail in Africa, violence increases. We know that, but we don't seem to be able to do anything about it."

Sachs also said the international community needed to come up with a framework for dealing with growing migration caused by droughts, floods and other disasters linked to climate change.

Population growth -- which is expected to increase the number of people in Africa by 1 billion by the middle of the century -- is likely to make the problem worse by fuelling competition for scarce resources, Sachs said.

Dry, landlocked African nations were likely to become a major source of environmental refugees and richer countries should be prepared, he warned.

"The world needs a better response than locked gates, barbed wire and shooting people. The political challenge is enormous," Sachs said.

Darfur: U.N. Says It Needs More Money for Aid

From the AP

The United Nations has received only about one-third of the funding it requested for aid activities in 2006 and urgently needs more money to assist 30 million people worldwide, it said Tuesday.

Six months after the launch of its 2006 appeal for $4.8 billion, the United Nations has received only $1.7 billion in cash, said the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA.

"Much has been achieved in the face of these crises in the first half of 2006, but much more remains to be done," said Yvette Stevens, head of OCHA's offices in Geneva. "The percentage of funds provided is still inadequate and there continues to be a delayed donor response."

The money, mainly for Africa and Southeast Asia, is the equivalent of 48 hours of worldwide military spending, the U.N. said.

About a third of the total appeal to ease major humanitarian crises around the world was slated for Sudan and the conflict in its Darfur region.

The most underfunded appeal is to help victims of drought in the Horn of Africa region, which has received $17.5 million - or 15 percent - of the $119 million required, OCHA said.

The appeal for Sudan has received 24 percent of $503 million; Burundi 25 percent of $123 million; and Congo 26 percent of $705 million, OCHA said.

Other underfunded appeals include several more African crisis points, as well as the Palestinian territories.

"We must do better in terms of providing adequate levels of predictable humanitarian funding for our appeals," said OCHA chief Jan Egeland.

Darfur: Donors to Pledge Funds, Press for UN Force

From Reuters

The United Nations and aid agencies will press donors on Tuesday to finance an ill-equipped African Union mission in Darfur for a few more months, while donors and the U.N. itself will urge Sudan to accept an eventual transfer to a more able U.N. mission.

The cash-strapped African Union's 7,000-strong mission has been unable to stem the violence Washington called genocide. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and 2.5 million forced in exile, in three years of fighting in lawless Sudan.

The U.N, the European Union and the United States have long been pressing Khartoum to accept the world organisation to take over the mission in an effort to stop the violence.

"A U.N. operation is the only viable and realistic option in Darfur in the long term," the European Union said on the eve of talks Tuesday in Brussels between U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the EU, the United States, other donors, and Sudan.

World powers are set to clash with Sudan's Foreign minister Lam Akol, as Foreign Ministry spokesman Jamal Ibrahim reiterated on Monday Sudan's repeated rejection of a U.N. mission.

But eight leading aid agencies said in a joint call on Tuesday the international community should focus on funding the AU to stop the killings now, rather than discuss the transfer.

The mission only has enough money to run its mission until August, EU officials said.

"The African Union ... simply cannot be expected to fulfil its mandate without proper support," said Barbara Stocking, director of the British branch of Oxfam, in a joint statement with other aid agencies.

"We are hoping that people will pledge," also said a U.N. spokeswoman. "We have to do something collectively to make the horror stop."

The AU had wanted to hand its operation to the United Nations at the end of September but its leaders decided earlier this month to extend its mission until the end of the year because of Sudan's opposition to any U.N. deployment.

"While an enormous amount of money is being spent debating what will happen in six months time, no one seems to have noticed that people are still being killed today," said Denis Caillaux, secretary general of CARE International.

The agencies urged donors to make pledges whether or not there is an agreement for a transition to the U.N.

But a senior EU official said "all support to AMIS (the AU's mission) is of course in the perspective of a transfer to the U.N. later."

Darfur: What's Behind the Campaign?

[My policy is to try and post things that I consider at least somewhat informative, even when I completely disagree with them - like this piece.]

From Workers World

A well-attended forum entitled “Darfur, An Open Discussion on Intervention, Regime Change & the Politics of Genocide” was held July 6 at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.

The goal of the event organizers was to answer those clamoring for U.S. intervention in Darfur. According to independent journalist Keith Harmon Snow, the forum was organized in response to a June 21 event, “Witnessing Darfur - A Benefit for the People of Darfur,” which he said raised $10,000 for groups such as Human Rights Watch.

Panelist Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center, gave a historical materialist overview of the underdevelopment of African nations by the U.S., Britain, and European colonial powers. She explained that the word “genocide” is being used for war propaganda, and posed a question to the audience: “How could anyone dare say that they were not against ‘genocide’?” She added that by claiming this as a “moral imperative,” the U.S. corporate media is shaping the issue on Darfur.

Flounders brought up that it is the U.S. that is militarizing the area by funding and arming rebel groups in Chad and Darfur. She went on to say that, in fact, the U.S. caused more than half of the deaths in Sudan—when under President Bill Clinton, the U.S. military bombed the El Shifah pharmaceutical plant in 1998, which supplied 60 percent of Sudan’s medicines.

Smith College Professor Elliot Fratkin gave a detailed history of Sudan covering almost a thousand years and emphasizing interethnic and intertribal conflicts. He was the only speaker on the panel who supported sending UN troops to Darfur to mediate among the Sudanese forces in Darfur.

The next panelist to speak, Keith Harmon Snow, emphasized: “People need to know they are being lied to [in regard to Darfur]. ... Sudan and the Darfur region have a lot of oil, and it has two-thirds of the world’s supply of high-quality gum arabic. Corporations such as Coke, Pepsi, and Pfizer rely on cheap supplies of gum arabic.” He went on to say that “The mass media and Hollywood are fooling the public about what’s really happening in Sudan. ... The CIA and USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] are the real forces who want to overthrow the government of Sudan.”

When asked what he thought was important about holding Thursday’s forum, organizer and panelist Dimitri Oram replied, “For the first time, one of these events on Darfur is really shining a light on the U.S. role in Darfur and other African nations.” He continued, “The Rwandan Defense Forces sent to Darfur are themselves responsible for crimes against humanity and acts of genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and these troops were trained and are highly linked to the U.S. military.” Oram compared the U.S. claims of genocide in Darfur to the war propaganda used to justify U.S. military intervention in Bosnia and in Kosovo.

The last speaker on the panel, Dr. Enoch Page, Associate Professor of Anthropology at UMASS Amherst and expert on the anthropology of genocide, brought up the fact that the people of the United States do not need to look abroad to find cases of genocide. He pointed out that the 1949 United Nations definition of “genocide” has been and continues to be carried out against African Americans here in the United States. He reminded the audience that part of the UN definition includes killing members of a racial group; causing psychological damage to members of the group; and creating conditions of financial hardship for members of the group.

Professor Page raised the “attempt at systematic destruction of African Amer ican people by the U.S.” and stressed that, “We must talk about that fact whenever there is a discussion on ‘genocide.’”

Professor Page suggested, “Africa is still being punished for its brave resistance and overthrowing of its colonial oppressors.” When asked what information coming out of the forum he thought was important, Professor Page replied, “That the U.S. is causing the conflict in Darfur, and wants to overthrow the Islamic government there because it has a vested interest in the region, not because of ‘genocide.’”

Sudan: Fight Over State Bills Moves to Congress

From The Hill

A business group is lobbying against an effort in Congress to give states constitutional cover in their effort to prohibit pension funds from investing in companies with ties to Sudan.

Officials at the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), which represents 300 multinational companies, say a provision in a House-passed bill is unconstitutional because it interferes with the federal government’s ability to conduct foreign policy.

The bill would block assets and deny visas to any individual responsible for genocide or war crimes in Sudan and employ other punitive measures designed to pressure the government to end the crisis in Darfur, where marauding Janjaweed militia members have killed and displaced hundreds from the country’s western region.

The Sudanese government, which denies involvement, is thought to have armed and otherwise supported the Janjaweed.

The language in the bill that is generating controversy states that nothing in the act “or any provision in law shall be construed to preempt state law that prohibits investment of state funds … in or relating to the Republic of the Sudan.” Supporters argue that states should be allowed to put whatever additional pressure they can on Sudan.

“Sudan doesn’t care about political pressure,” said one House aide who supports the bill. “What they care about is whether the flow of money stops.”

American companies are already prohibited from doing business in Sudan. But according to the group Sudan Divestment Task Force, several continue to operate there through foreign affiliates. Several foreign companies that aren’t restricted by the U.S. sanctions also continue to operate in Sudan.

Four states, Illinois, Oregon, New Jersey and Maine, have passed measures that would force pensions funds and other financial institutions to divest any ties to Sudan, according to sudandivest.org.

Similar bills are under review in several other states as well. Additionally, many colleges and universities have sought to divest from companies that do business in Sudan.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), a member of the House International Relations Committee, added the language to the bill.

Supporters say the measure is needed to protect the state laws from legal challenges like the one that the NFTC plans to file to block the Illinois Legislature from implementing its bill, which is one of the most restrictive measures.

Daniel O’Flaherty, an NFTC vice president, describes the Sudanese government as ruthless and said his group has no problem with states’ passing measures encouraging pension managers to divest investments in companies that do business in Sudan.

But he argues that state laws that require such divestment violate the U.S. Constitution, which gives the federal government supremacy in determining foreign policy.

“You don’t want 50 states weighing in with different carrots and sticks,” O’Flaherty said.

“You want a clean and coherent national foreign policy. … States shouldn’t muddle in this kind of thing.”

[edit]

A Senate draft version of the Sudan bill does not include the clause in question. A Senate source agreed the provision is likely unconstitutional. As such, including it could delay implementation of other aspects of the bill, the source said.

Administration officials have also relayed concerns about the House provision, the source said. Since the House passed its measure, congressional activity has stalled as members have sought to allow administration efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution in Sudan to proceed.

Negotiations over the language continue, but it is unclear when the bill might move.

DRC: An Unspeakable Toll

A piece in the Washington Post by Richard Brennan and Anna Husarska, both of the International Rescue Committee - via the COC

The International Rescue Committee, which has been providing humanitarian assistance in Congo since 1996, conducted four mortality surveys in the country between 2000 and 2004. We found that in the most affected zones, the mortality rate over the years covered by our studies (1998 to 2004) exceeded the "normal" rate for sub-Saharan Africa by nearly 4 million people. This makes the crisis in Congo the deadliest anywhere since the end of World War II, dwarfing Bosnia, Kosovo, Darfur and even the South Asian tsunami. Yet for the most part, these deaths have gone all but unnoticed.

Perhaps this is because of the nature of the dying. In an era of instant news cycles, more attention is paid to those who die violently than to those who die of disease. In our most recent Congo survey, only 2 percent of the deaths were attributed to the simmering conflict there. The rest resulted from easily preventable and treatable diseases that are the indirect -- but no less devastating -- result of the strife. Our teams were told that the "excess" Congolese deaths were mainly the result of fever (mostly caused by malaria), diarrhea, malnutrition or respiratory problems. Nearly half of the victims were younger than 5, but they still received almost no attention. The disappearance of 4 million Congolese was well-documented (our study was published in the British medical journal the Lancet), but it was viewed as unheroic, seemingly apolitical and therefore untelevisable.

This is all the more lamentable because our survey also showed that death rates plummet when security is assured. The death rate in areas with continuing violence was 76 percent higher than in the more stable regions. For instance, the arrival of U.N. peacekeepers to establish security in the town of Kisangani in 2004 had a dramatic effect: The death rate fell from a catastrophic 6.2 deaths a month per 1,000 to a normal level of 1.4.

Anticipating a slightly increased interest in Congo because of the upcoming elections, the IRC recently went a step further to see whether the international response has been proportional to the identified need for this disaster. Though determining which deaths receive more attention is a gruesome exercise, it is also a revealing one. We investigated the way mortality triggered three types of response -- humanitarian aid, peacekeeping and news coverage -- and compared the results for Congo with other humanitarian disasters. In every category, despite its higher mortality, Congo received far less attention.

A bipartisan relief bill pending in the Senate would authorize $52 million in humanitarian assistance for Congo for the next fiscal year. It recommends strengthening the U.N. peacekeeping effort there and calls for a U.S. special envoy for the Great Lakes region of Africa, which includes Congo. An effort to bring money, mission and media attention to this suffering nation, the bill has not yet reached the floor for a vote.

Responses to a crisis such as Congo's are always linked. When there is media coverage, aid increases. Large donors may be more inclined to press for a greater presence of international peacekeeping forces to protect civilians and humanitarian assistance teams. And the presence of peacekeepers makes it easier for the media to report.

If these factors come together, they accomplish the goal of every humanitarian response: saving lives.

Uganda: LRA Demands Compensation, Disbanding of Military

From Reuters

Ugandan rebels at peace talks with the government want compensation and Uganda's army disbanded as part of a deal to end their 20-year insurgency, according to a copy of their demands seen by Reuters on Monday.

Tentative discussions between Ugandan officials and representatives of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) guerrillas began in neighbouring southern Sudan on Sunday, when both sides submitted proposals to be considered by local mediators.

"We demand comprehensive compensation for all the losses suffered as a result of civil strife and/or state-instigated schemes," the LRA document said, highlighting cattle rustling and the destruction of homes in the north during the conflict.

It also demanded the Ugandan military be disbanded.

"It is ethnic, partisan and pledges its loyalty to (Ugandan) President (Yoweri) Museveni personally and not to the nation," the statement said.

In its document, Uganda demanded the rebels withdraw graft claims and give up their weapons in order to win amnesty.

Uganda: Kiir Hopeful on Peace Talks

From Reuters [the article also notes that Kiir is on his way to Washington to meet with President Bush to discuss the LRA talks, the North/South peace deal, and Darfur]

Despite a fraught start to talks to end the 20-year war in northern Uganda, the president of mediator southern Sudan said on Monday he expected a deal to end the conflict will be struck by September.

Talks to end the Lord's Resistance Army's brutal insurgency began on Sunday with Ugandan government demands for the rebels to withdraw graft claims and give up their weapons in order to win amnesty.

That came after the LRA threatened to continue their insurgency -- notorious for the mutilation of victims -- while accusing Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's government of warmongering, graft and political persecution.

Salva Kiir, president of southern Sudan's regional government which is brokering the talks, said on Monday both sides had pledged to negotiate "in good faith".

"We expect they will commit themselves to the responsibilities they have assigned themselves ... so that they reach a peaceful agreement," he told a news conference in Nairobi.

Last week, Uganda extended a deadline for thrashing out a peace deal to September 12 from July 31.

"We're expecting a peaceful solution to the conflict at the end of the period," Kiir added.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted nearly 2 million more in northern Uganda and destabilised southern Sudan, which is itself emerging from a two-decade civil war against the Khartoum government.

The rebels, led by self-styled prophet Joseph Kony, have raided both sides of the Uganda-Sudan border and late last year set up camps in the lawless jungles of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kiir said the decision to broker talks between the Ugandan government and LRA, whose top five leaders are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, was a difficult one.

"We were forced into this position because it is our people who are dying," he said.

"We have two choices -- to fight the LRA militarily, which of course would take time, or to talk to them, which is easy. Until they prove not to be forthcoming in the field of negotiation then we can resort to other solutions."

Kiir was en route to Washington, where he was expected to brief President George W. Bush on the LRA talks, progress made in implementing the peace deal that ended southern Sudan's war and sentiment towards U.N. troops in the troubled Darfur region.

Darfur: Push for a Special Envoy

A press release from the Genocide Intervention Network

The Genocide Intervention Network today commends Sens. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), Conrad Burns (R-MT) and the ten bipartisan co-sponsors of the Lieberman-Burns Envoy Resolution, urging President Bush to appoint a Presidential Special Envoy to Sudan.

The resolution, S. Res. 531, was introduced in the Senate on Friday. It serves as a powerful statement by a Congress — which two years ago declared the conflict in Darfur, Sudan, to be government-sponsored genocide — that a special envoy is needed to the region to effectively end the unmitigated violence.

“Stopping the genocide in Darfur is a crucial test for the United States and other like-minded nations,” Sen. Lieberman said on Friday. “If we fail to do more to prevent the death and suffering of millions of vulnerable and isolated people, we are turning our backs on the fundamental humanitarian values of our societies, and forgetting the lessons of our history.”

Two Bush administration officials, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick and White House advisor Michael Gerson, had led Washington’s involvement in the Darfur genocide until they each retired earlier this summer. With a peace agreement signed by the government of Sudan in May quickly unraveling, the administration must appoint a new leader to demonstrate its commitment to ending the genocide.

“We need to stay focused on making sure all parties are faithful to implement the Peace Agreement so that the violence and suffering will end,” Sen. Burns said after introducing the resolution.

The Lieberman-Burns resolution notes the important precedent set by the presidential envoy to Sudan, former Sen. John Danforth, who helped secure peace between the government of Sudan and rebel groups in the country’s 21-year civil war.

“Appointing a special envoy to Sudan demonstrates the United States’ leadership in ending the genocide in Darfur, in living up to our promises of ‘never again,’” says Mark Hanis, executive director of the Genocide Intervention Network. “Even more importantly, it holds the parties in Sudan, especially the government of Sudan, to the agreements they made in May to end the genocide.”

Darfur: Cash-Strapped AU Unable to Stem Violence

From IRIN

Violence is rampant in the strife-torn region of Darfur in western Sudan despite the signing of a peace agreement between the government and rebels in May, aid workers said on Monday. Insecurity was preventing humanitarian agencies from assisting civilians affected by the conflict, they added.

The African Union's (AU) 7,000-strong peacekeeping force deployed in Darfur to protect civilians lacked the resources to enable it to provide adequate security to internally displaced persons (IDPs) and aid agency staff in the region, they said.

"The agreement has not brought security to civilians, or any improvements on the ground. The humanitarian need in Darfur remains as great as ever," said Alun McDonald, Oxfam's communications officer in Sudan. "Civilians in Darfur continue to face the daily threat of violence and are in desperate need of protection," he said.

The African Union's Mission in Sudan (AMIS) urgently needed strengthening to enable it to provide better protection to the people of Darfur, McDonald said. "The insecurity is threatening the ability of aid organisations to reach the people in need. Oxfam is having to access many of our programmes by helicopter because the roads are simply too dangerous. Hijacking of humanitarian vehicles has become almost routine," he said.

The AU has said its Darfur mission had a shortfall of well over US$50 million for the April to September 2006 period. An additional $270m was required to fund the mission to the end of December 2006.

[edit]

With additional resources, including personnel, equipment and transport, Africa Union troops would be able to cover more territory and protect more people, according to Brendan Cox, spokesman for international NGO Crisis Action. "The African troops are making a difference where they are deployed. They need to be backed up with more resources on the ground," said Cox, urging donors not to wait until a proposed handover of the peacekeeping mandate in Darfur from the AU to the UN. "People are being killed now. The time to scale up the AU force is now," he said by telephone from London.

Cox said the AMIS mandate also needed to be strengthened to make it able to react in a more robust manner whenever civilians or humanitarian workers were threatened by the numerous military forces, rebel factions, militias and criminal groups operating throughout Darfur.

Said McDonald: "Widespread talk about increasing support for the AU has yet to be backed up by action. The UN and international governments should be doing more to strengthen AMIS and must lay down a firm action plan and a timetable for doing so."

He said that in camps and rural areas of Darfur, AMIS had very little presence. "Donor governments and the international community must commit to equip AMIS with the resources it needs to carry out regular patrols, not just in camps but also in the rural areas, and to maintain a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week presence," he added.

The debate over a possible UN force was deflecting attention from the immediate needs of the people of Darfur, said McDonald, who had just returned to Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, after spending several days in Darfur. "Any UN force will not be fully deployed until 2007, and in the meantime AMIS is the only force on the ground and it desperately needs strengthening. The people of Darfur need protection right now - not just in six months' time," he added.

Darfur: AU Peacekeepers Ready to Hand Over to UN

From the AP

Some 95,000 people who fled Darfur’s violence are crowded into this labyrinth of huts scavenged from whatever is available _ tree branches, plastic sheeting, scrap metal.

They have found only relative safety in Kalma camp, which offers a grim illustration of the challenges faced by an undermanned, underequipped African Union mission sent to try to help civilians caught up in civil war. Some A.U. troops say they have failed. A.U. commanders on the ground and officials at headquarters in Ethiopia refused to comment for this report. But the A.U. has officially embraced the proposition that it be replaced by a larger, more robust U.N. force. The Sudanese government, though, has so far balked at allowing a U.N. mission.

[edit]

Armed men roam just outside Kalma, and young women who venture out in search of firewood have been raped. The marauders have even made raids inside Kalma. On one occasion, men on horseback reportedly entered the camp saying they were searching for stolen cattle, and shot and killed a man.

Aid workers report looters who prize the water pumps at the camp’s wells are growing increasingly brazen. In a recent raid on one of the wells, usually guarded by men armed with little more than sticks to ward off snakes, looters arrived firing automatic rifles. Sudanese police stationed just outside heard the gunfire and began firing at random. No one was hurt.

Kalma’s residents refuse to allow in Sudanese police, trust shredded by the war. That leaves only AU civilian police, who are not allowed under the mission’s mandate to be armed. The A.U. police can investigate incidents, but can only turn evidence over to Sudanese police for prosecution.

[edit]

Only about 400 A.U. security officers are assigned to the sector that includes Kalma, and they patrol the camp only sporadically _ when armed A.U. troops are available to protect civilian police. Patrols were suspended altogether for more than a month after a May 8 riot in the camp in which a Sudanese interpreter working for the AU was killed and an A.U. office looted.

The riot was a dramatic expression of the anger camp residents often direct at the A.U., which they charge does too little to protect them.

"I want to go home because we have failed here and the United Nations needs to come in and take over this failed job," one Nigerian soldier in the A.U. contingent, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of being punished, told The Associated Press. "The people don’t even want us here .... They have absolutely no respect for us and I am tired of this."

Aid groups, who need security to do their work, have been less harsh, saying the A.U. troops have made a difference, but are spread too thin and lack crucial equipment.

No one seems to have enough of what they need, whether it’s radios or helicopters. In a region where it can take nearly three hours to travel 60 kilometers (40 miles) because of loose sand, there are too few Russian-made transport helicopters. When the rains that are expected anytime now come, the logistics situation will only worsen, and the need for reliable air transport will dramatically increase.

The authority to act also is in short supply. A.U. soldiers may only fire when fired upon and given authorization to do so.

"Mandates are made by the bodies that authorize them," said John Prendergast, an Africa analyst with International Crisis Group. "The AU should enhance its mandate much more than it has, but hasn’t because of resistance from Khartoum. The U.N. will face the same problem if it ever gets approval from Khartoum to come. The ideal mandate would be one that focuses on the protection of civilians, the disarmament of the janjaweed and support to returnees to their home villages."

While the U.N. may come in with more troops and equipment, it may have no more power to act. But in Kalma, many place their hopes on the U.N.

"I appreciate the A.U., but I want the U.N. here because the A.U. has no power," Sheik Ali Abdirahman Tahir, head of all the local leaders in Kalma, said through a translator. "The U.N. has the resources to get the job done and we need this because the A.U. has not been able to accomplish anything."

Darfur: Sudan, EU Set for Clash Over UN Troops

From Reuters

Sharp differences emerged on Monday between Sudan and the international community over the purpose of an upcoming conference world powers say is aimed at pushing for a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur.

A draft pre-conference EU declaration obtained by Reuters said the European Union, the United States and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will urge Sudan to allow a U.N. mission into Darfur to replace an African Union (AU) force that has been unable to stem the violence Washington called genocide.

A senior EU official said the Brussels meeting on Tuesday would also seek funding for the AU mission until it is replaced by U.N. troops.

But Sudanese officials said the sole aim of the meeting is to secure more money for the under-funded AU peacekeeping mission in its sprawling west, where tens of thousands have been killed in three years of fighting.

"The delegation which left today is going to discuss with the EU what support is needed for AU forces ... (a U.N. force) is not the issue of the meeting," Sudanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Jamal Ibrahim told Reuters.

Omar Adam Rahama, a member of Sudan's negotiation and implementation team for the Darfur peace deal reached in May with one rebel faction, was optimistic the country could get more AU funding without any concessions that would increase the likelihood of a future U.N. deployment.

"I'm very optimistic that they will support the AU mission ... because it's the right thing to be done," he said.

Darfur: 230 Killed or Injured in Tribal Clashes

From the Sudan Tribune

At least 230 people were killed or injured in clashes in Darfur between two tribes fighting for control over grazing land in the area, a Sudanese official was quoted as saying Sunday.

The Sudan Media Center, a pro-government news agency, reported the first official comment on the clashes that lasted three days last week between the Rizzaigat and Habania Arab tribes in south Darfur.

The head of the attorney general’s office in south Darfur, Ahmed Ali al-Muktasi, was quoted as saying that the Habania tribe suffered some 200 casualties, and that 30 members of the Rizzaigat were killed or injured.

Police and army reinforcements have blockaded the area in a bid to restore calm, the agency said.

Fighting between nomadic tribes over water and pastureland in drought-stricken areas is common in Sudan.

Darfur: Rallying Cry vs. Genocide

From the New York Daily News

Ruth Messinger's voice is raspy, and her face slightly drawn with fatigue. Still, she's multitasking - conducting an interview, fielding phone calls and signing a string of documents.

Tired or not, Messinger has much to do. A few days hence, the former New York City councilwoman, Manhattan borough president and 1997 Democratic candidate for mayor is due to be on a plane bound for Chad, in North Africa, and southern Uganda in East Africa. "Not very nice places," she said.

Although she lost that mayoral contest to Rudy Giuliani, Messinger, 65, is in the midst of a second presidency. As head of American Jewish World Service, she is traveling the country and the world to rally international condemnation against the genocidal murders in Darfur, in southern Sudan.

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"It's a humanitarian emergency, with millions of people being chased out of their homes with no resources," Messinger said. "When Congress and Secretary of State Colin Powell called it a genocide, we thought that sent a message to civilization that here we were again - like Bosnia, Cambodia and Rwanda."

AJWS raises money and consciousness in the American Jewish community about needs in the non-Jewish developing world. Messinger said the group supports "grass-roots efforts at social change," which equates to more than 200 projects, including AIDS/HIV education, literacy and agricultural reform, in 40 countries around the world.

Darfur has a "special resonance" for the group, Messinger said, because "one of the crises for the Jewish community during the Holocaust was the extent of the silence from the international community."

AJWS has raised - and is spending - about $2 million on various Darfur-related projects, from supplying clean water to the refugees housed by the thousands in desert camps, to constructing health clinics in Chad and providing counselors to help refugee women who were the victims of violence and sexual attacks.

Messinger visited Darfur in August 2004 and Chad in October 2005.

The camps are "desolate," she said. "People who were living in small villages now live in refugee camps, eight to 10 people in a tent, with 15,000 to 100,000 people."

That trip, she said, allowed her "to come back and bear witness to what I had seen, and to try to alert people to the dimensions of the problems on the ground."

Messinger said she's not discouraged by the response to Darfur, which, despite the horrors there, is still not a household word like Bosnia or even Enron.

Their campaign was helped by the movie "Hotel Rwanda," which dramatized a true story of a hotel manager who sheltered hundreds of people during Rwanda's civil war, she said.

"During some of the showings, we had people handing out flyers saying that in 10 years, you will be coming to see ‘Hotel Darfur' unless something is done right now," she said.

Still, Darfur remains a somewhat hidden conflict with little press coverage, partly because Sudan makes it difficult for journalists to visit.

But Messinger doesn't believe that Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia or other large humanitarian demands of the past few years have left Americans desensitized to disaster relief.

She blames the media.

"I think when and if our media focuses peoples' attention on what is happening, we get results," she said. "People respond to the cues and clues they are given."

Uganda: Peace Talks Start, But Positions Far Apart

From IRIN

Mutual recrimination and significant discrepancies between the positions of the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) jeopardise a swift conclusion to the peace talks, observers warn.

As the talks got under way in the southern Sudanese town of Juba over the weekend, Sudanese mediators struggled to keep the peace after an LRA statement during the opening ceremony infuriated the Ugandan government delegation.

"The government has considered the statement and found it absolutely unacceptable. It is full of falsehoods, distortions, and is completely out of touch with reality," Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, who leads the Ugandan team, said in a statement released on Sunday.

During the opening of the talks on Friday, LRA spokesman Obonyo Olweny had accused the Ugandan government of political imbalance and "inequity for the benefit of a few". He also warned that "they shall be in for a rude shock", if the government thought it would be able to defeat the LRA militarily.

"Since they are the ones who have caused destruction and inflicted suffering, they have no moral authority to speak as such and should be humble enough to apologise," Rugunda stressed. In spite of the LRA statement, his delegation remained "firmly committed" to the peace process, however.

Rugunda added that it was a "well-known and properly documented fact" that the LRA had killed thousands of innocent civilians, raped girls and women, abducted young children and maimed thousands of civilians, resulting in the displacement of millions of people into camps.

"The Ugandan delegation expressed their displeasure about our opening statement, but we stick to our position," Olweny told IRIN on Sunday. "It will not affect the negotiations," he added.

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A political analyst observed that the tensions at the talks were a result of the "huge discrepancy" between the expectations of both negotiating parties.

The LRA wants to be accepted as a credible political force fighting the oppression of the people of northern Uganda, he said. It expects to enter into wide-ranging peace talks that would include power and wealth sharing and provide structural solutions to redress the 'history of injustice' in northern Uganda.

"We should talk about the issues and the genesis of this conflict over the past 20 years. The grievances of the people of the north and how the current government marginalises the people of the north; that is the issue," Olweny said.

The Ugandan government, on the other hand, seems to have a much more limited idea of what the talks could achieve; focusing on a cessation of hostilities and the reintegration of LRA rebels into society.

"They are here to negotiate an amnesty," the analyst said. "They just want Kony to come out of the jungle with his hands up."

"The main idea is to give them a soft landing," Capt Paddy Ankunda, spokesman for the Ugandan delegation, confirmed on Sunday.

In their position paper for the negotiations, the Ugandan government demands the LRA "cease all forms of hostilities, dissolve itself and hand over all arms and ammunitions in its possession together with their inventory [and] assemble in agreed locations where they will be demobilised, disarmed and documented."

For the LRA, however, negotiating an amnesty presupposes military defeat and the rebel movement does not consider itself vanquished – even while they have been militarily weakened and forced into hiding in a remote area in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

An additional problem was the discrepancy in political weight and credibility between the two negotiating parties, the analyst said.

"On the Ugandan side, many delegates have been senior members of Museveni's establishment from the beginning," he observed. Besides Rugunda, the Ugandan delegation includes Col Charles Otema-Awany, who commands the army's fourth division based in the northern Ugandan town of Gulu and Col Leopold Kyanda, chief of military intelligence and security.

In contrast, despite including two senior field commanders - Col Bwone Lobwa and Santo Alit - most members of the LRA delegation are from the diaspora, the analyst observed. "They may have essentially been outside the country for much of the conflict. These are part-time LRA supporters," he added. "They have day jobs in London, Nairobi and Las Vegas."

As a political wing of the LRA, it was also unclear how much influence the delegation had on the actions of the military leadership, the analyst observed.

"They behave as if they are on a par with us – as if their force can roll all the way to Kampala – but they aren't," a source in the Ugandan military said. "These people have never been in the bush. If you've faced the fire and heard the bullets, you wouldn't behave like this."

"The Ugandan government delegation had earlier wished to meet and discuss with authentic and authoritative leaders of the LRA," Rugunda said. "The LRA statement implies that some people wish to once again derail this peace process for reasons best known to themselves."

Darfur: The Fugitive's Tale

The latest from Nick Kristof

Traditionally, our best excuse for inaction in the face of genocide was that we didn’t fully know what was going on — until too late.

During the Holocaust, reports trickled out of Nazi areas of atrocities and extermination camps, but they encountered widespread skepticism. “I don’t believe you,” Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court justice, told Jan Karski, a Polish Catholic who at extraordinary risk had visited a Nazi death camp as well as the Warsaw Ghetto and finally escaped with hundreds of documents.

Likewise, the Turks mostly barred access to the scene as they industriously killed off Armenians (a pattern of denial that persists in Turkey today). Cambodia sealed itself off during Pol Pot’s rule. And when Westerners evacuated from Rwanda in 1994 (the French airlifted out their embassy dog, while leaving behind local employees to be butchered), few witnesses were left to chronicle the savagery day by day.

That’s what makes Darfur so unusual in the history of genocide: the savagery is unfolding in plain view, and yet as world leaders gather in Russia for the Group of 8 summit meeting, the basic international response is to look the other way.

No genocide has ever been publicly chronicled so extensively as this one. We have satellite images of the burned villages, and detailed reports from groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Aid workers interact daily with the two million displaced people, and we can watch as Sudan spreads instability into neighboring countries.

Indeed, now we have a witness who has come all the way to America: Hashim Adam Mersal, a young man now living in Pennsylvania with the help of the Pittsburgh Refugee Center.

Mr. Hashim, who is 26, is a member of the Zaghawa tribe, which has been particularly targeted for death in Darfur. He grew up in a village called Tomorna and lived a relatively prosperous life because of his family’s large herd of 400 cattle and 150 sheep.

Then in August 2003, the Sudanese government sent the janjaweed militias to attack black African villages in his region. Mr. Hashim escaped with some of the livestock, but his father and brother (a 24-year-old father of two) were both killed, along with many others — including eight children in one family. Mr. Hashim isn’t sure what happened to the rest of his family.

“It was humans and livestock all mixed together, running for survival,” Mr. Hashim remembers. “Some kids were falling behind, and we just couldn’t help. We couldn’t do anything for those falling back. There was lots of crying, but you were too scared to stop and help anyone. Some were wounded and couldn’t keep up. Some were left behind and died.”

In that flight, Mr. Hashim passed other villages that had been burned. “Bodies were scattered everywhere,” he said.

Eventually, Mr. Hashim made his way to the Chadian capital. He used cash and tribal connections to obtain a fake Chadian passport and, somehow, a diplomatic visa to the U.S. So Mr. Hashim came to the U.S. — only to be jailed on immigration charges. He was released on bail and is fighting deportation back to Sudan; a hearing is scheduled for October.

Frankly, the best place to put Mr. Hashim isn’t in jail, but in the White House Rose Garden for a photo-op with President Bush to call attention to the genocide.

Mr. Hashim studies English into the wee hours in hopes of communicating better, so as to plead with Americans to help save his people. At the same time, he is wracked by guilt at having survived when so many others died. “I am alive and breathing, but I am like a dead man who walks,” he said. “The rest of my life will be nothing but sorrow.”

In the small community of Darfur-watchers in America, there is deepening gloom. There has been an outcry at the grass-roots level — www.savedarfur.org gathered one million signatures demanding a greater response — but the genocide is still spreading. John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, just back from the region, warns that “the international community is actually missing the potential enormity of the crisis as it metastasizes to Chad and the Central African Republic.”

A conference of donors on Tuesday in Brussels will be an important test of whether there is any international resolve to save lives.

But increasingly it appears that even when the world has no excuse at all for inaction — when it is fully informed about a genocide in real time — it still cannot be bothered to do much about it.

Uganda: Gov't Demands LRA Disarm

From Reuters

Ugandan negotiators at talks to end one of Africa's longest wars demanded on Sunday that Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels disarm and hand over all their weapons in order to receive amnesty.

Tentative talks to end the guerrillas' brutal two-decade insurgency began in earnest on Sunday, mediated by the government of neighbouring southern Sudan.

Uganda's government said it welcomed the rebels' decision to attend, but called on them to abandon "all forms of terrorism" before being re-integrated into civilian life, according to a copy of the Ugandan demands seen by Reuters.

It called on the rebel group to "dissolve itself and hand over all arms and ammunitions in its possession together with their inventory (and) assemble in agreed locations where they will be demobilized, disarmed and documented".

It said resettlement and retraining would be given to former fighters who wanted it, and that the government would work with northern Uganda's cultural and religious leaders to reconcile the ex-combatants with their local community.

The demands reiterated that any deal would have to be reached before Sept. 12. Talks are due to resume on Monday.

Darfur: Gov't, SLA, Defend Peace Deal Despite Violence

From Reuters

The Sudanese government and a Darfur rebel faction on Sunday defended a peace deal against charges of missed deadlines and new violence, saying it had the support of the people and had produced significant results.

Mohamed Yusuf Abdallah, deputy head of the government delegation to the Abuja peace talks, said the release of prisoners captured in fighting, as well as an amnesty, were major achievements in implementing the May 5 agreement signed in the Nigerian capital.

"I think the delay that we are talking about in some aspects is right, but the things that we could implement quickly we have," Abdallah said.

Only one of three Darfur rebel factions signed the deal -- the faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) led by Minni Arcua Minnawi. Abdallah said the appointment of Minnawi to the post of first assistant to the president was a step forward.

An SLA representative said the deal had received widespread support.

"We had a great response from the people ... The people understand the importance of the agreement," SLA spokesman Abdul Kareem al Sheikh said.

But since the African Union-mediated peace deal tens of thousands of people have staged sometimes violent demonstrations against the pact, saying it does not meet their basic demands.

One of the deal's key brokers, U.N. envoy to Sudan Jan Pronk, has said violence has worsened since the agreement. Intra-rebel fighting has increased and tribal tensions have escalated, fuelling new attacks in Sudan's Darfur province.

The SLA-government news conference came two days before the European Union was scheduled to meet Sudanese officials in Brussels to discuss the status of the Darfur peace agreement and the transfer of the AU peacekeeping mission to U.N. troops.

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Responding to criticism that Khartoum had delayed implementation of the deal, including writing a crucial proposal on disarming the Janjaweed, a government representative said Khartoum had handed over a plan to the African Union.

He also blamed the AU, which has 7,000 peacekeepers on the ground in Darfur, for delays in implementation.

"We gave the plan to the AU and we have in fact started implementation," said Omar Adam Rahama, a member of the government's negotiation team in the Abuja peace deal.

"The AU forced us, kept us hostage to getting more signatories (to the peace deal). Now that everybody's convinced that those who did not sign are not going to sign ... we are set to implement the deal," he added.

Adding to the violence in Darfur, an SLA representative at the conference accused gunmen from neighbouring Chad of attacking the group two days ago. Chadian representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.

Darfur: Sudan Says It Has Handed Over Disarmament Plan

From the Sudan Tribune

In a response to increasing critics on delay in the implementation of Darfur peace deal, Sudan has announced that plans have being handed over to the AU to disarm Jajaweed militias in Darfur.

The Spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry, Ambassador Jamal Mohamed Ibrahim, has announced that Sudan delivered the plan for disarmament of the militias in Darfur to the African Union (AU), 24 hours before the deadline.

In press statements Saturday, Ibrahim affirmed that any statements here and there by UN officials are out of the course, stressing that the government reserves the right to doubt the desires of those who make such statements.

He added that it is not for the interest of any party involved in the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) to slow down its implementation, explaining that the government is always keener to implement the agreement.

Sudan: Garang Left a Legacy of What-Ifs

From the Los Angeles Times

His memorial appears untouched since the funeral a year ago. Temporary aluminum roofing covers baskets of dusty plastic flowers. Tattered flags and fading tinsel hang limply from metal beams.

Yet each day, visitors stream by to pay their respects to Sudanese rebel leader John Garang, who led a 21-year civil war against the government before signing a landmark peace deal, only to die six months later in a helicopter crash.

Around Juba, the dilapidated capital of southern Sudan, many can't help but wonder what might have been.

Would Garang have secured a stronger role for his fellow southerners in the new coalition government led by his onetime archenemy, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir? Would Garang have made good on his pledge to resolve the standoff in the western region of Darfur, which has worsened since his death? Would he have pushed for faster development in the long-neglected south?

"If Garang were still around, life would be different," said Samuel Gouorid, 41, leaning over his stand of eggplant and limes in Juba's central market.

It's a common refrain these days in Juba. For decades, people here blamed Khartoum for their plight, accusing the northern government of abandoning the south, first in retaliation for the civil war and, later, to more easily seize control of its oil resources.

But a year after a new southern government won autonomy for the region, little has changed, residents say.

Darfur: Clinton Says Sudan Should Accept Muslim Peacekeepers

From Reuters

Sudan should be pressured into accepting foreign peacekeepers from Muslim countries to help stem bloodshed in its troubled Darfur region, former U.S. President Bill Clinton said on Sunday.

Sudan has refused to accept a U.N. peacekeeping mission to replace the 7,000 underfunded African Union (AU) peacekeepers currently in Darfur. Sudan has likened the proposed U.N. mission to a Western invasion.

"Sudan should be pressured to accept international troops from Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh and others to help maintain peace and order in Darfur," Clinton told an audience at AU headquarters.

Clinton, on an African tour where he has been launching aid initiatives, was speaking after breaking ground at a new paediatric HIV/AIDS clinic in the Ethiopian capital.

The United States, the European Union and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan are due to meet in Brussels on Tuesday to urge Sudan to accept the U.N. force. They will also discuss how to fund the AU mission until it is replaced.

"The AU alone cannot solve the Darfur problem and find solutions to stop the killings. There are not enough troops with a clear mandate and legal power to stop thousands from dying and alleviate the hardship of the people in Darfur," Clinton said.

Chad: Wave of Repression Reported

From Reuters

A human rights group in Chad has accused the government of a wave of arbitrary arrests and political disappearances following a rebel assault three months ago on the capital of the central African oil producer.

Human Rights Without Frontiers (DHSF) accused the Chadian state of carrying out a witch hunt' against those it suspects of collaborating with rebels in the April 13 attack -- which killed hundreds of people just weeks before elections.

DHSF and relatives of some of those who have disappeared want the government to say who is in detention and where they are being held.

Ninety days after the fierce fighting on N'Djamena's dusty streets, many people taken from their homes by security forces have still not been seen or heard of, DHSF claims.

A significant proportion of those detained were civilians, though senior Chadian military officers were also held, the human rights group said.

"Following the attack on N'Djamena on April 13, we have observed that there has been a witch hunt," DHSF President Deuzoumbe Daniel Passalet told Reuters.

"Are these people alive? Are they dead? If they are alive, what sort of state are they in? We are even receiving reports that some people have been executed."

Chadian Human Rights Minister Abderamane Jasnabaille was unavailable for comment.

DHSF and relatives of those seized are demanding an international enquiry and are calling on President Idriss Deby's government to say where those arrested are being held.

Passalet said his organization knows of at least 20 people -- both civilians and military personnel -- who have been arrested and of whom there is now no trace.

"We are certain this figure is just the tip of the iceberg," he said. "That's why we are asking relatives of people who've been taken to come forward."

The government says those arrested are suspected of having links with the rebels from eastern Chad. Relatives of the disappeared say that if they are suspected of treason, the prisoners should be tried in court or released.

Deby said the rebels are mercenaries in the pay of Sudanese President Omar Hassan el-Bashir, trying to extend Arab fundamentalist Islam in Chad. A French-trained former fighter pilot, Deby has held power since 1990 and won a fresh five-year term in May 3 polls.

The elections were boycotted as fraudulent by the opposition, which has called for France to withdraw its military assistance from Deby's government. France has a garrison of some 1,200 troops in Chad and provides military intelligence to Deby.

Mahamat Bichare said his uncle, a colonel in the military police, was abducted from his home in April during Easter celebrations with friends and family.

"Suddenly he received a message the President of the Republic wanted to see him," 31-year-old Bichare said. "He left to investigate, and after a while came back home. But shortly afterwards, everyone at the house was arrested ... military and civilians alike."

"The next day most people were released, but my uncle and several of his bodyguards were not. We still don't know where they are," said Bichare, adding that police plundered everything from his uncle's home -- money, food and even clothes.

Uganda: Gov't Shocked by Rebel Claims Ahead of Talks

From Reuters

Ugandan negotiators will press ahead with talks to end one of Africa's most brutal wars, but were shocked by rebels' claims of corruption and threats of more violence, a spokesman said on Saturday.

Closed-door discussions with Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) guerrillas who have waged a two-decade insurgency were due to start in neighbouring southern Sudan on Saturday.

But the LRA surprised many at Friday's opening ceremony when they threatened to continue their rebellion if talks did not address what they called rampant graft and political persecution by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's government.

"We were shocked by their attitude," Ugandan delegation spokesman Captain Paddy Ankunda told Reuters in the southern capital Juba.

"How can they threaten more violence at a time like this? It was insulting, but we will talk to them and find out what else they have to say."

LRA officials and southern Sudanese mediators were in meetings and not immediately available to comment. It was not immediately clear when both sides would sit down for talks together.

Darfur: Annan to Lead Conference on AU

From AFP

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will lead an international conference in Brussels next week on funding the cash-strapped peacekeeping mission in Sudan's Darfur region, EU officials said Friday.

The meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, which will involve 72 delegations, will discuss financial support for the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), which could run out of funds as soon as next month.

The conflict in Darfur, an arid desert region the size of France, between rebels and militias backed by Sudanese government troops has left some 300,000 people dead and displaced more than two million others since 2003.

African Union (AU) countries sent troops there in 2004 -- a force which now numbers around 7,000 personnel -- but the peacekeeping mission has suffered from poor funding and has struggled to contain the violence.

"The international community's goal is to ensure that AMIS can function at its current level until the end of the year," said an EU diplomat.

On Thursday, EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel said AMIS, which is likely to be replaced by a United Nations mission, could continue to operate until mid-August or early September.

"After that, we just don't have enough money," he said.

Darfur: Pressured Peace is Not the Answer

From the Mail & Guardian

Deadlines for signing peace agreements have come and gone, in Burundi and Darfur -- two of Africa’s most vexed trouble spots -- illustrating that pressure tactics are not always the answer.

Arm-twisting might force warring parties to the negotiating table -- and even get them to sign agreements. But these often fall apart when they cannot be implemented.

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n Sudan’s lacerated western region of Darfur, some sections of the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) have signed a deal with the government of Omar al Bashir.

That group is now fighting pitched battles with SLA elements that have refused to sign. More than 80 people died this week and the signatory group led by Minni Minnawi is reportedly using tactics identical to those of the pro-government militia known as the Janjawid -- including rape and attacking innocent civilians.

Nevertheless, Al Bashir has managed to persuade his African peers and the United Nations that the only way to achieve peace in Darfur is to turn the screws on the SLA factions that have yet to sign the peace deal.

“The Western powers don’t understand the dynamics of peace-brokering in Africa,” said Dr Timothy Othieno of the Institute for Global Dialogue in Midrand.

“They use high-pressure tactics to get the parties to sign and then head home claiming credit for getting those signatures. A couple of months down the line we end up with nothing as the parties are unable to implement what they were forced to agree.”

Othieno says the parties in Darfur have learned from the experience of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which signed a peace deal nearly two years ago between north and south Sudan after the continent’s longest-running civil war.

“Minnawi struck his own deal with Khartoum. The other factions in Darfur don’t want to make the same mistake as the SPLA, who believed they were signing a peace deal that would see them sharing in the oil wealth of Sudan.

“Now the SPLA is told that only the oil in southern Sudan is to be shared. Not surprisingly the SLA elements in Darfur say they cannot sign something just to appease the mediators. They are looking for cast-iron guarantees before agreeing to anything.

“Too often the mediation believes that once they have the signatures on paper peace will prevail. This is not necessarily the case.”

Darfur: Eritrea Backs Sudan to Oppose U.N. Force

From Reuters

Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki said the United Nations has "no responsibility" sending peacekeepers to neighbouring Sudan which should be left to resolve internal problems on its own.

Khartoum rejects the idea of a U.N. peacekeeping force in its remote Darfur region, where tens of thousands have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in three years of conflict.

"The United Nations has no responsibility at all to intervene in the issue unless it wants to engage itself in acts of manoeuvres so as to accomplish other objectives," Eritrean government Web site shabait.com reported Isaias as saying.

Eritrea itself has had tense relations with a U.N. peacekeeping force monitoring its border with Ethiopia, recently expelling Western staff and banning helicopter overflights.

"The Sudanese should resolve their problems themselves be it in Darfur or any other areas," the Information Ministry site added in its post of an Isaias news conference on Wednesday.

Any outside support should be approved by Khartoum, it added.

Uganda: Peace Talks Set to Begin

From Reuters

Peace talks to end one of Africa's most brutal conflicts are set to begin on Friday after a Ugandan delegation headed to Sudan for the long-delayed negotiations, southern Sudan's President Salva Kiir said.

Talks between the Lord's Resistance Army and the government, scheduled for last Wednesday, were held up after the cult-like rebel group said it would not send its top leaders to Juba, the capital of south Sudan.

Uganda had wanted either LRA leader Joseph Kony or deputy Vincent Otti -- both wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes -- to attend in person.

A Ugandan team led by Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda has set off for Juba, where it will meet guerrilla representatives in a bid to end the LRA's two-decade insurgency.

"There is optimism these people will reach an agreement, and we are quite sure that we will play our part," Kiir told reporters in the town.

Southern Sudan's Information Minister Samson Kwaje added that the talks were due to begin at 4 p.m. (1300 GMT).

The south's regional government says it wants to broker an end to the LRA conflict, which has killed tens of thousands and uprooted nearly two million people in northern Uganda alone.

The rebels operate in a large area in east and central Africa known as the "LRA Triangle" spanning northern Uganda, southern Sudan and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Ugandan government reaffirmed this week it would not revoke an amnesty offered to Kony as was done for former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was arrested trying to leave Nigeria where he had been in exile.

Analysts say Kony and Otti fear arrest if they go to the negotiations.

Darfur: Sudan Under Pressure to Accept UN Mission

From Reuters

World powers will next week press Sudan to accept a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur amid reports of increasing violence in the province.

Tens of thousands have been killed and 2.5 million people forced into camps during three years of rape, murder and pillage in Darfur, in lawless western Sudan.

A conference in Brussels on Tuesday attended by the European Union, the United States and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will urge Sudan to allow a U.N. mission to replace an ill-equipped and over-extended African Union force in an attempt to stop the violence.

"A U.N. operation is the only viable and realistic option in Darfur in the long term," the European Union will say on the eve of the meeting according to a draft declaration obtained by Reuters.

Tuesday's conference will urge Sudanese rebels to sign a peace deal reached in May between the Khartoum government and one of the main rebel factions.

CAR: France Provides Military Help to Restore Security

From IRIN - via POTP

France is to provide military assistance to help the Central African Republic (CAR) restore peace and security in its troubled northern region. The area has endured months of attacks by armed groups as well as counter-attacks by government forces.

"The assistance will be available in days to come," said Jacques Schwartz, first counsellor of the French embassy, said on Wednesday in the CAR capital, Bangui.

Four French jet fighters flew over Bangui on Thursday.

The CAR defence ministry announced on Tuesday that France would provide military personnel and logistics support to help the national army deal with the rebellion in the north. The aid includes a C-130 cargo aircraft to transport heavy military equipment from Bangui to the affected area.

The ministry added that senior French army officers would also be deployed in the CAR to help with planning operations on the ground. The ministry's communiqué added that French jet fighters would be used to locate the armed groups in the northwest. But the number of French soldiers and jet fighters expected in the country was not specified.

The communication adviser to the CAR head of state, Guy Roger Moskit, told IRIN on Wednesday that French military aid would increase the CAR army's capacity in battling the armed groups.

"This important assistance by France will help push the armed groups operating in the prefecture of Vakaga out of the national territory," Moskit said.

He added that France's decision to help the CAR was made after the United Nations Security Council on 7 July condemned the attacks in Vakaga.

He claimed the northern part of the country was occupied by foreign troops. "We don't know who they are and where they come from but the military operations with the support of France will restore security in the country," he added.

Although the defence ministry's communiqué did not state when the French aid would arrive, military sources in Bangui said some French troops were already in the capital, awaiting transport to the troubled area. "Some of the French troops involved in the operations in the north can be seen driving around," said an army captain who requested anonymity.

Darfur: Ready to Run

From Caritas

The huts on the outer limits of Um Gozen Camp are empty. The only signs of life are a pair of black slippers and a door made of tins from the World Food Program. A middle-aged woman gives a tour of her old home - two huts and a shelter.
She used to live here with her four daughters and two sons, but they moved for fear of their lives. The militias come from the mountains on the horizon, just on the other side of the thorn hedge surrounding the compound.

"The militias came at night and threatened us. My neighbour got his donkey and cattle stolen. He cried for help, but no one responded. The militia men fired shots in the air," says the widow, who has now moved in with her sister in the middle of the camp, where she feels safer.

"If you try to fight the militia, they will kill you," she says.

The family of seven now lives in one hut. Security is better, but the family is ready to run if the militias attack the camp. Under the bed, two sacks from USAID are already packed with clothes and the children’s school books. The family’s food is packed in an iron box with a padlock.

"I will put it on my head and run," the woman explains.

The single mother is not the only one who fears an attack. Several families from Um Gozen camp and the seven other camps surrounding Mershing have already headed south for the camps around Nyala, South Darfur’s main town.

"There is no security in Mershing. The militias are patrolling just outside the camp," says a woman in a pink tob, a traditional Sudanese cloth wrap.

As in many other camps in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region, it is dangerous for the women to venture outside the camp to fetch firewood.

"Sometimes the militias kidnap the women and keep them overnight. They are released in the morning," says another displaced woman.

The men stay inside the camp’s futile walls. Militias are no more than one kilometer away. One of the women says that a man was kidnapped more than a month ago. Still nobody knows where he is.

The people of Mershing have good reason to fear an attack. Five months ago, the town and its surrounding camps were abandoned because of a militia attack. Some 55,000 people - the internally displaced and the host community - fled to neighbouring Menawashi.

International agencies, including ACT-Caritas, intervened immediately to provide humanitarian assistance and to mediate between the parties. The displaced people wanted to continue on to the camps in Nyala, but the authorities were not keen on increasing the number of people in the already over-crowded camps. After negotiations, the displaced people of Mershing agreed to go back if they were provided with protection.

The police commander and some of the police forces were replaced, and the African Union (AU) was to increase patrolling in the area.

The security situation in Mershing improved for the first couple of months, but in April it began to deteriorate again. Militias ride close to the camp; they threaten people at night and steel their belongings, say the women and men of Mershing.

"The police do their job, but Mershing is big. The shooting comes from the outskirts of the camp," says a staff member of one of the local organisations working in the camps.

Just north of Mershing is one of the militia’s strongholds. Malam is a "no-go" area for all international agencies.

"We also have a military base here, but it is not enough," says the NGO staff person.

The local organisations in Mershing have done everything they can to alert the United Nations, the AU and other international agencies about the increasing insecurity, but there is not much they can do. The AU patrols once in a while, but the effect is limited.

"The militias stay away when they see the AU, but when they are gone, the militias come back," says one of the displaced men.

The last time Mershing was attacked, the international community was warned one month ahead by the local organisations in the area.

"Now we hear the same outcries from the people. They say that they want to flee and that nobody is helping them," says an employee of a local organization.

The people of Mershing and the local organisations would like to have an AU base in the town or international troops present. When the town was attacked in January, the AU was a constant presence for a week, and the number of attacks and assaults decreased. And the Sudanese police did a better job, according to organizations.

"We would like to see a U.N. office here and more international agencies. If we want to talk about our problems, we have to go all the way to Nyala," says one of the men from the camp.

Darfur: Podcast with Prendergast

A new podcast with John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group from the Committee on Conscience

Jerry Fowler: What did you see in Eastern Chad?

John Prendergast: We went into Eastern Chad and we crossed the border into rebel held areas of Darfur as well and both sides of the border, there is clearly an increasing tension as a result of cross border attacks by government of Sudan backed Janjaweed militias and government of Sudan backed Chadian rebels who are attacking across the border with the same kind of impunity, and in some cases the same kind of intention they did when attacking inside Darfur. We are seeing a sort of exporting some of the genocidal counterinsurgency strategies into Chad now, and that was one of the dominant themes. The other dominant theme was how uniformly the refugees and displaced people that we came across were unable to support the current peace agreement that has been signed between the government and one of the rebel factions in Darfur. There is an intense, palpable fear on the part of those who have been rendered homeless by this assault over the last three years, fear of the provision in the agreement that would leave the disarmament of the Janjaweed in the hands of the government of Sudan with no real international verification. In the absence of that, most people would have just said, “We cannot support this, and we have to keep the struggle alive until we get this fundamentally important provision into any kind of a text of an agreement.” It was quite eye opening to see, and people were not brain washed; they knew what was in the agreement and they just chose to say, “We do not want an incomplete peace because it will not bring peace,” and that was fairly uniform up and down the border, all over.

Jerry Fowler: When you say “refugees” and “displaced,” these were Darfurians who you encountered on both sides of the Chad border?

John Prendergast: Correct, yes, just for international legal purposes, when you cross the border you become a refugee, and if you are still inside Sudan, and still inside Darfur—the Darfurians who were rendered homeless—would just be technically called “displaced.”

Jerry Fowler: Or internally displaced peoples—IDPs. In terms of the people that you talked to, some reports have suggested that the attitude towards the agreement among the part of Darfuris is breaking down along ethnic lines. The rebel who signed it, Minni Minnawi, is from the Zaghawa group, and the most notable holdout, Abdul Wahid, is from the Fur group. Did you find that kind of ethnic split developing among the Darfurians?

John Prendergast: We very conscientiously went and visited with different groups of the three main ethnic groups of Sudan—the Masaalit, the Fur and the Zaghawa—and found that view of opposition to the current version of this peace agreement to be uniform, even those that were of the same ethnic group as Minni Minnawi, the guy who signed the agreement. Everyone we met; we did not meet one Zaghawa, displaced, or refugee person who was supportive of the agreement. They understood Minni’s signing, but did not support it and we were seeing, unfortunately, the fragmentation within the Zaghawa community and within Minni’s own faction. Since he signed, many of his commanders have left, splintered off, and said, “We do not agree with this signing. We do agree with the pressure that Minni was placed under to sign, and we just think that the agreement needs to be amended and improved before we can support it.” He is increasingly isolated in the sort of rebel ranks and does not have much popular support for it, as much as we can tell.

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Jerry Fowler: What is going to be the consequences of that because the conventional wisdom was that a peace agreement was a prerequisite for the United Nations approving a United Nations force to take over from the African Union? If the peace agreement falls apart, does that leave efforts to create a United Nations force in disarray? In more disarray than they already are?

John Prendergast: It is hard to imagine it getting worse, but it is, and I think yes, at some point you just have to say, “The strategy was wrong. The United States invested heavily for a minute by sending Deputy Secretary of State Bob Zoellick—who I think is finished today; it is his last day in office—he went and spent a few days out there, got at least enough of a concession out of the government of Sudan to get one of the rebel factions on board, and then we basically walked away, and he has now resigned of course, and there is nobody that has taken his place as sort of the lead element of the United States, and the United States is so important diplomatically in the Sudanese context, so the vacuum that leaves means that the entire diplomatic strategy with respect to support for the peace deal has been wandering, meandering since then. How do you rescue it? Well, the United Nation Secretary General’s Special Representative said the other day that there needs to be some type of amendment to this, improvements to this peace agreement, otherwise pretty much everyone in Darfur has a problem with the fact that the Janjaweed are not going to be disarmed, so there has to be some enhancement to the agreement, and then you can start to build a process, getting the concessions, but it is almost unimaginable right now Jerry because within the absence of any United States role, who can bring leverage on Khartoum to get them to extract the concession necessary to allow for more external verification of the Janjaweed? Without that kind of support, then you are not going to have enough for consensual position within the country to allow for a United Nations force. We are far away from a situation which would allow for the implementation of this agreement and allow for the deployment of a United Nations force. We are really far away, and the red alert has been sounding now for quite some time, and I think people are finally hearing it.

Sudan: Neglected East Upbeat on Government Talks

From Reuters

Talks to end a long-simmering insurgency in Sudan's remote but economically important eastern region moved a step forward on Thursday, delegates to a confidence-building conference said.

The government sponsored meeting was held to solicit the views of delegates from under-developed eastern Sudan to help bolster peace talks with eastern rebels currently taking place neighbouring Eritrea.

"We will support the east, not just for itself ... but for the whole of Sudan," Sudan's Second Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha said in his key-note speech, in which he pledged to develop the region.

"We applaud all who take part ... we applaud our brothers in Eritrea," he added.

Eastern delegates welcomed the speech and the conference as a sign that the Khartoum government acknowledged problems of underdevelopment in their homeland, but said it remained to be seen whether the government would act on its pledges.

"What they're saying is good. But all the time, what they are saying is not the same as what they are doing ... His speech was a good start," said Mahmoud Ghander, a member of the Beja Congress Party who had come to monitor the conference.

[edit]

"We want the government to include us in power-sharing (and) wealth. We want development. The government says it will do this. We want to bring our sons who are carrying guns and the government closer together," eastern delegate Mohamed Khan said.

Uganda: Gov't Will Meet Anyone LRA Send to Talks

From Reuters

A Ugandan delegation on its way to Sudan for talks with Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels will prove its commitment to peace by meeting whoever the insurgents send, the government said on Thursday.

Negotiations with the rebels scheduled for Wednesday failed to start when the north Ugandan rebel movement said it would not send its leaders to the talks in Juba, capital of south Sudan.

"Our delegation will travel to Juba and meet whoever is there, if that is what it takes to show the world we are serious about peace," Ugandan government spokesman Robert Kabushenga said, without detailing when the team would leave Kampala.

Uganda wants either LRA leader Joseph Kony or his deputy Vincent Otti to attend the talks in person.

Both men are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and analysts say the fear of arrest could have prevented them from attending.

South Sudan's vice president Riek Machar, who has spearheaded mediation to halt the two-decade-old civil war in northern Uganda, was optimistic the talks would occur.

"The talks are going to take place. The Ugandan delegation has been ready since last Friday ... let them digest it and they will come," Machar said, referring to the LRA team composition.

Darfur: A Dying Peace Deal

An op-ed by John Prendergast in The Boston Globe

This is the first time in my 20 years of work in Africa's war zones that I can remember meeting people so opposed to their own peace deal. They are not opposed to peace, to be sure. They are opposed to specific provisions in the Abuja agreement that would leave them vulnerable to Janjaweed predation and land-grabbing. The key issue in Darfur is security, and that primarily means Janjaweed disarmament, or at best neutralization. Local confidence in Janjaweed neutralization requires independent, external verification, and responsibility for that in the Darfur Peace Agreement rests with the African Union force now on the ground in Darfur, which openly admits it cannot do the job. The situation demands a transition to a UN force with a stronger mandate than the current African Union mission, but the government of Sudan opposes a UN force of any kind.

As it stands, the deal thus hinges entirely on the Sudanese government's willingness to disarm the Janjaweed -- something Khartoum has disingenuously pledged to do many times before (including to both Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice) and something it will not do because the Janjaweed are the cornerstone of regime security in Darfur.

And it is not just the war's victims who understand the reality of the situation. An African Union officer on the ground told me, ``The government of Sudan will not disarm the Janjaweed as long as there are rebels. Without UN verification, it won't happen." President Idriss Déby of Chad also said that the holdout rebel factions would sign the Darfur Peace Agreement if these same security conditions were met: ``The population of Darfur doesn't trust the government of Sudan," he told me. ``They need the UN as a guarantor of the agreement."

For the past six years, the United States and the European Union have pursued an incentives-based strategy to try to change Sudan's behavior. Khartoum pocketed each incentive while state-sponsored violence continued in Darfur.

It is time for serious pressure. The United States should tell regime officials it will work multilaterally to impose targeted sanctions, help the war crimes investigations of the International Criminal Court, and support the divestment movement that seeks to have companies stop doing business with Sudan.

The regime in Khartoum has taken the measure of the international community and believes it will face no consequence for continuing to support the Janjaweed and blocking a UN peacekeeping mission. As one high-ranking Sudanese government official brazenly told me this week, ``The United Nations Security Council has threatened us so many times, we no longer take it seriously." That state of impunity and arrogance is dangerous to the international system and deadly to the people of Darfur.

Darfur: Factional Fighting Displaces Thousands

From IRIN

Clashes between rival factions of a rebel group in Sudan's western region of Darfur have displaced 8,000 civilians in the past 10 days, United Nations emergency coordinator Jan Egeland said on Tuesday, reiterating his call for the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force in the war-ravaged area.

Rivalries between the two factions of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) have been exacerbated by differences over a peace deal signed by one of the groups with the government in May.

"It is heartbreaking to see that what the SLA groups had rightfully accused the Janjawid [government-backed militia] of doing, they are now doing themselves to the civilian population caught in the crossfire," Egeland told a news conference in New York. Government forces were reportedly supporting the attacks against the splinter faction and humanitarian workers throughout Darfur were being attacked "on an almost daily basis".

The Darfur peace deal was signed by the Sudanese government and one of the three main rebel groups, the SLA faction headed by Minni Minnawi. Abdelwahid Mohamed al-Nur's faction of the SLA, with the strongest support base among the Fur - the largest ethnic group in Darfur - refused to sign, claiming it did not fulfil his key demands. Fighting between the two SLA factions, as well as targeted attacks against the African Union, which mediated the peace talks, has flared since.

"In Darfur, security is non-existent for the civilian population and non-existent for humanitarian workers," said Egeland. "I have also received reports that the government is using white helicopters, the same colour that AMIS [the African Union Mission in Sudan] and the United Nations is using. This is a violation of international principles and poses a direct threat to UN and non-governmental organisation staff who normally [use] white helicopters and are neutral and impartial and should not be attacked," he added.

A member of CARE staff had been killed in the massive Kalma refugee camp, a UN World Food Programme convoy ambushed and looted a few days ago in South Darfur, while the abduction of a national staff member and mounting security concerns had forced Oxfam to suspend operations in two of its six offices in North Darfur earlier this week, Egeland said.

He said AMIS lacked the capacity to effectively protect civilians or provide adequate security for humanitarian operations. "We need a UN force on the ground (...) It is completely unsustainable the way it is now," he added.

Darfur: SLM’s Minawi Nominated for Senior Assistant to the President

From the Sudan Tribune/AP

Sudan has taken the first toward appointing a Darfur rebel leader as head of the administration that will run the western region once peace has been restored.

The Sudan Liberation Army, the only rebel group that signed the Darfur Peace Agreement on May 5, nominated its leader, Minni Minnawi, to the post of senior assistant to Sudan’s president in meeting with a presidential adviser on Tuesday night, state media reported.

Once endorsed by President Omar al-Bashir — considered a formality — the position will make Minnawi the head of what will be the Darfur Authority, the administration that will run Darfur as an autonomous part of Sudan once the terms of the peace accord have been implemented.

"This is a historic day for our country," Samani al-Wasilah, the state minister for foreign affairs, told the official Sudan Media Center after the SLA delegation handed the nomination to presidential adviser Majzoub Khalifa. "Sons of the homeland have come together to cement the pillars of peace and work together to implement the Darfur Peace Accord."

But the DPA is in trouble. It has failed to stop the fighting, and its provision for the disarmament of militia has not been implemented. People continue to report killings, rapes and kidnappings to the United Nations, and refugees continue to arrive at Darfur’s camps for displaced people.

The UN chief envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, expressed "concern" Wednesday about the ongoing harassment of civilians and attacks, but he did not blame any specific group.

Pronk told reporters in Khartoum that even the rebels who do not support the May 5 accord — such as a breakaway faction of the SLA and the Justice and Equality Movement — were obliged to observe the cease-fire signed in 2004.

Minnawi himself told reporters in Cairo on Tuesday that the only achievement of the DPA was that the cease-fire was holding in some places.

"(In) some of the area now, there is a cease-fire 100 percent. The government respected the cease-fire and also our troops are respecting the cease-fire," he said.

Speaking before the Tuesday night meeting, Minnawi said he would accept the nomination if it were made, and that he would soon return to Sudan. He did not give a date.

After the president has endorsed Minnawi’s appointment, it will have to be ratified by Sudan’s parliament, but this is considered a mere procedure.

Darfur: Escalating Tribal Tensions Fuel New Attacks

From Reuters

Rape, killing and looting are increasing as tribal tensions escalate in Sudan's troubled Darfur province, the United Nations' top envoy to the country said on Wednesday, despite a peace deal he had helped broker.

U.N. envoy Jan Pronk described an attack by a rebel faction led by Abdel Wahed Mohammed al-Nur, whose members mostly come from the Fur tribe, on a group of women refugees to illustrate his point.

"They were tied to a tree, beaten, forced to eat donkey dung, raped in turn for three days by 30 men who had accused the women of espionage because they were married to Zaghawa men," Pronk told reporters, referring to the Zaghawa tribe.

"That means civilians are being attacked and the tension becomes of a tribal character. That is especially what we wanted to stop with the peace agreement," Pronk added.

Pronk said the account had not been verified, but that the victims should be believed. A recent U.N. report also cites rising tribal tensions in some refugee camps.

Representatives for Nur, who leads a splinter faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), could not immediately be reached for comment.

Darfur: Relief International Aid Worker Killed

From Relief International

A relief worker with the U.S.-based global humanitarian organization Relief International (RI) was killed Wednesday as a result of an armed attack on a Relief International vehicle.

Hassan Ahmad Idris, a Sudanese agricultural officer, was one of two national staff who, along with a driver, were on a regular field mission in the state of North Darfurwhen their vehicle was stopped by armed robbers. Idris, 23, was shot by the assailants and died immediately. One of the robbers has been arrested and is in police custody.

“We are deeply saddened by this tragic news,” says Dr. Farshad Rastegar, CEO of Relief International. “Hassan Idris was a dedicated humanitarian and a hardworking staff member who was greatly loved and respected by all his colleagues. As a key member of RI’s livelihoods program, he was instrumental in helping displaced Darfurians in the most remote areas regain access to food and economic security.”

With more than 100 staff members working in Darfur, Relief International is a major provider of primary health, reproductive health, food security, livelihoods and protection services in Darfurto over 350,000 vulnerable and displaced civilians. Relief International has temporarily suspended operations in the Kebkabiya region where the incident took place while it reviews the security conditions in the area. Relief International is continuing programs in other regions and remains committed to delivering essential humanitarian services in Darfur to assist civilians who have been affected by the conflict.

Darfur: Further Engagement With Sudan Needed on UN Force

From the UN News Service

Misunderstandings between the Government of Sudan and the international community concerning a proposed United Nations mission in Darfur must be cleared up if the peace agreement is meant to support is to be successful, the world organization’s top peacekeeping official said today.

“There was not enough engagement,” Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, told the press after briefing the Security Council on his discussions with Sudanese President Omar al Bashir and other African leaders on the margins of the African Union (AU) Summit meeting held in Banjul earlier this month.

In his talks with President al Bashir in Banjul, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that there was agreement on the need to immediately strengthen the AU mission in Darfur (AMIS) and to consolidate the peace accord in that region, which has seen scores of thousands of people killed and over 2 million displaced.

However, the Sudanese President’s agreement on the deployment of a UN force, which peacekeeping officials have said was needed by January 2007 to fully implement the peace accord, was not secured in the talks, Mr. Guéhenno said, although progress had been made in dispelling any notion that such a force would have any “colonial” or other hidden objectives.

“The international community is interested in Darfur because it is interested in helping the people of Sudan and the Government of Sudan in establishing the authority of the State and peace and security throughout the territory,” the peacekeeping chief said he stressed.

Mr. Guéhenno also emphasized that further engagement with the Government was needed. “I think we need to continue that discussion, because clearly the Government of Sudan has to be a part of the solution.”

In any case, he said it was important to strengthen AMIS and make sure that the situation in Darfur does not deteriorate in the next six months, and for that reason he said he had highlighted to the Council the importance of a conference aimed at supporting the AU mission, to be held on 18 July in Brussels.

Darfur: Moscow Letting Khartoum Get Away With Murder

An op-ed by Georgette Gagnon, deputy director of the Africa division at Human Rights Watch, in The Moscow Times

The Darfur Peace Agreement, barely three months old, is already in tatters, victim of a flawed process, the recalcitrance of Sudan's government and rebel groups and a dearth of international support for its implementation. The conflict is bleeding into neighboring Chad, where Janjaweed militias and Chadian rebels in the volatile border zone have displaced some 50,000 Chadians from their homes.

After almost three cruel years of human suffering and loss, the tragedy of Darfur could actually get worse. Humanitarian agencies, reeling from increased attacks on their staff and convoys, are losing access to hundreds of thousands who need their assistance. Fears are mounting that Darfur's crisis could spread beyond eastern Chad and into the Central African Republic, sparking a truly regional disaster.

All of this is well known to the G8 leaders. But despite strong words from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and some Western leaders, the group has done little to end the crisis and has entirely failed to put sufficient pressure on Khartoum to end its scorched earth campaign against the people of Darfur. In fact, precisely the opposite is happening: The Sudanese government continues to receive backing from a number of countries, including Russia.

As a major supplier of arms to Khartoum and an ally on the UN Security Council, Russia's political cover permits the Sudanese government to pursue its abusive military and political agenda in western Sudan with impunity. If Darfur's civilians are to be rescued, Russia must stop facilitating the Sudanese government's war crimes and throw its full weight behind measures to help the people of Darfur.

Most urgent is the transition of the 7,000-member African Union force now in Darfur into a larger, more robust UN force, with African troops forming the core. Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir has repeatedly refused to give Khartoum's consent to a UN force, despite requests from the African Union, the Arab League and the Security Council.

As chair of the G8, Russia can and should intervene with Khartoum with a very clear message: G8 leaders want Sudan to accept the urgent deployment of a UN force in Darfur. Russia should step up and ensure Sudan's leadership hears, understands and complies with that message.

Putin must loudly and clearly affirm the assessment of the UN under-secretary general for peacekeeping operations that the situation in Darfur requires at least 17,000 troops with the rapid response capabilities, military air assets and resources to stop attacks on civilians.

These UN troops must have a muscular mandate under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to use "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. Without this robust mandate, the UN mission may prove ineffectual.

Finally, Russia must tell Khartoum it will no longer block strong measures by the Security Council against Sudan, such as tougher and broader sanctions and an arms embargo expanded to cover all of Sudan, not just Darfur, if Khartoum continues to block the deployment of a UN force.

Khartoum has resisted every effort to stop the killing in Darfur. But if Khartoum knows Russia will no longer provide it with a diplomatic shield, el-Bashir's objections to a UN force will disappear. Almost three years of failing to confront Sudan has wrought unbearable damage on civilians in Darfur and eastern Chad and cost the lives of many. Further delay will only serve to drive the death toll higher. It's time for Moscow to stop letting Khartoum get away with murder.

Uganda: LRA Rebels Snub Talks/ICC Warrants Not Withdrawn

From the BBC [It was earlier reported that Uganda was seeking a waiver of ICC warrants for the LRA but that appears not to have been the case]

Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have refused to send their top leaders to peace talks with the Ugandan government due to start in Sudan.

[edit]

In an attempt to persuade the rebels to send more senior delegates, South Sudan's Vice-President Riak Machar, the chief negotiator in the proposed peace process, travelled to their base near the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But the BBC's Jonah Fisher in Juba says he is returning without any of the top five leaders.

Our correspondent says there are now question marks over whether the government will attend to the talks that were due to start on Wednesday.

Mr Machar was hoping to convince the rebels to send at least one senior LRA commander to Juba, he says.

But after keeping him waiting for five days, the LRA leader refused to meet him.

[edit]

Meanwhile, the ICC says the Ugandan government has not asked for the withdrawal of arrest warrants for the rebel leaders during a meeting on Wednesday.

The talks are considered northern Uganda's best chance for peace in years, but the ICC insists the warrants still hold.

"The government of Uganda did not ask for any withdrawal of the warrants of arrest. The arrest warrants remain in effect," the ICC's prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said in a statement after meeting Uganda's security minister, Amama Mbabazi.

"It is the view of the office of the prosecutor and the government of Uganda that justice and peace have worked together thus far and can continue to work together," he continued.