Darfur: Peace Deal Has Rekindled War

From the Guardian

Hawa Salih Ali sits on the sand with one of her grandchildren, their heads protected from the broiling sun by plastic sheeting draped across wooden poles. Around them sit thousands of other displaced people, the latest victims of Darfur's three-year-old tragedy.

Hawa Salih fled her village once before, forced out when Janjaweed militia backed by the Sudanese government attacked the area because it harboured rebel fighters. The war moved on to other parts of this huge region of western Sudan, and two years ago she and her family felt safe enough to go home and restart their lives.

Now they are homeless again, forced out this time by the very rebels who defended them before. Worse still, it happened after a peace deal was signed in May in a heavily trumpeted ceremony, which Hilary Benn, Britain's international development secretary, helped to broker along with top US and African Union negotiators.

Instead of bringing peace, the deal has only rekindled a war.

"There were three days of attacks," says the old woman. "On the first day they came into the village and killed some of our young people. The next day they took all our livestock. The third day they told us to leave or we would all be killed." Six hundred families of Diken in Korma district set off on foot on a 50-mile march eastwards to El Fasher, the capital of north Darfur. It took them five days, frightened, parched and hungry.

"Minni Minnawi [a leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army] was protecting us three years ago. Now he's started attacking us. We don't know why the Zaghawa are doing this," she says. Minni Minnawi is from the Zaghawa tribe and is leader of what used to be the main force fighting the government in Khartoum. Hawah Sali is a Tunjur, a branch of the Fur, the region's largest tribe, hence the name Darfur, which means "land of the Fur".

A few yards away in the vast new settlement of flimsy shelters that have sprouted in the desert since the peace deal, Moussa Adam Suleiman is tending his two donkeys. The people in his village, also in Korma district, managed to flee with their precious livestock. He put his five children on the animals, and he and his wife trudged beside them, carrying a few possessions.

"In the past Minni controlled the area and the government couldn't get in," he says. "Now he's with the government and they are killing people together. It has never been so bad before." Asked why things have turned out like this, he blames the peace deal. "That's why we're here. I don't know the details of what's in the agreement. But it's just created problems."

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The attacks on the ground are now being matched by a furious struggle for hearts and minds in Darfur's dozens of camps for displaced people. Those in favour of the peace deal and those against are trying to control opinion by any means.

"We used to take these camps as separate entities," says Thomas Linde, the director of protection for civilians in the United Nation's Khartoum office. "But since May one of the most marked tendencies is how networks have grown. Their capacity to mobilise people around topics in the Darfur peace agreement is amazing. You can't talk to young leaders in the camps without mobile phones ringing as they talk to colleagues in other camps."

The propaganda campaign has gone cyber. The National Redemption Front has already opened a website, where it constantly denounces the peace deal.

These new fissures on the rebel side plus the split over whether to sign the peace deal have added new complexity to Darfur. The old template of an Arab versus African conflict that prompted thousands of people in the west to denounce genocide and ethnic cleansing now looks even less accurate.

The confusion is producing ironies in the west as well. While Britain has joined the Bush administration in criticising Khartoum for refusing to accept UN troops in Darfur, it now emerges that Britain is working with the Sudanese government to try to sell the peace deal in the camps.

Hilary Benn's department is funding Simon Haselock and Andrew Harker, two British experts with Bosnian experience, to help develop a media campaign extolling the peace agreement. Although they are attached to the African Union, which is in charge of monitoring the faltering peace deal, they will be using Sudanese government resources.

A programme on the deal's merits will be broadcast on three state-owned radio stations, and focus groups will be invited to listen to them and discuss the topics raised.

Theatre groups will go round the camps, doing role-playing to say why the deal's opponents are wrong. Whether this will be enough to change the doubters' minds remains to be seen.

Diplomats are also offering talks in the hope of getting the non-signers to think again.

Darfur: Arab League Chief to Visit Sudan

From Reuters

The head of the Cairo-based Arab League will travel to Sudan on Monday for talks with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir over war-ravaged Darfur, a League official said on Saturday.

The trip by Secretary-General Amr Moussa comes amid a global diplomatic standoff over Darfur, where roughly 200,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million have been displaced since 2003 in fighting between rebels, government forces and militias.

"He (Moussa) will be going to Sudan. He is leaving on Monday and coming back on Tuesday night. The purpose of the trip is to discuss issues pertaining to Darfur," Hesham Youssef, an aide to Moussa, told Reuters.

Sudan is under heavy international pressure to allow a 20,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force to replace 7,000 poorly funded, ill-equipped African Union troops tasked with monitoring a shaky ceasefire in west Sudan.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso arrived in Sudan on Saturday to try to convince Khartoum to let in the peacekeepers.

Arab diplomats have said that Egypt and the Arab League, of which Sudan is a member, were trying to persuade Khartoum to accept a U.N. Security Council resolution that proposes sending U.N. troops to Darfur to restore law and order.

They said they want Sudan to accept a U.N. deployment to avoid the kind of confrontation that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Bashir has so far refused to admit U.N. peacekeepers, likening them to an invasion force bent on regime change in Khartoum. Analysts say the Sudanese government is also worried that some officials could be arrested on war crimes charges.

The Arab League's Youssef declined to specify what kind of message Moussa would deliver to Bashir, or whether he would try to exert any pressure on Sudan over U.N. forces.

Western leaders, some African presidents, and international humanitarian groups say a robust U.N. force is the only way to stem violence in Darfur. The mandate for African forces, extended earlier this month, expires at the end of the year.

But not all Arab countries have publicly joined the call for U.N. forces, with the 22-member Arab League labelling the U.N. Darfur resolution as "hasty".

"It was taken in a hasty manner without adequate consultations ... It could have been done in a much better way. But we have to see how we will deal with this issue," Youssef said, adding that the Arab League believed U.N. resolutions should be respected in principle.

"So we have to see how we are going to deal with this Security Council resolution despite all what we see as shortcomings ... We still have to deal with it."

Egypt, which says any U.N. force must have the consent of the Khartoum government, blamed Darfur rebels on Thursday for insecurity in western Sudan.

But in an interview with the pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit also said Egypt was willing to send troops to Darfur to take part in a peacekeeping force "if Sudan wants that and accepts the presence of international forces on its land".

Darfur: Still No Visa for Natsios

From Reuters

Sudan appears to be balking at granting a visa to the new U.S. special envoy for Sudan, Andrew Natsios, and is restricting the movement of all U.S. officials to Khartoum, the State Department said on Friday.

Relations have deteriorated sharply in recent months between Washington and Sudan, which is under growing international pressure to allow a U.N. force into its war-torn Darfur region.

"He (U.S. special envoy) has not been granted a visa yet. Certainly, I think Andrew (Natsios) would very much want to travel to Khartoum. We are having some difficulties now with the Sudanese government," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who declined to provide specific details.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said last weekend his government would impose a travel ban on U.S. officials confining them to Khartoum. That would rule out any visits to Darfur region.

"They've placed certain restrictions on our ability to travel outside a 25-kilometer (16-mile) limit (from Khartoum), I believe," said McCormack.

He added, "We don't think that it should be in place for anybody in our mission there ... it makes it harder for everybody to do their work."

Darfur: U.N. Experts Recommend Sanctions

From the AP

A team of experts has recommended that the U.N. Security Council impose sanctions on top Sudanese government officials for violations of peace efforts in the war-ravaged Darfur region, diplomats said Friday.

The list, which is secret, was sent to the Security Council with an Aug. 31 report that all sides in the Darfur conflict continue to commit "blatant violations" of an arms embargo. It said the rebels appear to have gained strength since March, while the government continues to supply weapons to Arab militias known as the Janjaweed.

Qatar's U.N. Ambassador Nassir Al-Nassir said the new list of names forwarded to the Security Council includes "top people in the government." The number of people on the list also was not known.

Al-Nassir questioned the use of imposing sanctions on government officials at a time when the United Nations is negotiating with it over the expansion of an African Union force trying to stem continued violence in Darfur. The Security Council has demanded that the U.N. take over peacekeeping in Darfur, but Sudan has refused.

"I don't know how we can solve the problem if we accuse the government," Al-Nassir said. "How can we ask them to cooperate when we put them on the list?"

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The latest report noted that the Sudanese government has not implemented any of the financial sanctions against the four called for in the Security Council resolution. The document said Sudan's government has "willfully avoided implementing this resolution."

The government continues to arm the Janjaweed, which have upgraded their weapons from "horses, camels and AK-47's to land cruisers, pickup trucks and RPGs," or rocket-propelled grenades, the report said.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said sanctions might help win Sudan's approval for an overhauled peacekeeping force in Darfur.

"One could make the argument that consideration of sanctions might have a positive effect on reaching agreement with the government of Sudan," Bolton said. "We've never had any hesitation about seeking sanctions when the evidence was there against anybody who committed the offenses that the panel of experts is studying."

Darfur: Congress Approves $20 Million for AU

A press release

Legislation authored by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) to provide $20 million in emergency aid to African Union (AU) peacekeeping forces in Sudan passed the Senate today as part of a larger Department of Defense (DOD) spending bill that will soon be signed into law by the President.

"With the severity of this situation growing worse, and as the government of Sudan continues to block the deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force to Darfur, the African Union force remains the front line of security," said Senator Reid. "Now that the African Union has decided to increase its force and extend its stay in Darfur until the end of the year, this legislation will be a good step towards strengthening the African Union Mission in Sudan."

"In August, I met with AU commanders in Eastern Chad where thousands of Sudanese refugees have fled from the violence that has engulfed their country," Obama said. "It quickly became clear to me that bolstering the AU mission is critical to short-term efforts to protect innocent civilians and allow humanitarian operations in the region. While we have so much more to do to stop the slaughter of innocents, this funding, combined with recent pledges of assistance from European governments, is an important step in the right direction."

Reid and Obama's amendment provides $20 million in emergency military assistance to the AU peacekeeping force. The AU is the only international force in Darfur working to prevent a further deterioration of a situation where 400,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes.

Darfur: Khartoum Strong-Arms, Negotiates to Retain Control

The latest from Eric Reeves

As a number of observers have remarked, Khartoum’s genocidaires have much to fear from a robust UN deployment in Darfur, one that would further undermine their ruthless arrogation of Sudanese national wealth and power. Moreover, despite the reassurances given these brutal men by the UN, the International Criminal Court should certainly have been able to conduct sufficiently thorough investigations, even without direct access to Darfur, to issue warrants for the arrest of most senior National Islamic Front officials. And if these men were to answer in The Hague for their actions of the past 17 years, all would certainly receive multiple life sentences for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

Men like President Omar al-Bashir, Vice President Ali Osman Taha, Defense Minister (and former Interior Minister) Abdel Rahmin Mohamed Hussein, Major General Saleh Abdalla Gosh (head of the feared National Security and Intelligence Service), Presidential advisors Nafie Ali Nafie and Gutbi al-Mahdi, Interior Minister Elzubier Bashir Taha, Major General Ismat Zain al-Din (director of operations, Sudanese Armed Forces), and many others are well aware of their guilt and the overwhelming evidence that could be assembled in an international tribunal. Many already stand “indicted” by a UN Panel of experts (January 2006) and should be subject to sanctions (per UN Security Council Resolution 1591 [March 2005]); virtually all the others are certainly among the 51 names referred to the International Criminal Court by the UN Security Council on the basis of a January 2005 report by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Darfur.

These are the same men adamantly refusing to accept a UN force, and commandeering all of Sudan’s international diplomatic leverage in their unrelenting effort.

The character of the vicious security cabal that is the National Islamic Front was well captured in the opening sentences of recent Congressional testimony by Roger Winter, who has for a quarter of a century worked tirelessly to achieve a just peace in Sudan, most recently in his capacity as Special Representative on Sudan of the Deputy Secretary of State:

“Sudan’s National Congress Party is controlled by an intellectually-capable, radically-committed, conspiratorial and compassionless nucleus of individuals, long referred to as the National Islamic Front (NIF). In the seventeen years since they came to power by coup to abort an incipient peace process, they have consistently defied the international community and won. As individuals, the NIF has never paid a price for their crimes. Almost all of them are still in important positions. The NIF core is a competent cadre of men who have an agenda, the pursuit of which has killed millions of Sudanese and uprooted and destroyed the lives of millions more. While their agenda is radically ideological, it is equally about personal power and enrichment.”

It is not difficult to see why such a regime feels as though it is fighting for its survival; and there is certainly nothing these men will not do to keep the UN out of Darfur---and to ensure that security throughout the region remains solidly under their savage control. There are of course huge swaths of Darfur that are controlled by rebel groups that did not sign the ill-conceived Abuja peace agreement of May 2006; but fighting and banditry in these areas have made them too insecure for humanitarian operations. The inevitable result is vast, ongoing human displacement, as well as genocidal attrition among the badly weakened non-Arab or African tribal populations that have been so relentlessly targeted by Khartoum’s violence.

Darfur: The Responsibility to Protect

An op-ed by William G. O'Neill in the Christian Science Monitor [O'Neill co-authored the Brookings Institution's "Protecting Two Million Internally Displaced: the Successes and Shortcomings of the African Union in Darfur."]

The UN Security Council's recent passage of a resolution to establish a UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur could mark an important break with the past, one largely overlooked in the commentary following the resolution's adoption. Most news stories and analyses have focused on whether the government of Sudan's "consent" is required before any UN troops may enter Darfur.

Little noticed, however, is the resolution's reference to paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 United Nations World Summit outcome document. These paragraphs describe what is known as the "responsibility to protect," which world leaders at last year's UN General Assembly unanimously endorsed.

The responsibility to protect means that if a country cannot or will not protect its citizens from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or ethnic cleansing, then it must accept support or assistance from other nations to end the violence. While the sovereignty of countries to regulate their own internal affairs is respected, it is conditional and not absolute. When peaceful means are exhausted and leaders of a UN member state are "manifestly failing to protect their populations," then other states have the responsibility to take collective action through the Security Council.

Resolution 1706 is the first time that the Security Council has referred to the responsibility to protect in a specific country situation where armed UN peacekeepers are to be deployed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. This chapter allows the council to take whatever military means necessary to restore international peace and security.

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The Security Council has already put Sudan's government on notice. The crucial question is: What happens if Sudan does not "consent?" If it says no, the Security Council has a choice. It can find troops from countries willing to send their young men and women into a hostile environment, or it can do nothing. As difficult as the first option might be, if the UN does not act, the "responsibility to protect" will become an empty phrase, as meaningless in the 21st century as "never again" was in the 20th.

Darfur: EU's Barroso Heads to Sudan

From Reuters

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and a top EU aid official will go to Sudan this weekend to try to convince Khartoum to allow U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur.

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Barroso, who is president of the EU's executive body, and EU Aid Commissioner Louis Michel are due to meet Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Saturday evening in Khartoum, before travelling to Darfur on their two-day trip.

"We will try to show it is in his interest, as well as that of the international community, to allow a U.N. mission in Darfur," an EU official said.

The official said Bashir was key to solving the deadlock but getting China and Arab countries on board was also crucial.

China, which has veto power on the U.N. Security Council, is a major investor in Sudan. Western diplomats hope Arab countries will use their leverage with Sudan to win support for the U.N.

If Khartoum persists in its objections to any U.N. force in Darfur, the EU is likely to broach options, including keeping the mission under an AU hat while adding a U.N. component, said Africa analyst Tom Cargill at think-tank Chatham House.

However he said there was little chance of convincing Khartoum on that either.

"They do not want an effective peace-keeping force on the ground, so the branding does not matter that much," he said.

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A Sudanese diplomat in Brussels repeated Khartoum's opposition to a U.N. mission in Darfur.

"You cannot impose peace by force, otherwise the U.N. would be there for a thousand years," he told Reuters, adding that Khartoum would ask the EU to exert pressure on rebels who have not signed a peace deal reached in May.

Cargill said that the fact the EU had not followed Washington in calling the killings in Darfur a genocide may make Sudan's President more comfortable about the meeting with the EU envoys, but he doubted it would yield any concrete results.

The European Union says it is the main contributor to the African Union's mission in Darfur, with 242 million euros ($306.5 million) committed to the operation since 2004.

After visiting Sudan, the EU envoys will travel to Addis Ababa to meet the African Union's commission.

Darfur: Pronk Says U.N. Mission Unlikely

From the AP

Sending U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur is unlikely to take place soon, and the international community should instead push for the existing African Union mission to remain in the war-torn region indefinitely, the head of the U.N. in Sudan said Thursday.

A U.N. Security Council resolution calls for 20,000 peacekeepers to replace the ill-equipped and underfunded AU force that has done little to prevent escalating violence in Darfur. But the Sudanese president fiercely rejects the U.N. mission, and the United Nations cannot legally deploy in the region without his consent.

"I don't expect the government to accept a U.N. transition any time soon," Jan Pronk told The Associated Press.

"The international community should instead push for the African Union's mission to be prolonged and reinforced," Pronk said in an interview at the U.N. headquarters in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.

He called for the AU force to be extended indefinitely to prevent jeopardizing humanitarian work in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in three years of fighting.

Pronk said he was confident the Sudanese government would allow the African troops to stay on in Darfur, though for now Khartoum only has agreed to keeping them an extra three months.

He also urged the international community to change strategy and guarantee more funds to the AU, so it can implement peacekeeping without the constant pressure of diplomatic deadlines.

"Otherwise, we're shooting ourselves in the foot each time," he said. "Our first priority must be to help the people of Darfur."

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But Pronk said he didn't expect the Sudanese government to agree to that soon and said there was "no possibility" that the Security Council would pass a new resolution allowing U.N. peacekeepers to invade.

Earlier this week, Sudan's top official for Darfur said the government was willing to let a trickle of U.N. military advisers join the AU forces, describing it as "a third way" that could resolve the stand off between Khartoum and the United Nations.

Pronk said these discussions were now being settled and the first batch of 105 U.N. military advisers and dozens of police could be sent to Darfur "very soon." He hinted that their numbers could be increased "in a step by step process."

Meanwhile, the AU has pledged to boost its force by up to 4,000 troops. Some of the African soldiers would be immediately available, but the AU says it doesn't have the cash to send them in.

Pronk said there were reports that the AU force was so strapped for cash that some soldiers in Darfur were not being fed, and that patrols weren't going out because there was no gasoline for their armored vehicles.

The U.N. chief maintained that the Darfur Peace Agreement signed in May between the government and one rebel faction was "in a coma," an assessment that angers Khartoum but that Pronk says reflects the worsening humanitarian situation.

Both government forces and rebels have violated the cease-fire more than 70 times between May and August, and there were new violations in September since Khartoum launched a large scale offensive in northern Darfur, Pronk said.

The government has announced it created the Darfur Transitional Regional Authority, a makeshift organization meant to provide some of the power sharing demanded by rebels. But Pronk said both Khartoum and rebels were in "total noncompliance" with the peace deal.

He said that Khartoum and the rebels who signed the deal were barring other factions from joining the commission meant to monitor the cease-fire, and that the U.N. was barely granted an observer's status.

"We are being silenced, which is preposterous," Pronk said.

He also said Khartoum was making little effort at disarming the Janjaweed, a pro-goverment militia of Arab tribes accused of most of the atrocities against ethnic African villagers.

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The U.N. says it has reports that Janjaweed are holding some 7,000 people hostage in a detention camp in South Darfur, including women and children, asking for a ransom to let them leave safely. Other militia attacks on refugee camps have been reported across Darfur this week.

Darfur: US and UK Must End "Megaphone" Diplomacy

From Reuters

Britain and the United States must stop making threats over the crisis in Sudan's vast Darfur region because the government in Khartoum knows they can't back them up with action, a leading British diplomat said on Friday.

Mark Malloch Brown, Britain's outgoing United Nations' deputy secretary general, told the Independent newspaper London and Washington were isolated in their stance and they needed to tone down the rhetoric and build an international consensus.

"The megaphone diplomacy coming out of Washington and London: 'you damn well are going to let the U.N. deploy and if you don't beware the consequences' isn't plausible," he said in an interview published on Friday.

"So Tony Blair and George Bush need to get beyond this posturing and grandstanding.

"The Sudanese know we don't have troops to go in against a hostile Khartoum government; if Sudan opposes us there's no peace to keep anyway; you're in there to fight a war," he added. "It's just not a credible threat."

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Malloch Brown said the veiled threats left the Sudanese government free to portray themselves as the "victims of the next crusade after Iraq and Afghanistan".

What was instead needed was a carrot and stick package, backed by an international consensus, of incentives and sanctions that could be clearly understood by Khartoum.

He said Khartoum wanted normalised relations with Britain and the United States, the ability to use their new oil wealth, a supportive U.N. deployment and protection from the International Criminal Court.

"But in the other pocket there need to be sanctions. And those pluses and minuses need to be echoed not just by a group of Western leaders but by a much broader cross-section of countries that Sudan respects and trusts," he said.

He particularly noted efforts to bring China, a major oil client of Sudan, into the international coalition to bring pressure to bear on Khartoum.

In the meantime, the West should put its hands into its pockets and fill the $300 million shortfall in aid to the starving millions in Darfur, Malloch Brown urged.

Darfur: The Book Was Closed Too Soon on Peace

A post from Alex de Waal on the Guardian's Comment is Free

The immediate root of today's crisis in Darfur is the breakdown of the political process. Violence escalated after the peace talks, which ended in the Nigerian capital Abuja on 5 May, concluded with the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement by the Sudan government and one rebel faction, headed by Minni Minawi. Two groups - the Sudan Liberation Movement of Abdel Wahid al Nur (the largest group) and the Justice and Equality Movement - didn't sign, and the smouldering war promptly re-ignited.

The breakdown did not happen because the peace agreement was faulty, but because the political process was brought to an abrupt and premature end when Minawi signed. I was part of the African Union mediation team and was present in the final negotiating session when Wahid declared the DPA's security arrangements "acceptable" and the wealth-sharing provisions "95% acceptable." He stalled because his party was offered far fewer executive and legislative posts than it wanted, and because his group was given an ultimatum of signing without time to examine the options. The outstanding differences between him and Khartoum were small and could have been accommodated with modest flexibility on both sides.

The disaster of the DPA was that the book was closed on 5 May and those who failed to sign were shut out of any further formal negotiation. All the high-powered mediators left Abuja.

For a month, I stayed behind and continued to facilitate negotiations between Wahid and the Sudan government. We came agonisingly close to an agreement - had we found a formula for providing an additional $100m for immediate compensation for victims of the violence, I believe we might have closed the deal. But, prevented from revisiting the DPA's text, I had only the tiniest room for manoeuvre. Wahid did agree with Khartoum on a comprehensive ceasefire, including withdrawal of forces to designated zones of control, demilitarisation of displaced camps and humanitarian supply routes, restriction of the Janjaweed leading to ultimate disarmament, and much more robust mechanisms for monitoring and reporting violations. But that counted for naught when he was given the "take it or leave it" option on the whole package.

When that last-chance mediation failed, Khartoum insisted that the rebels who hadn't signed up should be expelled from the Darfur ceasefire commission. The AU's greatest error was to acquiesce in this decision, which has left its troops branded as pro-Khartoum by many Darfurians.

Sudan's government shoulders the greater part of the blame for today's violence on account of its perfidy and military aggressiveness. But it was correct in appreciating that, with only Minawi's signature, the DPA could not be implemented and could not bring peace.

We need to get back to negotiation. Step one is to reconstitute the Darfur ceasefire commission so that all the warring parties are represented. A good ceasefire agreement is the best measure to protect Darfurian civilians.

Step two is resuming dialogue towards an overall political settlement. This involves a credible negotiation to address the shortcomings of the DPA and also a patient and all-inclusive community dialogue to address the local issues that contributed to the war and mass killing. Diplomatic efforts are underway on both: they need political backing and time to succeed.

We should recognise that restoring stability to Darfur is a long task - at least seven to 10 years - and that this job is nine parts politics and community relations to one part force, or the threat of force. And while the Sudan government is the major cause of the tragedy, that government must also be a partner in finding a solution. The decision to keep AU peacekeepers until the end of the year gives us a breathing space. Let's tone down the rhetoric and focus on the politics and the practicalities.

How to Save Darfur

A piece by Peter Beinart in Time Magazine

There's only one way to save Darfur: tell Sudan it can either accept the U.N. force or face war against the world's most powerful military alliance. Though the U.N. can't fight its way into Darfur, NATO can. If it does, al-Bashir could end up following Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic and Liberia's Charles Taylor to a war-crimes trial at the Hague. Confronted with that prospect, al-Bashir might conclude that a U.N. peacekeeping force isn't so bad.

Unfortunately, genocidal dictators are generally not impressed by tough talk. Milosevic didn't abandon Bosnia until NATO bombed him for two weeks. He didn't abandon Kosovo until NATO began planning a ground invasion. No one knows al-Bashir's breaking point. To find it, NATO must first impose a no-fly zone over Darfur so Sudanese MiGs can't keep assisting Arab militias from the air. That's doable. A congressional expert estimates that it would require 12 to 18 fighter jets, probably French and American, based in neighboring Chad. If shooting down a few Sudanese planes (and thus eliminating much of the Sudanese air force) didn't make al-Bashir relent, NATO would probably have to bomb Khartoum. And while doing so, it would have to begin preparations for a ground invasion.

The very idea makes Western leaders break out in a cold sweat. Once again, genocide is coming at an inconvenient time. The U.S. military is buckling under the strain of Iraq. NATO has all it can handle in Afghanistan. Barely anyone wants the U.S. and its allies to attack another Muslim country--except for the black Muslims of Darfur, thousands of whom were seen this summer chanting "Welcome, welcome, U.S.A."

Yet a ground operation in Darfur is well within NATO's capacity. The newly created 25,000-member NATO Response Force, which reaches operational capacity this October, is made for situations like this. It can deploy in five days, fight its way into a hostile area, and stay for a month before needing to be resupplied. That would be long enough to decimate Darfur's militias and secure its refugee camps before handing the job over to U.N. peacekeepers.

So far, only the boldest politicians will even whisper about such things. It's easy to see why. NATO intervention would be aimed at saving Muslim lives, but that wouldn't stop al-Qaeda from screaming about the West's recolonization of the Islamic world. Bringing stability to a region as complicated and brutalized as Darfur could take years, if not decades. U.N. peacekeepers still patrol Kosovo today, and that's an easier case.

You could fill volumes detailing the geopolitical reasons America should abandon Darfur to its fate. The argument for military action, by contrast, rests on just two tarnished words. Last week a small crowd gathered in Kigali, Rwanda. "If you don't protect the people of Darfur today," said a man named Freddy Umutanguha, "never again will we believe you when you visit Rwanda's mass graves, look us in the eye and say 'Never again.'" Try offering a geopolitical answer to that.

Darfur: U.S. Weighs Moves Against Sudan Over U.N. Force

From the Washington Post - via POTP

The United States is considering a series of punitive steps if the Sudanese government fails to agree to a U.N. peacekeeping force to end the violence in Sudan's Darfur region, U.S. officials said yesterday. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signaled the new approach in a speech yesterday in which she demanded an immediate cease-fire and warned that Khartoum faces "a choice between cooperation and confrontation."

U.S. officials said the options under consideration include reimposing sanctions that had been eased when Sudan signed a peace agreement last year with southern rebels, as well as taking action against top Sudanese officials who have been implicated in what the United States has labeled acts of genocide in Darfur.

Another option that has received renewed consideration is establishing a "no-fly zone" over Darfur, mainly because the Sudanese military has restarted attacks. But there are practical obstacles to a no-fly zone, including the effect it may have on humanitarian missions, so officials said that decision is not imminent.

Although Rice's Washington speech to the African Society's National Summit on Africa held out the prospect of improved ties between the two countries, relations have worsened dramatically in recent weeks.

U.S. officials detained Sudan's deputy foreign minister at Dulles International Airport for several hours last week and also restricted the travel of Sudan's president, Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, and his entourage when he came to address the U.N. General Assembly. Bashir was so angry that when he returned to Khartoum, he announced restrictions on the travel of U.S. diplomatic personnel and official U.S. visitors.

U.S. officials suggest that the visa restrictions imposed on Bashir were a mistake, generated mainly because he got the visa on a Sunday afternoon in Havana, where the U.S. routinely issues restricted visas to Cuban diplomats. "There was no policy decision to restrict them," a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "I think they simply didn't reset the machines for non-Cubans."

A senior Sudanese diplomat scoffed at that explanation. "Such mistakes are becoming very common for our American friends," the diplomat said. He confirmed that deputy foreign minister Ali Ahmed Karti had been detained for several hours and that Bashir was upset at the restricted visas. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, he said U.S. diplomatic movements were being restricted because "reciprocity is one of the golden principles of diplomacy."

U.S. officials are still trying to figure out the practical aspects of Sudan's restrictions, including whether they will apply to diplomats or official visitors.

U.S. officials gave varied explanations for Karti's detention, which included that he was carrying cash in excess of $10,000 to finance Bashir's travels and that he turned up on a Homeland Security watch list because of his association with the Janjaweed, the marauding militias implicated in the Darfur violence.

Human rights groups say that Karti, though he now holds the title of state minister for foreign affairs, was the head of the Popular Defense Forces, a paramilitary group that fought alongside the Janjaweed during a campaign of terrorism that has resulted in as many as 450,000 deaths and has driven more than 2 million from their homes. Some experts have said they think he is on the secret list of 51 names referred by the United Nations to the International Criminal Court for possible prosecution for war crimes.

Darfur: CBC Presses Rice

From McClatchy

The Congressional Black Caucus urged the Bush administration Thursday to push China and moderate Arab nations to pressure Sudan into admitting a U.N. peacekeeping force to help end the violence and humanitarian crisis in its Darfur region.

The caucus made the suggestion to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill. It came a day after Rice warned in a speech that Sudan faces "a choice between cooperation and confrontation" if it doesn't allow U.N. forces in.

Bush has called ending the three-year-old conflict, which the United States considers genocide, a priority for his administration.

Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., a caucus member, said the group told Rice that the administration could apply more pressure to nations with major business and cultural connections with Sudan, pointing to China, Egypt and Jordan.

Last year, Beijing purchased half of Sudan's oil exports, which covered only 5 percent of China's ravenous oil appetite, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Chinese firms also are pouring billions of dollars into office and infrastructure projects in Sudan.

"Our feeling was there should be, whether it's quiet diplomacy, that the U.S. should tell China to tell (Sudanese President Omar Hassan) al-Bashir to stop what he is doing and stop putting out this so-called opposition to the United Nations coming," Payne said.

[edit]

Susan E. Rice, former assistant secretary of state for African affairs under President Clinton, said the world was rapidly approaching a "Kosovo moment" in Darfur.

"If we're serious about saving lives in Africa, as we are in Europe, we'd give the Sudanese government a short, time-limited ultimatum: Accept a U.N. force or face military action, perhaps airstrikes like in Kosovo."

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow hinted last week that there might be movement on Darfur. "There are behind-the-scenes, ongoing diplomatic efforts," he said.

Payne said he was confident that the White House would prevail. "The U.N. will be in Sudan by the end of the year. Period," he said.

Meanwhile, the 43-member Congressional Black Caucus is pursing its own diplomacy. Caucus members met Tuesday with China's U.S. ambassador, and with Arab League representatives Thursday.

"We believe that the Arab League can have an influence on the government of Sudan - as a matter of fact, all the influence in the world," Payne said. "We're saying to moderate Arab countries - Egypt, Jordan - that they can't sit by and allow the government of Sudan, where they have excellent relations with, to continue the killing."

Uganda: Kiir Ties to Save Peace Talks

From Reuters

The president of Southern Sudan has intervened to try and save Uganda's faltering peace process after rebels withdrew from talks aiming to end one of Africa's most vicious wars, local media said on Friday.

Southern Sudanese President Silva Kiir met in Juba with delegates representing the Ugandan government and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels throughout Thursday to try to break a deadlock that threatens their truce, the Ugandan media added.

Uganda and the LRA signed a truce last month that many hoped would bring an end to a brutal 20-year insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly 2 million.

But peace talks in the southern Sudanese capital, Juba, stalled this week, with both sides accusing each other of grave ceasefire violations.

The government said the LRA had failed to assemble at two meeting points agreed in the truce. The LRA said the Ugandan army was surrounding the meeting points -- using them to contain the rebels for a future military strike.

The breakdown in talks has disappointed non-governmental organisations, charities and human rights groups tracking the process closely in hope of peace. They urged donors to apply pressure to get both parties back to the negotiating table.

"Peace talks could completely disintegrate, yet the international community is responding with silence," wrote the International Crisis Group in a joint statement with various charities.

"We could be witnessing the collapse of the best chance we've had to end twenty years of brutal war."

The LRA's two-decade insurgency earned them notoriety for cruel attacks on civilians -- beating people to death, hacking limbs off survivors and kidnapping children for use as fighters and sex-slaves.

"The United States and other governments must apply pressure to help salvage these peace talks. The future of two million people in northern Uganda is hanging in the balance," the statement added.

Darfur: Gov't, SLA-Minnawi Clash in Khartoum

From the AP

Sudanese authorities and a former Darfur rebel group that had signed a peace agreement with the government clashed Thursday in an affluent neighborhood of the country's capital, the head of the U.N. in Sudan said.

Tensions between Sudanese authorities and the rebel faction, whose leader joined the government after signing the Darfur peace agreement in May, degenerated into an open shootout Thursday afternoon in Omdurman, a Khartoum neighborhood, said Jan Pronk, who leads the U.N.'s Sudanese mission.

"The situation in Darfur is becoming worse and worse, that it has now reached Khartoum is just another proof of how bad things are," Pronk said.

Pronk said at least one person was killed in the shootout, but other reports would not confirm if someone died.

An official with the rebel faction of the Sudanese Liberation Movement said the clash erupted when Sudanese security forces raided an SLM office and took away two members of the group. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said in retaliation, SLM members raided a nearby police station and took several police officers hostage.

The Sudanese government and police could not immediately be reached for comment.

The SLM is the only rebel group to have signed the May peace agreement. Its leader, Minni Minnawi, was sworn in last month in Khartoum as an assistant to President Omar al-Bashir, a post that also would eventually make him the head of a semiautonomous government in Darfur under the peace deal.

Sudan: Independent UN Expert Says Human Rights Continue to be Violated

From the UN News Center

Sudanese Government forces, militia and armed groups such as rebel factions and opposition from neighbouring Chad continue to violate life in Sudan, particularly in the Darfur region, an independent United Nations rights expert has told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Sima Samar, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Sudan, said discrimination and marginalization of certain groups continued and basic rights such as access to food, shelter, health and education were not guaranteed, according to a press release from the Council.

The right to life continued to be violated, in particular in Darfur. The perpetrators were Government forces, militia and armed groups such as rebel factions and Chadian opposition, while rape and sexual violence against women also continued, again especially in Darfur, she said in a report delivered yesterday.

In response, Omar Dahab Mohamed said Sudan would continue to fully cooperate with Ms. Samar as well as with the numerous other Special Procedures and with all the work of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

However, he said Sudan wondered about the real motivation of one or two States that were using international forums to put pressure on the country to affect negatively its fight against poverty.

Representatives from over 30 countries and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) made statements during the debate before the 47-member Council moved on to discuss the human rights situation in Belarus and a report on the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.

Adrian Severin, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus, said that the human rights situation in the country had deteriorated during 2005 and so far this year to such an extent that the elements usually defining a dictatorship could be seen.

Civil and political rights were limited, cultural rights were ignored, and economic and other rights were enhanced to reward for obedience, he said, adding that the Government had refused any cooperation with the Rapporteur and this was not in coherence with the UN Charter.

Sudan: Gov't, Eastern Rebels Sign Security Deal

From Reuters

The Sudanese government and eastern rebels signed a draft security protocol on Thursday, raising the prospects for an end to the low-level revolt in the economically important region, state news agency SUNA reported.

The agency did not provide details of the deal with the rebel Eastern Front, signed in the Eritrean capital Asmara, and officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

It was the most significant achievement of the Eritrean-mediated peace talks since June, when Sudan's government and the eastern rebels signed a pact to cease hostilities and agreed a framework for future talks.

Darfur: Egypt Blames Rebels for Deteriorating Security

From Reuters

Egypt on Thursday blamed the Darfur rebels for insecurity in the vast region of western Sudan and said any agreement on implementing a U.N. Security Council resolution should take into account Khartoum's reservations.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in a statement that the principal culprits were the rebel groups which refused to sign a peace agreement for Darfur in May.

"The parties which did not sign the agreement (are) those primarily responsible for the current deterioration of the security situation," the Foreign Ministry statement said.

[edit]

Egypt has been acting as an informal intermediary between the Sudanese government and the United Nations over a U.N. Security Council resolution which proposes sending 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers to restore law and order in the troubled region.

[edit]

Aboul Gheit said: "The extension ... could help reach an understanding on the best way to implement the U.N. resolution with full respect for Sudanese sovereignty and taking into consideration the worries on the basis of which the government of Sudan rejected the resolution."

The statement indicated some Egyptian sympathy for the position of the Sudanese government. Khartoum says that U.N. and U.S. demands on Darfur are a cover for imposing U.S. plans on the Middle East and possibly overthrowing the government.

Arab diplomats said on Thursday that Egypt and the Cairo-based Arab League were trying to persuade Sudan to accept the U.N. resolution and let in U.N. forces, avoiding the kind of confrontation which led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

At the same, they want the United Nations to help the Sudanese government find a way to accept, they added.

"Egypt thinks the Sudanese government has a share of responsibility and they are advising them not to get into a confrontation of the kind with (former Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein," said one diplomat, who asked not to be named.

"They are encouraging the two sides to reach a settlement, through the United Nations finding a way for Sudan to accept the U.N. resolution," he added.

"They (Egypt and the Arab League) are trying to work within the resolution, rather than around it," said another diplomat.

One promising sign would be a Sudanese agreement to let in some 105 military personnel which the United Nations plans to send to Sudan to help the African Union force, he added.

"That is an opening that could be expanded," he said.

Darfur: 'I Was a Witness to Genocide'

From USA Today - via POTP [You can see more of Steidle's photo's here]

As an admiral's son and a former Marine officer, Brian Steidle believed that following orders and doing the right thing were one and the same. Then he went to Darfur.

As an official international monitor of the vicious conflict in western Sudan, he faced a choice: respect authority and honor a code of silence or show the world what he'd seen and kiss his career goodbye. He puckered up ... and blew the whistle.

[edit]

Steidle says he went to Darfur for several reasons. Mostly, he went because of what he saw one day in 2004 on a computer screen.

He was in the Nuba Mountains in south-central Sudan, working for the international commission supervising a cease-fire in another civil war, between the government and another rebel group.

He was bored. Promotions had put him behind a desk. That's why he'd left the Marines in 2003 after more than four years, having served in Kosovo, made captain and risen to company commander.

That day, a colleague was back from a trip to Darfur. Steidle had heard reports of atrocities against African farmers, who supported Darfur's rebels, by nomadic Arab militias armed and supported by the government. The raiders were called Janjaweed — "devil on horseback."

How was Darfur? Steidle asked his colleague. The man flipped around the laptop on his desk, clicked up a slide show and invited Steidle to take a look.

Steidle had never seen anything like it — schoolgirls, bound together with makeshift handcuffs and burned alive. He was shocked, then outraged, then intrigued. He wanted to see for himself.

Today, when asked why he volunteered for a situation from which most would flee, he sticks his chin out: "I heard there was shooting, and I run toward bullets." Or he'll cite "selfish reasons" — money ($3,500 a week tax-free, paid by a private company under contract with the State Department) and adventure.

That month he wrote an e-mail to his sister Gretchen, which she shared with USA TODAY. It suggested another motive:

"I have to write to you to get this out of my mind. I have seen these photos from a confidential report. I am not permitted to send them, nor do I wish on you the same dreams that I have as a result. ... Why are we sitting here letting this happen? This is not the doing of humans, this is the work of the devil. We as humans, all races, religions, colors, creeds, etc., have to stand up for what is right."

He applied for a job monitoring Darfur's shaky cease-fire under the auspices of the African Union, the association of African nations whose mission in Darfur receives financial support from the United States and other nations. He'd have no power or authority to stop the violence, not even a sidearm.

But Steidle did not go unarmed. Photography had been his hobby; now he bought the best digital camera he could afford: a professional-grade Canon EOS 1D Mark II. In Darfur, it would prove more powerful, and more dangerous, than a gun.

Steidle believed the world needed information to prick its conscience. If the classified photos he'd seen had been released to the public, he wrote Gretchen, "there would be troops in here in a matter of days."

Photography was a touchy subject. Although then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had just described what was happening in Darfur as genocide, there had been virtually no pictures of Janjaweed attacks on civilians; Steidle says he was warned the Sudanese government wanted to keep it that way.

A few photos of atrocities had been leaked outside official channels, so African Union commanders — not wanting to offend the host government — were suspicious of the new man with the camera that could zoom in on a face on the ground from 500 feet in the air.

It took Steidle several weeks to win their trust before he was allowed to use his camera. That was Oct. 20, 2004, when his team visited a village that the Janjaweed had torched. They found some women and children huddled under a tree.

A woman handed Steidle a 1-year-old girl. This was Mihad Hamid. Her mother had been shot to death while fleeing with Mihad in her arms. Mihad was shot in the back. She was having trouble breathing. She probably didn't live the night, he says.

There were many days like that. On the worst, he counted smoke from attacks on 37 villages. On another, he stood next to a Sudanese army commander, who watched as soldiers looted a village. Steidle says that when he asked Brig. Gen. Ahmed El Hajer Mohammed why he didn't stop them, the general said they weren't his men — anyone could put on a uniform.

He heard Janjaweed riders explain that they destroyed villages over stolen cattle. He saw neither regret nor remorse: "It was like looking into the devil's eyes."

Steidle planned to make public his photos, not his identity or affiliation. "It was never his intention to speak out," Gretchen says, "even when he quit."

He'd break the trust of AU commanders and make them less likely to share intelligence with the humanitarian agencies for whom AU patrols were eyes and ears.

He'd ruffle the U.S. State Department, which had not authorized him to go public. He'd throw away a lucrative career doing freelance military and security work overseas.

"Did I promise not to release anything? No. Do I own the copyright to my photos? Yes. I took them with my own camera," he says. "But I was apprehensive. I was paid to do what I was told, keep my mouth shut, and go home."

Gretchen put him in touch with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Steidle gave him some photos but said not to use his name.

After the Times printed the photos Feb. 23, Steidle says, Kristof called. "He said, 'Everybody's asking me where I got these photos. Can I use your name?' "

His father says Brian struggled with the decision. "He felt he gave his word." But Steidle thought about what his sister — the family's social conscience — had asked: "Who has the right to keep genocide a secret?"

Darfur: Address to the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa

Excerpt from remarks by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

We will continue to bend every fiber of our being to ease the suffering of people of Darfur, but our goal is, and must be, more ambitious than that: We do not want the people of Darfur to live forever in refugee camps; we want to help them return home and to live at peace. The status quo that caused this war was flawed and fatal. It had broken down before, with horrific human consequences. So to prevent this from happening again – in a month, or in a year, or in a decade – and to chart a path to real and lasting peace, as we did for northern and southern Sudan with the CPA, we are working to address the political roots of the conflict in Darfur.

A breakthrough on this front came in May, with the negotiation of the Darfur Peace Agreement. This document does not create peace; it outlines the principles of peace, and creates a political framework to realize them – including agreements to share power fairly, to distribute wealth equitably, to cooperate on security, and to build trust and reconciliation. The Sudanese Government signed the agreement, as did the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Minni Minnawi. Two other rebel groups did not. Nonetheless, by outlining a new political compact between the Government of Sudan and the people of Darfur, the Darfur Peace Agreement could be a worthy and necessary complement to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

At this moment, however, the Government of Sudan has renewed its military offensive against the rebels, which is undermining the Darfur Peace Agreement, as well as our collective humanitarian efforts. As in the past, the government’s new campaign of violence is targeting the people of Darfur, and it is they who are suffering most. Because of the lack of security, humanitarian aid workers are unable to reach hundreds of thousands of people in the camps. Without food, and water, and other assistance in the coming months, all will suffer, and many could die.

This tragedy can, and must, be averted, and President Bush is personally committed to this goal. Last week, in his speech before the UN General Assembly, the President reiterated his strong support for the people of Darfur, and he appointed Andrew Natsios, who is with us today, the former Director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to serve as his Special Envoy on Sudan. Andrew, thank you for accepting this task. (Applause.) Andrew has the complete trust and confidence of President Bush and of myself; he has a strong mandate to advance our goals in Sudan. He will get started because we have no time to lose.

At this critical time for Darfur, there are three additional steps that we must take.

First, we need an immediate ceasefire. The Government of Sudan must halt its military operations, and the rebels who are non-signatories to the Darfur Peace Agreement must stop fighting and sign the accord. Though we will not renegotiate the Agreement, we are conferring with rebels who want peace. We are seeking to address their legitimate concerns. And we will support them if they choose peace. If the rebels refuse, then they will face serious consequences, including targeted UN sanctions.

Second, to help stabilize Darfur, to protect the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives are now at risk, and to help all parties implement the Darfur Peace Agreement, the Government of Sudan must immediately and unconditionally accept a UN peacekeeping force into Darfur. (Applause.) We commend the African Union for all of its efforts. The African Union has taken the leadership role, as is only right. They have done so much to protect people of Darfur. We applaud the AU’s decision to extend its mission, ensuring that not a day goes by without peacekeepers on the ground. But ultimately, 7,200 people cannot effectively secure an area the size of Texas. The African Union has done as much as it can under these circumstances, and it has now called for international support – not once, not twice, but three times.

Last month, the UN Security Council responded, and we passed Resolution 1706 – calling for the transition of the African Union mission to a larger, more robust UN peacekeeping force, with more than 20,000 new troops and police. One main source of opposition remains: the Sudanese Government. I would be quick to note, this opposition to the UN force has not been unanimous within Sudan. The Sudan Liberation Movement and the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement support a force for Darfur.

We hope now that the entire Sudanese Government will understand that it faces a clear and consequential decision, indeed the same decision that it faced when we ended the north-south civil war. This is a choice between cooperation and confrontation.

If the Government of Sudan chooses cooperation – if it works with the United Nations and welcomes the UN force into Darfur – then it will find a dedicated partner in the United States. And as President Bush stated in his recent letter to President Bashir, we will be prepared to examine all aspects of our bilateral relationship – and to work toward our common goal of a unified, peaceful, and democratic Sudan.

But, if the Sudanese Government chooses confrontation – if it continues waging war against its own citizens, challenging the African Union, undermining the peacekeeping force, and threatening the international community – then the regime in Khartoum will be held responsible, and it alone will bear the consequences of its actions. The international community must make clear to the leaders of Sudan that this is the choice that they face.

The Sudanese Government says that it wants a stable country and a good relationship with the international community. But its behavior is creating the exact opposite: instability and isolation. The deployment of a UN force to Darfur would help to turn this around. It would secure the area, it would stabilize the country, it would benefit the Sudanese people, and thereby serve the interests of the Sudanese Government as well. UN peacekeepers are playing this role in southern Sudan already; they should do the same in Darfur and they should do so now. (Applause.)

If the Sudanese Government wishes to become a respected member of the international community, then it must act like one and behave responsibly. The time for stalling has passed; the time for action has come. We cannot, and we will not, accept Sudan’s opposition to this important goal. Since the Sudanese Government will not save the lives of its own people, the United Nations must act.

With UN peacekeepers in Darfur, helping to protect innocent people and to implement the Darfur Peace Agreement, one final step will still be necessary – the transition from a humanitarian effort to a reconstruction effort, which can help the people of Darfur return to their homes and rebuild their lives.

This will be a monumental undertaking. Most of the victims of conflict in Darfur have little or nothing to which to return. They will need help to restore their stolen wealth. Water programs will be necessary to replenish people’s livelihoods and reduce future conflict. The challenge facing Sudan’s Government of National Unity is nothing less than the transformation of Darfur. Sudan will, of course, lead its own development effort. But we and the international community would clearly support them. And the world’s generosity would be more important than ever –for many years to come.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Historical grievances and old patterns of violence need not, and should not, determine the future of Darfur. Nor should they determine the future of all Sudan. The Sudanese people have suffered too much pain, too much bloodshed, and too much death. Now is the time to build something better – a Sudan that is unified, and peaceful, and democratic, where all of its citizens enjoy the blessings of freedom, and justice, and development. The choice is before the Government of Sudan – but it must act now.

This is an urgent matter of life and death, and the international community cannot – and will not – remain neutral. The nations of the world must speak clearly, with urgency, and with one voice. It is not our intention to impinge on Sudan’s sovereignty. But we will stand firm in our conviction that sovereignty is rooted not merely in control, but in responsibility – in every government’s responsibility to its citizens and to the international community. The nations of the world have made it clear what we expect to hear from the leaders of Sudan; they know what they need to do. And so do we.

Our responsibility is to the weakest and the most powerless members of mankind. It is our responsibility to protect those who cannot protect themselves. If the idea of an international community means anything, it is this. And we must do what is necessary to honor our pledge.

Thank you very much.

Uganda: LRA Walk Out of Peace Talks

From the AP

Uganda rebels have walked out of peace talks aimed at ending a 19-year conflict in which thousands of civilians have died, state media reported Thursday.

Lord's Resistance Army rebels said they were boycotting the talks with the government because of a heavy military buildup by the Ugandan army, officials were quoted as saying in the government-owned The New Vision newspaper.

"The Juba peace talks are in grave threat and danger of failure due to the unfolding heavy military deployment of UPDF (Uganda People's Defense Forces) troops in Uganda, Southern Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo," said a statement signed by Martin Ojul, the head of the rebel team negotiating a peace deal with the government.

Ojul said they handed the statement to Southern Sudan Vice President Dr. Riek Machar, who is the chief mediator of the peace talks in the southern Sudan capital, Juba.

The said they would review there position in seven days.

Darfur: For Refugees, Return Appears Remote

From McClatchy

Walking behind his mule beneath a sky seared white by the afternoon heat, Abdikrim Mohammed contemplated the end of the rainy season.

He and his family have lived in Oure Cassoni refugee camp in this Sahara Desert border town since 2003, when they fled western Sudan's Darfur region in the wake of militia attacks supported by the Sudanese government. About 29,000 men, women and children live in the camp.

Mohammed lives in a U.N. tent that becomes dusted daily with fine brown sand that sifts into his food, water and clothes and leaves him perpetually grimed with grit. He supports himself selling cloth in the camp's market, with the hope - diminished but not yet extinguished - that he will one day return to his Darfur village.

But for now, Mohammed, 35, braces for renewed fighting. The deluge of rain that swept through central Africa beginning in June will end this month, making it possible for Sudan-backed militias to ford once-flooded rivers and increase their attacks on Chadian border villages.

"Without the rains, they will come," Mohammed said, staring at the border and the shallow river, Wadi Hawar, that separates the camp from Sudan.

Mohammed is not alone in his concern. The United Nations and relief organization officials say they are bracing for fighting that may rival anything that came before in a conflict the Bush administration calls genocide. Mounting violence before the rainy season resulted in at least 55,000 Chadians driven from their homes. Refugee camps swelled with these displaced families and the hundreds of Sudanese refugees that arrived each week.

At the start of the Darfur conflict, the Sudan government armed Arab militias called janjaweed to quash a political uprising by Darfur villagers. Many of the Sudanese rebels took refuge in Chad because they belong to the same tribe as President Idriss Deby. That prompted Sudan to support rebels opposed to the Chad government. As the rains have decreased, clashes on both sides of the border between different rebel factions and government forces affect Chadians and Darfurians.

The U.N. estimates that at least 200,000 people, mostly civilians, have died because of the Darfur conflict, and more than 2.5 million have been displaced. About 235,000 Sudanese refugees have sought sanctuary in Chad. In the eastern provinces of Chad, 12 refugee camps have been established. Security remains particularly precarious for them and for humanitarian workers.

Sudanese troops in August deployed along the border near Oure Cassoni and other refugee camps for the first time since the Darfur war began in 2003. Some aid workers say the troops, ostensibly placed to prevent anti-Sudan rebels from escaping into Chad, will leave fleeing Darfur families sandwiched between the militias and the Sudanese soldiers.

Last week the African Union announced it would extend the mandate of a peacekeeping force in Darfur through Dec. 31, avoiding a showdown for now over Sudan's refusal to permit the United Nations to take over the mission and triple its size. The U.N. will lend material and logistic support to the mission, which has been hobbled by equipment and cash shortfalls.

"A lot of things remain unresolved between the belligerent parties," said Matthew Conway, spokesman for the U.N. high commissioner for refugees. "While we hope they sort their differences out through dialogue, given the recent history we are preparing for the worst."

Conway said U.N. refugee experts expect at least 50,000 new refugees by the end of the year.

Darfur: Army Operations Violate Cease-Fire

From the AP

The Sudanese government's military operation in Darfur violates the peace agreement it signed in May, the top U.S. diplomat in Khartoum said Wednesday.

Cameron Hume said Sudan's army had moved over 8,000 men to Darfur's regional capital of El Fasher in violation of its commitment not to move troops around the troubled western area of the country.

"The government is repeatedly violating the cease-fire it signed in May," Hume told The Associated Press of Khartoum's ongoing campaign in the troubled area of western Sudan. Since the government signed the agreement with a rebel group, fighting has intensified causing additional hardship to civilians.

"The Sudanese government's unilateral moves have been unsuccessful and have worsened the situation," Hume said of latest round of fighting that began when the government on Aug. 28 launched an offensive.

Several Sudanese officers have been killed in the recent fighting and rebel forces have captured a significant number of vehicles and large amounts of armaments, Hume said, but didn't give the source of the information.

Darfur: US Congress Approves Sanctions

From VOA

The Darfur Peace and Accountability Act won House approval earlier this year and then went to the Senate, where it sat until just last week.

That is when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, headed by Republican Senator Richard Lugar, removed from the bill a provision referring to state divestment from Sudan.

Lugar and like-minded senators asserted the single paragraph would have doomed chances of getting the legislation to President Bush's desk before Congress adjourns at the end of this month.

The full Senate approved the change, sending the legislation back to the House, where lawmakers focused on challenges facing U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan Andrew Natsios.

Congressman Chris Smith is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa and Global Human Rights.

"The special envoy's mandate should include all efforts to consolidate peace throughout Sudan, including by ensuring full implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement, and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement [for Sudan]," he said.

Tom Lantos, ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, says the Darfur situation will require aggressive diplomacy.

"Sustained and intensive diplomatic efforts at the highest levels are needed," he said. "The special envoy must not only engage the parties to the conflict in Darfur, he will also need to galvanize the international community to bring lasting peace to Darfur."

The sanctions in the Darfur Act include freezing the assets and banning entry of Sudan government officials or members of Arab militias found to be complicit in atrocities and banning them.

It would also ban the U.S. from providing assistance other than for humanitarian needs to countries providing military aid to the government in Khartoum.

Sanctions would remain in effect until, among other things, Khartoum takes concrete steps to disarm Arab militia blamed for killing and displacing tens of thousands of civilians.

"We continue to say to Khartoum that they must stop the genocide, it will not be tolerated," said Donald Payne, a New Jersey Democrat. "President Bashir, the National Congress Party officials, Janjaweed [Arab militia] commanders and murderers, and others responsible for genocide must be held accountable and will be brought to justice."

On the issue of divestment, lawmakers such as Congresswoman Barbara Lee say they are not finished, and have proposed separate legislation to keep international companies operating in Sudan from receiving U.S contracts.

"We are coming back on divestment, because it makes no sense to allow companies with holdings in Sudan to continue to do this type of business," she said. "Pension funds should not have blood in their banks, and that is exactly what has happened."

The Darfur Act, which now goes to President Bush for signature, authorizes the president to support expansion of the 7,000-strong African Union peace force sufficient to protect civilians and humanitarian operations.

It also calls for the U.S. and NATO to provide assets to help African peacekeepers deter Sudan government air strikes, along with logistical and a range of other support.

Darfur: EU, Rice Raise Pressure On Sudan

From the AP

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday called for an immediate cease-fire in Sudan's western Darfur region and urged the Khartoum government to immediately and unconditionally accept a UN peacekeeping force there.

She said the government faced a choice between cooperation with the United Nations or confrontation. She warned of unspecified consequences if the government chose confrontation.

In a speech to the Africa Society's National Summit on Africa, Rice said that if Sudan "works with the United Nations and welcomes a UN force into Darfur then it will find a dedicated partner in the United States."

She said President George W. Bush has told the Sudanese president, Omar el-Bashir, the United States was prepared to examine all aspects of its relationship with Sudan. U.S. lawmakers are close to approving sanctions against the Khartoum government.

"If the Sudanese government chooses confrontation - if it continues waging war against its own citizens, challenging the African Union, undermining its peacekeeping force and threatening the international community - then the regime in Khartoum will be held responsible and it alone will bear the consequences," Rice said.

She said the Sudanese government wants a stable country and a good relationship with the international community, but its behavior is creating exactly the opposite result: isolation and instability.

Fighting between government- backed Arab militias and non-Arab rebels in Darfur has left more than 200,000 dead and 2.5 million displaced since 2002.

More than two years have passed since the U.S. government labeled the atrocities in Sudan as genocide, but the killing has accelerated in recent weeks as the Sudanese government has launched a new offensive.

A poorly funded African Union force in Darfur has been mostly unable to contain the violence and the UN Security Council has sought to take over the operation to provide better resources. Sudan opposes a UN takeover.

In a related development, the European Union on Wednesday renewed its calls for a UN mission in Darfur.

"The EU is alarmed about the recent developments in Sudan, especially the deteriorating humanitarian and security situation in Darfur," said the Finnish minister handling European affairs, Paula Lehtomaki. Finland now holds the rotating EU presidency.

"The Darfur conflict has implications on regional stability, on Chad, on the Central African Republic," Lehtomaki said. "The only viable and realistic option for peacekeeping in Darfur is through the UN. The Darfur security situation cannot improve without a UN contribution."

Lehtomaki said it was increasingly difficult to distribute humanitarian aid in Darfur, with only about half of it reaching its destination.

Uganda: LRA Moves Threaten Peace Talks

From IRIN

In a move that could affect peace talks between the government and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the Ugandan army has accused the insurgents of violating a recent agreement by abandoning an assembly site designated by the truce deal.

A Ugandan army spokesman said on Wednesday the LRA fighters who had assembled in Owiny Ki-Bul in southern Sudan in accordance with the cessation of hostilities agreement signed with the government on 26 August had now left. He did not give a reason for the dispersal.

"We have information that the LRA fighters are moving away from the assembly point at Owiny Ki-Bul," Maj. Felix Kulaigye, said. "By yesterday evening, they were moving towards the River Nile. If this continues, we shall have to take necessary steps to protect the people."

By late on Wednesday, the LRA negotiating team had not arrived at the venue for talks that were due to resume with the government in Juba, southern Sudan. Both the government delegation and the mediator, the southern Sudanese Vice-President, Riek Machar, were waiting for the rebels.

According to the 26 August agreement, the rebel fighters are supposed to assemble at Owiny Ki-Bul in Sudan’s Eastern Equatoria State and in Ri-Kwangba in Western Equatoria State, while talks continue between the two parties.

On Saturday, the LRA team in Juba had threatened to walk out of the peace talks, claiming the Ugandan army had besieged their fighters at Owiny Ki-Bul. This was denied by Uganda’s army commander, Gen Aronda Nyakairima, who said his troops were 45 km away.

However, Aronda warned the LRA that his forces would hunt down the rebels should peace talks in Juba fail - a threat that could have triggered the exodus from Owiny Ki-Bul, according to local leaders in the northern Uganda town of Kitgum.

Local villagers at Pajok, Magwi district, in Sudan’s Equatoria province said at least 1,000 rebels encamped at Owiny Ki-Bul had left the area. Kulaigye said another group of rebels, led by Okot Odhiambo, was moving from Ri-Kwangba, near the Uganda-Democratic Republic of Congo border, towards West Nile region.

"We still believe the Juba talks remain the best option to end this conflict," Kulaigye told IRIN in Kitgum. "But if the LRA chose another option, we shall also do."

Martin Ojul, head of the rebel team negotiating a peace deal with the government after 19 years of war, told reporters he had no knowledge of the reported exodus, insisting that thousands of rebel fighters were at the two camps.

Odhiambo is one of five LRA commanders wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Others include LRA commander Joseph Kony and his deputy Vincent Otti.

The rebels have, however, demanded that the ICC indictments be withdrawn before they agree a peace deal. But Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has said the indictments should not be rescinded until the rebel leaders sign a peace deal.

Uganda: ICC Says Crimes May Continue Without Arrests

From Reuters

The International Criminal Court's (ICC) chief prosecutor said on Tuesday leaders of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army must be arrested to stop them from committing more crimes, despite calls for an amnesty to allow for peace talks.

Last week, deputy LRA leader Vincent Otti said lifting the ICC war crimes indictments against himself and other top LRA leaders was a pre-condition to a full peace deal.

The LRA launched one of the world's most vicious insurrections from northern Uganda 20 years ago, killing civilians and often slicing off victims' lips and noses.

ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said war crimes could not go unpunished.

"If we do not execute the arrest warrants, the crimes can start again," Moreno said at a public hearing with non-governmental organisations.

The NGOs backed the ICC's efforts to arrest and prosecute those responsible for war crimes.

"It is critically important that the ICC gets convictions under its belt," said Nicholas Grono of the International Crisis Group," If it is continuously trumped by peace processes it will never have a deterrent effect."

Amnesty International's senior legal adviser, Christopher Keith Hall, said it was extremely disturbing that the LRA leaders had not yet been arrested and that the ICC needed more policing power.

"We urge the prosecution to press the United Nations and other international government organisations to establish law enforcement teams," he said.

“Schwarzenegger Signs Pension Fund Bill To Stop Investing in Sudan"

Kudos to the Governor:

“We cannot watch from the sidelines and be content to mourn this atrocity as it passes into history. We must act and that is exactly why we will divest from the Sudan. Divesting will show our defiance against the murderers and their inhumanity.”

Away

I am going to be away from my computer and unable to post for the next week. As such, I recommend that you check out Passion of the Present to keep up to date on developments in Darfur and elsewhere.

Darfur: Sudan Won't Accept U.N. Peacekeepers Under Any Circumstances

From the AP

Sudan will not allow the United Nations to take control of peacekeepers in Darfur under any circumstance, its president said Tuesday, claiming that human rights groups have exaggerated the crisis there in a bid for more donations.

President Omar al-Bashir did say that the African Union, which now runs the peacekeeping mission in Darfur, should be allowed to augment its forces with more logistics, advisers and other support.

"The picture that volunteer organizations try to give in order to solicit more assistance and more aid, have given a negative result," al-Bashir told a news conference.

Speaking on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly debate, al-Bashir claimed that Zionist groups wanted to weaken Sudan and accused Israel of spreading a lie that Sudanese Arabs are killing Sudanese Africans.

"We refuse to normalize with Israel, we refuse to deal with Israel," he said.

[edit]

Al-Bashir reiterated his stance that the demands to put peacekeeping in Darfur under U.N. control are part of efforts to protect Israel, carve up Sudan and gain access to its oil reserves.

While he ruled out U.N. peacekeepers at any cost, he said he had no objection to the African Union force receiving logistical, military and communications support, as well as material and advisers.

In what could be an encouraging sign, he said the African Union forces should be allowed to remain in Sudan until the region sees peace at last.

"We want the African Union to remain in Darfur until peace is re-established in Sudan," al-Bashir said.

Darfur: Konare to Propose 3-Month Extension for AU

From Reuters

African Union Commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare will likely recommend to African leaders meeting in New York on Wednesday that they extend the mandate for African forces in Darfur for three more months to avoid a security void, analysts and AU sources said.

They said Konare would likely tell the leaders he hoped an extension would allow more time for the United Nations and Sudan to come to an agreement on the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers in Sudan's war-ravaged west.

"There is a possibility of an extension for three months or a withdrawal with very negative effects," said Noureddine Mezni, AU spokesman in Khartoum. "We have these two options."

"We definitely don't want any vacuum. We will try to avoid it at all costs. We believe in dialogue and consultation to find a way out."

Konare was expected to tell the leaders at the meeting of the AU Peace and Security Council that a 3-month extension for African forces was the most workable option for Darfur, where 200,000 people have died since the conflict flared in 2003.

An indefinite extension for the 7,000 poorly funded African troops, whose mandate expires on Sept. 30, would not be presented as a realistic choice.

[edit]

Sudan, which has likened U.N. peacekeepers to an invasion force bent on regime change in Khartoum, appears likely to accept an extension of the African Union force presence.

"They seem to have opened the door to an extension of the AU mandate," said Dave Mozersky, horn of Africa project manager for the International Crisis Group.

"It makes sense to strengthen the AU mission on the ground until the U.N. can take over. What I have heard is an extension of 2-4 months."

Sudan's Second Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, who is close to Bashir, called on Monday for the strengthening of AU efforts at implementing a Darfur peace deal signed in May between the government and one rebel faction.

On the other hand a withdrawal, if that is the option AU leaders choose, would take over a month to complete. A withdrawal could also lead to an escalation with possible repercussions on neighbouring countries including Chad and the Central African Republic, analysts said.

The United Nations has said that an African Union force withdrawal could lead some 350,000 people to be displaced, and humanitarian access would deteriorate dramatically as attacks on vehicles made road travel impossible outside urban areas.

But analysts said that extending the AU presence for a few months would not resolve the long-term conflict in Darfur, and could be seen as a victory for Sudan in its opposition to a U.N. force.

"I imagine they (AU) would extend. The U.N. is pressing for that . I think the AU would look very bad to pull out without a U.N. force to replace it," said Gill Lusk, former deputy editor for Africa Confidential political newsletter in London.

"But it would mean the issue would come up again . It's a victory for the Sudan government, not for the people of Darfur. It is putting off the problem. One of the Sudanese government tactics is to play for time."

Sudan: Pronk Briefs Security Council

From the UN Security Council [The document is long but is pretty informative especially regarding the implementation, or lack thereof, of the North/South CPA]

While only four months old, the Darfur Peace Agreement was “nearly dead”, the senior United Nations envoy to the Sudan told the Security Council today, as he briefed it on the latest developments in that country and presented his proposal for reviving the plan, which could have a serious impact on the implementation of the peace agreements throughout the country.

The Darfur Peace Agreement “ought to be under intensive care, but it isn’t,” the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to the Sudan, Jan Pronk, said. It was a balanced text -- somewhere in the middle of the extreme positions taken by the Government and the rebel movements -- yet, it did not have the support of several of those groups, which had taken a political decision to stand aside. Bringing them on board was the first condition to bring the Darfur Peace Agreement “out of the coma”. Other conditions for reviving the accord included establishing a truce; reforming the Ceasefire Commission; resuming talks to improve the Agreement; and getting off the “collision course”, both within Sudan and internationally.

Also needed was the implementation of the Council’s resolution 1706 (2006) adopted on 31 August, he said. That text made it crystal clear that the international community wanted a transition from the present African Union peacekeeping force to a United Nations force. The Council had also invited the Government’s consent for the deployment. From its side, the Government had also been crystal clear that it was against the transition. However, the United Nations Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS) had proven to be a fair and effective peacekeeper in southern Sudan. “We can and will do the same in Darfur,” Mr. Pronk pledged.

He added that the United Nations did not deserve insinuations from Sudanese political leadership in power. The withdrawal of UNMIS troops from eastern Sudan upon completion of their mandate had sent a strong signal to the people of the country that the United Nations had come to eastern Sudan upon invitation of the Government, accomplished its task and left. There was no hidden agenda to occupy or “recolonize” the country. The Organization’s only aim was to protect the people, while respecting the sovereignty of the Sudanese nation.

Commenting on the briefing, members of the Council noted that the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was on track, but they agreed with Mr. Pronk’s assessment that it was still “a bumpy ride and the train could easily derail”. They also expressed concern about the danger of the conflict spilling over into the south, agreeing with the Secretary-General, who stated, in his recent report on the situation, that peace in the Sudan was indivisible and that efforts to implement the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between North and South would prove inadequate until durable peace also came to Darfur.

The United States representative said that, just as the Government of National Unity had shown itself able to overcome decades of violence in South Sudan through respect for the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and cooperation with the United Nations peacekeeping mission, so should it be prepared to ensure a better future for its citizens in Darfur, through respect for the Darfur Peace Agreement, a strengthening of the African Union’s operation and through cooperation in the deployment of UNMIS forces in Darfur.

He expressed his intention to circulate a draft resolution on Sudan, to renew the mandate of UNMIS, set to expire on 24 September, and to ensure continuity of United Nations operations in the south. The draft would also take into consideration the expansion of the Mission, as per resolution 1706 (2006). It was critical that the Council expanded those missions concurrently to ensure that urgent assistance to the African Union Mission in the Sudan, as stipulated in resolution 1706 (2006), was not jeopardized, he urged.

Citing the “responsibility to protect”, the representative of the United Kingdom stressed the Government’s obligation to protect its own citizens. It was clear that the Sudanese Government was not protecting its own citizens in Darfur, to say the least. In such cases, the responsibility to protect meant that the international community had a right to get involved, primarily in efforts to help the State concern carry out its responsibilities. That was what the United Nations had done in southern Sudan, and it was what everybody wanted to see happen in Darfur. If offers of help were turned away, the international community could not allow the situation to “slide from crisis to catastrophe, because of the ill-founded fears of the Government of Khartoum”. If the Government of the Sudan cared about its citizens, it must consent to a United Nations force.

With most Council members expressing support for an expanded United Nations force to Darfur, China’s representative, however, insisted on the need for the Sudanese Government to first agree to the extension of UNMIS to Darfur. He pointed out that the United Nations had played a positive role in other parts of the country because it had had the support of the Government. The mission in Darfur should be based on the same principles, he said.

Several speakers said they looked forward to the meeting on Wednesday of the African Union Peace and Security Council and placed high hopes on the meeting of the interested parties, to be hosted by Denmark and the United States, in New York at the end of this week.

Also taking the floor this afternoon were the representatives of Argentina, France, Denmark, United Republic of Tanzania, Peru, Japan, Slovakia, Russian Federation, Congo, Ghana, Qatar and Greece.

Darfur: President Bush Addresses U.N. General Assembly

Transcript via the Washington Post

To the people of Darfur, you have suffered unspeakable violence. And my nation has called these atrocities what they are: genocide.

For the last two years, America joined with the international community to provide emergency food aid and support for an African Union peacekeeping force. Yet your suffering continues.

The world must step forward to provide additional humanitarian aid. And we must strengthen the African Union force that has done good work, but is not strong enough to protect you.

The Security Council has approved a resolution that would transform the African Union force into a blue-helmeted force that is larger and more robust. To increase its strength and effectiveness, NATO nations should provide logistics and other support.

The regime in Khartoum is stopping the deployment of this force. If the Sudanese government does not approve this peacekeeping force quickly, the United Nations must act. Your lives and the credibility of the United Nations is at stake.

So today I'm announcing that I'm naming a presidential special envoy, former USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios, to lead America's efforts to resolve the outstanding disputes and help bring peace to your land.

Darfur: UN Warns of Disaster if AU Leaves

From IRIN

A top United Nations official has warned of a humanitarian disaster in Darfur should African Union (AU) troops leave as scheduled in 11 days, ahead of an AU meeting in New York to discuss the future of its troops in Darfur.

The UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan, Manuel Aranda da Silva, said another 350,000 civilians in Darfur might be displaced within a month of the AU’s exit. "We feel very strongly that any pull-out of the peacekeepers as they are today will trigger a much more serious situation in Darfur," he told reporters in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. "The potential situation we are facing looks very grave. Many people will be enduring displacement for the second or third time, each [time] making them more vulnerable and demoralised."

The AU has struggled with funding problems and a mandate that critics charge does not allow it to protect civilians. But Da Silva said the AU is providing "psychological security" to millions of displaced in Darfur. "Even if [the AU] are only in very limited areas in Darfur, they provide a sense of security in many areas in Darfur," he said.

The AU’s mandate expires on 30 September. The New York meeting will take place on the fringes of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. "We will assume our responsibilities," said AU spokesman Norredine Mezni in Khartoum. "We will not create a vacuum here. We care about the people of Darfur. We care about the Sudanese people."

Mezni stressed that the final decision on whether the AU would remain in Darfur would be made by the AU Peace and Security Council, which has twice voted to turn its mission over to the UN. Sudan has refused calls for a UN force. Protests have paralysed parts of Khartoum in recent days as students and civil-society organisations have denounced the proposed arrival of blue berets.

On Monday, however, the United States said it expected Sudan to allow the 7,000 AU peacekeepers to stay in Darfur for three more months, despite the expiry of their mandate. "We’re hoping that when the African Union Peace and Security Council meets, they will extend the AMIS mandate through the end of the year," said US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, after a Security Council meeting on Sudan on Monday, referring to the peacekeeping force, known as the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS).

"That will provide the basis on which AMIS will continue and we can strengthen AMIS as we [are] simultaneously preparing for the UN handover," Bolton added.

Darfur: Pressure Mounts for Sudan to Allow AU to Stay

From IRIN

Sudan is expected to agree to allow some 7,000 African Union (AU) peacekeepers to stay in the troubled Sudanese western region of Darfur for three more months, despite the expiry of the AU force’s mandate there on 30 September.

“We’re hoping that when the African Union Peace and Security Council meets in a few days, they will extend the AMIS mandate through the end of the year,” said US Ambassador John Bolton after a Security Council meeting on Sudan on Monday, referring to the peacekeeping force, known as the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS.)

“That will provide the basis on which AMIS will continue and we can strengthen AMIS as we [are] simultaneously preparing for the UN handover,” Bolton added. Underfunded, undermanned, and lacking strong logistical support, the AU force is in desperate need of bolstering as it is thinly stretched across Darfur, a region the size of France.

The Sudanese government had been opposing an extension of the AMIS mandate past 30 September, and says it is still against allowing UN peacekeepers to deploy to Darfur.

But some observers now hope that Sudan will agree to the extended AMIS presence. An AU meeting on the fringes of the UN General Assembly, originally scheduled for Monday, has been postponed until Wednesday to accommodate Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, himself due to address the UN General Assembly this week.

Bashir’s First Vice President, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, announced in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum this week that he supported a strengthened African Union force, fuelling hopes that Sudan is to accept the continuation of the AU force after all.

Many observers feel that getting Sudan to agree to some aspects of UN Security Council resolution 1706, including allowing AU troops to stay, would at the very least not leave the civilian population in Darfur totally unprotected.

It could also buy time for Sudan’s allies to work on changing the minds of key political players in Khartoum towards accepting the deployment of a UN transitional peacekeeping force of about 20,000 troops, as stipulated in the resolution.

“This is a practical and humanitarian set of objectives, with no objective to interfere with the sovereignty of the Sudanese people,” said Lord David Triesman, Britain’s Minister for Africa, who spoke to a few journalists Monday morning in New York, before addressing the UN Security Council on Sudan in the afternoon.

A number of ideas are on the table to make a UN force more palatable to the Sudanese, including a proposed package of incentives created by the British government, and announced by British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Saturday. Incentives could include dealing with some of Sudan’s debt, ending the suspension of some development aid, and lifting sanctions.

“If there is peace and security, and everybody is taking the full part in the reconstruction of Sudan, I don’t think anyone would want to impede the progress by the continuation of sanctions,” said Triesman.

Violence has only increased since Sudan’s government and the largest armed faction of Darfur’s main rebel group signed a peace agreement in May.

“The Darfur Peace Agreement is only four months old, but it is nearly dead. It is in a coma,” said Jan Pronk, the UN’s Special Envoy to Sudan told Security Council members at an open meeting on Sudan on Monday in New York.

Rebels have split into factions in North Darfur, among them a rebel alliance which recently launched an attack into neighbouring West Kordofan province. “Sadly, it provided the government with an excuse for continuous attacks and air raids, under the pretext that the civilian population had to be protected,” said Pronk. “However, it is an outright violation of the DPA.”

Pronk told council members that a truce among the factions was necessary to move the peace process along, as well as talks involving not just the government and groups that signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) in May, but other factions outside the fold.

Bolton announced in the Sudan council meeting that the US and Denmark plan to hold a ministerial meeting on Sudan on Friday this week with the other 13 council members. South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda, Chad, Egypt, and Algeria have been invited to attend.

With the British incentives package, time is of the essence, according to Triesman. “We’ll try and do it as rapidly as possible,” he said, noting that Prime Minister Blair was going to be working on the initiative over the next few weeks.

“We are beyond the point when we should be overly concerned with people saving face. We should be concerned with saving lives,” Treisman said.

Darfur: Bush to Name Natsios as Envoy

From the Washington Post

President Bush has decided to name Andrew Natsios, the former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, as his special envoy for Darfur in the hope of reviving a diplomatic effort to end a 3 1/2 -year spree of violence in Sudan that has left hundreds of thousands dead, according to senior administration officials.

Bush is expected to announce Natsios's appointment Tuesday in a speech to world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly. The initiative follows increasing pressure from Congress and human rights advocates to do more to halt what the Bush administration has termed the world's only ongoing case of genocide.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller on Monday invited counterparts from nearly two dozen governments to participate in a high-level meeting on Darfur at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Friday afternoon.

Rice and British Prime Minister Tony Blair also have appealed to senior Chinese officials in recent days to apply pressure on the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, to allow a U.N. peacekeeping force of nearly 20,000 troops into the Darfur region. China, a major consumer of Sudanese oil, has routinely resisted efforts by the United States to convince the U.N. Security Council to punish Khartoum for its role in the violence.

John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, meanwhile said the United States is planning to introduce a new Security Council resolution aimed at expanding a U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Sudan into Darfur. The U.N. force would replace a force of 7,000 African Union peacekeepers that has struggled with few resources and limited success to stem the bloodshed in Darfur.

African leaders will meet Wednesday in New York to decide whether to extend the AU's mandate, which is set to expire on Sept. 30. The United States and the United Nations are pressing the Africans to remain in Darfur in the hope that Khartoum will ultimately agree to invite the U.N. blue helmets.

[edit]

The U.N. special representative to Sudan, Jan Pronk of the Netherlands, declared Monday that the U.S.-brokered peace agreement "is nearly dead. It is in a coma. It ought to be under intensive care, but it isn't." He said fighting has flared up again, with the Sudanese government again launching a major military offensive and a growing number of rebel factions vying for power.

The spiraling violence has heightened criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the Darfur crisis two years after then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell first called the killing there a genocide.

It has also spurred bipartisan congressional support for greater international action in Darfur. Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Norm Coleman(R-Minn) paid a visit to the United Nations on Monday, meeting with Sudan's ambassador to press for greater international scrutiny of the atrocities in Darfur.

But Bush had resisted international calls for a special envoy. By selecting Natsios, the administration has chosen a blunt representative with considerable backing among the American aid community and a long record of butting heads with the Sudanese over the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

When Powell flew to Darfur in July 2004, he was accompanied by Natsios, then USAID administrator. As the plane flew over the blackened remains of ravaged villages, Natsios described his dismay at the Sudanese government in a stream of expletives.

"I think he won't be fooled by these guys," said John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, a sharp critic of the Bush administration's Darfur policy.

Still, some U.N. officials privately expressed concern that Natsios may pursue a confrontational approach that will harden Khartoum's opposition to a U.N. force in Darfur.

Pronk, meanwhile, joined the British government in proposing that the international community consider offering Sudan a series of incentives -- including debt relief, the lifting of sanctions and greater trade access to Western markets -- in exchange for cooperating with U.N. peace efforts. He also scolded Sudan's leaders for describing U.N. peacekeepers as a Western invasion force. "We do not intend to recolonize, nor are we laying the carpet for others to do so," he said.

Darfur: 350,000 May Be Displaced if AU Leaves

From Reuters

Some 350,000 people in Sudan's war-ravaged west could be displaced if African Union forces leave Darfur when their mandate expires at the end of the month, the United Nations said on Monday.

It forecast that if the 7,000-strong AU force pulled out of Darfur, humanitarian access there would deteriorate dramatically as attacks on vehicles made road travel impossible outside urban centres.

The U.N. also feared more civilians could be killed in areas out of reach of aid workers.

"We feel very strongly that any pullout of the peacekeepers as they are today will trigger a much more serious situation in Darfur," U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan Manuel da Silva told a news conference in Khartoum.

"We think that if the African Union leaves Darfur, there will be many more people displaced in a very short time," he added, estimating that 350,000 could be displaced in the months following a pullout.

[edit]

The United Nations said the anticipated fresh displacements in any void caused by the departure of African forces would involve people moving to already overflowing urban camps or to remote mountains and rural areas, far from humanitarian aid.

It also said a pullout could lead to a loss of services including clean water and health care. Cholera was an "ongoing problem", and the expiration of the AU mandate coincided with the start of the malaria season.

"We know that with access to affected populations and the generous support of our donors we can produce concrete results and save lives," da Silva said.

"But if we are unable to provide assistance ... malnutrition and deaths from preventable diseases will increase, and the long-term picture will look increasingly bleak."

Darfur: Options Must Be Eyed

From the AP

The international community should consider all options - including military intervention - as it mulls how to deal with Sudan's rejection of a U.N. peacekeeping force for war-ravaged Darfur, a top British official said Monday.

Last month, the Security Council passed a resolution that would give the United Nations control over a peacekeeping operation in Darfur now run by the African Union. The AU force has been largely ineffective and understaffed because of a lack of funding, and its mandate expires at the end of this month.

Sudan has so far refused to give its consent for the U.N. takeover, stalling the transfer of power.

"The international community is going to have to keep its options open," David Triesman, the British Foreign Office's minister for Africa, told reporters in New York ahead of a U.N. Security Council meeting on Sudan later Monday. He added that nothing was being ruled out, and that the situation was nearing a "tipping point."

Asked about the possibility of an international force intervening even if the Sudanese government continues to resist a U.N. peacekeeping force, he said: "There is bound to be a consideration of a range of options if there is no movement."

[edit]

"No issue needs more urgent attention than Darfur. There is no longer any time to waste. When we say 'never again' to genocide and serious human rights abuses, we must mean it," Gambari said.

Triesman warned, however, that anyone considering intervening against the Sudanese government "has got to make the calculation whether more people will be killed and more will be displaced if we do," he said.

Darfur: Pronk Says Peace Deal Needs Fresh Discussions

From the UN News Center

The Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) that was supposed to end the fighting in the war-torn region of western Sudan “is in a coma,” violated day after day and lacking the respect of most locals, the senior United Nations envoy to the country said today as he called for a reshaping of the peace deal.

Jan Pronk, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sudan, told the Security Council that while the DPA – which was signed in early May – is a good agreement in theory, it lacks the support of several key rebel groups who have since been marginalized from the peace process.

“The Darfur Peace Agreement is only four months old, but it is nearly dead. It is in a coma. It ought to be under intensive care, but it isn’t.”

Mr. Pronk called for new consultations on the DPA to include those groups that did not sign the deal, although he warned against this being labelled as the “reopening of the peace negotiations.”

The envoy also recommended the striking of a truce to end the continuing clashes in the region, as well as an enhanced and improved ceasefire commission to deal with the numerous violations of the DPA.

“Since its signing, the DPA has been violated day after day, week after week,” Mr. Pronk said, adding that “the use of rape as a tool of terror is frequent and again on the rise.”

Mr. Pronk, who was briefing the Council on the Secretary-General’s latest report on Sudan, voiced concern about what might happen at the end of this month, when African Union (AU) troops stationed in Darfur are slated to leave.

“The AU is less effective than it was a year ago, but its presence is essential. Departure of the AU leaves the people in the camps [for internally displaced persons] unprotected and vulnerable to anyone who would wish to harm them and resume the cleansing of 2003 and 2004.”

The Security Council voted last month to deploy more than 17,000 UN peacekeepers in Darfur, but Khartoum has remained adamant that it is opposed to such a force.

“The UN does not deserve the insinuations from Sudanese political leadership in power. We do not intend to recolonize, nor are we laying a carpet for others to do so,” Mr. Pronk said.

Uganda: LRA Leaders Miss Truce Deadline

This Reuters article corrects an earlier story that said Kony had arrived in Sudan

The two top leaders of the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have missed a Tuesday deadline to gather at an assembly point on the Sudan-Congo border as part of a truce, mediators said.

"They have not assembled yet. They have missed the deadline and it is going to be considered a violation on their part," said the head of an independent truce monitoring team, Major-General Wilson Deng Kuoirot.

"They can be given maybe 24 hours. It's a delay of the implementation of the peace process."

Kuoirot said more than 800 fighters had already assembled at two locations as part of a landmark truce signed last month raising hopes of an end to the two-decade insurgency in northern Uganda, one of Africa's longest running wars.

The ceasefire expired on Tuesday, although Ugandan government negotiators were expected to review the truce at a meeting with LRA representatives later this week.

Kuoirot said LRA leader Joseph Kony and his deputy Vincent Otti had not turned up at Ri-Kwangba yet.

From the AP

The leaders of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army were still at large despite an agreement with the Ugandan government to assemble at two camps by Tuesday, but the government said they would be given more time.

``We will discuss with the LRA team about the new deadline for the cessation of hostilities agreement,'' Interior Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda said. ``We need to be with a time frame so that things work out quickly.''

More than 800 rebels have arrived at the two camps set up in uninhabited areas of southern Sudan, said Maj. Gen. Wilson Deng, chairman of a Sudanese team set up to monitor the LRA. Under the truce, the rebels will be protected and monitored while a broader peace deal is negotiated.

The assembly points are at Ri-Kwangba, just 550 yards north of the border with Congo, and Owiny-Ki-Bul, just north of the Ugandan border.

Five LRA leaders, including Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti, are wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni says he won't turn them over if they end the insurgency.

Darfur: Bush to Name Special Envoy

From Reuters

President Bush, pressured by aid and rights groups, has decided to appoint a special envoy to try to end the violence in Sudan's western Darfur region, a U.S. official said on Monday.

The official, who asked not to be identified, declined to say who Bush had chosen but Sudan expert John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group said the front-runner was Andrew Natsios, a former Bush administration aid official.

Natsios, who resigned last December as head of the U.S. Agency for International Development and is now a professor at Washington's Georgetown University, did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

Aid groups and some members of Congress have complained that the Bush administration's interest in Darfur had waned after the departure earlier this year of former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who focused on the issue.

The U.S. official said Bush would likely announce the appointment of the envoy on Tuesday in New York, where he is attending the U.N. General Assembly.

Darfur: Rice Presses China Over UN Peacekeepers

From AFP

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed her Chinese counterpart to do more to convince the Sudanese government to allow the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force to the war-ravaged Darfur region, officials said.

Rice and her top aides met Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly for talks on a variety of issues, but the crisis in Darfur dominated the discussions, US officials said.

"Substantively, they spent most of the time on Sudan," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said of the meeting, which lasted less than an hour.

China, which has close energy ties with Sudan, abstained last month in the vote on a Security Council resolution that called for deployment of some 20,000 UN troops and police to halt what Washington says is genocide against ethnic minorities in Darfur.

The Sudanese government rejected the resolution, effectively preventing deployment of the UN forces to replace a smaller and under-funded African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission which has failed to halt the violence in Darfur.

China cited Sudan's opposition to the UN force in explaining why it joined Russia and Qatar in abstaining on the Security Council vote.

But Washington has insisted the UN resolution would permit an international deployment to halt the humanitarian crisis in Darfur even in the face of opposition from Khartoum.

"The secretary urged the Chinese to do everything they could do to allow in the international force, to allow for that transition from the AU mission to the UN force," McCormack said following Monday's meeting

The Chinese minister told Rice he planned to meet this week in New York with Sudanese President Mohammed al-Beshir and "would work to persuade the Sudanese to abide by the Security Council resolution," according to McCormack.

But there was no indication the Chinese were ready to back a more muscular approach to halt the crisis in Darfur, an area the size of France along Sudan's western frontier with Chad.

Darfur: Khartoum Urges AU To Extend Mandate

From AFP

Sudan has urged the African Union to extend the mandate of its truce monitors in Darfur, ahead of a crucial vote by the African body and amid mounting pressure on Khartoum to accept UN forces.

"The African Union should extend their mandate beyond September 30," Vice President Ali Osman Taha told reporters in Khartoum on Monday, referring to the official expiry of the 7,000-strong contingent's mandate.

The African Union's Peace and Security Council was due to hold a vote on extending the mandate later Monday in New York but the gathering was postponed due to the absence of key leaders.

The African body, whose first ever peacekeeping mission has been undermined by paltry funding and a lack of adequate equipment, has already asked the UN to take over but its request has been roundly rejected by Khartoum.

Taha reiterated that his government was willing to offer financial assistance to the AU force, an offer first made at an Arab summit in Khartoum in March.

An extension of the AU mandate would offer more time for all parties to continue negotiations and avert a diplomatic crisis over the planned deployment of UN forces in the war-torn western region.

The UN Security Council adopted a resolution late last month which calls for the deployment of up to 20,000 UN peacekeepers to replace the cash-strapped and ill-equipped AU troops in Darfur, a region the size of France.

Beshir has become increasingly isolated in rejecting the planned UN mission, with Western powers turning up the heat on his regime and his Sudanese peace partners breaking ranks on the issue.

The veteran president charges that the UN plans are a US-engineered ploy to invade his country and plunder its resources.

"If the African Union is to form the core of a UN force, why insist on placing it under UN command instead of providing it with financial and technical assistance?," asked Taha at Monday's press conference.

The combined effect of war and famine has left up to 300,000 people dead in Darfur and displaced 2.5 million in three and half years of civil war pitting the government and allied militias against ethnic minority rebels.

Analysts argue Khartoum fears that a UN presence in Darfur could pave the way for arrests of government officials accused of war crimes.

"The United Nations cannot declare war on a member state and as long as we remain UN members, nobody can force the deployment of peacekeepers in Darfur," Taha said. "There will be no international forces in Darfur without Sudanese consent."

Darfur: AU Meeting Delayed

From Reuters

An African Union (AU) meeting to discuss the situation in Darfur, scheduled for New York on Monday, will now "possibly" take place later in the week, South Africa's Foreign Ministry said.

"The reason for the postponement is to allow AU Heads of State and Government comprising the 15-member AU Peace and Security Council, currently attending the United Nations General Assembly, to participate in the Peace and Security Council meeting," the ministry said in a statement.

The AU peacekeeping mandate expires on September 30 and the United Nations wants to assume control of a new mission with 20,000 U.N. troops.

Sudan has said it would not accept U.N. forces in its vast west but was expected to accept an extended AU mandate, a presidential adviser was quoted as saying on Monday.

South Africa said President Thabo Mbeki would represent it at the AU meeting. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashil was also expected to attend the meeting.

Darfur: Bashir May Withdraw Deadline for AU

From The Guardian

Sudan is expected to withdraw its deadline for African Union peacekeepers to leave the war-torn western region of Darfur at the end of this month, when AU foreign ministers discuss the mounting crisis in New York today, according to senior officials in Khartoum.

[edit]

President Bashir has repeatedly said he would not accept UN troops, accusing the west of wanting regime change and trying to recolonise Sudan. "We don't want the United Nations back to Sudan no matter the conditions," he said in Havana after meeting the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan.

But sources in Khartoum now say the government is willing to let the African Union remain in Darfur, and accept some changes in its powers. "It is likely we will arrive at an extension of the African Union mandate when the ministers meet in New York. There seems to be a common interest. It will give time for all sides to find a way out of this," Ghazi Salahuddin Atabani, a senior presidential adviser, told the Guardian yesterday. The government wants to explore what it calls "African Union Plus", a plan to keep the AU troops but give them extra back-up in the form of helicopters and surveillance technology from western states.

Darfur: As Peace Mission Nears End, War in Sudan Intensifies

From the Washington Post

As the African Union prepares to abandon its troubled peace mission to Darfur, the region is descending ever more steeply into war.

Fresh Sudanese government troops with machine guns slung over their shoulders patrol the streets of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state. Helicopter gunships based here rumble off into the countryside almost every day, loaded with rockets. And Darfur's fractured and frustrated rebel forces increasingly are fighting back against government forces.

The intensity of the combat in Darfur, the western Sudanese region the size of Texas, has forced a new flood of civilians to flee their burned and bombed-out villages for sprawling camps on the outskirts of this and other cities. The estimated 2 million people already in such camps are settling in for the long haul, losing hope that they will ever return home.

Hawab Abdallah Osman, 50, said her village about 45 miles northwest of here is now empty. Asked when she planned to return, she said, "Never."

"There is bombing there," she said. "I don't think peace will come."

[edit]

The government also has failed to restrain the Janjaweed, which continues to rape, kill and pillage. Increasingly, the militiamen are doing so while wearing crisp green uniforms, distributed by the government.

Civilians here say militiamen gallop their horses and camels into the camps for displaced people, sometimes within site of African Union troop positions. Rarely have the troops responded with force. In some cases, Darfur civilians, still smarting from deaths of friends and family members, have demonstrated angrily in front of African Union encampments.

"This African Union, if there is fighting, they are running away," said Halima Idriss, 55, gesturing furiously as her orange head scarf flapped in the hot wind of a camp outside of El Fasher.

The African Union's Peace and Security Council plans to review its decision to depart at a meeting in New York on Monday. But with its current mandate and resources, African Union officers express despair about their ability to keep peace when both the government and rebel forces are determined to return to war. Field commanders from the only rebel group that signed May's peace deal say they, too, are likely to resume fighting soon unless the United Nations sends its peacekeepers to Darfur.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the African Union officers muttered angrily about their failure to enforce calm while expressing greater fears. They used the words "genocide" and "Rwanda" to describe what they expect will follow their departure.

Outside analysts also say that the African Union, while ineffective at peacekeeping, is serving as vital eyes and ears for the outside world at a time when the Sudanese government is making it more difficult for aid groups and journalists to operate here. With the African Union gone, they say, the last buffer will be lost against a bloodier assault in Darfur.

"All predictions are that without witnesses, the slaughter will begin," said Eric Reeves, a Smith College professor who has closely monitored the Darfur conflict, speaking from Northampton, Mass. "As long as the A.U. stays in, they are powerless but they are witnesses."

The African Union pullout would come shortly before the end of the rainy season, when flooded dirt roads typically dry out, allowing full-scale military maneuvering to resume after many weeks of limited mobility for both sides.

John Prendergast, an Africa analyst for the International Crisis Group said the United States and the United Nations have allowed the Sudanese government to outmaneuver them diplomatically. He acknowledged that the United Nations would have trouble deploying troops over the objections of the government but said tougher actions would persuade officials to allow the peacekeepers.

"If we start acting, they will change their behavior," said Prendergast, speaking from New York, where he was preparing for a Darfur rally in Central Park. "It's very sad that the U.S. has not mustered the political will to head down that path."

Little news of the political maneuvering reached displaced civilians in Darfur. They passed the day much as they have for months, in some cases for years. They took long, dangerous walks into the Janjaweed-controlled countryside to gather firewood. They rode their donkeys in search of grass for the animals to eat. They sought shade from the blistering sun under makeshift shelters made with reeds and plastic tarps distributed by international aid groups.

And they waited for a peace few expect to come.

Darfur: SLA-Minnawi Wants UN Force

From the AP

The only Darfur rebel faction to commit to a peace deal for the war-torn region urged Sudan‘s ruling party on Monday to let U.N. peacekeepers replace the largely ineffective African Union force.

The faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, which signed the Darfur peace agreement in May, supports the U.N. Security Council U.N. Security Council resolution calling for U.N. peacekeepers to replace the understaffed AU troops, whose mandate ends Sept. 30, said the rebel faction‘s spokesman Mahjub Hussein.

The ruling National Congress Party and its leader, President Omar al-Bashir, have rejected U.N. peacekeepers as infringing on the country‘s sovereignty and have offered to send government troops to Darfur instead. Critics say such troops would escalate violence in the region.

Minnawi was sworn in last month in Khartoum as an assistant to al-Bashir, a post that also would eventually make him the head of a semi-autonomous government in Darfur under the May peace deal.

The May peace agreement has not halted the violence, which aid workers and rights groups say has increased in recent months.

Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the United Nations ‘ top rights watchdog to focus its attention on Darfur, saying it deserved the same diligence that has been given to crises in the Middle East.

"At the present time I feel I must draw your attention especially to those to which the people of Darfur are being subjected and which threaten to get even worse in the near future," the statement said.

"The armed groups in Darfur are the real culprits of the violations mentioned," Omer Dahav Fadol Mohamed told the council. "We‘re always willing to contribute to respect to human rights."

French President Jacques Chirac said Monday that he would make a "solemn appeal" to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir during the U.N. General Assembly meeting, which opens Tuesday.

Darfur: US Moves Stall to Press Sudan

From the Financial Times

Moves in Congress to put financial pressure on Sudan to stop the killings in Darfur have been stymied by a combination of big business interests and the Bush administration, according to supporters of legislation blocked in the Senate that would have endorsed decisions by US states to divest from companies involved in Sudan.

Tens of billions of dollars in equity are at stake, mostly of non-US companies and including two listed Chinese energy giants involved in Sudan's rapidly growing oil industry which fuels the military with arms and other supplies.

While giving rhetorical backing to anti-genocide protests staged around the world on Sunday, Democrats and Republicans admitted that a new watered down draft of the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act was further evidence of US unwillingness as well as inability to take decisive action.

The draft put forward last week after long delays by Senator Richard Lugar, head of the foreign relations committee, took out controversial language known as "section 11" in the House equivalent that passed in April. This would have given a green light to a growing, celebrity-backed Sudan divestment campaign that has successfully targeted states, universities, pension and investment funds, persuading them to dump stock.

[edit]

"Section 11 was critical," said Jason Miller, national policy director of the Sudan Divestment Task Force which is co-ordinating the campaign. His group pushes for divestment targeted not at all companies in Sudan but those deemed to be directly helping the government, through the oil industry which accounts for over half of state revenues and some telecommunications companies that have directly assisted the military.

On the other side, the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), a US business lobby group representing major industries, is fighting the campaign and has sued the state of Illinois.

Bill Reinsch, president of the NFTC, lobbied Congress. He told the FT that the principle was simple – "the president of the United States runs foreign policy; the mayor of Berkeley does not".

The NFTC also complains that lists of target companies are drawn up by unaccountable private interest groups. He said some of the US companies listed had been exempt from existing US sanctions to do business with Sudan – usually in the south where rebel groups recently signed a peace accord with Khartoum. Others had nothing to do with Sudan, he said.

It is not clear whether Mr Lugar's draft will get through the committee, though there is a sense that so much time has been wasted that something is better than nothing. The sudden arrival of the draft caught many by surprise and it is still being studied. No one contacted by the FT could explain why support for a "no fly zone" over Darfur had apparently been dropped as well.

The State Department declined to make an official comment on the issue.

One administration official questioned whether the legislation would make any difference. He said there was little the US could do on its own, its military was stuck and exhausted in Iraq, China was refusing to co-operate and Nato was tied up in Afghanistan.

To that list, analysts said, should be added US reluctance to make Darfur a priority in its difficult relationship with China, Sudan's oil wealth, and a still close intelligence relationship between Washington and Khartoum in the war on terror.

Darfur: Annan, Arbour Urge UN Human Rights Council's Focus

From the AP

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the United Nations' top rights watchdog to focus its attention on Sudan's war-ravaged region of Darfur, saying it deserved the same diligence that has been given to crises in the Middle East.

As the 47-member UN Human Rights Council opened its second session of the year on Monday, the global body's top rights official, Louise Arbour, read out the statement from Annan.

"I trust you will focus the same vigilance on violations and abuses wherever they may occur," Annan said in the speech read by Arbour.

"At the present time I feel I must draw your attention especially to those to which the people of Darfur are being subjected and which threaten to get even worse in the near future," the statement said.

At least 200,000 people have died and more than 2 million people have been displaced in the Darfur conflict, which began in early 2003 when ethnic African tribes revolted against the Khartoum government. The government is accused of unleashing Arab militiamen blamed for rapes and killings. Despite a May peace agreement, aid workers and rights groups say the violence has increased in recent months.

The rights council, which held its first session in June after replacing the discredited UN Human Rights Commission, has been criticized by the United States and others for focusing too much attention on alleged Israeli atrocities in Lebanon and Gaza.

It already has held two special session condemning Israel's military operations in both places.

Annan noted that the council was "rightly concerned" with the Middle East, but reminded it of the "importance of universality, objectivity and non-selectivity and of eliminating double standards and politicization."

"Do not disappoint the hopes of humanity during the next three weeks as you work to build an effective and credible human rights council," the statement said.

Arbour, in her own speech delivered afterward, was even stronger in her demand for the council to act on Darfur, describing an atmosphere where armed groups are indiscriminately attacking civilians, and noting an increase in rape and other atrocities.

"In the face of a near collapse of the prevention and protection initiatives put forward by the international community, we must stress, in the last instance, the need for unflinching accountability," Arbour said.

Sudan's deputy ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva said criticism of his government has been unfair.

"The armed groups in Darfur are the real culprits of the violations mentioned," Omer Dahav Fadol Mohamed told the council. "We're always willing to contribute to respect to human rights."

Darfur: Arabs vs Africans

From the AP

The crises in Somalia and Sudan are pitting Arabs and African governments against each other, sharpening a centuries-old continental divide.

Sudan currently chairs the Arab League, and was supposed to hold the rotating chairmanship of the African Union as well when it hosted the summit of the group‘s 53 states and territories in February. The Africans withheld the privilege, however, because of Sudan‘s alleged complicity in atrocities in its Darfur region.

Africa experts say tensions between Arab and ethnic African states over Darfur have been growing for months.

"Once a region is destabilized, international powers step in and rearrange it according to their needs," Al-Ahram said.

But he said Arab states harbor a deep-seated racism toward black Africa, and Gamal Eid, executive director of the Cairo-based Arab Network for Human Rights Information, accused them of having a "generally condescending view" toward their southern neighbors. He believes the rift is widening.

Somalia and Sudan are at the eastern end of a continentwide line where Islam and Christianity first collided 150 years ago, as Arabs moved south bringing Islam and bumped up against European colonizers with their Christian missionaries. Both Arabs and Europeans were involved in the slave trade, leaving a legacy of resentment among Africans.

Iqbal Jhazbhay, a political analyst at the University of South Africa, noted that when the African Union was founded six years ago, it pledged not to ignore members‘ human rights violations. The Arab League, however, though, rarely criticizes one of its own.

He added that when the Arab League recently launched peace talks for Somali factions, some Africans saw it as interference. "That certainly has not gone down well with key member states of the African Union," he said.

That war ended in 2005 but meanwhile Darfur was becoming the vast country‘s next battleground.

Somalia is mainly black and Muslim. There the fear expressed by many is of a Taliban-style government taking root, or of foreign intervention sparking a regional war and drawing in faraway powers.

Plans are afoot to send in Ugandan and Sudanese troops, as requested by the weak Somali government. The Islamic fighters vehemently oppose such a move.

In Darfur, some 200,000 people have died in a three-year rebellion by ethnic African tribes following years of government neglect. Some of the worst atrocities are blamed on the janjaweed, Arab tribal militias unleashed by the government — a charge officials deny. The U.N. Security Council U.N. Security Council wants to send in peacekeepers, but only if Sudan consents.

But Sudanese officials have declared U.N. troops could spark a holy war. Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden — who was based in Sudan in the 1990s until the government ousted him — has called on Islamic militants to battle any U.N. troops that deploy in Darfur. Bin Laden also has identified Somalia as a battleground in his war with the West.

Darfur: Activists Around the World Rally

From Reuters [POTP has more coverage here and here]

Peace activists around the world staged a day of action on Sunday to highlight the "forgotten war" in Darfur where tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million left homeless.

In London, Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders delivered a plea and said prayers outside the residence of Prime Minister Tony Blair, and demonstrators rallied outside Sudan's embassy.

In Rwanda -- scene of a 1994 genocide which some have evoked in comparison with the Darfur crisis -- survivors of the slaughter that killed 800,000 people called for action.

"When I think of the people in Darfur today, it makes me sick to the stomach because I know what it's like to watch your protectors walk away and I know the fear of waiting for help that never comes," said survivor Didier Sagashya.

The western region of Sudan bordering Chad has been plagued by political and ethnic violence since 2003 when rebels took up arms against the government.

A new estimate of the number of people killed in Darfur published last week put the toll at 200,000 or more. And the more than 2 million people displaced by conflict have created one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

Western leaders, some African presidents and humanitarian groups are piling pressure on Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to accept a U.N. resolution to deploy more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned last week of "yet more death and suffering, perhaps on a catastrophic scale" if the government in Khartoum does not allow international peacekeepers into the region.

The mandate for 7,000 poorly equipped African Union (AU) troops expires on September 30 and Sudan has said they would only be allowed to extend the mission if they remained under AU control.

Bashir reiterated at a meeting of Non-Aligned nations in Cuba Saturday that under no circumstances would he accept U.N. troops in western Sudan.

"We don't want the United Nations back to Sudan no matter the conditions," he told a news conference in Havana.

But Bashir will attend a United Nations meeting on Darfur in New York this week, opening the way for further talks, South Africa said on Sunday.

Bashir would "interact" with the U.N. Security Council over the issue and attend a summit of the African Union's peace and security council, said South African President Thabo Mbeki after talks in Havana with Bashir and Annan.

Bashir has likened a U.N. presence to an invasion force bent on regime change in Khartoum, which would result in an Iraq-style quagmire. Analysts say the government might also be concerned U.N. troops could arrest suspects eventually named in war crimes warrants by the International Criminal Court.

In a protest march in Khartoum Sunday to coincide with the global "Day for Darfur" dozens of Sudanese pro-government activists marched to U.N. offices to oppose new peacekeepers.

Darfur: Blair's Letter

From the BBC

Tony Blair has written to each European Union member calling for unity on the crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Here is his letter:

I know we all share a strong personal commitment to Africa and that we all agree the tragic situation in Darfur is unacceptable and that the international community cannot turn its back on the millions of people in Darfur who have suffered so much in recent years.

I believe that EU leaders should join with the AU [African Union], United States and others to give a very clear message to the Sudanese government and rebel forces.

Our foreign ministers will have the opportunity to discuss this in New York next week.

I also propose that we should discuss this at the informal European Council in Finland in October.
The EU should play a central role in mobilising world opinion on this issue.

We should strongly call upon government of Sudan and non-signatories alike to stop immediately the violence in northern Darfur.

Both sides must abide by the commitments they made under previous ceasefire agreements.

The Darfur Peace Agreement signed in May this year by the government of Sudan and one of the rebel movements sets out a path for peace.

It provides a framework in which all parties to this conflict can work for a peaceful solution.

Therefore, we should also call on the rebel groups who have so far failed to sign up to do so; and on the government of Sudan and other parties to implement the agreement.

'United voice'

We should pay tribute to the African Union Mission in Sudan [Amis] for its contribution to improving the lives of the people of Darfur.

UNSCR 1706 provides for a UN peacekeeping force to take over and to protect the people of Darfur.

We should call on the government of Sudan to agree to the continuation of Amis, and transition to the UN.

We should urge the government of Sudan to rise to the challenge above, make the right decisions to protect the people of Darfur, and put Sudan back in its rightful place at the heart of the family of nations.

If it responds we should commit to provide substantial support for reconstruction and peace through debt relief and aid.

But this window should not remain open forever.

And if it fails to move we should agree further measures to isolate and pressure it.

We should work to create the broadest possible coalition to speak with one united voice on this issue.

I have spoken in recent days to President Bush and Premier Wen and will also speak to other leaders.

I know we are all determined to ensure that the international community does not fail to protect our fellow human beings facing slaughter.

I am committed to do everything I can on this.

Darfur: Sens. Smith, Kennedy Introduce Legislation

A press release from last week from Senator Gordon Smith

In advance of the Global Day for Darfur on September 17, Senators Gordon Smith (R-OR) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA) announced their bipartisan plan to implement the Darfur Peace Agreement and help alleviate the suffering in the region. The bill is the first legislation introduced in Congress after the Government of Sudan signed the Darfur Peace Agreement on May 5, 2006.

“Lives can be saved if the influence of the international community is brought to bear,” Smith said. “If it is not, bloodshed and murder will continue. The United States has an immense power to do good, and without our leadership, I fear the world will continue to stand idly by while innocents are slaughtered.”

“This weekend, thousands of Americans will rally to bring greater awareness to the genocide. Our government must also act. For far too long, violence and suffering have gripped the Darfur region of Sudan, and the continuing tragedy has been shamefully tolerated by the international community. Our overarching goal must be to insist that the Sudanese Government stop the violence and comply with its commitments,” Kennedy said. “It’s a simple message, but its impact will depend on whether the world is vigorously supporting it or only a few countries are expressing concern. We must act, and act now.”

The “Supporting Peace and Alleviating Suffering in Darfur Act” aims to increase the prospects of implementing the peace agreement and, in the meantime, to address the unmet humanitarian and security needs in Darfur. At the heart of the bill lies the tenet that effective implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement requires verification by a United Nations peacekeeping operation. To achieve this, the bill seeks to intensify the international pressure on the Government of Sudan to comply with the agreement and to allow in the UN peacekeepers.

In the bill, Congress calls on the President to appoint a Special Envoy for Sudan with responsibility for supporting the Darfur peace process and, together with the international community, to press the Sudanese parties to implement the agreed upon ceasefire and disarm the Janjaweed militia, which has caused the genocide in Darfur. The bill calls upon:

* The Government of Sudan to immediately allow in a UN peacekeeping force to Darfur and implement the Darfur Peace Agreement

* NATO to enforce the no-fly zone over Darfur, if requested by the UN, and to provide airlift, logistical and intelligence support to the peacekeepers

* The international community to support the current African Union Mission in Sudan and a follow-on UN peacekeeping mission to Darfur, and to promptly act to fill the outstanding humanitarian assistance needs

The President is required to report to Congress within 90 day on the Government of Sudan’s implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement and describe the situation on the ground, including the humanitarian crisis. Also, the President reports on what the United States, NATO and the international community are doing to support the peace process and fill humanitarian assistance needs. Additional reports are required every 180 days.

If the President certifies in his report that the Government of Sudan is implementing the peace agreement and has agreed to allow in a UN peacekeeping mission, then the President is authorized to implement recommendations from the Special Envoy for Sudan to further peace process. However, if the President finds the Government of Sudan in non-compliance, then the President shall impose targeted sanctions on the leaders of Sudan and their immediate families, urge the international community to do the same and to adopt sanctions the United States already has in place, and continue to oppose normalization of the United State’s relationship with Sudan.

For each of the fiscal years 2008-2012, the bill authorizes $150 million in additional funding to fill the unmet humanitarian needs in Darfur. To gain greater leverage with the Government of Sudan, the bill requires reports on companies investing $5 million or more in Sudan and on the assets of Sudanese leaders in the United States and elsewhere. This information will aid in applying financial pressure on the Sudanese. Finally, the bill codifies sanctions against Sudan that are now implemented through Executive Order.

Uganda: Kony Emerges After Truce

From Reuters

The head of Uganda's notorious Lord's Resistance Army rebels, Joseph Kony, has arrived at an assembly point in Sudan as agreed in a truce to end his devastating insurgency, a delegate said on Sunday.

Confirmation of the presence of Kony would be a huge boost to what is widely seen as the best chance for an end to a two-decade war in north Uganda which has been one of the world's worst and most neglected conflicts.

"They're all there. (LRA No. 2) Vincent (Otti) and Joseph (Kony) are there. We are going to discuss the next phase: a comprehensive solution," Martin Ojul, head of an LRA mediating team, told Reuters near the Ri-Kwangba assembly point.

Kony and Otti are among the world's most wanted men, both indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

LRA mediator Ojul was speaking from a village 4 miles from Ri-Kwangba where a delegation of LRA representatives and southern Sudanese mediators were en route to the assembly point late on Sunday. A Reuters reporter accompanied the group.

Join Me to Help Save Darfur

An op-ed from Kofi Annan in the Los Angeles Times -via POTP.

More info on the Global Day For Darfur

TOMORROW, SEPT. 17, people around the world will be taking part in a "Global Day for Darfur" to show support for the people of Darfur and to put pressure on governments to protect innocent civilians. They are right, and I hope their call will be heard.

The glimmer of hope that many of us felt when the Darfur peace agreement was signed four months ago — albeit by only two of the warring parties — is being extinguished by renewed fighting among the factions. In violation of the agreement, the Sudanese government has sent thousands of troops to Darfur and renewed its bombing.

I strongly condemn this escalation. The government of Sudan should stop its offensive immediately. All parties should perform what they have promised and abide by the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council.

These latest clashes have brought yet more misery to the people of Darfur, who have already endured far too much. The total number of displaced people stands at 1.9 million. Nearly 3 million people depend on international aid for food, shelter and medical treatment, while aid workers have increasingly become the targets of violence — 12 have been killed just in the last two months.

A year ago, world leaders meeting at the U.N. agreed that all states have the responsibility to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The government of Sudan, if it fails in this sacred responsibility, will face opprobrium and disgrace throughout the world. Neither those who decide such policies nor those who carry them out should imagine that they will not be held accountable.

Once again, I urge Sudan to avoid this by accepting the Security Council's decision to deploy a U.N. peacekeeping operation, which would be better equipped and funded than the current African Union mission and have a clearer mandate to protect those in danger.

About 10,000 U.N. troops are already in Sudan. For more than a year, they have been helping to implement the peace agreement between northern and southern Sudan. On Aug. 31, the Security Council, while reaffirming its commitment to the sovereignty, unity, independence and territorial integrity of Sudan, authorized the deployment of up to 17,300 additional troops to Darfur to implement the peace agreement. There is no hidden agenda, no other ambition than to help the people of Darfur to live in peace and in dignity. But the government of Sudan has refused.

Putting the extra U.N. troops in place will in any case take time. Therefore, the Security Council also called for strengthening the African Union mission, or AMIS, so that it can carry on until the U.N. arrives. The Africans have repeatedly asked for this transition but say that in the meantime their troops, who have performed valiantly in very difficult conditions, need help.

The U.N. has agreed to support AMIS during the crucial transition period. But AMIS will also need increased support from donors — including the League of Arab States, which has offered vital backing and wants AMIS to stay until the end of the year.

I have tried repeatedly to explain the transition to the government of Sudan and to clear up any misconceptions or myths. In public and in private I have stressed the humanitarian situation and appealed to the government's own pragmatic good sense.

But my voice is not enough. Whoever, in Africa or beyond, is in a position to influence the government of Sudan must do so without delay.

The Security Council, and especially its five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — have a particular responsibility to ensure that the message to the government of Sudan is strong, clear and uniform. But every voice raised makes a difference, and therefore the responsibility is shared among us all. I urge everyone to join their voices with mine in asking the government of Sudan to embrace the spirit of the Security Council's resolution, to consent to the transition and to pursue the political process with new energy.

There can be no military solution to the crisis in Darfur. All parties should have understood by now, after so much death and destruction, that only a political agreement — in which all stakeholders are fully engaged — can bring real peace to the region.

Twelve years ago, the United Nations, and the world, failed the people of Rwanda in their time of need. Can we now, in all conscience, stand by and watch as the tragedy deepens in Darfur?

Darfur: Militia Rallies Against UN Troops

From Reuters

More than 1,000 volunteer fighters from Sudan's Popular Defence Forces rallied in Khartoum on Saturday vowing to treat any U.N. force in Darfur as an invading army that would be in a state of war with Sudan.

The volunteers, from Sudan's official PDF militia, danced to nationalistic folk music and chanted "God is Greatest". Some wore masks over their faces, while others wore military-style fatigues.

"We consider any army that enters Sudan as an invading army, even if the order was from the United Nations," Ahmed Bilal Osman, a presidential adviser, told the crowd of PDF volunteers.

"Any country that takes part in this invasion force will enter into a state of war with Sudan."

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"We say to any Western country that comes to Sudan that this will be its graveyard," said Abdullah Mohammed Ali, a 30-year-old PDF volunteer dressed in a green uniform.

"We can solve our problems by ourselves, and we think any intervention is to control Sudan. We will defend against it."

The PDF volunteers, who came to the rally at the Popular Defence Forces Khartoum headquarters unarmed, included veiled women and older men, and organisers said some had travelled from across the country to attend the rally in the Sudanese capital.

Some at the rally waved Islamic prayer beads in their hands as they danced in the courtyard of the Popular Defence Forces Khartoum headquarters. Others waved 'V' for victory signs and chanted: "March, march, Bashir".

"This battle that they will open upon us, they shouldn't think that we will greet it in a regular war, or that we will wait for them to take up positions or entrench themselves," said Kamal al-Din Ibrahim, general coordinator of the PDF.

"We will determine the place of the war. We will determine the timing of the war," he said.

The mandate for 7,000 poorly equipped African Union peace monitoring force expires on Sept. 30 and Sudan has said they would only be allowed to extend the mission if they remain under AU control.

"We are prepared for any foreign force that enters Sudan," said Ahmed Aboul Qassem, a PDF volunteer at the rally. "We have more than one million ready and trained in all weaponry, even swords and knives."

Darfur: "Epicentre of a Major Earthquake"

From the BBC

The head of the UN refugee agency says the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region could have a devastating impact on the peace and security of the region.

In a BBC interview, Antonio Guterres described Darfur as the "epicentre of a major earthquake".

Earlier UK PM Tony Blair urged Sudan's government to stop military action in the area and allow in a UN force.

[edit]

Mr Guterres said instability resulting from the Darfur conflict was spreading into Sudan's neighbours, Chad and the Central African Republic.

"I would say you must look at Darfur not only in itself, but as the epicentre of a major earthquake in the area that can have a devastating impact not only on peace and security but also terrible humanitarian consequences," he told the BBC.

The UN Security Council could not take action to introduce an international UN force unless Sudan gave its consent, which it was not yet prepared to do, the UN official said.

"The secretary-general is making huge efforts trying to create the conditions for this presence to finally be possible as a basic condition both for humanitarian action, for the protection of the people involved and also for a lasting peace to be possible," he said.

The remarks came as one of Sudan's vice-presidents, representing a former southern rebel movement currently sharing power in Khartoum, was quoted as saying he would accept a UN force.

First Vice President Salva Kiir Mayardit told the al-Sudani daily the government was incapable of protecting civilians in Darfur.

"The aggravation of the humanitarian and security situation in Darfur necessitates the intervention of international forces to protect civilians from the atrocities of the Janjaweed militias so long as the government is not capable of protecting them," he was quoted as saying.

Reminder: Global Day For Darfur

September 17th is the Global Day for Darfur

Despite the signing of a Darfur peace agreement on 5 May 2006, the violence in western Sudan has not stopped; in fact, in some parts of Darfur, the violence has grown worse.

People are still being killed and raped and displaced - every single day.

On September 17 people around the world will take part in the Global Day for Darfur to show world-wide support for the Darfuri people and to put pressure on our Governments to protect the civilians.

We hope that you will be able to join us on the Global Day for Darfur.

Darfur: Waiting for the Slaughter

From the Independent

Rasha Ibrahim Adam and her children may be about to die - just as she thought they had all escaped to safety.

The 38-year-old mother of four children is one of the latest to flee the bombs from the Sudanese government that have dropped on their homes. Today, she finds herself in one of the dusty, benighted refugee camps that litter the region of Darfur. She sits in her once bright red tob - a wrap-around dress - that has been faded by the sand-laden wind that blows across al-Salaam camp on the edge of the town of el-Fasher.

She was one of the 50,000 people who swelled the scorched camps for the "internally displaced" in the past month - bringing to about 2.5 million the number of children, women and men now homeless in a conflict that has dragged on for three years without an end seemingly in sight. Until now, that is. Because an end is in sight for the Darfur camps - where at least 300,000 black African farmers have been slaughtered by the Khartoum government and its Arab proxies, the Janjaweed militia, whose name means "devils on horseback". One of those who died was Rasha's husband, Adam.

It could be an end so terrifying, it defies the imagination.

The fear is that the rest of Adam Ibrahim Adam's family - and many of the two million people of the Fur, Massaleit or Zaghawa tribes in the camps - may soon perish too.

[edit]

In a situation already described by the UN as the "world's worst humanitarian disaster" the genocide so long denied by the Arab government in Khartoum may be about to happen.

"We're on the brink of a massive catastrophe," said one senior Western diplomat yesterday. "If there is no Plan B for Darfur, all-out genocide is highly likely," said James Smith, chief executive of the Aegis Trust, which is co-ordinating a worldwide protest that will take place in 32 countries tomorrow.

[edit]

Government troops and military ordnance have been pouring into el-Fasher airport for seven weeks now. Preliminary attacks have already begun. Yesterday, there were reports of the bombing of Dobo Madrasa, and another unnamed village, to the east of the Jebel Marra mountains.

The day before, the government bombed seven villages south of Tawilla town, including Tabarat and Tina, after which about 45 vehicles carrying government troops swept into the area. Local people fled the villages to hide in the mountains.

The tall and dignified Rasha - her name has been changed to protect her identity - described what happened when the government attacked her village near Kulkul. "I was feeding my two-year-old son when I heard the plane. I knew immediately what it meant," she said. "I started to run but didn't know where to go.

"Then the bombs dropped and soon everybody was running and my boy was screaming. The bombing didn't last long but to me it felt like days, and I didn't know where my other children were or what happened to them. Eventually, they came running to me - they'd been hiding with friends near the mosque.

"Two people were killed but we knew the bombers would be back, so nearly the whole village decided to leave. All around us is fighting but to the north the fighting is the worst so we headed south to el-Fasher.

"We walked for days and arrived here in al-Salaam camp. We all walked together to try and keep safe - it was very slow with young children and old women and some of the children were abducted on the way. We still don't know what's happened to them. Now I'm here with all my children and I thank Allah that we are safe and alive."

But for how long? The Sudanese government is making its preparations, brazenly, before the eyes of the world. On Tuesday, the EU's special envoy, Pekka Haavisto, on a three-day visit to the region, witnessed Antonov-20 planes loading bombs in el-Fasher, the regional capital of North Darfur, in preparation for an attack. The Sudanese military roll bombs from the doors of these cargo planes; rights observers saw a woman and seven children injured near Kulkul when a bomb was rolled from the back of an Antonov.

Khartoum is flagrant in its flouting of the authority of the African Union mission in Darfur. This week, the government seized a tanker full of AU jet fuel in el-Fasher and used it to fill its own aircraft which are arriving daily there delivering troops and arms.

Last Saturday, villagers who had earlier been attacked by the Janjaweed gathered near the ruins of their homes in South Darfur to speak to AU investigators; as they waited for the AU helicopter to arrive, the Janjaweed attacked again, killing 18 of the survivors of the earlier assault.

All across Darfur, people are on the move again in the face of intensified combat. The rebel forces, many of which have fragmented in disagreements over the Abuja peace deal, are causing mayhem.

The region is descending slowly into warlordism and banditry. In the lawless wild west of Sudan, where every group now seems out for itself, aid agencies, the UN and even the African Union force are being ambushed and robbed of supplies and vehicles. Rebels who once rode camels and horses and carried AK47s are now in 4x4s with rocket-propelled grenades obtained from Chad and Eritrea.

South Darfur, which had been quiet since the peace deal, has seen militia attacks on many villages in the past few weeks. Gerida refugee camp south of Nyala, which previously housed 20,000, is now the biggest camp in Darfur with 120,000 inhabitants.

Guerrillas from the rebel Justice & Equality movement (JEM) have split from the National Redemption Front (NRF) - an alliance of rebels who did not sign the Abuja peace deal between the Khartoum government and the main rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) - and are moving into West Darfur.

The region is in deepening chaos. Of its six million population, two million are in internal camps and 200,000 in camps in neighbouring Chad. Some 3.4 million are dependent on food aid - but of them, an Oxfam spokesman, Alun McDonald, said, 4 out of 10 people are not receiving the assistance they need because aid agencies cannot reach them.

Mr McDonald said: "Our movement in Darfur is greatly restricted because the roads are simply too dangerous to use. Where possible, we access places by helicopter but most rural areas are almost completely out of bounds."

Things will get much worse if the African Union is forced to leave. But yesterday Khartoum was intransigent on that point.

After a meeting of the African Union Peace and Security Council in Addis Ababa, the Sudanese Minister for Foreign Affairs, Al-Samani Al-Wasila, insisted the AU troops, who were due to begin a "rolling transition" to a UN peace mission, must withdraw on 30 September.

"The government of Sudan will not accept UN peace-keepers," he said. It has also told the AU it will allow no further troop rotations. Instead it proposes its own stabilisation plan which will move 10,500 more Sudanese troops into Darfur to combat "outlaws and terrorists" there.

The signs of what that force will do are not encouraging. In addition to the new wave of bombings, an assault has been launched on the NRF rebels in the town of Um Sidir, 70km north of el-Fasher. The town has changed hands several times in the past few days.

The government has told the few aid organisations who have not pulled out that it wants to disperse the entire camp population by the end of September. It wants agencies, including Oxfam, to set up services in rural areas so people can be enticed back despite the lack of security. If that does not happen one state governor has spoken of putting barbed wire around camps "for their own protection" - in effect ,making them prison camps.

To intimidate aid agencies, Khartoum harasses them. The Norwegian Refugee Council, the main NGO at Kalma camp in South Darfur, was barred from the camp last week. Aid workers have been detained for gathering information on rapes and sexual violence. Eight aid workers have been killed in the past few weeks.

Many aid agencies, such as Save the Children UK, have pulled out of the region entirely. And Oxfam has shut two offices near Kebkabiya. "It's got a lot more unstable," said one worker. "It's extremely difficult to operate."

It will get even worse if African Union troops pull out. In one area where the AU used to provide three patrols a week rapes increased from four a month to 200 when the patrols had to be reduced to one a week.

Back in Rasha's camp at al-Salaam, an old lady named Fatima looked on, bent-backed. She opened her gap-toothed mouth and, gesturing around the wind-swept camp with its pitiful shelters of bent branches, she cried: "I'm far too old for this. But I will go home - I am not going to die here, far away in a strange camp."

Sadly, she could prove to be horribly wrong.

Darfur: For Women, Survival Means Leaving Camp, Risking Rape

From the Washington Post

The tall, light-skinned man reeking of sweat and cigarettes often gallops his horse right into the nightmares of Darelsalam Ahmed Eisa, 18. Each time, she said, he throws her to the ground, pushes up her skirt and forces himself inside her while muttering: " Abdah. Abdah. Abdah ."

Slave woman. Slave woman. Slave woman.

He was in her dreams just last night, she recalled, as real and horrifying in his green camouflage uniform as he was the day he raped her two months ago. But when Eisa awoke this morning, there was no time for terror, no time for tears. She covered herself in an orange and blue cloth, grabbed the family's ax and departed for the perilous Darfur countryside, out of the relative safety of a sprawling camp for people displaced by the violence in this region of western Sudan.

In the wilderness, Eisa can find grass for the donkeys and firewood for cooking. But it is also where government-backed militias known as the Janjaweed roam, terrorizing villagers. Violence and disease in Darfur have killed as many as 450,000 people since 2003, and an estimated 2 million have been forced to flee their homes.

The government and a rebel group reached a cease-fire agreement in May, but since then, rapes in and around camps for people displaced by the fighting have surged, aid groups and residents say. The International Rescue Committee has recorded more then 200 sexual assaults among residents of a single camp near Nyala, a town in South Darfur state, during a five-week period in July and August.

More and more often, women in Darfur face the starkest of choices: risk being raped by leaving the camps in search of firewood and grass, or starve. If they invite their brothers or husbands along to protect them, the Janjaweed will still rape the women, they say, and kill the men.

"It is better for me to be raped than for my brother to be killed," said Eisa, soft-spoken and round-faced, with hair braided into tight rows beneath her head scarf. She has two children, ages 2 and 5, but no husband. He divorced Eisa last year, she said, after she quarreled with one of his elder wives.

But Eisa is not alone. On this morning, as she walked with the ax on her shoulder, her sister, Aziza, 15, was just a few paces behind. Other women and girls, on foot and on donkeys, soon joined them in a haphazard convoy of mothers, daughters and sisters flowing west, away from the low morning sun.

They passed braying donkeys and smoky wood fires in the camp. They passed children playing soccer and rolling pot lids with sticks. And they passed an African Union military base, close enough to hear a sputtering generator there that powers satellite televisions. On the screens, images of slinky Bollywood dancers entertained the lonely men who are posted at the base to monitor the cease-fire but rarely venture beyond the double-coiled razor wire of their perimeter.

Eisa, her sister and an 18-year-old friend had followed the same path on the day in July that they were attacked.

But that day, they had gone farther -- about two hours west instead of one -- in search of a variety of grass that fetches a higher profit at the camp's makeshift markets, about 75 cents per sack rather than the 50 cents paid for the grass collected near the camp. They had four donkeys with them that day, so 25 cents more per pack meant maybe a couple of dollars more in earnings for the day.

After walking for about two hours, they had nearly reached the better grass when dozens of Janjaweed militiamen on horses and camels suddenly appeared, surrounding the young women.

Aziza tried to run but was caught within seconds and struck in the face. Eisa froze. Quickly and roughly, the men separated the two sisters and their friend, with a man taking each one to a secluded spot.

The tall, light-skinned man was riding a reddish-brown horse, Eisa said. He was clean-shaven and armed with a machine gun. "I will take you," the man told Eisa. "My wife needs a slave."

He then ordered Eisa to lie on her back, but she refused. She knew that if he raped her and the community learned of the attack, she would probably never be able to remarry.

Her defiance enraged the man. He aimed the gun at Eisa and shouted: "I will shoot you! I will shoot you!"

At that moment, a second Janjaweed man stepped in. "Don't waste a bullet on a woman!" he said. "Just throw her."

The tall man hurled Eisa to the dirt and crawled atop her.

A few minutes later, the rapes were over but not the ordeal. The Janjaweed tied the young women together at their wrists and beat them with their fists and the butts of their guns.

Then, the militiamen ordered the women to lead them to a place where they could find some animals to steal. If they found enough, the men said, they might free them.

Terrified, Eisa helped lead their captors to a place where people water their animals. But before they arrived, they came upon two men relaxing with their animals. One mounted his horse and rode off in a panic as the Janjaweed approached, leaving 40 cows behind for them to steal. The second man, having only a donkey, was unable to escape.

The Janjaweed shot him dead, Eisa said, and took his donkey.

Darfur: Blair to Propose New Initiative

From Reuters

Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Saturday he will propose an incentive package for Sudan as part of a new initiative to end the crisis in war-torn Darfur and get U.N. peacekeeping troops on the ground.

"In the coming weeks I will talk to other leaders to agree an initiative that sets out the help Sudan can expect if the government lives up to its obligations and what will happen if they don't," Blair said in a statement.

The western region of Sudan bordering Chad has been rent by political and ethnic violence since 2003. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced by fighting between government troops, rebels and militias.

Western leaders, some African presidents and humanitarian groups are piling pressure on Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to accept a U.N. resolution to deploy more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur.

The mandate for 7,000 poorly equipped and under-funded African Union troops is due to expire on September 30 and Sudan has said they would only be allowed to extend their mission if they remain under AU control.

"The situation is unacceptable. I do not understand the government of Sudan's rejection of the U.N. force, or its threat to withdraw its welcome from the AU," Blair said.

"The government of Sudan must agree to the continuation of the (African Union) force and transition to the U.N.," he said.

A British official said Blair's aim was to get the African Union, European Union, the United Nations and the United States to back the initiative at the highest level.

The official said the plan would make clear what Sudan could expect to get in return for playing its part in ending the crisis, saying the incentives would be a road-map for normalising relations with international powers.

They could include ending suspensions of development and recovery aid, resolving Sudan's debt situation, establishing higher level political contacts and moving towards the lifting of sanctions, he said.

"If they do not shoulder their responsibilities, then they would face serious consequences," he told Reuters, declining to elaborate on what the consequences might be.

Darfur: Kiir Backs U.N. Troops

From the AP

One of Sudan's two vice presidents, who heads a former southern rebel group sharing power in Khartoum, said in remarks published Saturday that he would accept the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region.

The head of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, First Vice President Salva Kiir Mayardit, told the independent Al-Sudani daily that the Sudanese government was incapable of protecting civilians in Darfur, and called on the U.N. to intervene.

"The aggravation of the humanitarian and security situation in Darfur necessitates intervention of international forces to protect civilians from the atrocities of the Janjaweed militias so long as the government is not capable of protecting them," Kiir was quoted as saying at the close of an SPLM politburo meeting held in the southern city of Juba late Friday.

Kiir's group signed a peace agreement with the Sudanese government in January 2005, laying down its arms after 21 years of civil war -- Africa's longest war.

Some see that peace deal as a model for resolving the Darfur conflict. Kiir's organization is believed to have influence over the Darfur rebels, though the conflicts were not related.

On Tuesday the U.N.'s humanitarian chief said it was vital that a U.N. peacekeeping force be allowed into the western Sudan region of Darfur to improve the security situation.

Sudan has long resisted the plan for a U.N. force. A 7,000-strong African Union force now in the region is understaffed, starved of cash and eager to hand over to the U.N. Its mandate expires at the end of the month.

"Indeed, in many ways we are in a freefall in Darfur at the moment," U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland told reporters in Kenya at the end of an eight-day visit to Congo, Uganda and southern Sudan.

He said if insecurity forces aid agencies to pull out of Darfur, a region the size of France, hundreds of thousands of people would be left with absolutely nothing.

"There is still a possibility to avoid that, but we have very little time, in my view, to avoid a collapse in Darfur," Egeland said.

Darfur: News Round-Up

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

A renewed government offensive caused devastation in North Darfur this week, where the UN reports that 355,000 do not have access to food aid. Despite two special sessions of the UN Security Council, the question of peacekeeping in Darfur has still not been resolved and the Sudanese government still refuses to accept a UN peacekeeping force. Many diplomats are discussing alternate options, and several have called for international intervention in Darfur without the consent of the Sudanese government.

Letter From a Sudanese Prison

From the Washington Post

I came bearing gifts I imagined would be useful to a foreign correspondent trapped in a grubby African prison -- mosquito repellent, books, two recent issues of the Economist and an oversized bar of dark Lindt chocolate. And I came with one big question: How did Paul Salopek, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for the Chicago Tribune, a veteran of dicey Third World travel, land himself in a Sudanese lockup?

The answer, on the surface, seemed simple enough. Salopek, 44, had been on assignment for National Geographic when, on Aug. 6, he crossed over the border from Chad, entering the intractable war zone of the Darfur region without a visa. Within two hours, he was picked up by former rebels who had cut a deal with the government. A few days later, including one when a helicopter carrying him took ground fire, Salopek was in the hands of Sudan's notorious secret police. The charges included not just the visa violation, but also espionage and writing "false news." The possible punishments included many years in prison.

I met Salopek four weeks later while on a reporting trip to Darfur. With stamped and signed travel papers in my pocket, I walked into the sandy court compound that had, at this late stage in his captivity, become his home. In late afternoons, the steel-barred doors to his concrete-box lockup were left open, allowing Salopek and his two Chadian colleagues -- a driver and an interpreter -- to move about freely, talk on the phone, chat with visitors and order out for dinner from one of El Fasher's few restaurants.

Salopek, lean and bookish-looking in short hair and glasses, had approached his time in prison as he would a story -- immersing himself in the place with the passion of a devoted observer. He picked up a bit of Arabic, and studied the names and personalities of his captors, all of whom eventually came to treat him as a friend. They talked and shared food and played soccer. And when a senior guard challenged him at chess, Salopek wisely lost 10 of 13 games and muffled his shock that the queen in the Sudanese version is called "the minister," stripping the game of its legacy of female power.

Most of all, he appeared at peace with his situation, which I knew took much effort for a man uncomfortable in the spotlight. The Tribune, National Geographic and a host of U.S. officials were working hard for his release, and despite some encouraging signs, Salopek was preparing himself and his two Chadian associates for a long stay. "If I have to spend two years in Shalla prison," he said, referring to North Darfur's prison, "I'll work on my Arabic."

He said this in an even tone, without a smile or bravado. In fact, the only time his blood pressure seemed to rise was when he contemplated another possible outcome of his captivity -- that he would go free but that other journalists, chastened by his experience, would stop coming to Darfur. It pained him to imagine that his plight might lead to less attention for one of the world's great ongoing tragedies.

Salopek knew better than most what the stakes were. For whatever he learned before entering Sudan (including through visits with rebels and refugees in Chad) he had spent a month mastering firsthand the brutality of the government here. And despite what he suffered -- I leave this for him to tell, but he came far closer to death than has been widely reported -- Salopek expressed much more concern for the hundreds of thousands of people who had died and 2 million made homeless in Darfur.

Salopek was convinced, as was every aid official and African Union officer I met here, that the conflict was about to become worse as the government moved to finish off the rebels who had not signed a May peace deal. With the AU preparing to leave and a planned U.N. mission blocked by the government, the thin margin of safety for journalists and aid groups was about to disappear as well. Salopek was distraught over what could happen to civilians once all the outside witnesses left Darfur, as the government seemed determined to make happen.

Darfur: Blair Says Situation is Unacceptable

From the AP

The situation in Darfur is unacceptable, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Saturday, and he urged international pressure on the Sudanese government and rebels to stop fighting immediately.

He said the African Union force in Sudan deserved thanks for its efforts, and noted that the UN Security Council has authorized a UN peacekeeping force to take over.

"I do not understand the government of Sudan's rejection of the UN force, or its threat to withdraw its welcome from the (African Union). This does not match the commitment to peace the government showed in May by signing" the peace agreement, Blair said.

The British premier said the coming weeks were "crucial."

"Sudan will stay at the top of my agenda," he added.

Darfur: Bipartisan Letter to President Bush

A press release from the Office of Nancy Pelosi

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and House Members from both parties active on the crisis in Darfur sent the following letter to President Bush today urging him call special attention to Darfur when he addresses the United Nations on Tuesday and appoint a special envoy on Sudan.

Below is the text of the letter:

September 15, 2006

The President

The White House

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

As we have done several times over the last few years, we write to you with profound concern over the increasingly dire humanitarian crisis and worsening genocide in Darfur. The United States simply cannot stand by while the government of Sudan continues its campaign of terror and atrocities against innocent civilians. We urge you to use your speech at the United Nations on Tuesday to call special attention to Darfur and the need for the international community to take immediate, decisive action to end the genocide.

The situation in Darfur has dramatically deteriorated over the last several weeks. In direct violation of the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) and numerous UN Security Council resolutions, Khartoum has begun to deploy some 26,000 troops to the Darfur region. This has coincided with a sharp increase in attacks on civilians and humanitarian aid workers, renewed aerial bombardment and the all but complete deterioration of the fragile DPA.

The member states of the United Nations have simply not done enough to stop the brutal violence that has occurred in Darfur in the past three years. We urge you to call publicly for full implementation of all UN resolutions on Darfur, and for all member states, particularly Russia and China with considerable influence in Khartoum, to do more.

As the international community debates whether or not an international force, in addition to that already deployed by the African Union in Darfur and by the UN in other parts of Sudan, can be deployed without the consent of the Sudanese government, we hope you will cite as examples the intervention of international forces in the 1990's in Africa and Europe. We do not believe the approval of those who have allowed genocide to occur in Darfur is necessary before other nations intercede to bring it to an end.

We would also ask that you use your influence to urge the African Union to renew its mandate until a UN force can take over. The United States should take a leadership role in ensuring that the AU force is properly supplied and equipped. The prospect of leaving a void is a clear recipe for disaster.

Finally, we ask that you immediately appoint a special envoy on Sudan. Now, more than ever, a person with a robust mandate and direct access to you is needed to demonstrate the priority the United States attaches to ending the genocide quickly.

We would like to request a meeting in the coming days to further discuss possible US responses to this emergency. The people of Darfur have suffered for far too long. After each genocide of the last century, Rwanda being the most recent, we vowed "never again." Yet we have become witness to another genocide. Now is the time to act.

Sincerely,

Nancy Pelosi, House Democratic Leader

Donald Payne, Member of Congress

Tom Lantos, Ranking Member, International Relations Committee

James Clyburn, Chairman, House Democratic Caucus

Charles Rangel, Ranking Member, Ways and Means Committee

George Miller, Ranking Member, Education and Workforce

Carolyn Kilpatrick, Member of Congress

Barbara Lee, Member of Congress

Mel Watt, Chairman, Congressional Black Caucus

Frank Wolf, Member of Congress

Maxine Waters, Member of Congress

Michael Capuano, Member of Congress

Jan Schakowsky, Member of Congress

Tom Tancredo, Member of Congress

Uganda: UN Asked to Back Peace Effort/ICC To Probe Efforts to Arrest LRA

From Reuters

The U.N. Security Council should back peace talks between Uganda and a rebel group that has tortured children instead of putting its leaders on trial immediately, a senior U.N. official said on Friday.

Top leaders of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army, including its deputy commander Vincent Otti, have been indicted of war crimes by the Hague-based International Criminal Court for killing civilians and the abduction and mutilation of more than 20,000 children to serve as fighters or sex slaves.

Uganda signed a truce last month with the group to stop its brutal 20-year insurgency, but Otti has said that his fighters would not surrender unless the International Criminal Court charges were withdrawn.

Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, who just visited northern Uganda, where the population has been herded into squalid camps for fear of rebel attacks, was vague on when any indictments would be acted on and said the first priority was peace.

"The council should show its support for the talks, and encourage the government and the LRA to reach a final agreement," Egeland said. "This is the best chance we have ever had for peace in northern Uganda.

While Egeland said there should be no impunity for mass murderers, he said that after demobilization of the group one could "come up with something" to satisfy international law.

He said Luis Moreno Ocampo, prosecutor of the international court, agreed that the United Nations should support the peace talks as well as "a solution that makes peace and justice work together."

"I think the ICC indictments will not be a stumbling block. I think they can actually be an impulse for future progress for northern Uganda peace that is now at hand," Egeland said, adding that the indictments were a factor in pushing the rebel group into negotiations.

Also from Reuters

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has ordered an urgent report into Uganda's efforts to arrest and hand over leaders of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army, wanted by the court on war crimes charges.

Uganda last month offered amnesty to leaders of the cult-like rebels, who are notorious for massacring civilians, mutilating survivors and kidnapping thousands of children, under the terms of a truce.

The court said in a statement on Friday it had asked its registrar to submit a written report by October 6 on what progress there was in the execution of the arrest warrants and the co-operation of the relevant states.

It stressed the arrest of LRA leader Joseph Kony and his deputies was vital for their effective prosecution and the prevention of further crimes.

Darfur's Sudan Problem

A piece by Gérard Prunier on Open Democracy responding to this piece by Alex de Waal from a few months ago [Prunier is the author of "Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide" while de Waal is co-author of "Darfur: A Short History of a Long War."]

It is relevant that Alex de Waal was a principal advisor to the negotiating teams in Abuja, and had vigorously defended the provisions of the DPA as a "historical opportunity" which should not be missed - since not signing this text would open the door to renewed violence in the province.

Ten weeks on, the ruins of the agreement are everywhere apparent. A host of reports and testimonies confirm that the violence has got worse as the offensive military operations of the Sudanese government have escalated. The scale of atrocity is comparable with that during the massive massacres of late 2003 and early 2004. It cannot be believed that this is due only to the fact that the DPA's implementation "is stalling".

This is not a case of political goodwill being waylaid by poorly-handled technical arrangements, as de Waal's formulations imply. Rather than face this inconvenient truth, the author discusses the nature of an eventual foreign military intervention (which earlier he had thought inadvisable). A "purely military solution to the janjaweed problem would be large, long and costly", he writes, requiring "an intervention force of 200,000 for an indefinite period". In other words Darfur would become a second Iraq, admittedly a rather unpleasant prospect.

De Waal reaches this conclusion by arguing that military strikes against the janjaweed could not be selective since the irregular janjaweed are "now part of the Sudanese regular forces". Thus, such attacks "would entail declaring war on the Sudan government, which would delight some advocates of intervention". In other words only irresponsible warmongers could contemplate a direct military intervention.

Nonetheless, de Waal advises one course of action that would be compatible with the DPA: "a piece-by-piece plan" that requires "the Sudanese army ... to do the tough job". This is to ensure the effective cantonment of the janjaweed, and to "reform and downsize the paramilitary institutions that have absorbed them, establish controlled migration routes for the nomads and supervise disarmament through a group of tribal elders known as the Peace and Reconciliation Council". This entire process would be supported by a foreign intervention which would be "small, smart and with long-term perspectives". Actually, long-term perspectives are exactly what this idyllic view of the situation lacks.

Darfur: Bush Frustrated With UN

From the transcript of the press conference held by President Bush

QUESTION: Mr. President, as you prepare to go up to the United Nations next week to address the General Assembly, Secretary Kofi Annan has been critical of some U.S. policies, particularly in Afghanistan, lately.

How would you characterize the relationship between the United States and the United Nations at this point?

BUSH: First of all, my personal relationship with Kofi Annan is good. I like him. We've got a good personal relationship.

I think a lot of Americans are frustrated with the United Nations, to be frank with you.

Take, for example, Darfur. I'm frustrated with the United Nations in regards to Darfur. I have said, and this government has said, there's genocide taking place in Sudan.

BUSH: And it breaks our collective hearts to know that.

We believe that the best way to solve the problem is for there to be a political track as well as a security track.

And part of the security track was for there initially to be African Union forces, supported by the international community, hopefully to protect innocent lives from militia.

And the A.U. force is there. But it's not robust enough. It needs to be bigger. It needs to be more viable.

And so the strategy was then to go to the United Nations and pass a resolution enabling the A.U. force to become blue-helmeted -- that means become a United Nations peacekeeping force -- with additional support from around the world.

And I suggested that there also be, you know, help from NATO nations in logistics and support in order to make the security effective enough so that a political process could go forward to save lives.

The problem is, is that the United Nations hasn't acted.

BUSH: And so, I can understand why those who are concerned about Darfur are frustrated. I am.

I'd like to see more robust United Nations action. What you'll hear is, "Well, the government of Sudan must invite the United Nations in for us to act."

Well, there are other alternatives, like passing a resolution saying, "We're coming in with a U.N. force in order to save lives."

I'm proud of our country's support for those who suffer. We provided by far the vast majority food and aid.

I'm troubled by reports I hear about escalating violence. I can understand the desperation people feel for women being pulled out of these refugees centers and raped. And now is the time for the U.N. to act.

So you asked of levels of frustration. There's a particular level of frustration.

I also believe that the United Nations can do a better job spending the taxpayer -- our taxpayers' money. I think there needs to be better management structures in place, better accountability in the organization.

BUSH: I hope the United Nations still strongly stands for liberty. I hope they would support my call to end tyranny in the 21st century.

So I'm looking forward to going up there. It's always an interesting experience for a West Texas fellow to speak to the United Nations. And I'm going to have a strong message; one that's hope -- based upon hope, and my belief that the civilized world must stand with moderate, reformist-minded people and help them realize their dreams. I believe that's the call of the 21st century.

Darfur: Food Crisis Looms

From IRIN

Rampant insecurity in North Darfur State is preventing aid agencies from distributing food and stopping many farmers from planting crops. The result is very precarious food security, aid workers warn.

"The lack of access, due to insecurity as a result of fighting, banditry and hijackings, is the most important humanitarian concern right now. It is leading to a drop in service provision, more displacement, and a total lack of predictability," Niels Scott, head of the regional Darfur office of the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), told IRIN.

"Villagers are at risk not only of being attacked but also of losing their livelihoods - both these dangers can cause displacement," the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a recent statement. "Many people in rural areas are facing hardship as a result of blocked migration routes, lack of access to markets and healthcare services, and insufficient water for both humans and animals in places where large numbers of livestock congregate."

[edit]

In the arid areas farther north in North Darfur State - predominantly controlled by the rebel coalition of the National Redemption Army (NRF) that refused to sign the DPA - access has been minimal and humanitarian organisations are desperately trying to find out what the effect has been on the local population.

"We haven't been able to access any of these areas since April-May, and many used to receive food assistance," one aid worker said. "I'm very concerned - we're talking about 250,000 people who haven't received food."

Most people in this area are pastoralists, who cultivate on a relatively small scale and sell their camels at the markets of Kutum, Mallit and El Fasher town, while others take their animals all the way to Libya.

"We haven't seen many people of these areas at the markets over the past three to four months," the aid worker observed. "To reach the markets further south, they would have to move with all their animals through insecure areas and they're afraid they will be looted."

Although he had very limited information about the impact on cultivation, the aid worker said the main clashes in the northern region had occurred when people would normally attend to their fields.

"We expect that planting has been limited this year due to the fighting," he said. "In the end, it means that much more food will be needed and that people will depend on food aid throughout next year."

Zam-Zam, a camp near El Fasher, houses 40,000 IDPs, who have mostly fled from villages from the fertile belt southwest of El Fasher. The villages have been attacked - and sometimes razed to the ground - during various waves of fighting throughout the course of the three-year conflict.

Inside Zam-Zam, an SLM/A commander of Minnawi's faction told IRIN that many people in the camp had initially planned to go back to their villages to cultivate. "When they saw all the recent movement of government troops, however, they were afraid another war was starting and they decided not to plant."

Aid workers say they are seriously concerned about a potential influx of another 40,000 IDPs into Zam-Zam camp. "All humanitarian aid agencies pulled out of the area west of Tabit and south of Tawilla [60 km southwest of El Fasher town] due to insecurity - it is the height of the hunger season and the last food distribution that people in that area received was in July," one aid worker warned.

"We might be heading towards a humanitarian catastrophe here," Scott warned.

The recent movement of as many as 50 NRF vehicles into the area of Tawilla has sparked rumours of an impending escalation of violence that would throw the volatile region back into turmoil once again.

On Wednesday, NRF rebels clashed with government forces south of Tawilla. An Antonov plane and two helicopter gunships reportedly bombed Dobo Al Umda Dobo and Dobo Al Madrasa town and the surrounding villages. The number of casualties is unknown.

"If a United Nations force is not deployed soon, something much worse is going to happen here," the SLM/A commander added.

Darfur: EU Presses Sudan on UN Force

From DPA

The European Union on Friday urged the Sudanese government to give up its resistance to deployment of an international peacekeeping mission to the troubled Darfur region.

EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels also pressed for the implementation of a peace agreement signed in May between Khartoum and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), an African rebel group.

"A broadly-based and inclusive implementation (of the pact) ... remains the basis for stability, peace and reconciliation in Darfur," ministers said in a statement.

The EU also underlined its support for a current African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.

UPDATE: An official statement

The Council adopted the following conclusions:

"1. The Council expresses its deep concern about the deterioration of the security and humanitarian situation in Darfur. The Council condemns the continuing violations of the cease-fire by all parties, particularly the violence directed at the civilian population and the targeting of humanitarian assistance. It reiterates the obligation of all parties to permit the unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance. The Council reminds the leadership of the Sudanese Government of its collective and individual responsibility to protect its citizens from all violence and to guarantee respect for human rights. The EU strongly endorses the statement by the UN Secretary General to the UN Security Council on 11 September, including his urging of the Government of Sudan to embrace the spirit of UN Security Council Resolution 1706 and his warning that those who decide and carry out policies leading to death and suffering in Darfur will be held accountable.

2. The Council is alarmed by the renewed fighting in areas of North Darfur, the recent military build-up in Darfur and the reinforcement of the government forces. It condemns the reported military attacks by both the Sudanese government and the rebel groups and stresses that any military action will only further aggravate the already alarming humanitarian situation. The Council stresses that the Sudanese Government should stop their military action in Darfur, abide by the ceasefire agreement and respect their commitments under the DPA. The Council recalls the provisions of UN Security Council Resolution 1591 asserting that those individuals impeding the peace process or threatening the stability in Darfur shall be held responsible.

3. The Council strongly supports the UN Security Council Resolution 1706 of 31 August 2006 which expands the mandate of the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) to Darfur and strengthens its military and civilian components in support of the early and effective implementation of the DPA and the 2004 N'djamena Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement. The Council reiterates the readiness of the EU to support the efforts of the UN and other partners in the planning for transition from AMIS to UN.

4. The Council strongly calls upon the Sudanese Government to give its consent to the deployment of the UN operation and to extend its full cooperation to the UN in preparing for the implementation of the extended mandate of UNMIS.

5. The EU reaffirms its strong support to the AU. Until transition to the UN is completed, the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS) and the effective and impartial implementation of its mandate will continue to be of critical importance for the peace process in Darfur. The Council stresses the need to continue efforts to enhance the operational capabilities of the mission, particularly regarding the tasks related to the protection of the civilian population and humanitarian access, and reiterates the EU's support to that end in view of the AU PSC meeting on 18 September.

6. The Council reiterates that a broadly based and inclusive implementation of the DPA, signed in Abuja on 5 May 2006, remains the basis for stability, peace and reconciliation in Darfur. It calls on the non-signatories to join in and commit themselves to the implementation of the agreement. In this regard, the Council urges the signatories to the DPA to continue working to find ways to address the concerns of the non-signatories, allowing them to adhere to the agreement.

7. The Council in particular emphasises the need to involve the non-signatories in the effective monitoring of the cease-fire and the investigation of violations committed. The non-signatories should be held fully responsible for the fulfilment of their commitments set out in the N’djamena Agreement. The Council thus urges the DPA signatories to accept the participation of the non-signatories in the mechanisms set up by the existing cease-fire agreements and to facilitate a swift resumption of their work. The Council also suggests considering confidence-building measures such as inviting the non-signatories to participate in the Core Coordination Group (CCG) and take immediate steps to better involve civil society through an inclusive Darfur-Darfur dialogue.

8. The Council underlines its deep concern at the potential negative impact of a continuing conflict in Darfur on the rest of Sudan and in the wider region. The Council is particularly attentive to the situation of the refugee camps in Chad and it welcomes both the recent indications of an improvement in the relations between Sudan and Chad and the on-going talks in Asmara between the Sudanese Government and the Eastern Front.

9. The EU calls on the international community to combine its efforts and to work with the parties to the conflict to improve the humanitarian situation and to build a sustainable peace in Darfur."

Darfur: Diplomatic Paralysis

The latest from Eric Reeves

The cataclysm of human suffering and destruction in Darfur continues to grow, with no end or even mitigation in prospect. The Khartoum regime is currently accelerating its vast military offensives in North Darfur and eastern Jebel Marra, with large-scale civilian casualties and displacement. Evidence of deliberate, ethnically-targeted human destruction---particularly among the Fur communities---is reported almost daily. At the same time, Khartoum continues to defy the international community, adamantly refuses to accept the peacekeeping force specified in UN Security Council Resolution 1706 (August 31, 2006), and insists that a crumbling and demoralized African Union observer mission may accept neither a UN mandate nor UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations funding. For its part, China has made emphatically clear, as has the Arab League, that no UN force can deploy without Khartoum’s consent, ensuring that the accommodating language of Resolution 1706 (guaranteeing that Khartoum’s claims of national sovereignty will not be “affected” by the resolution) paralyzes any further UN action. And indeed, since passage of the US-British-sponsored resolution two weeks ago, there has been nothing but exhortation.

This paralysis continues even as humanitarian assistance is, according to Jan Egeland, in “freefall”:

“‘In many ways we are in a freefall in Darfur at the moment,’ UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland [said]. [Egeland also said that] if insecurity forces aid agencies to pull out of Darfur, a region the size of France, hundreds of thousands of people would be left with absolutely nothing. ‘There is still a possibility to avoid that, but we have very little time, in my view, to avoid a collapse in Darfur.’ Egeland urged China as well as Arab and Islamic states to help convince the Khartoum-based government that ‘we need this UN force to avoid a collapse.’” (Associated Press [dateline: Nairobi], September 13, 2006)

But there is simply no current prospect of this UN forces deploying, let alone in the “very little time” that Egeland rightly argues remains. And even were a UN force to deploy as soon as possible, this would likely not be until January or February 2007 without major assistance from “first-world” military powers. Moreover, even immediate deployment---by a large, robust force, armed with an appropriate mandate for civilian protection---could do nothing to save the hundreds of thousands who have already perished in three and a half years of genocidal conflict. Nor could it provide for more than the very gradual alleviation of current suffering among a massive population of over 4 million conflict-affected persons in Darfur and eastern Chad (the most current UN figure for the conflict-affected population in Darfur is 3.78 million; in eastern Chad, Darfuri refugees, Chadian Internally Displaced Persons, and other Chadian civilians affected by the Darfur conflict have produced a population that exceeds 350,000). And in the absence of near-term provision of security, humanitarian evacuations and withdrawals will continue, leaving many hundreds of thousands with no humanitarian access, and well over a million human beings with only the most limited and tenuous humanitarian access. These numbers grow daily.

China, a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, yesterday again made its views on deployment of a UN force to Darfur cruelly explicit: Agence France-Presse reports from London (September 13, 2006):

“Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said on Wednesday he backed the proposed deployment of the United Nations peacekeepers in strife-torn Darfur, but warned that Sudanese government consent was vital first.”

It is precisely such consent that Khartoum repeatedly, insistently, obdurately refuses to give:

“Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Thursday [September 14, 2006] reaffirmed his refusal to accept United Nations peacekeeping troops for Darfur, saying they had a hidden agenda to ‘recolonise’ his country. Bashir, speaking at the end of a brief visit to Gambia, said the existing 7,000-strong African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in the conflict-torn western Sudanese region had been successful and should continue its mission there. ‘The UN forces have a hidden agenda in Sudan because they are not coming for peace in Darfur. They want to recolonise Sudan,’ Bashir told a news conference.” (Reuters [dateline: Banjul, Gambia], September 14, 2006)

The UN’s “Sudan sit rep” of September 10, 2006 (Khartoum) reports:

“On 9 September [2006], President Al-Bashir said during commemoration celebrations of the seventh anniversary of the AU in Sert, Libya, that Sudan is categorically opposed to [UN Security Council Resolution] 1706. He stressed that the AU Peace and Security Council has no legal ground to transfer [the African Union mission] to UN. He said if the AU fails to fulfill tasks in Darfur, then it should withdraw and hand back the affairs to the Sudanese Government. [ ] Over the weekend, local papers noted that President Bashir addressed a rally in Hameshkhoreib (Eastern Sudan), where he reiterated his rejection to UN deployment in Darfur.”

There has been no dissent from these views by any senior member of the Khartoum regime or its “political party,” the National Islamic Front (aka National Congress Party). On the contrary, al-Bashir’s position been repeatedly and insistently echoed in all quarters, most ominously today by a senior military official:

“A senior Sudanese army officer on Thursday [September 14, 2006] said the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces in the war-torn Darfur region could jeopardize a May [2006] peace agreement between the government and a rebel group. ‘The Abuja peace agreement has not provided for any role by the UN in implementation of the agreement, except a humanitarian role,’ armed forces operations chief Gen. Ismat Abdel Rahman Zeinal Abdin told reporters in Khartoum. ‘The deployment of international forces in Darfur is tantamount to abrogation of the Abuja peace agreement,’ he said.” (Associated Press [dateline: Khartoum], September 14, 2006)

This intransigent refusal to accept a UN forces leaves the African Union mission as the only international guarantor of security for more than 4 million human beings in an immense and difficult region---amidst accelerating violence, deteriorating security for humanitarian operations, and the growing prospect of annihilating attacks on camps for displaced persons.

Darfur: COC Podcast With Alex de Waal

A podcast with Alex de Waal, author of "Darfur: A Short History of a Long War" from the Committee on Conscience

JERRY FOWLER: Alex, in Darfur it seems like the situation continues to hit a new low every day.

ALEX DE WAAL: The situation for the humanitarian aid operation, and the situation politically are hitting new lows; that is absolutely correct, but we have to have the perspective that the violence, bad though it is, is nowhere near the scale that Darfur witnessed at the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2004 when tens of thousands were killed and millions displaced. It was really those two huge military offensives by the Sudan government with the Janjaweed as proxy that created the disaster of Darfur, and what we are really dealing with today is the aftermath of that.

JERRY FOWLER: You mentioned that, obviously, the situation and the humanitarian operation is perilous, and if this current violence causes the humanitarian operation to collapse, which some United Nations officials have been suggesting may happen, the consequences will be even worse than that round of violence in 2003, 2004.

ALEX DE WAAL: Certainly if the humanitarian operation grinds to a halt, then the situation for the population of Darfur will deteriorate. Having said that, the operation over the past couple of years has been remarkably effective at bringing mortality rates down. It is actually, in some interesting respects, a humanitarian success story. In the context of the most appalling violence, and the most appalling intent by the government of Sudan and some of the rebels, the humanitarian community has rescued some sort of solution for very, very many people in Darfur. Should they withdraw, the situation will deteriorate, but it will not deteriorate overnight. Darfurians are remarkably resilient people; they are able to survive very, very considerable adversity, and many of them will do so, where the precipice where on is not an immediate humanitarian precipice; it is a humanitarian incline. It is not a precipice of massacres; the precipice is one of losing sight of a solution. We did have a solution to the crisis in Darfur within our grasp earlier this year; it is very, very rapidly going out of our grasp, and if it does, then what we are faced with is an intractable crisis that could stretch many years into the future, a bit like the war did in Southern Sudan for more than twenty years.

JERRY FOWLER: You said that a solution was within grasp, and I imagine you are talking about the period of time in early May when the Darfur Peace Agreement was signed. The situation has deteriorated since the signing of that agreement. Why has that not worked out?

ALEX DE WAAL: The negotiations in Abuja—and I was part of them; I was particularly working on the security side—those negotiations dragged on over a couple of years, and the last round dragged on almost six months, and they were tremendously frustrating. They were tremendously frustrating because the government has some very able negotiators who scarcely gave an inch, and the rebel movements were divided, they were incoherent, they were maximalist in their demands, and they were really so distrustful of the government, with good reason of course, but they were not prepared to engage in serious negotiation. However, progress was being made; compromises were being reached; the parties were admitting that they need to live with each other, that the power sharing needed to be worked out within certain parameters; a lot of agreement was reached on issues of wealth-sharing, and the security arrangements, which were the most tricky of all, the area where distrust and mutual fear was at its greatest, we were beginning to make serious progress in defining the problem and identifying a route on how to demilitarize displaced camps, how to disarm the Janjaweed, how to integrate the rebels into the Sudan army, and so on. What was needed, I believe, was more time. Darfur is peculiarly horrible, but in many other respects, it is just like any other African civil war in which a negotiated settlement is the answer, and a negotiated settlement takes quite a while to achieve because of these huge obstacles of mutual distrust. But, because of the gravity of the situation on the ground, and because of the frustrations with the slow pace of the negotiation, we were stampeded into a very quick settlement. We were stampeded into, as the African Union, not acting as facilitators or as mediators, but as arbitrators. The document that was produced in Abuja—and I think in most respects it is really quite a fair document, certainly quite a sophisticated document—was one that was essentially imposed on the parties; it was not owned by the parties. The reason why two out of the three rebel groups—the SLA of Abdul Wahid al-Nour and the JEM—rejected it was not so much that they disagreed with the content, but because they disagreed with the process. They felt that they had not had time to work through these issues and come to an understanding with their adversary, the government, and that is the main reason why they rejected it. What they wanted was longer, and when they rejected it, it soon became clear that it simply was not going to work. The SLA of Minni Minnawi may have been militarily the strongest, but it had very, very little popular support in Darfur, just really minority support among certain groups, and so it was unsustainable. What that meant was that as the weeks passed by, the DPA, and especially the security arrangements, were completely unimplementable. How can a government—a government we dislike as much as the Sudan government for all its human rights abuses—how can a government actually implement an agreement in good faith if it does not have another party to implement it with? How can it withdraw its forces? How can it disarm its militias if it is under military attack? It was not going to be possible to implement it. The government knew that. The government had agreed to bring in United Nations forces to help implement a Darfur peace agreement on the assumption that everyone had signed it; it had agreed to this in March. Now when the Darfur peace agreement was put on the table with only one signatory out of three, it was not a peace agreement, it was only halfway there, and in that context, any international force that came in would have to have a completely different mandate; it could not be one that was implementing an agreement; it would have to be one that was imposing its will, and for that reason, the Sudan government felt, “this simply is not going to work,” and it was valid, that was a valid line of reasoning. However, being the government that it is, being perfidious, being militaristic, it certainly thought to manipulate the agreement to maximum affect, and that is why it broke down, and locked us in the current situation where we have this game of chicken, of the United Nations posturing and the Sudan government posturing, and I fear no solution will come out of this.

Darfur: Millions Facing Threat of Genocide

A transcript from The World Today - via POTP

Dr. Sam Totten, a US-based genocide scholar who has visited the region and who was on the committee [that] advised the Bush administration, says the international community needs to take urgent action to prevent an atrocity that could dwarf the genocide in Rwanda.

Dr Totten is in Australia this week and spoke to me from Bendigo [Victoria]. I began by asking him whether the situation in Darfur has at least improved since the signing of the peace deal this year.

SAM TOTTEN: No, it's not. In fact, the situation is degenerating right now and actually the situation in Darfur, within the next two to three weeks, could erupt into a greater crisis than ever. And as to the fact that the African Union troops, it sounds as if the African Union troops are going to be pulling out at the end of this month.

And it sounds as if the President of Sudan is going to refuse the entrance to UN troops. And that can be an absolute... that could result in an absolute disaster for the black Africans, both who are internally displaced in Darfur, as well as those refugees in Chad.

ELEANOR HALL: And now the UN has authorised a peacekeeping force to replace the AU force, it's the Sudanese Government that's refusing to allow that force in, so you're calling for action from the international community, but what do want the international community to do?

SAM TOTTEN: Personally I think that the international community needs to push the al-Beshir Government to let the UN troops in, because genocide has... as you know, genocide has been declared by the United States, the UN carried out its own investigation, did not find that is was genocide, but found that crimes against humanity had been perpetrated.

And anybody in their right mind would not wait until genocide is declared, but if crimes against humanity are being perpetrated, that's the time to get in to save the people.

So, this could, in effect... if the UN does not push this matter, we could see another Rwanda on our hands.

ELEANOR HALL: What are the similarities with Rwanda prior to the genocide there?

SAM TOTTEN: Well, there are certain similarities, there are many differences, but my fear is this. As you probably know, the Rwandan genocide took place over the course of 100 short days in April, May, June and July, and during the 100 days, between 800,000 and one million people were murdered though the use of machetes largely.

So, if the African Union troops are removed and the UN does not go in, the Sudanese Government could certainly wipe out that many people and more, because they have much more fire power than the Hutu government ever had. And the other thing is that most of the people, meaning the black Africans, are in a contained area.

ELEANOR HALL: So, what can the international community do to put pressure on the Sudanese Government to make it accept the UN peacekeeping force?

SAM TOTTEN: Well, the UN has made approximately a dozen to 18, a dozen-and-a-half resolutions over the past two-and-a-half years, threatening sanctions. And the UN has never followed through on those sanctions.

One of the first sanctions that they could implement right away is establish a no-fly zone over Darfur. And military experts have said that it would not take all that many jets, either from the UN, or NATO, to secure that area. That would be the first thing.

The second thing of course, is that I think the UN Security Council needs to immediately agree among themselves that this is a dire humanitarian crisis, that it could erupt within a number of weeks, and they need to move from their exercise of Realpolitik and decide once and for all that they truly are going to honour the UN convention that they've all ratified and act immediately.

ELEANOR HALL: What confidence do you have that the international community will respond in time?

SAM TOTTEN: Little to nothing. And I'll tell you why. It's based on their record in regard to Rwanda. Virtually, the United Nations knew what was taking place in '92/'93, leading up to 1994. The United States definitely knew, and other major nations knew as well, and little to nothing was done then.

And in light of the resolution, after resolution, after resolution has been made at the UN and no action, I really do not have much confidence and I truly fear that in several weeks we could see a major crisis.

I just... my heart truly breaks for the grave situation the people face. They've already faced such horrific injustice and atrocities, and for them to be sitting there helpless, truly breaks my heart.

Darfur: Death Toll Underreported, Study Declares

From the New York Times, related to yesterday's post

The number of people killed in Sudan’s Darfur conflict has reached into the hundreds of thousands — not tens of thousands as has often been reported, according to an article appearing Friday in the journal Science.

By using scientific sampling techniques and data from camps for displaced persons, two researchers based in the United States estimated that as many as 255,000 people have died, though they believe the actual number may be much higher.

“We could easily be talking about 400,000 deaths,” said John Hagan, a sociologist at Northwestern University and an author of the article, along with Alberto Palloni, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin. “And when you’re talking about genocide, it’s essential to properly identify the scale of death,” Dr. Hagan said in a telephone interview.

In the past, American and United Nations officials have used a range of estimates, from 60,000 to 300,000, to quantify the killing in Darfur, which sank into chaos in 2003. The war started as an uprising of African tribes against Sudan’s Arab rulers but soon degenerated into a conflict with many warring parties and civilians bearing the brunt of the fighting.

The Sudanese government has not released comprehensive casualty figures, but health organizations working in Darfur have surveyed survivors at random about family members who were killed.

In their article, “Death in Darfur,” Dr. Hagan and Dr. Palloni used seven of these surveys to build projections of the death toll, which ranged from 10,000 deaths per month in 2004 to around 5,000 per month more recently. These estimates include natural deaths, though Dr. Hagan said that number was only 10 percent to 15 percent of the total. He said part of his research was based on a rough ratio of one death per every 14 people living in a camp.

“It’s an extremely challenging research environment,” he said. “But ultimately, you’ve got to come up with numbers.”

Dr. Hagan attributed underreporting to the obvious difficulties of physically counting victims in a conflict as inaccessible as Darfur’s, as well as a general tendency by the news media to use conservative estimates about unverifiable casualty claims. Also, some news organizations continued to use an outdated estimate of 70,000 deaths, made once by the World Health Organization.

Darfur: US Implores Allies to Join in Pressing Sudan

From VOA

The United States Thursday called on allies to join Washington in pressing Sudan to accept deployment of United Nations peacekeepers in Darfur. The mandate for the current African Union observer mission in the troubled western Sudanese region expires at the end of the month.

Officials here are concerned that Darfur may be headed for a new round of severe violence if the peacekeeping issue is not settled, and they are calling on allied governments to match U.S. diplomatic pressure on Khartoum to allow deployment of a U.N. force.

[edit]

At a news briefing, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack dismissed an assertion Thursday by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir that proponents of the U.N. force have a hidden agenda, and want to re-colonize Sudan.

McCormack said the history of dealing with the Sudanese government is that it is responsive over time to concerted diplomatic pressure, and he appealed to other countries to match U.S. efforts at persuasion with Khartoum.

"This doesn't move as quickly as we would like," he said. "Certainly not. We have been pressing hard on this. We would certainly hope that the rest of the world would join us in pressing as hard on this issue as we have. I think it is incumbent upon other member states of the United Nations to match the effort the United States has made on this issue."

Darfur: Wiesel and Clooney Urge UN Action

From the UN News Center [POTP has a lot more coverage here]

Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel and screen artist George Clooney today joined their voices at a meeting of the Security Council in New York to urge action to help the people of Darfur, Sudan, where African troops are slated to leave and a planned deployment of United Nations peacekeepers faces government opposition.

Describing Darfur as this century’s first genocide, Mr. Clooney warned the Council today that millions of Sudanese will die unless it takes “real and effective measures” before the end of the month to put an end to the killing and rapes in the war-torn region.

The actor and director – who visited Darfur earlier this year – told the 15-member body that the way it deals with the crisis there “will be your legacy, your Rwanda, your Cambodia, your Auschwitz.”

Nobel Laureate and UN Messenger of Peace Elie Wiesel, who himself survived the notorious Nazi death camp, reminded Council members that the UN Charter obligates them to save lives.

“You hold their destiny in your hands… Be worthy of your mission. Despair is not an option. Hope is,” Professor Wiesel said.

The meeting, hosted by United States Ambassador John Bolton, was held a day after Secretary-General issued a stark message that Darfur is headed for disaster unless the world can persuade Khartoum to accept UN peacekeepers to take over the work of the existing African Union (AU) peace operation.

When the Council voted to deploy more than 17,000 UN troops last month, the resolution also said it “invites the consent” of the Sudanese Government. But Khartoum has stated it is opposed to the arrival of blue helmets.

Mr. Clooney said the situation had become especially urgent because the AU operation is set to withdraw at the end of this month.

“The 1st of October will leave these people with nothing… With no protection, all the aid workers will leave immediately and the 2.5 million refugees who depend on that aid will die. [Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs] Jan Egeland estimates 100,000 a month. So after September 30th, you won’t need the UN. You will simply need men with shovels and bleached white linen and headstones.”

Acknowledging that the UN was faced with an extremely difficult task, he said that nevertheless “you have to decide what’s most urgent. You have the responsibility to protect. In the time that we are here today, more women and children will die violently in the Darfur region than in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel or Lebanon.”

Mr. Clooney added that Darfur represents “the first genocide of the 21st century and, if it continues unchecked, it will not be the last. My job is to come here today and to beg you on behalf of the millions of people who will die – and, make no mistake, they will die – for you to take real and effective measures to put an end to this.”

Professor Wiesel labelled Darfur “the world capital of human suffering, humiliation and despair… You know that the tragedy there seems endless as well as senseless. It has all the components of the worst and ugliest crimes of the last century: tribal hatred, vicious brutality, and scandalous behaviour of raping women [and] killing children.”

He compared the situation to that of Rwanda in 1994, when the Security Council was accused of being indifferent to the genocide there that led to the deaths of an estimated 800,000 people in less than four months.

“The victim is always doubly cursed, and doubly punished. First, by being a victim, and then, by being alone. Miserably alone and forgotten by the so-called decent people and its reputable spokesmen and leaders.”

Uganda: New Hope for an End to Monstrous War

From the New York Times

In the beginning, it was simply called the Acholi war, and despite the brutality, few people outside Uganda paid attention.

The Lord's Resistance Army, a messianic rebel group, was exploring a new dimension of violence by building an army of abducted children and forcing them to burn down huts and slice off lips and pound newborn babies to death in wooden mortars, as though they were grinding grain.

"I killed and killed and killed," said Christopher Oyet, an 18-year-old former rebel who was kidnapped at 9. "Now, I am scared of myself."

But for the first time in 20 years, the killing has stopped. The rebel leaders, boxed in and with dwindling support, signed a cease-fire agreement two weeks ago. Whether it lasts depends on whether Joseph Kony, the phantom commander who is said to live deep in the jungle with 60 child brides, and his top deputies are given amnesty. That is complicated, because they have been charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

Still, this is the farthest any peace deal has ever come, fueling hopes that one of Africa's most grotesque and bizarre wars, which has cost tens of thousands of lives, may finally be over.

White flags are already fluttering in Gulu, the hub of Acholiland, even from the aerials of government trucks. People are no longer night commuting, the signature north Ugandan exodus from villages to towns every evening for safety's sake. Instead, they are returning to the carpeted green hillsides to plant cassava, corn and beans, and this time their hoes and machetes are being swung to grow things, not destroy them.

The victims of this war are so desperate to put the nightmarish days behind them that they want to forgive, just as much as they want to forget.

Typical is Christa Labol, who had her ears and lips cut off by bayonet-wielding pre-pubescent troops and now says she would welcome them home.

"Only God can judge," said Labol, who speaks through a mouth that is always open.

Uganda: Why Do Exiles Back LRA?

From Reuters

Why would a resident of east London decide to spend months in the African bush defending one of the world's most reviled rebel groups?

It's a question many have been asking of a mediating team for the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) mainly drawn from members of the Ugandan diaspora rather than commanders on the ground.

"I sympathise with their cause, the struggle for human rights," explained Josephine Apira, who lives in London's Hackney district and took time off from her work at a non-governmental organisation to represent the LRA.

Last month, the rebels and government forces signed a ceasefire many hope will end a 20-year conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly 2 million.

Apira, who is the LRA's deputy head mediator, is in many ways typical of the group of Ugandan exiles who have come to south Sudan's capital Juba to negotiate for the rebels.

A northern Ugandan, she has lived in exile since President Yoweri Museveni seized power in a 1986 coup, and has strong sympathies for the group trying to topple him for two decades.

"I've been campaigning (for the LRA) with other victims of Museveni's government from London," Apira told Reuters.

The LRA is notorious for killing civilians, slicing off body parts and abducting children as fighters and sex slaves. Despite victims' testimonies, Apira does not believe those stories.

"It's government propaganda to make us look dirty," she said. "The government commits atrocities and blames the LRA. The LRA don't target children, government forces abduct children."

As most LRA fighters are hiding in the bush and their leaders are nervous of international arrest warrants against them, the majority of the delegation in Juba is from abroad.

Of 17 representatives, only five are rebel fighters, while 10 are Ugandans living in Britain, the United States, Kenya and Germany. The remaining two are LRA sympathisers from Kampala.

"We are all refugees," Apira said. "We just want peace to come back and people can go home. I want to go back to Uganda."

Uganda: LRA Will Sign Peace Deal But Hide Until ICC Indictments Lifted

From IRIN

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the Ugandan rebel group, has promised to sign a final agreement to end fighting in the north once peace talks with the government are concluded, but said its leaders would remain in hiding until arrest warrants are lifted.

"Our delegation will sign an agreement, but we shall stay where we are until the warrants are withdrawn," said Vincent Otti, LRA deputy commander, in a phone-in radio programme on Wednesday by satellite telephone from southern Sudan.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has indicted Otti, LRA leader Joseph Kony and three other commanders on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for atrocities allegedly committed by the group against civilians in northern Uganda over the past 20 years.

Otti also said he was willing to personally lead the LRA delegation in the peace talks if the ICC dropped the charges against him and his co-accused. Alternatively, Otti would participate in the talks if the government delegation and mediators met him in one of the assembly sites in southern Sudan where LRA fighters are gathering under a cessation of hostilities pact reached last month. The leader of the southern Sudanese government, Riek Machar, is mediating the talks in the city of Juba.

"If the delegates of Uganda come to where I am, I will lead my delegates to the peace talks myself. I fear kidnapping, but if I'm with my people I will defend myself if someone came to kidnap me," Otti said on KFM radio.

He said that an amnesty offer from Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni meant little as long as the ICC indictment remained in force. "I would be with the president in Kampala, but the pressure would not allow the president to protect me. Even if the African Union agreed with the Ugandan government, the external pressure would be too much for them," he said.

Government spokesman Robert Kabushenga, however, told IRIN that it was not realistic to expect the ICC to lift the indictments before a peace deal is reached and the LRA leadership comes out of the bush.

"We can't go to the ICC to start negotiations until these people sign an agreement and come home. The ICC will not entertain any discussion with us until we assure them that there will be accountability as far as the people who committed atrocities in the LRA are concerned," said Kabushenga.

DRC: Congo Journey

A piece by John le Carré in The Nation

My first warlord, Thomas, is about as far removed from my expectation as he could decently be. He is tall and elegantly dressed, and receives us with diplomatic grace. His house, guarded by sentries with semiautomatic rifles, is spacious and representational. A plasma television screen plays silent football while we talk. He speaks for the Banyamulenge, and his people have been fighting wars in Congo pretty well nonstop since 1966, but his own war was spent in South Africa, lobbying for their cause. The Banyamulenge, I had read, are pastoralists originally from Rwanda who over the last couple of hundred years have settled the high plateaus of the Mulenge mountains of South Kivu. Feared for their battle skills and reclusiveness, and hated for their supposed affinity with Rwanda, they are the first to be pilloried in times of discontent. Would the upcoming elections make things any better for them? we asked. His reply was not encouraging. The losers will say the vote was rigged, and they'll be right. The winner will take all, because why else win? Candidates are vying to demonstrate their pro-Congolese, anti-Rwandan credentials, so it will be open season on the Banyamulenge.

Thomas was similarly unimpressed by Kinshasa's efforts to incorporate Congo's many armed groups into one national army: ''We have many men who have joined and then defected to the mountains. In the army they kill us and insult us, although we have fought many battles for them.''

There was a chink of hope, he conceded. The Mai Mai, who regard themselves as the keepers of a Congo free of all ''invaders'' and ''foreigners''--including the Banyamulenge--are also learning the high price that must be paid to become a soldier of Kinshasa. ''Maybe as the Mai Mai learn to mistrust Kinshasa, they will draw closer to us.''

Afterward, I ask Jason whether Thomas was right to be gloomy about the forthcoming elections. By and large, thought Jason, he was. Elections were only one trapping of a democratic system. Without a Parliament, courts or an administration, they merely decided who got to rip off the country next. Thirty percent of Congolese lived on one meal a day. Eighty percent earned less than a dollar a day. The losers had guns, and would very probably use them to contest the outcome. And yes, another Congolese war could follow.

Darfur: Beset By Another Round of Violence

From the UN News Center

A gunman fired shots at African Union (AU) soldiers attempting to bring peace to Darfur, the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said today as it reported on a fresh round of violent clashes and acts of banditry across the war-wracked region.

UNMIS said that an unknown man fired two shots yesterday at a vehicle carrying AU soldiers near Kutum airstrip in North Darfur state. One soldier was struck in the leg while driving, and the gunman escaped.

On Tuesday, 10 armed men forced their way into a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Tawilla, also in North Darfur, and stole animals. AU soldiers later killed one of the gunmen in an exchange of fire.

In South Darfur, the area around Buram remains inaccessible to humanitarian workers because of continued fighting, UN spokesman Yves Sorokobi told reporters at the daily press briefing in New York.

There have also been continuing clashes between Government forces, allied militias and rebel groups in West Darfur and North Darfur, according to UNMIS, although the number of casualties in either state is unconfirmed.

The clashes and banditry were reported one day after Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that Darfur is headed for a catastrophe unless the Sudanese Government changes its mind and allows UN peacekeepers to take over from the existing AU operation.

Mr. Annan told a press conference at UN Headquarters that the world faced a “big challenge” to ensure there was not a repeat of the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

“If the African Union forces were to leave, and we are not able to put in a UN follow-on force, we are heading for a disaster, and I don’t think we can allow that to happen, particularly since we only recently passed the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ resolution,” he said.

Darfur: Death Toll Appears Vastly Underestimated

From the New Scientist

The death toll in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2005 was an order of magnitude greater than that estimated by the US State Department, according to a new estimate of the extent of the genocide

The crisis of death and displacement in western Sudan began in February of 2003 and soon engulfed all three states of North, West, and South Darfur.

The new analysis finds that hundreds of thousands of people have died in the conflict, rather than the earlier reports of tens of thousands.

John Hagan, at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and Alberto Palloni at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, both in the US, made the new estimate from the best available surveys conducted in camps of “internally displaced persons” in West Darfur.
Crude mortality

Earlier estimates have been made for restricted areas and time periods, and the State Department estimate, especially, was error prone for several reasons, say the authors.

The previous estimate was based on unspecified figures for estimating “crude mortality rates” (number of deaths per 100 people per year) and at-risk populations. And it neglected to take into account violent death occurring before refugees entered the displacement camps, Hagan and Palloni say.

Also, the estimate made a distinction between “normal” deaths it would expect to find in settled populations, and those it considered “excessive”. But deaths in displacement camps do not occur at the same lower rate as those in settled populations, the pair argue.

The uncertainty over how many people have died in the region results from difficulties inherent in surveying a war-torn region in Africa, as well as assumptions made by the agencies trying to generate estimates, the researchers say.

“As might happen in a natural disaster, there is no way to get an accurate body count; estimates must rely on interviews. Surveys from displacement camp samples must be substituted for unavailable population-based census data," the researcher write.

"And extrapolating from limited samples to an entire population at risk is problematic,” they add. Furthermore, 25 years of famine and war has reconfigured nuclear families in the region, making "sampling units" in surveys problematic.
Sobering numbers

Hagan and Palloni used UN refugee camp counts to estimate the "at risk" population of West Darfur, and World Health Organization and Médicins Sans Frontières surveys to obtain direct and indirect monthly estimates of CMRs in West Darfur.

"We conservatively estimate 19 months [between early 2004 and mid 2005] of mortality in West Darfur as 49,288, with a range from 40,850 to 67,598," the researchers report.

They then extended their estimate to 31 months, up to May 2006, and applied the same ratio of death to displacement across North and South Darfur. The range then becomes 170,000 to 255,000 deaths.

"It is likely that the number of deaths for this conflict in Greater Darfur is higher than 200,000 individuals, and it is possible that the death toll is much higher," say Hagan and Palloni.

A similar article from National Geographic

United States government death toll estimates for the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan in Africa underestimate the count by hundreds of thousands of lost lives, according to a new study.

Some experts estimate that the conflict between government-sponsored militias and rebel groups, which began in February 2003, has killed as many as 500,000 people so far.

But in 2005 officials at the U.S. Department of State gave a vastly lower threshold of 63,000 to 146,000 dead.

The low figures produced "patterns of underestimation that prevailed in the press," said John Hagan, study co-author and sociology professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

"After that announcement, much of the media reporting started to talk in the tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands, or they didn't talk about deaths at all and talked exclusively about displacement," he said. "It had the effect of diminishing the sense of urgency."

The latest report, to be published in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science, challenges official U.S. estimates.

Hagan and co-author Alberto Palloni of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, estimate that the conflict has caused anywhere from 170,000 to 255,000 deaths, and they say the number could be much higher.

"Analysis of factors confounding previous estimates leads to the conclusion that hundreds of thousand of people … have died as a result of the conflict in Darfur," Hagan and Palloni write in their study.

Many death toll estimates for Darfur have been hindered by the difficulties of taking surveys in Sudan's western region.

Data-gathering agencies must therefore make problematic assumptions, the authors write in their study.

For example, interviews in displacement camps must be used as substitutes for body counts and population-based census data.

Surveys also vary in coverage, and years of war and famine throughout Sudan have "reconfigured nuclear families, making sampling units in surveys problematic," the authors write.

The study also says that estimates of Darfur mortality "have been based on the dubious assumption of a constant number of deaths per month."

According to Hagan and Palloni, the State Department's data were limited due to an emphasis on "camp health problems rather than pre-camp violence."

The department also drew "on health surveys that were not fully identified and for which primary sources are uncertain."

State Department officials declined to comment for this article.

Darfur: Tutu Calls for U.N. Forces

From United Press International

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has criticized the international community for failing to convince Sudan to accept a U.N. peacekeeping force.

The African Mission in Sudan mandate expires at the end of September, but Sudan has continually refused offers of U.N. assistance to keep the peace. Tutu said that without U.N. peacekeepers, the country is headed for a repeat of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which occurred when 800,000 Tutsi's were killed in 100 days by the Hutu tribe, African News Dimension reported Thursday.

The Sudanese government has said the AU forces must leave the country on Sept. 30 if they continue to refuse government funding and call for the United Nations to replace them.

Tutu said "the harsh truth is that some lives are more important than others" as far as the international community is concerned.

Darfur: Wiesel Says World Must act Now

From Reuters

For Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, Darfur is the "capital of human suffering" and he is perplexed why world leaders are standing by, as they did in Rwanda, while genocide took place.

Outraged by Sudan's refusal to accept a U.N. force to end the violence in Darfur, Wiesel was appealing to the United Nations on Thursday, along with actor George Clooney.

"I will be pushing for stopping the murder, the humiliation, the starvation of the victims in Darfur," said Wiesel in an interview before addressing the Security Council.

"I call Darfur the capital of human suffering. To ignore it would be an insult to our collective conscience," he added.

Tens of thousands have been killed and 2.5 million people forced from their homes in 3 1/2 years of fighting in Sudan's remote western area of Darfur. Humanitarian workers have also come under greater attack in recent months.

Last month, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution for a 20,000-member force to take over from struggling African Union peacekeepers when their mandate expires in two weeks.

Despite world pressure, Sudan is balking at the idea of a U.N. force and says the African Union has no authority to transfer its mission to the United Nations.

Wiesel said he would push the council to intervene.

He drew parallels to Rwanda's 1994 genocide, when the world intervened too late.

"Rwanda is always on my mind when I speak of Darfur. We could have saved 600,000 to 800,000 men, women and children there but we didn't. Now, those who didn't will bear the responsibility for that for years and years and generations to come," he added.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was in charge of U.N. peacekeeping operations at that time, has acknowledged the United Nations failed Rwanda during the genocide.

The United States, which classified Darfur's conflict as genocide two years ago, hopes Sudan will at the last minute concede to a U.N. force and has said repeatedly that U.N. forces will not "shoot their way" into Darfur.

But Wiesel said whether Sudan agreed or not, there must be an international force in Darfur. If the AU pulled out, the security vacuum would result in slaughter, he said.

Darfur: Bashir Resists Pressure for UN Force

From Reuters

Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Thursday fended off intense international pressure for him to accept U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur, denouncing what he called a hidden agenda to "recolonise" his country.

But two senior members of Sudan's national unity government, both ex-rebels, came out in favour of a U.N. mission in Darfur. They said African Union peacekeepers already on the ground were failing to halt the bloodshed in the conflict-torn region.

Western leaders, some African presidents, and humanitarian groups are piling pressure on Bashir to accept a U.N. resolution to deploy more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops in Darfur, which has been rent by political and ethnic violence since 2003.

They say this is the only way to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in the west Sudanese region, where tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced by fighting between government troops, rebels and militias.

On Thursday, Bashir again reaffirmed his resistance to a U.N. peacekeeping force.

"The U.N. forces have a hidden agenda in Sudan because they are not coming for peace in Darfur. They want to recolonise Sudan," Bashir said in Gambia after a brief visit.

"We are not ready to be ... recolonised," he added.

But when Bashir later flew on to Dakar for a brief stopover, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade chided him for refusing to accept a U.N. force.

And even China, a close ally of Sudan, has been lobbying Khartoum to let U.N peacekeepers into Darfur, Beijing's U.N. ambassador said.

[edit]

Distancing himself from Bashir's line, Sudan's most senior official on Darfur said he was not satisfied with what the AU was doing and would accept U.N. troops in the region.

Minni Arcua Minnawi, head of the former rebel Sudan Liberation Movement and now the fourth-ranking member of the presidency in Khartoum, said he was also worried about renewed fighting in North Darfur which has displaced tens of thousands.

"If there is no alternative, let the U.N. forces come," he told Reuters and the BBC in a joint interview.

Minnawi was the leader of the SLM faction which signed a AU-brokered peace deal for Darfur in May. Two others refused and tens of thousands of Darfuris have demonstrated against it.

At Juba, in south Sudan, the country's First Vice President, Salva Kiir, also criticised the strategy of the dominant National Congress Party (NCP), which opposes a U.N. force and maintains the Darfur crisis can be solved militarily.

"The U.N. has maintained there is a need for an international force to intervene ... and we in the SPLM have consistently echoed this concern on humanitarian grounds," Kiir, chairman of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), said.

Senegal's Wade said African leaders would meet in New York on Monday to discuss the Darfur crisis. "Africa's position has been that we don't have either the troops or money to fix Darfur's problems," he said.

But Bashir rejected arguments that the AU lacked resources.

"The lack of resources is a pretext because, already last March in Khartoum, the Arab League summit agreed to fund the AU peacekeeping mission for six months," he said in Banjul.

European Union foreign ministers will press the Sudanese government on Friday to halt attacks on civilians in Darfur, according to a draft EU statement obtained by Reuters.

Darfur: Minnawi Rebels Say They May Abandon Peace Pact

From the Washington Post

Commanders from the only rebel group that signed a peace accord in May for Sudan's Darfur region are prepared to resume fighting if African Union peacekeeping troops leave as scheduled at month's end and are not replaced by a United Nations force, according to more than a dozen senior rebel officials interviewed Wednesday.

Rebel commanders predicted that such a resumption of combat would spell the end of Darfur's tattered peace agreement and quickly escalate fighting to an intensity not seen since the early days of the conflict in 2003 and 2004.

Their comments came as the African Union force of 7,000 is preparing to depart and as Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is vigorously resisting pressure to allow a U.N. peacekeeping force of up to 22,500 to enter the country, threatening to attack them if they try. At a meeting scheduled for Sept. 18, officials of the 53-country African Union are to reconsider their decision to withdraw their soldiers

Abdulrahaman Abdallah, a commander of the rebel group's military police, said that without a strong international force here, "the government will go back to its strategy, which is genocide, and inevitably we will go back to the bush."

[edit]

The commanders interviewed Wednesday said they were so angry about recent attacks on civilians, including the bombing of villages by Antonov planes and rocket attacks by Mi-24 helicopter gunships, that they were prepared to abandon the peace deal. They said they would not be swayed even if Minnawi decided to keep his senior job with the government in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

His group, while having less political support than the most popular rebel group in Darfur, was widely regarded as the most potent fighting force among the rebels. It remains strong in Darfur's southern and western areas.

"It's not our desire to go back to the bush, but if there is no choice, we will go," said rebel Gen. Ali Marmar, speaking in Graida, a rebel stronghold in South Darfur. Marmar said Minnawi would be replaced if he broke with the will of his commanders: "We have thousands like Minni."

[edit]

This week, the government seized a tanker full of African Union jet fuel in El Fasher and used it to fill its own military aircraft, African Union sources said, speaking on condition their names not be published.

Investigations of major breaches of the cease-fire, meanwhile, have been stymied. That includes an incident Saturday in which villagers who had been attacked by Janjaweed militiamen two weeks earlier gathered near the ruins of their homes in South Darfur to speak to A.U. investigators set to arrive by helicopter.

But the helicopter turned back because of severe rain, and the Janjaweed attacked again, killing 18 of the survivors of the earlier assault and dispersing as many as 25,000 into a remote southern region far from humanitarian assistance or military protection, rebel leaders here said.

Minnawi complained to top African Union officials about the incident, and the group's cease-fire commission twice scheduled investigative trips to the site of the atrocities, only to cancel them as commission members quarreled over the importance of the journey.

"The African Union is too weak to act," Abdallah said.

Adoma Ahmed Haggar, a rebel field commander based here, said, "There are no signs of peace on the ground. The A.U. is not able. Our only hope is pinned on the United Nations."

[edit]

The government has also issued new restrictions against aid groups and journalists. Many humanitarian organizations have curbed their operations in the face of rising violence that has led to the deaths of 12 aid workers since the peace deal was signed. The U.N. World Food Program has reported that 355,000 residents of Darfur are going without food because it is not safe to reach them.

Rebel commanders say they will not tolerate such attacks and deprivations much longer. Minnawi's group has about 50 senior commanders. Asked how many would resume fighting if an effective international force did not arrive soon, Marmar said, "All of them."

Darfur: U.S.'s Deadly Errors

An op-ed by John Prendergast in the Philadelphia Inquirer

I just returned from rebel-held areas of Darfur on a trip with Scott Pelley of CBS's 60 Minutes, and I found that the crisis is spiraling out of control: Violence is increasing, malnutrition is soaring, and access to life-saving aid is shrinking. The Bush administration has made some noise about Darfur over the last two years, but it has made a series of deadly mistakes that have served only to make matters worse.

The administration's first deadly mistake is that while it helped broker a peace agreement in May, its negotiator left after only one rebel group signed, leaving at least two other rebel groups wanting more detail in the deal. The Khartoum regime is now partnering with the signatory group to launch a major offensive against the nonsignatories, thus deepening the divisions in Darfur.

Second, the United States and its partners did not make explicit in the peace deal the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping operation to oversee implementation. U.S. officials took verbal promises from Khartoum as sufficient, which the regime has since renounced. Without a U.N. force, Darfurian displaced and refugee populations have no prospect of protection.

The third mistake was not ensuring sufficient international involvement in the dismantling of the deadly Janjaweed militia structures. The task was left to the very entity that arms the Janjaweed, the Khartoum regime. Without real international participation in the dismantling, no displaced Darfurian will ever go home.

Fourth, the United States has politically supported the rebel group that signed the peace deal, including having President Bush meet the group's leader. This faction has since effectively become a government militia that has been responsible for gross human-rights violations.

Fifth, after the senior U.S. official who helped negotiate the partial peace took a job on Wall Street, almost his entire team departed. For these last four critical months, State Department officials have opposed the naming of a presidential envoy to clean up the mess and make Darfur a genuine priority.

Sixth, the United States and Europeans have left the African Union force in Darfur in a state of limbo, not giving it the requisite resources and political support needed to protect the people of Darfur.

Seventh, the United States crafted a U.N. Security Council resolution that authorized targeted sanctions in early 2005, but has since imposed sanctions on only one regime official, a retired air force commander. This leaves Khartoum with the correct impression that there will be no accountability.

Eighth, the United States has not provided information and intelligence to the International Criminal Court as the latter conducts its investigation of the war crimes committed in Darfur. Sharing such material could be a critical part of leverage on Khartoum as it would face the prospect of accelerated indictments of senior officials.

Ninth, the United States invited the security chief of the regime to CIA headquarters in Virginia, thus cementing the relationship with a man believed to be the architect of the ethnic-cleansing campaign in Darfur. This tells Khartoum that as long as they are "with us" in the war on terror, they can continue to pursue what the U.S. president himself has labeled genocide in Darfur.

Tenth, and most recently, the United States continues to offer incentives rather than pressures in its bid to change Khartoum's behavior and induce it to support a U.N. force. An administration official went to Khartoum recently and offered President Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir a meeting with Bush and discussed the possibility of removing some of the U.S.-imposed sanctions. If we have learned anything over the last 15 years, it is this: Being soft on perpetrators of crimes against humanity does little to alter their behavior.

The administration's press statements and offers of incentives, and U.N. Security Council resolutions without real punitive actions have left the impression in Khartoum that Washington and the rest of the international community are all bark and no bite. "Constructive engagement" sometimes works, but it is making no impact here. Until the international stance, led by the United States, becomes much tougher, Khartoum can be expected to go on relentlessly targeting the civilian population in Darfur.

Darfur: Bashir Slams UN "Hidden Agenda"

From Reuters

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Thursday reaffirmed his refusal to accept United Nations peacekeeping troops for Darfur, saying they had a hidden agenda to "recolonise" his country. Bashir, speaking at the end of a brief visit to Gambia, said the existing 7,000-strong African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in the conflict-torn western Sudanese region had been successful and should continue its mission there.

The AU mission expires on Sept. 30 and the U.N. Security Council last month passed a resolution to deploy more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops in Darfur. The Sudanese government has rejected the resolution.

"The U.N. forces have a hidden agenda in Sudan because they are not coming for peace in Darfur. They want to recolonise Sudan," Bashir told a news conference. He spoke in Arabic through an interpreter.

"Sudan was the first African country south of the Sahara to get independence. We are not ready to be the first to be recolonised," he added.

Bashir rejected arguments that the AU did not have enough resources to extend its mission in Darfur, where tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced by political and ethnic conflict since 2003.

"The AU experience is a very successful one, a positive, a constructive one. The AU troops should continue their mission in Darfur," Bashir said.

Darfur: Tutu Warns of Genocide

From AFP

South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu said on Thursday that international indifference risked allowing a repeat of the Rwandan genocide to be played out in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.

Tutu said: "The harsh truth is that some lives are more important than others" in the eyes of the international community.

He said: "Very much the same kind of thing that happened in Rwanda." According to Tutu, it appears that "if you are of a darker hue you are always going to end up at the bottom of the pile".

Darfur: Gov't Renews Ultimatum for African Union Force

From IRIN

Sudan is refusing to back down from its position that the African Union (AU) would have to withdraw its peace mission from Darfur on 30 September if it transfers its force to a United Nations-led operation.

"The government of Sudan has not accepted and will not accept UN peacekeepers ... what we need is a partnership between all of us [AU, Sudan and international community] and not [enforced] resolutions," the Sudanese State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Al-Samani Al-Wasila, told reporters in Addis Ababa after a closed-door meeting of the AU Peace and Security Council on Somalia and Darfur on Wednesday.

"If it is within this understanding we are ready to cooperate and talk, if it is otherwise, they [the AU] have to pack up their troops and leave on the 30th of September," he added. "In case they decide to transfer their mandate to the UN, we'll say farewell to them and would take over our responsibility as a government - we are not a failing state."

The Sudanese minister said the AU mission was still welcome in his country and that Sudan would be ready to finance an extension of the mandate of the cash-trapped force with the help of Arab League funds.

"If they [the AU] say that their reason to go is lack of money, we say the money is there, we give it to you," Al-Wasila said. "The money is coming from the Arab League ... we know 100 percent that the money is there," he added, without giving a specific amount.

Darfur: Sudan's Reply to Bush Unsatisfactory

From Reuters

The U.S. State Department on Wednesday described as "unsatisfactory" Sudan's official reply to a personal message sent by President George W. Bush for Khartoum to accept a U.N. force in Darfur.

Sudan's Foreign Minister Lam Akol met U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington on Monday and delivered President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's response to Bush's appeal for Sudan to let the United Nations take over from African Union troops trying to end the violence in Darfur.

"We got the substance of the Sudanese reply and it was unsatisfactory," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

The top U.S. diplomat for Africa, Jendayi Frazer, went to Khartoum last month to deliver the U.S. president's message to Bashir. In an apparent diplomatic snub, Bush did not meet with Sudan's foreign minister to hear Bashir's reply.

"Certainly President Bush was not going to sit there and listen to the reply that this foreign minister delivered to the secretary of state," said McCormack.

He said Akol had tried to focus on improving relations with the United States rather than on accepting a U.N. force when the African Union's mandate in Darfur ends on Sept. 30.

"(Rice) made clear those relations certainly would not get better absent their support for this international force. In fact it was likely those relations would get worse," said McCormack.

The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution last month to deploy more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops in Darfur where tens of thousands have been killed and 2.5 million people forced from their homes in 3-1/2 years of fighting.

Sudan's government said on Wednesday the African Union had no authority to transfer its mission to the United Nations and no one could replace the 7,000-strong force without Sudan's approval.

McCormack called Sudan's questioning of the legality of transferring an African force to U.N. control a distraction.

He also reiterated strong U.S. concern that Sudan was building up its military in Darfur and had launched new air attacks in the remote western region.

"Our concern has not abated concerning the Sudanese government's actions with respect to committing acts of violence in Darfur. That is very troubling," he said.

Darfur: Frazer Defends Peace Agreement

From the Washington File

Speaking at a September 12 conference on Sudan and U.S. policy sponsored by the National Defense University (NDU), Frazer said, "There are some in our own country whom I think have irresponsibly stated that the DPA is a flawed document."

On the contrary, she said, "It is a good agreement" and offers a "fair deal" to all the parties involved.

"Most importantly," said Frazer, the DPA creates a vehicle through which “the rebels themselves and nonsignatories can come to the table and negotiate" with the [Sudanese] government "to achieve their ends through political means rather than killing innocent civilians, attacking humanitarian workers and attacking the African Union forces that are there [in Darfur] with no other reason than to save lives and protect civilians."

John Prendergast, Sudan program officer for the International Crisis Group based in Brussels, Belgium, told an NDU panel before Frazer spoke that he believed President Bashir was using the DPA as an excuse to mount a military campaign in Darfur. "Bashir can do this with impunity," he added, because the DPA failed to provide for monitoring by outside forces like the United Nations and therefore the document was "flawed" from the beginning as a peace agreement.

Bashir, on the other hand, has interpreted the Abuja agreement to allow operations in Darfur by his security forces, including an offensive against factions in the province that have not yet signed the agreement. Therefore, Bashir has said, calls by the United States and the U.N. Security Council to replace an African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur with 12,000 new troops are unnecessary and contrary to the DPA.

Frazer said Bashir was operating in "bad faith." She explained, "We believe that the [Sudanese] Government offensive is a violation of its obligations under the Darfur Peace Agreement” as well as under a previous cease-fire agreement.

In addition to the U.S. government's vigorous push for a U.N. peacekeeping force for Darfur, Frazer said, "We will continue to work on a political front with the nonsignatories to bring them on board to the DPA [because] the Sudanese government is basically using the nonsignatories as an excuse for attacking and launching its new offensive in Darfur."

Frazer reminded her audience that President Bush has said "there was no military solution to the crisis in Darfur and that we must extend the United Nation's Mission in Sudan mandate to protect innocent lives."

She said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke to the Sudanese foreign minister recently "making it very clear to his government that there is no prospect of improving bilateral relations with the United States as long as the crisis and killing in Darfur continue."

Reminder: Global Day for Darfur

September 17th is the Global Day for Darfur

Despite the signing of a Darfur peace agreement on 5 May 2006, the violence in western Sudan has not stopped; in fact, in some parts of Darfur, the violence has grown worse.

People are still being killed and raped and displaced - every single day.

On September 17 people around the world will take part in the Global Day for Darfur to show world-wide support for the Darfuri people and to put pressure on our Governments to protect the civilians.

We hope that you will be able to join us on the Global Day for Darfur.

Uganda: LRA's Otti Said Ready to Join Peace Talks

From Reuters

The deputy commander of Uganda's northern rebels said on Wednesday he would lead his delegation in peace talks if the government came to meet him where insurgents were assembling in south Sudan.

Negotiations in south Sudan's capital, Juba, between Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) are seen as the best chance to end one of Africa's most brutal conflicts.

But analysts say the questionable legitimacy of the LRA delegation and warrants out for the arrest of top rebel leaders are huge obstacles to achieving peace.

"If the delegates of Uganda come to where I am, I will lead my delegates to the peace talks myself," Vincent Otti told a local radio station.

Otti is indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) along with LRA leader Joseph Kony and three others.

He said the arrest warrants were a major obstacle to peace and has expressed reluctance to go to Juba before, fearing extradition.

"I fear kidnap, but if I'm with my people I will defend myself if someone comes to kidnap me," he said.

"Nothing can prevent me from going home, Joseph Kony from going home, the LRA from going home, but the ICC is the greatest obstacle," Otti said.

Darfur: Khartoum Vows to Fight UN Force, Blames Zionists

From GulfNews

Sudan said on Wednesday that it will fight any UN peacekeeping force which may be deployed in Darfur in accordance with a Security Council resolution.

"Sudan not only rejects the deployment of international forces in Darfur but will fight fiercely to prevent their entry by force. Regardless of our capabilities and the price we may pay we will fight to ensure our sovereignty," Sudanese Justice Minister Mohammad Ali Al Mardhi told a news conference held at the Sudanese embassy in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.

Al Mardhi, who is responsible for the Darfur region, warned that any peacekeeping force sent to Darfur may face the fate of international troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

"We reject the idea of sending any such troops to Darfur as we cannot guarantee their safety. We will not be responsible for them and any extremist groups can sneak into the country via the vast 8,000 kilometre borders which link us with nine countries," the minister said.

He added UN Security Council resolution 1706 was "illegal" and that it violated the peace agreement signed between the government and one of the rebel factions.

[edit]

"We also reject the idea of sending African Union forces under the umbrella of the UN as this jeopardises our country's sovereignty. We are the ones who decide here and we know what the idea of the resolution is all about," he added.

The Sudanese minister said his government was convinced that this is all part of a Zionist colonialist plot to take over Darfur and exploit its natural resources.

He said that what proves it was a 'ready-made decision to conquer Sudan' is the statement by US President George W. Bush that the consent of Sudan to send UN forces to Darfur was not needed.

The Khartoum government believes that there is a hidden agenda behind the resolution.

"We know very well who is behind this resolution. This whole case is made up by NGOs which have Zionist links like the Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the International Crisis Group," Al Mardhi said.

Darfur: Annan Issues Stark Warning About Impending Catastrophe

From the UN News Center from a few days ago

Warning that “the tragedy in Darfur has reached a critical moment,” Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the international community today to live up to its promise last year to protect civilians in trouble and immediately press the Sudanese Government to accept United Nations peacekeepers.

In an address to a Security Council meeting on Darfur, Mr. Annan stressed that the humanitarian and security conditions have become so dire that Council members must use all their means to convince Khartoum that UN blue helmets should take over the work of the existing African Union (AU) force.

“It is time to act. Not only in Darfur, but by people around the world, this is seen as a crucial test of the Council’s authority and effectiveness, its solidarity with people in need, and its seriousness in the quest for peace,” he said.

Almost 2 million people are displaced as a result of the brutal conflict that has engulfed Darfur, an impoverished region on Sudan’s western flank, since 2003, while nearly 3 million people there depend on international aid for food, shelter and health care.

The situation has worsened considerably since the signing in May of the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) between the Government and some of the rebel groups it has been fighting. In the past two months, 12 aid workers have been killed – more than in the entire previous two years.

Mr. Annan said the UN and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) will have to drastically scale back their humanitarian operations in Darfur unless the security situation improves.

“Can we, in conscience, leave the people of Darfur to such a fate? Can the international community, having not done enough for the people of Rwanda in their time of need, just watch as this tragedy deepens?” he asked.

“Having finally agreed just one year ago that there is a responsibility to protect, can we contemplate failing yet another test? Lessons are either learned or not; principles are either upheld or scorned. This is no time for the middle ground of half-measures or further debate.”

The Secretary-General condemned the recent offensive by Government forces, which has included renewed aerial bombing and the deployment of thousands of armed troops, in violation of the DPA.

He urged Khartoum to embrace resolution 1706, by which the Council voted to deploy a UN force of more than 17,000 peacekeepers across Darfur and said it “invites the consent” of the Sudanese Government.

“My voice alone will not convince the Government,” said the Secretary-General, detailing his efforts to explain the transition to the Government, and to clear up any misconceptions or myths.

“It is time now for additional voices to make themselves heard. We need governments and individual leaders in Africa and beyond, that are in a position to influence the government of Sudan, to bring that pressure to bear without delay. There must also be a clear, strong and uniform message from this Council,” Mr. Annan declared.

Darfur: Eighteen Human Rights/Humanitarian Organizations Call for Aggressive Diplomacy

From Physicians For Human Rights - the statement is here (PDF)

In a statement released today, an international coalition of eighteen human rights, humanitarian and conflict prevention organizations condemned the Government of Sudan’s (GOS) recent military build-up and intensifying attacks on civilians in northern Darfur. They called on the international community to mount intensive diplomatic efforts, beginning at the opening of the new session of the United Nations General Assembly, to halt the GOS offensive. They also recommended that the United Nations prepare to deploy the UN peacekeeping force authorized on August 31st by the Security Council regardless of the acquiescence of the Sudanese Government

Darfur is witnessing increased bloodshed. International aid groups are pulling out due to the insecurity. The mandate of the African Union (AMIS) force of approximately 7,000 in Darfur expires at the end of September. Though chronically under-resourced and understaffed, AMIS is still the only source of protection for civilians in Darfur. Yet, the GOS is threatening to expel the AU force unless it rejects any transition to a UN-sponsored force and accepts funding by the Sudanese Government. The Government in Khartoum has also vowed to fight against the deployment of a UN force.

“The nations of the world have not stood up to Khartoum’s blatant violations of humanitarian law and the Darfur Peace Agreement which it signed in May,” said Susannah Sirkin, Deputy Director for Physicians for Human Rights, who recently returned from a trip to Darfur. “We cannot continue to allow the GOS, the primary aggressor responsible for the destruction of thousands of villages and the deaths of tens of thousands, to dictate the terms in Darfur. Key international actors, including the United Nations, the Arab League, the African Union, the United States and the European Union must speak out forcefully against Khartoum’s aggression, while simultaneously preparing to deploy a United Nations force by October 1 that is capable of protecting the people of Darfur.”

“The immediate future looks terrifying for the civilians in Darfur. If AMIS leaves and is not replaced by an international peacekeeping force, the vacuum will undoubtedly be filled by the GOS military offensive in Darfur,” said Osman Hummaida, Director of the Sudanese Organization Against Torture. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, predicts that Darfur is headed for a “major catastrophe.”

The Tragedy of Darfur

From Rolling Stone

There is generally only one reason anyone goes into a refugee camp to conduct interviews. At Farchana, a United Nations facility overflowing with more than 17,000 villagers from Sudan, I imagine that reason hangs over me as clearly as if I were wearing a sign around my neck that read TELL ME ABOUT THE WORST POSSIBLE MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE.

Marion Mohammed Abdel Kharim sits next to me in an open courtyard at the camp. She has three distinct tribal scars under her left eye. When she speaks, she gestures with her hands, pulling at her stomach in grief and despair. Around us are row after row of aging brown tents ringed by crude fences made of straw and wood. The fences resemble the one that encircled Kharim's home, but the camp is not home. Behind some of the fences, just steps away from the tents, are piles of manure left by the cows, donkeys and camels that refugees managed to bring with them when they fled the civil war in the Darfur region of Sudan, one of the poorest and most desolate corners of the world. Like Kharim, they were driven here by the janjaweed, a brutal militia armed and funded by Sudan's government. Backed by helicopters and Antonov planes loaded with shrapnel-filled bombs, the janjaweed have swept through hundreds of villages in Darfur on horseback and camel, looting, burning, raping and killing at will. In the past three years, the war has claimed more than 200,000 lives and left 2.5 million homeless, creating what the United Nations has called "the world's worst humanitarian crisis."

Before the janjaweed destroyed Kharim's village, she and her husband were farmers. Their five children went to school and helped their father in the fields. Located just sixty miles from Farchana, the village was home to several hundred people who lived in thatch-roofed huts of mud and rocks. In the evenings, after the work was done, people would gather to drink tea and listen to music.

When the janjaweed came, Kharim and her family set off running. "You just ran away with your clothes," she says. "You don't know how many people died." As she recalls the attack, her habit of using her hands to act out her words grows more dramatic. Describing how she watched the janjaweed toss children into a fire, she reaches out and briefly touches the arm of a little boy who is sitting next to me. She touches him, and then flings her empty hand toward the other side of the courtyard. For those few seconds, it is easy to picture just how easily that child, whose hands at that moment are buried in one of my boots, could be tossed like a doll into the air.

Kharim and her family walked for three days. In the afternoon they would sleep in the canyons because they didn't have enough food or water to carry them through the scorching heat of the day. Like hundreds of thousands of other refugees, they made their way here, across the western border of Darfur into neighboring Chad, where the U.N. has set up twelve camps to house hundreds of thousands of refugees. Many have lived here for as long as two years, in rapidly deteriorating conditions. Children suffer from malnutrition and dehydration. Tents leak during the violent rainy season, ruining blankets and mattresses. While collecting firewood, women in the camps have been raped by armed militias and local villagers, who see the refugees as competition for the desert's dwindling supply of fuel.

As Kharim spoke, others in the courtyard nodded their heads or clicked their tongues against the roofs of their mouths. They had all lived through the same thing. The following morning at Bredjing, the largest camp in Chad, I listen as Abdoulaye Yacoub Annour, an old man dressed in a tattered white robe, describes how his village was destroyed in a three-day onslaught. "The entire village was burning," he says.

I ask Annour if he lost any family members during the attack. "I lost eight of my family," he says. I ask who they were. His eyes, slightly bloodshot and surrounded by a web of lines that disappear into his gray and black mustache and goatee, begin to well up. Supporting himself with a walking stick, he stretches out his hand and prepares the sand at his feet with the tips of three fingers, running them back and forth along the surface until it is smooth and ready to be written upon. With one hand still on his walking stick, he draws four lines on the ground.

"Four children," he says. One line for each child lost.

He moves his hand over a few inches more. He waits a few seconds and then draws two more lines, each roughly the length of a finger.

"Two sisters."

He slides over a few inches and sweeps away a little more sand, as if deliberately trying not to crowd the dead, before drawing the last two lines.

"Two nephews."

Darfur: Heading for Disaster

From the UN News Center

Darfur is headed for a disaster unless the Sudanese Government changes its mind and allows a force of United Nations peacekeepers to take over from the existing African Union (AU) operation in the strife-torn region, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.

Warning that the situation in Darfur has become desperate, Mr. Annan told a press conference at UN Headquarters in New York that the world faced a “big challenge” to ensure that there was not a repeat of the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

“If the African Union forces were to leave, and we are not able to put in a UN follow-on force, we are heading for a disaster, and I don’t think we can allow that to happen, particularly since we only recently passed the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ resolution,” he said.

At the World Summit last year, Member States agreed there is a collective international obligation to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, and the Security Council must take decisive action if there is no peaceful means to protect and the national authorities are manifestly failing to do so.

Referring to the experience in Rwanda, Mr. Annan reminded Member States that “everyone said we should not let it happen again.”

[edit]

Khartoum has said on several occasions that it is opposed to a UN force stepping in, and Mr. Annan reiterated his appeal for other governments with any influence on Sudan to convince the leadership to change its attitude.

In response to a question at the press conference, the Secretary-General said the responsibility to act lay more with the Member States than with the UN itself.

“They are the ones who have to have the political will. They are the ones who have to put pressure to influence the Sudanese Government to act and accept and transition, and several of them have indicated that they will do that,” he said.

Mr. Annan added that Khartoum’s reactions so far to a UN force in Darfur indicate that a so-called “coalition of the willing” would be just as unwelcome.

Darfur: Sudan Says AU Can't Transfer Mandate

From Reuters

Sudan said on Wednesday the African Union (AU) had no authority to transfer its troubled peacekeeping mission in the Darfur region of western Sudan to the United Nations.

If the African organisation abandons the mission, the AU troops would withdraw and no one could replace them without the approval of the Sudanese government, a Sudanese junior minister told the AU's Peace and Security Council.

The AU mission expires on Sept. 30 and the U.N. Security Council last month passed a resolution to deploy more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops in Darfur. The Sudanese government has rejected the U.N. resolution.

Al-Samani al-Wasiyla, minister for state for foreign affairs, said: "All the African Union can do if its mission failed for any reason is to withdraw from Sudan and it cannot hand over its duties to any party except the government."

"There is no provision in the protocol establishing the African Union Peace and Security Council that allows the African Union to transfer its mandate to the United Nations", he added.

He disputed the argument that the AU would have to give up the Darfur mission because of financial problems, saying that money was available from the Arab League.

[edit]

Wasiyla said the U.N. resolution on Darfur was a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of his country.

"(It) gives the U.N. the mandate to intervene in restructuring Sudanese police and set up an independent judicial system. No government on earth would accept such a flagrant violations to its independence and sovereignty," he said.

Chad: Gov't and Rebels Clash

From IRIN

Government military planes, vehicles and troops were flooding in and out of the military hub Abeche in eastern Chad on Wednesday following fighting with rebels in the region earlier this week.

Government and rebels confirmed fighting took place on Sunday in the remote, mountainous region of Aram Kole, 65km from the town Biltine, and 150 km north of Abeche. Both sides claimed victory.

In an announcement on Tuesday evening, Banyana Kossingar, the army Chief of Staff, said on national radio: “We attacked the mountains at Aram Kolle on Sunday 10 September at 14.00. The combat lasted for three hours.”

“168 rebels were killed, many more wounded, and 28 rebels were taken prisoner. On the government side, six were killed and several wounded. The situation is totally under control now,” Banyana added.

Rebel spokesperson Laona Gong Raoul contacted by IRIN countered that an alliance of rebel groups, the United Front for Democratic Change, had beaten off the Chadian army, killed hundreds of soldiers, and hold their position at Aram Kolle.

Sunday’s fighting is the first major combat between the army and rebel groups that have vowed to overthrow Chadian President Idriss Deby since clashes in mid-April that left over 200 dead. Then, the rebels reached the capital N’djamena before being turned back by the army.

A senior Chadian army officer, who asked not to be named because he was speaking without authorisation, told IRIN on Wednesday that Chad’s military chiefs are planning more attacks in the same area.

Rebel groups have been sighted close to Sunday’s combat zone, said the officer, adding that “Nierguil” and “Am-Zoer” would likely be targeted first, though neither location appears on commercial maps.

Security in eastern Chad is a major concern for the United Nations and aid agencies, which are feeding and housing a quarter million Sudanese who have fled attacks in the neighbouring Darfur region of Sudan.

The weekend’s fighting took place over 100 kilometres from the closest refugee camps near Guereda, east of Biltine.

However, conditions are already tense as dozens of aid agency vehicles have been stolen in a spate of armed hijackings forcing aid workers working outside Abeche to travel in armed convoys. In May, a worker with the UN children’s agency UNICEF was involved in a near-fatal shooting in Abeche. Over the weekend a UNHCR warehouse in Abeche was looted.

UN officials contacted in Abeche said the reinforcement of the army there is a concern, because members of Chad’s disorderly military are believed to be behind some of the attacks on aid workers.

“There is already a high level of insecurity, especially with regard to crime and theft,” said Matthew Conway, spokesperson for the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR in Abeche. “So far we have not seen major fallout but we are planning for the worst case scenario while hoping for the best.”

Uganda: Gov't Asks UN to Delay Action On LRA

From the New Vision

UGANDA has appealed to the UN Security Council to delay a resolution calling for joint military action against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and arrest its indicted leaders.

State minister for foreign affairs in charge of international affairs Okello Oryem said Uganda had communicated to Britain, the sponsor of the Security Council debate, to delay passing of the resolution.

The resolution calls for indictment of not only the LRA top officers but also collaborators and sponsors of the rebel group.

He said foreign affairs minister Sam Kutesa would brief the Security Council after the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Cuba.

"I must say that diplomatic efforts are underway to ensure that the Juba talks are supported in the interest of peace in the region," Oryem said.

He added that Uganda was consulting the International Criminal Court, which indicted LRA leader Joseph Kony, commanders Vincent Otti, Dominic Ongwen, Okot Odhiambo and the late Raska Lukwiya for war crimes.

Darfur: AU Peacekeepers Must Leave By Month's End

From the AP

Sudan formally called on the African Union Wednesday to pull its peacekeepers out of Darfur by the end of the month if it continues to support a U.N. takeover of the mission.

A 7,000-strong AU force is now in the western region of Sudan but is understaffed, starved of cash and eager to hand over to the U.N. Its mandate expires at the end of the month.

"If the AU wants to transfer the mission to the U.N., then they have to pack up their troops and leave by the September 30," Al-Samani Al-Wasila, Sudan's junior foreign affairs minister, told journalists after meeting with AU officials in Addis Ababa.

Sudan first took this stance last week, with Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Kerti saying the AU force can remain in Darfur only if it accepts Arab League and Sudanese funding. He gave the AU a week to agree or get its troops out, according to a September 4 government statement.

Al-Wasila said Wednesday the AU doesn't have the authority to transfer the mission and if the 53-member bloc is short of funding, then money can be provided from the Arab League.

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Al-Wasila denied Khartoum had launched a fresh offensive.

The AU's Peace and Security Council will meet Sept. 18 in New York, just before this year's General Assembly meeting, to discuss how to break the deadlock in Darfur.

Said Djinnit, the AU Peace and Security commissioner, said at the end of the closed door talks that the Sudanese wanted to make their position clear before the New York meeting.

Darfur: A Genocidal Black Box

From The Progress Report [all links in original]

The world may be two weeks away from another Rwanda. On Sept. 30, the under-manned and under-funded African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Darfur is set to leave the country. Those 7,000 A.U. troops -- dispatched over a region the size of Texas -- are the only force moderating the attacks in Darfur, during which "civilians are usually killed, injured, raped, abducted or forcibly displaced." In the last two weeks, the Sudanese government has "dramatically intensified" its air strikes and worked "to drain the region of witnesses," including foreign journalists. If the AU forces leave on Sept. 30 as scheduled, "this is a genocidal black box." President Bush cannot let this happen on his watch. (Take a moment to sign up with SaveDarfur.org and the Genocide Intervention Network; learn about the dynamics of the conflict from the International Crisis Group; and see how your members of Congress have voted on Darfur at DarfurScores.org.)

SUDANESE GOVERNMENT PREPARES TO BEGIN SLAUGHTERING: On Aug. 31, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution that "permits a U.N. force to use all necessary means to protect civilians in Darfur" and calls for a gradual transition from the AU mission in Darfur to a robust U.N. protection force. "But the plan to deploy as many as 17,500 U.N. troops and as many as 3,300 civilian police is contingent on consent by the government of Sudan, which has categorically rejected calls for U.N. forces in Darfur." "Ominously, the Khartoum government is preparing a new, massive military deployment, ostensibly to put down rebel forces before any U.N. peacekeepers arrive," The New Republic's Tim Fernholz writes. "But Khartoum's tactics have not been those of counter-insurgency, or even total war. They have been the tactics of genocide." Fernholz cites a recent Amnesty International report describing "indiscriminate and disproportionate bombings on civilians and how the Janjaweed, government militias operating alongside the Sudanese army, target exclusively civilians."

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WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE: There are no simple long-term answers for Sudan. Ending the "world's worst humanitarian crisis" will require a comprehensive political solution, and that takes time. But there are simple and effective steps that can be taken immediately. President Bush needs to use his bully pulpit to put maximum pressure on Sudan's government to accept a U.N. force. He needs to place an effective ambassador at the United Nations who can mobilize the international community -- including Russia and China -- to take action. Congress can also play an important role. A bill sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that passed on Thursday will allocate $20 million for the African Union and acts to “facilitate the air-lifting of [AU] forces into the Darfur region as quickly as possible.” Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) has introduced a resolution in the Senate calling for President Bush to appoint a presidential envoy to Sudan and establish a no-fly zone over Darfur. The resolution also declares that the latest operations by the government of Sudan are “in direct violation of the Darfur Peace Agreement.”

THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT: "The Sudanese government has persistently failed in its duty to protect civilians in Darfur from gross and systematic human rights violations," Amnesty International writes. "That responsibility has now devolved to the international community." Ordinary Americans understand that we hold this responsibility. Sixty-two percent of Americans agree that the U.S. “has a responsibility to help stop the killing in the Darfur region." At a demonstration last week in Washington, "almost everyone in the crowd wore a shirt with the report's title: 'A Tale of Two Genocides.' Underneath the title were images of two bloody handprints, one above the word Rwanda, the other above the word Darfur. And below the handprints, an assertion: 'The U.S. Has the Power to Protect.'" (Another major demonstration will take place in New York City on Saturday.) This month's Fortune magazine describes a recent scene in Rwanda when a local reporter asked President Clinton "about his administration's failures during the 1994 genocide. 'It didn't happen under my administration,' Clinton replied. 'It happened under me.'" President Bush needs to realize that this same responsibility now rests on his shoulders, and the looming tragedy in Darfur is his greatest test thus far.

Darfur: Dallaire Wants to Mobilize Canadian Youth

From the CP

Romeo Dallaire is calling young Canadians into the streets to promote international causes, especially Darfur.

"We need to get Canadian youth off their butts and into the streets to take on some of these significant international causes . . . and to demonstrate their internationalism," Dallaire said Wednesday. He said he believe's today's young people are more committed to global causes than their parents and he wants them to demonstrate that commitment.

The senator and retired general is promoting a Sunday rally in Toronto which he hopes will draw young people to activism on behalf of the beleaguered people of Darfur in Sudan.

He says his hope is that youth can prod the populace and the government into spearheading an international effort to stabilize Darfur and end the fighting which has killed thousands of people.

Justin Trudeau is to be the emcee of the Toronto rally, one of many scheduled around the world.

Dallaire, who led the ill-fated United Nations mission during the Rwandan genocide, is also pushing for a major international force to go into Sudan and stabilize Darfur.

He envisions a multi-national force of tens of thousands equipped with light armour and helicopters and with a mandate that would allow them to fight not only Sudanese rebels, but the Khartoum government, if necessary.

He said he hopes Canada would be willing to provide money and up to 600 troops for that mission.

Darfur: United By Their Wartorn Past

From Embassy

Canada's Sudanese immigrants are still close to the personal tragedies of civil war and genocide that have devastated their country, and wonder why there isn't agreement for a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur.

The small congregation that gathers to pray every Sunday afternoon at the Bronson Centre in downtown Ottawa is all too familiar with tales of war and suffering. So when the preacher, Samuel Guli, a tall man in a dark suit with a yellow tie, bows his head and asks the congregation to pray for Darfur last Sunday, it is in empathy–only understood by those bonded by the tragedy of war–that they bow their heads and pray.

Hailing from south Sudan, a region devastated by a 22-year-old civil war that ended last year, the 40 worshipers at the non-denominational service each have personal stories about war. If they have not been affected by it directly, they know someone–a friend or a relative–who has. Their presence as immigrants in Canada is either directly or indirectly related to the war.

"God, change the hearts of those in leadership so that the suffering in Darfur and the whole Sudan ends," prayed Mr. Guli in Arabic.

Mr. Guli remembered to pray for Darfur because the region is back in the news for all the wrong reasons. Last week, the ill-equipped and underfunded African Union force tasked with keeping the peace in the strife-torn province said it can no longer do the job and asked for United Nations forces to step in. The government of Sudan, which rejects the idea of UN peacekeepers in Darfur, last week gave the AU force an ultimatum: Accept alternative funding from the Arab League, or leave at month's end.

The ultimatum is what Mohamed Haroun, president of the Darfur Association of Canada, calls the Sudanese government's "intimidation tactics."

"They have said that there will be an Al Qaeda-like resistance to the UN forces, but this is nonsense," says Mr. Haroun by phone from Hamilton.

"This is a mission of rescuing a country, not occupying it."

Uganda: Talks Fraught with Challenges

A new report from the International Crisis Group

The peace talks in Juba between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government have made surprising progress, with a formal cessation of hostilities agreement signed on 26 August. Led by Dr Riek Machar, vice president of the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS), they evolved rapidly over five months and now offer the best chance to end a twenty-year civil war that has ravaged the north of the country and spilled into Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The immediate test is whether the LRA will relocate its forces to the two designated assembly areas in southern Sudan. Initial reports are that small groups of LRA troops, with LRA Deputy Vincent Otti amongst them, have arrived at the assembly areas, raising expectations the talks have overcome their first big hurdle; but if the rest of the forces do not arrive, they may yet fall apart.

Though there are reasons for optimism, the challenges are daunting. The discrepancies over expectations within the LRA itself, the questionable legitimacy of its delegation in Juba, differences in agenda and vision between the two parties, and limited GoSS capacity all suggest a new, two-phase mediation strategy may be required. Phase one would focus on the specific details of the LRA’s return from the bush and technical issues such as disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR). Phase two would provide a more inclusive forum to deal with the underlying political and structural issues that have fuelled the cycle of conflict in the north. This should be held in Uganda and grounded in the recognition that the current conflict is not solely an Acholi or northern problem but rather a collective crisis that needs countrywide application. Sustained international engagement will be essential to keep the government motivated to deal with the difficult political problems of the north once the LRA has signed a peace agreement.

A related article from Reuters

Peace talks with Ugandan rebels offer the best chance to end one of Africa's longest wars, but the process could collapse if fighters fail to gather at agreed assembly points, a think-tank said on Wednesday.

The questionable legitimacy of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) negotiators, international indictments against LRA leaders and Kampala's uncertain motives also posed huge challenges, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report.

The government signed a landmark truce with the LRA -- one of Africa's most feared rebel groups -- last month, raising hopes of an end to a 20-year insurgency that has caused tens of thousands of deaths and forced 1.7 million into refugee camps.

The pact prompted Uganda to extend a Sept. 12 deadline for a peace deal amid reports that hundreds of LRA fighters, including their deputy leader Vincent Otti, were gathering at two assembly points as agreed.

The ICG said an immediate test of the peace process, which has gathered pace despite initial international scepticism, was whether the rest of the forces would arrive.

"Failure to comply would likely be seen as a violation by the government and could easily lead to a military strike and collapse of the process," the ICG report said.

Darfur: Bipartisan Letter Calls on President to Take Immediate Action

The text of a letter sent to President Bush

Dear Mr. President:

We write to urge you to take decisive action immediately to address the disaster looming in Darfur.

As you know, Khartoum has rejected U.N. Security Council Resolution 1706, which calls for the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur. Meanwhile, government forces have launched a major military offensive in Darfur, and other armed groups continue their attacks, in direct violation of the Darfur Peace Agreement and the N’Djamena cease-fire accord. As a result, over fifty thousand civilians have been forcibly displaced, and nearly half a million are beyond the reach of humanitarian aid.

The Sudanese government appears to be making an all-out push to finish the job of ethnic cleansing in Darfur. Though it seems to have backed off its threat to expel the African Union force, it has garnered the support of the Arab League for Khartoum’s plans to deploy troops to Darfur. Human rights groups have pointed out that civilians, millions of whom are concentrated in IDP camps, are vulnerable to attack—including indiscriminant aerial bombardment. In short, this is a moment very much like the one the world faced just before the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and the massacre in Srebrenica in 1995. Strong action by the United States and its international partners is required in the coming hours and days – not weeks – to avert an even larger tragedy.

You have worked hard to keep Darfur on the international community’s agenda, as reflected most recently by the passage on August 31st of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1706. However, Khartoum has undermined your efforts at every turn. We therefore urge you to take the following additional steps:

Publicly reject, in coordination with our allies, Khartoum’s demand that the AU leave and insist that the only way to restore security is through the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force in accordance with Resolution 1706.

Impose targeted financial, travel, and diplomatic sanctions against the Sudanese leadership, rebel forces, and others determined to be responsible for the atrocities and pursue the immediate imposition of similar sanctions by the U.N. Security Council and the European Union as called for by UNSC resolutions 1556 and 1564. It is high time for such an action to be taken by the Security Council, and if the Council cannot act because of threats of a Russian or Chinese veto, by the United States and Europe acting together.

Urge the Security Council to establish a no-fly zone to enforce its previous call (in Resolution 1591) for the government of Sudan to cease offensive military flights over Darfur. If the Security Council does not act, the United States should work with its NATO allies to enforce a no-fly zone on our own.

Take active steps to secure support from member states for the United Nations Human Rights Council to convene a special session on Sudan.

Implement an inclusive dialogue amongst the people of Darfur to give them a role and interest in shaping a durable peace.

Increase diplomatic pressure on Russia, China, and the Arab League to convince them to use their influence with Khartoum to accept a U.N. peacekeeping force.

Urge all U.N. member states to accelerate implementation of Security Council Resolution 1706 and the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur, to provide additional personnel, equipment, financial, and logistical support to AMIS, and to adhere to all relevant U.N. Security Council Resolutions.

Provide Congress with an accurate assessment of funding shortfalls in peacekeeping needs for both the immediate support to the African Union as called for in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1706, and for the transition and maintenance of the new U.N. force in Darfur.

Reiterate to the government of Sudan, rebel groups, and all parties in Darfur that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1706 demands accountability for war crimes in Darfur.

In addition, we ask again that you designate a Special Envoy to Sudan to head the Office of the Presidential Special Envoy established pursuant to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2006 (P.L. 109-234). The previous special envoy to Sudan, former Senator Jack Danforth, played a critical role in negotiating an end to the 22-year war between Khartoum and Southern Sudanese rebels. Another envoy of similar stature and capability could build on the work of your administration.

Mr. President, tens of thousands of lives may hang in the balance. We are committed to working to support your efforts to address this urgent matter.

Sincerely,

U.S. Senators Joe Biden; Mike DeWine; Tim Johnson; Sam Brownback; Dianne Feinstein; Russell Feingold; Arlen Specter; Joe Lieberman; Ken Salazar; Bill Nelson; Daniel Inouye; George Voinovich; Norm Coleman; Byron Dorgan; Dick Durbin; Lincoln Chafee; Johnny Isakson; John Kerry; Chris Smith; Ted Kennedy; Hillary Clinton; Chris Dodd; Patrick Leahy; John McCain; Kit Bond; Carl Levin.

Sudan: Alleged al-Qaida Group Claims Responsibility for Killing

From the AP

A group claiming to be al-Qaida's branch in Sudan said Tuesday that it killed the chief editor of a Sudanese independent daily who provoked a furor with an article denounced as blasphemous.

The claim in the slaying of Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed, whose body was found last week, was issued by a previously unknown group called al-Qaida in Sudan and Africa. The authenticity of the claim, posted on the Web site of Al-Arabiya television, could not be independently confirmed.

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was based in Sudan until the late 1990s when the government threw him out and he moved to Afghanistan. Since then, members of the group have operated in eastern Africa. But until Tuesday's claim, no group had announced itself as al-Qaida's branch in Sudan, along the lines of those in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Ahmed, the editor-in-chief of Al-Wifaq, was snatched from his home in eastern Khartoum on Sept. 5 and his body was found a day later.

"Thanks to God's grace, ... execution was carried out against a dog of the dogs of the ruling party, the atheist journalist Mohammed Taha, who defamed our Prophet Muhammad," the statement said.

It said he was "slaughtered" by three members of the group, who it said fled Khartoum on Thursday. The phrasing has been used by al-Qaida in Iraq for people it has beheaded, but Sudanese officials have not said whether Ahmed was decapitated.

The statement was signed "Abu Hafs al-Sudani," identified as the group's leader. It was e-mailed to several Sudanese papers Tuesday, according to Al-Arabiya.

Sudan: Gov't Rejects Washington's Condition for Improving Relations

From Xinhua</